How to set SMART goals

Feb 9

Today we are going to be talking about SMART goals.

What the hell are they?
How do you use them for your business?

I know a lot of us revisit goals at specific trigger points throughout the year, whether that's before a new month, or before a new quarter or before a new year. But, the reality is you can really be setting goals whenever you want to! The biggest thing is setting goals that are setting you up for success and that are going to be the most likely to achieve. That's where SMART goals come in.

What are SMART goals?

SMART goals stands for simple, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time bound.

We all have set goals that were not SMART before. For example, “I want to lose weight” — how much weight in what amount of time? What are you going to be doing to lose weight? Setting really vague goals is difficult because you don't know when you've hit them, you don't know when you've accomplished them because there's no way for you to know when you have and so you're not able to track progress and see progress. Then you're way more likely to fall off the bandwagon or abandon them because we need that serotonin, that hit of feel good, that comes with “Oh, wow, I'm that much closer to my goal”, or “Oh, wow, I have achieved my goal!”.

It's so important to celebrate your wins as a business owner, no one else is going to celebrate them for you. It’s really important to take time to really intentionally celebrate those wins. If you don't, you're never going to, you're going to feel like you're always chasing the next thing.

How to set SMART goals

Let's go over smart goals and how you can set them right. SMART goals are simple. That means you don't want your goal to be this huge, major overarching thing — what you want to do is break that big goal into smaller chunks of goals, because this is going to be able to give you those wins. And by able by being able to see “Oh, I am getting closer to this goal”, and “I am having some wins”, you're able to use that as momentum, a wave to keep on rolling through.

The next thing in SMART goals is measurable. Again, you want to start writing more. Okay, great. What does that mean? You want to write every day for five minutes, you want to write a book? I want to get more clients. Okay? Does that mean you want to get 10 clients that are paying you $1,000 a month? Does that mean you want to get four clients that are paying you $2,000 a month? What is that? Make it measurable! I want to grow my social media following — what the hell does that mean? Make it measurable. Because again, that's going to allow you to really see that you're getting closer to accomplishing that goal. And it's going to allow you to see when you’ve accomplished this goal.

The next item is actionable. If you are setting a goal that you are not realistically going to be able to dedicate the time or the attention to accomplishing, you are setting yourself up for failure. And the thing is, is if you keep setting yourself up for failure, you're going to really internalise that, and that's where we start to get these beliefs of well — I never stick with something. Well, I don't want to invest in that coaching programme, because I never stick with coaching programmes, and I never work the programme like I should to see the results. Make it realistic and actionable.

And that's our next thing — make it realistic. If you're not able to really map out and see how you can accomplish that thing, that is not going to be a good goal for you. So maybe you need to break that goal down into a little bit of a smaller piece. Maybe you need to think what would go into accomplishing this goal? What are the steps that go into getting to this goal? What do I need to do? How many discovery calls do I need to be booking per week? And make it realistic. For example, I need to book five discovery calls per week, and those are going to last for 30 minutes each. But I only have an extra hour in my week to really dedicate to discovery calls. Well, there's a difference there. It's not realistic for your timeline. So either you need to find more time, or adjust your goal to be more realistic for you. And this is so key for you. It doesn't mean you can't set big ambitious goals, but break them into more realistic, actionable and accomplishable chunks, because you will start to get those wins and your subconscious doesn't want to make a liar out of you. So if you're making goals, and you never are hitting them, because you're setting yourself up for failure, you're going to internalise that, and start to believe I can't do this, I never accomplished things I never finished things I set out to do. Versus giving yourself those wins and really training your brain to think I accomplished whatever I put my mind to where my attention goes, it grows. That's a huge mindset piece that a lot of people ignore when they're doing goal setting. Mindset goes hand in hand with goal setting.

Our final item is make it time bound. Again, measurable and time bound. You want to write a book, okay, great. In a month, in a year, in 10 years? Make it time bound. And this does two things for you. It gives you a more sense of urgency, so that you're not pushing it off. If it's time bound, you're going to say, “Nope, I need to get that done this week.” So you're able to clearly see is this realistic? I want to get 10 new clients in the next week. Is that realistic?I want to get 10 new clients, okay, and how much time right? In a week. Okay, now it's not realistic. So you see how these different pieces of SMART goals really start to talk to each other and affect each other. You cannot goal set effectively without each part of SMART goals. Making them simple, making them measurable, making them actionable, making them realistic and making them time bound.

Next time you're setting goals, run it through these filters and think about whether you’re making it simple, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time bound.

Am I setting myself up for success here? Or am I setting myself up for disappointment? You can focus on it, you can kill yourself and work so hard. But if you haven't made it realistic, if it's not actionable, if it's not time bound, how would you ever accomplish that? How can you expect yourself to accomplish that? And that is so important for your business!

I hope you use these strategies next time you're doing goal setting, if you are struggling to set those goals, make those goals realistic, simple, measurable, actionable and time bound. If you feel that you have been setting those goals, and you're really just struggling to execute on them, I definitely think a digital strategy intensive is the right solution. We can do a deep dive and really look at where the weak points are, where you’re dropping off, what the issue is, where we can put more attention to to ensure this goal is getting met. This is the easiest way to get my eyes on your business. It's a 90 minute call and you're going to get an amazing actionable step by step action plan afterwards.