Why Quarterly Goals?
Today we are going to talk about setting quarterly goals… woo-hoo!
I wish I knew the best way to get across how extremely important, fun and tremendously useful, goal-setting is. My earliest memory of goal-setting. I was in gym class in high school and we used to have to do this presidential fitness thing; I don’t know if you did that in high school, too? We had to do something crazy – 1000 sit-ups maybe? A ridiculous amount of push-ups… I just remember that this was when I first learned about goal-setting; so I hated it. That’s pretty much what I thought about goal-setting for years to come, like push-ups and sit-ups and how I hated gym class. I just hated the whole idea of goal-setting – up until fairly recently. In the business world there is a lot of talk about goal-setting. Set your revenue goals, set your business goals, set your growth goals, you know. You’ve heard it too.
A Re-introduction to Goal Setting
My first taste of how incredible goal-setting really can be, especially when you write them down, was about five years ago. I think the idea came from a business conference. It might have been a Profit First conference, where there was a whole presentation about goal-setting. The content resonated with me and it made logical sense. Most of the conference was really about physically writing down your goals and the impact that has. After that conference, I was going on vacation and I had just bought myself a journal. I decided to do doing some brainstorming. Then I wrote down a few goals that I wanted to achieve in the next few years; it was pretty loosey goosey. But I wrote them down and I read it, and re-read it a few times.
The Light Bulb
A year later, I was going on vacation again and I brought the same journal. As I was leafing through it I ended up on the page where I had written those goals a year prior. I thought to myself, ”oh yeah! I wrote these last January, when I was here.” (I was in Aruba.) And guess what? I had actually achieved all of the goals that I had written down, without even really realizing it! I had:
- Achieved my revenue goal which, when I first wrote it, I thought was extremely lofty and unattainable for several years.
- Wanted my business name on the side of a building and that happened.:)
- Wanted to grow the business at that time to five full-time employees and we were either at five or six by the end of the year.
Connecting the Dots
I remember being shocked thinking about the power of writing that down and it stuck in my head -I had actually made all that happen. So that was really my first foray into how goal-setting actually does work and how it’s extremely powerful and useful. Now, just take that knowledge and let’s go ten steps further.
Breaking Goals Down
Don Miller of Story Brand (he now also has a company called Business Made Simple and a great book titled the same), offers an online university. In one of his online courses, he takes you through an entire life plan where you do a lot of goal-setting. First you create your ten-year, them five-year, one year, and quarterly goals. If you like, you can even break it down into months or weeks if you’d like to get that granular with it. But what’s great is it really keeps you dialed- in and laser-focused on where it is that you want to be in the not so distant future. Because let’s face it, ten years is gonna be here before we know it. Time just flies. Completing that course was quite an intense exercise, but a really important one to complete.
Once you have a ten-year plan that you can easily see/read, drill that down to a five-year plan. And then you drill that down to a one-year plan, and what needs to happen to be able to hit your targets along the way. Then, I break it down by quarter and month and I actually try to do little weekly things to keep me on target.
Our Spark Quarterly Planner
We actually developed a quarterly day planner, here internally at Spark, which I love and actually, you can buy it on our website, if you would like to try a really good planner. I had it created as an internal tool for myself and for the staff here and we REALLY love it! Really I figured I’ll just put it on the website and see if anybody else wants to use it. In this planner, we created it in the way I learned about goal-setting. The planner also helps us a lot with management of our time (which we wrote about time management in this blog piece.) It starts by having you brainstorm on what is important to you, your why, your mission, and then your goals. You write, “This is what I want to achieve in ten years, five years, one year and then here are my quarterly goals.”
Getting Sh** Done
From there, we begin. When you turn the page, we get down to it every day… I can quickly write a reminder for me of what goal I’m trying to achieve either that week, that month, that quarter, it’s whatever I’m thinking of or want to lend importance too. The impact around having this is that it’s in front of me all the time and so therefore, it’s really powerful, because it’s always on my mind – consciously and subconsciously. I always know where I’m going, and I just get shit done! That’s really the bottom line and this has worked extremely well for me. And that is why I created this planner and shared it with my staff and clients and colleagues, who I also thought would be interested in moving toward their goals, and moving toward them faster and certainly with more intention.
The Problem with Having No Goals
Intention is powerful. I talk about intention with money, intention with your time, and with your thoughts. But the other end of it is, without having any goals set, it’s like getting in a car and trying to drive cross country with absolutely no map. You’re just making turns wherever you think might be in the right direction! And God knows how long it will take you before you get to California from the East Coast. Well, versus actually having the most direct, mapped out route. It’s the same with goals. So write them down, and it’s okay if you veer off, if that’s the path you choose. But then you can get back to the best path. And you can change them as much as you want. It’s just that at least you have a target and something to strive toward and that’s where progress is made.
Getting Help with Goals
So that’s my talk on quarterly goals broken down into monthly and weekly and going all the way up to ten years. If you think you need some help figuring out what your goals are, I highly recommend doing the Hero on a Mission Course from Don Miller’s online school Business Made Simple University. It’s actually quite inexpensive yet extremely valuable. But if you already know your goals, and just need an organized way to go about achieving them, grab our planner! It’s on our website – sparkbusinessconsulting.com. And It’ll be the best 20 bucks you’ll ever spend. 😉
That’s it. Thanks so much for reading. Have a great week.
