Ah, the “Big Goal.” All entrepreneurs have one. But we often put it on the back burner to “fight the fires” of daily business.

But why?

Most times, it feels scary. We’re unsure how we’ll achieve it, so planning it seems too hard. (Especially on top of our daily to-dos.)

And many times, we wonder if it’s the right goal to have at all. 🤔

Below, you’ll learn how to choose an appropriate “Big Goal” for THIS stage of your company’s game.

You’ll see how you can prioritize it, so it doesn’t fall by the wayside as you do low-priority stuff. And you’ll learn how to ensure it’s attainable — not too “soft” or too “stretchy.”

Onward!

“Why set goals? I don’t like planning; I go by FEELING.”

Um. Great. I go by feeling, too. So do many of the highest-earning, most successful entrepreneurs. But make no mistake: They ALSO have firm goals.

I wonder if Oprah, Will Smith, and Mark Zuckerberg could’ve achieved all they have without setting goals and having structure!

It may surprise you how many business owners operate this way. Many have been in business for years.

But it’s no surprise they one day reach a level of growth they can’t get past. Not without some firm goals.

Choosing firm goals for your business gives you some way to measure success. If you have no goals, you won’t reach any. Everything you achieve will be accidental, and you’ll have no plan for the future.

Remember the old adage, “If you have no plan… that IS the plan.” Or something like that.

Choosing firm goals also eliminates distractions. There are always unlimited things we could be doing. But having not only “a goal,” but daily action steps to achieve it, keeps you focused. Then, if opportunities arise that won’t help you reach the goal faster, you can refuse (or table) them.

So here’s how I’d walk you through these steps, as part of the performance coaching process.

How do I know which goal is right for my company NOW?

By basing it on where you want to be, long-term. In our high performance coaching program, I help business owners create a 10-year map. Then we reverse engineer where they want to be in 10 years to determine what they should be doing today.

First, think of your current Big Goal. What’s that thing you’ve been wanting to do, but haven’t had time to see how to get there? Call it to mind. And now, let’s see how practical it is by considering your long-term goals.

To do that, we’d ask: What do YOU want to achieve by Year 10? Name three things.

Remember, Major Force exists to help entrepreneurs find balance to squash performance anxiety. So these probably shouldn’t all be business goals. Oftentimes, one is a revenue goal, one is an expansion goal, and one is a personal goal. But this is your business and life. You decide.

We’ll use a fictional online wellness coach named Jonna as an example. She’s 45 years old, and earns $80,000 per year in business revenue.

By Year 10 (Age 55!), Jonna might want to:

  1. Open a wellness center and stop teaching 1:1’s.
  2. Be earning $500,000/yr in revenue.
  3. Only work 6 months out of the year, traveling the other 6.

Whew. Seems lofty! But no worries. Let’s see if it’s realistic.

To do that, we’d ask: What would you have to achieve by Year 5 to make your Year 10 goals realistic?

Jonna’s answers may be:

  1. Convert half of my revenue to passive income.
  2. Be earning $250,000/yr in revenue.
  3. Only work 9 months out of the year, traveling the other 3.

Nice. But five years seems like forever away. And reaching those 5-year goals from where she’s starting from seems scary as @#%#%^. So let’s break her goals down further.

To do that, we’d ask: What would you have to achieve by the end of Year 1 to make your Year 5 goals realistic?

Jonna’s answers may be:

  1. Convert ¼ of my revenue to passive income.
  2. Be earning $125,000/yr in revenue.
  3. Only work 11 months out of the year, traveling for 1 month.

Jonna just did some simple math to get some initial numbers for her goals. (Ex: Five years from now is halfway to her 10-year goal. So she figured she’d need to be halfway to achieving all her goals by Year 5.)

Now, she can see if these 1-year numbers and goals feel realistic:

  1. Yes: She feels like she can convert ¼ of her revenue to passive income.
  2. No: She’s unsure if she’ll know how to create $45k more revenue in 12 months.
  3. Yes: If she makes some smart choices, she believes she can take off one month this year to do some traveling!

Instead, Jonna feels fairly confident she can figure out how to create $20,000 more revenue across 12 months. She’d need to earn about 25% more, which feels stretchy … but possible. (Although she’s still not sure how. No problem. We’ll tackle that next.)

So she modifies her second goal (revenue) as follows:

  1. 1-Year: $100,000/yr
  2. 5-Year: $200,000/yr
  3. 10-Year: $400,000/yr

Those feel a bit scary, but attainable to Jonna.

When she started this process, her Big Goal was just to hire another coach to offer her clients nutrition support! She still can, but… looks like she’ll want to reprioritize some things to achieve her long-term goals.

How do I create a plan for achieving my Big Goal(s)?

First, convert your plan to SMART performance goals (if needed). Then, consider resources you need beforehand (if any). Finally, spread all action items out across the next year (or whatever your timeline).

For instance, now our fictional coach has got her three Big Goals:

  1. Convert ¼ of my revenue to passive income.
  2. Be earning $100,000/yr in revenue.
  3. Only work 11 months out of the year, traveling for 1 month.

What’s a “SMART” performance goal?

This common business acronym stands for:

  • Specific: This one’s self-explanatory.
  • Measurable: What hard numbers can show we’ve achieved it?
  • Aligned(?): …with your core values, and your company’s MVP?
  • Realistic: Self-explanatory.
  • Time-Bound: By when will you achieve it (that feels aggressive)?

Ensuring all goals are SMART ensures your focus and clarity, and creates the greatest chance for success. As an example, let’s check one of Jonna’s 1-year goals:

Convert ¼ of my revenue to passive income.

  • Specific: Could be a little more specific. What type of passive income? Courses? Affiliate sales? Etc.?
  • Measurable: Yes, exactly “¼ of revenue” or $20k/yr.
  • Aligned: Yes. Jonna runs a business for more freedom, and chose her line of work to improve people’s health. So if she creates passive income, she can help more people get healthy while doing less work. Win/win.
  • Realistic: Yes. She can do 25% less 1:1 work for 25% more time to invest into passive income product creation.
  • Time-Bound: Yes. Her goal is to achieve it by the end of Year 1, in 12 months.

To simplify, we’ll also see if we can combine Jonna’s Big Goals any, so there’ll be less actions to take in the next steps.

So her final 1-year goal is to:

Earn $100k/yr in revenue (with $25k of it passive) in 11 months, by the end of Year 1.

To do it, she’s doing ¼ fewer private sessions, which means ¼ less revenue — for now. So she’s starting from $60,000/yr. Earning $40,000 more in passive products she hasn’t even created yet sounds WAY scary. So I help her figure out how to make her goal more realistic.

Jonna is charging $62.50 an hour now and running 20 client sessions per week. Remember, this equals $60,000/yr revenue if she only runs ¾ as many private sessions.

But if she raises her rate to $85/hr, she’ll earn about $75,000/yr. (Don’t worry, there are things she can do to offset any clients she’ll lose by raising her rate!)

So now, she’s only got to earn about $25,000/yr in passive income, which is just over $520 per week. Doesn’t seem so scary!

So now, she knows this year’s to-dos are to:

  • Create passive income products to earn $500/wk.
  • Plan a 1-month vacation.
  • Notify her clients of a rate increase.

And I help her turn those into SMART performance goals to guide her next steps:

  • Create passive income products within 30 days.
  • Plan a 1-month vacation by Month 10.
  • Notify her clients of a rate increase within 30 days.

Easy.

Now, I’ll help her create action steps from these Year 1 goals.

How can I create daily action steps from long-term goals?

First, prioritize your goals and see if you can work on any simultaneously. Then, break them out into tasks you can do in just a few minutes a day, if at all possible!

To avoid this post getting super-long (too late? 🤭), we’ll only break down one of her Year 1 goals:

  1. Create passive income products within 30 days.

To achieve it, she’ll need to do the following:

  • Decide on product topic
  • Create marketing materials
  • Create product
  • Decide on marketing plan

I help her recognize what things she can do at the same time as others. And make sure she’s budgeting a realistic amount of time for each thing.

That might look something like:

  • Decide on product topic: Week 1
  • Decide on marketing plan: Week 1
  • Create marketing materials: Week 2
  • Create product: Weeks 3 & 4

As you can see, I helped Jonna prioritize the items. In the real world, we’d also list out the little to-dos underneath each step. Then, she schedules those “little to-dos” on her calendar as her daily action steps. We’d plan for all steps to be completed within the next 30 days.

We’d repeat the same process to help her plan her one-month vacation and notify clients of a rate increase.

The goal is to come up with daily action steps that don’t take longer than 15 minutes per day to complete. While that’s often possible, it’s not always, depending on how aggressive your deadlines are.

Sometimes, you may need to spend longer on a daily task, say, breaking an hour-long “task session” into 15-minute blocks. But even that’s not set in stone. We’d collaborate to factor in your current obligations, level of energy, “other hands” available, etc.

But the simpler the better. The point is, what are the Minimum Daily Actions you can take to crush your Big Goal?

How can I fit in these new action steps with all my other work?

By now, that’s the easy part.

Through this entire process, you’ve connected to your “why.”

You’ve connected TODAY’S action steps with what you want to achieve in 10 years. You’re no longer just “fighting fires” or doing busy work. Instead, you have a clear idea of exactly what you want to achieve, when you want to achieve it by — and how you plan to do it.

That’s excellent motivation to fit these action steps into your day.

However, I get that you’re busy. And you have a lot on your plate.

So if clarifying long-term goals hasn’t made this process easy enough, it’s time to have a look at your calendar.

Take some time to evaluate what you do each day for a week. (You can use a free tool like ManicTime to keep track, if needed. Nobody has time for manual time logging!)

At the end of the week, see where your time has gone:

  • What meetings could you have opted out of?
  • What work could you have delegated?
  • Where could you have used automation instead of your precious time?
  • Where was time completely wasted?
  • Where (and how) could you have achieved something in half the time?
  • Etc.

You’ll almost certainly find at least a few hours you could’ve spent on your 10-year goals. (If not, well… it may be time to consider high performance coaching!)

The Bottom Line: Firm Goals = Focused Future Plans

Choosing — and achieving — firm business goals takes much planning, strategy, and diligence. But it’s insanely worth it.

After all, you didn’t start this company to spin your wheels for the next 10 years, and wonder where your life went.

You also didn’t start it to work twice as many hours as you did in the rat race.

Comment below if you have questions on putting these tips into action. Or, consider high performance coaching for support crushing your Big Goal in 4 to 6 months… without running yourself into the ground. 👍🏽