According to research 92% of new year resolution fail, with majority breaking their resolution before February even starts! I am sure we can all relate to that in our personal life. However, in business things should be different. Make sure you set your S.M.A.R.T. goals to increase your chance of success:
- Specific – distinct and defined as oppose to ambiguous
- Measurable – make sure the results/progress are trackable (use numbers where possible)
- Attainable – it is good to be ambitious but be realistic about it (think about the detailed steps to get there)
- Relevant – align your business goals with your purpose
- Time Based – just like a project, it needs to have a start and end date
The above is obviously widely known general knowledge, so let’s add our personal 2c worth into the mix:
- Instead of making it a ‘full year’ worth of goals, make it shorter (3 or 6 months for example) so it’s easier to get comprehend and less likely you will leave everything to the last minute and realise it’s too big to achieve in the last couple of weeks of the year.
- Set some kind of reward for if you manage to achieve your goals, but just as importantly, put in place penalties for if you don’t achieve your goals. There is even a website that’s dedicated to this called BeeMinder.
- Make your business goals public so that it makes you accountable (peer pressure is a powerful thing) and possibly leverage off other’s resource/network (they might help you achieve your goals simply because they are aware of it). Just the other day, shortly after posting our goals on a Facebook business group, we already had offers from other peers in helping us out.
With that said, below are 20-80 Solutions’ New Year resolutions/goals for the next 6 months:
- Expand operations team (front-end web developer and virtual assistant)
- Obtain 6 full package clients
- Create 6 video blogs (with interesting/unique theme)
- Run 3 business workshops
- Finish 3 process documents (hiring/firing, initial customer engagement, customer handover)
- Launch a win-win-win referral system
- Attend at least 6 network groups that’s SME related (via Meetup.com or Eventbrite)
- Obtain at least 3 joint venture partners (PR, content writer, social media, designer, business coach)
Now, who has the guts to share their business new year resolution/goals with us?