Except staying on top of your daily assignements, there is one more thing you can do for your business that will get you as far ahead, in your business, as you let it.
Being consistent at setting objectives on a monthly basis and working to accomplish them is one of the most important things you can do.
What happens in that you when people start a micro business, they kind of know what to do. Sometimes there is a lot, sometimes there isn’t, but they manage to somehow stay occupied with it 24/7 in every case. There isn’t much planning behind their actions, so they get stuck doing a little of everything at the same time and then, a year later, they find themselves doing the same things they thought they needed to do to kick-start their business. Neither happens; no kick-start, no finish to certain tasks.
On the other hand, if you set monthly objectives, you will soon find yourself accomplishing everything you needed and more. This will help you get more clear about what you want to accomplish and, setting monthly objectives, will get you one big step ahead every time.
The goal you set is something besides the regular work you do on an ongoing basis. Like a project; getting 10 new clients, redesigning your website, hosting an event, writing a manifesto, reaching your first thousand subscribers on your blog, launching a new product, etc. Always ask yourself the question what can you do to move forward. And when you’re far ahead, ask what could make your business even better then it is right now.
The reason why this works is because you have enough time to do it and, once you accomplish one thing and see how great it is and how much it has done for your business, you will want to do more.
It’s like strategic planning without the strategic planning, because you choose what you will do next based on what you have learnt along the way. This is very powerful, which you will hopefully discover, because it pushes you to do much more then you ever thought you could do and it helps your business grow exponentially.
If I had one advice for you, this would probably be it.
So, what is your objective for this month?
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photo courtesy Smashing magazine and Srđan Knezevic-Logodonia
I tend to think more in terms of quarterly goals, as opposed to monthly goals. However, for our sales team, we do have monthly revenue quotas to meet.
My objective for this month is to hire two new staff: a sales specialist and a writer. Gnosis Arts is experiencing strong growth this year, and so I need the staff to be able to delegate and manage a larger client load.
As long as you have specific goals set on a relatively short term basis, that’s good. I suggested monthly because I see a lot of micro businesses struggling to find their way in the workload. New entrepreneurs aren’t very adaptive from the begining, so they usually do a little here and a little there, not knowing that there is something they should do to move their business forward even if they have just started. Those monthly goals can be small, but they need to be out of the regular workload and they need to push your business forward.
Once you develop your business, get it to the next level, maybe it will be more logical to set quaterly goals, like it is for you Eric; depending on their nature.
Good luck with hiring and growth, I hope you find some brilliant people for your team!
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