image courtesy of kelp1966 on Flickr

If I didn’t have goals for my business, I’d be like someone lost in a maze.

There’s always more than one way to get through a maze, but if you’re trying to get out quickly & easily then you need a strategy.

It’s the same with your business. If you don’t have a plan then you’re going to go along making some great decisions, but also hitting a lot of bumps along the way. I’m not saying that because you have a plan you won’t hit any bumps or run off the road a time or two. It just won’t happen to you as much & you’ll know how to get back on track when you do find yourself stuck.

Long-term vs. Short-term

Long-term goals are the goals you have for your business that will take at least a year or more to complete. They’re those big goals that you have to work hard to reach. There are lots of steps you’re going to need to take to get you from where you are now to where you want to be in that amount of time.

Short-term goals are the goals that are quicker to reach. They may be parts or pieces of your long-term goals {which is smart}, or they may be individual & separate from your long-term goals. They’re usually goals that you can reach in no longer than 3 months time & they are what you will look to in order to come up with your day-to-day to-dos.

Coming Up With Goals

There’s no set way to determine which goals you should go for with your business. As far as long-term goals go, be realistic, but reach for the stars. If you want to make x amount of money this year, make that a goal. If you want to get an awesome website together, write it down. If you want to develop an online class, go for it. Those are the types of things that require a lot of little steps & preparations to get from Pt. A to Pt. B. You can do it.

As far as short term goals go, I personally like to make mine fit into a 1 month period. Why? Because I like to mark things off my list & see myself getting somewhere. It makes me feel accomplished & for me, that’s motivation baby! Many of my short-term goals will lead to the completion of my long-term goals, but a lot of them are separate from my big goals.

Again, it’s all up to you. Ask yourself these questions.

• Where do I want my business to be a year from now?
• Do I have any major projects I’d like to complete? What are they?
• Do I have any small sized projects I’d like to complete? What are they?
• How much available time do I have to work on my business?
• Do these things reflect my business & my brand?

Breaking Goals Down Into Bit-Sized Pieces

This is probably the most important step in accomplishing your goals. If you make a list of long-term goals & look at them, you’ll probably feel a bit overwhelmed. You may even wonder how on earth your going to reach those. The key is to break them down into bit-sized pieces so they’re easier to chew. You get me?

Take your long term goals & write down the steps needed to get there for each goal. Now you have some short-term goals. Now you’ll do the same thing for your short-term goals except this will be for your daily to-dos. Below is an example of what I’m talking about when it comes to turning your monthly {short-term goals} into daily to-dos!

Example:

Monthly goals: 1 – sell 10 items in my shop, 2 – make 3 new products, 3 – read a business book, 4 – blog 3 x week

Breakdown of Goal 1: 

• have a sale on last seasons products
• relist daily
• promote on FB & twitter
• write a blog post about a product
• cross-promote with someone

Oh my goodness! I can’t believe it’s April. Time has FLOWN by! Well seeing that it’s the first day of a new month, below is how I did on last month’s goals & my goals for this month!

So last month’s goals were:

Website

Blog 3 x wk

1 Interview

Set up website

60 newsletter subscribers

3 tutorials

Shop

5 sales

1 wholesale acct.

1 product feature

I am happy to report that I did every bit of that except…I didn’t meet my sales or get my wholesale account. But, I did go above & beyond in some of the other areas, so that’s a plus.

Now for this month’s goals.

I’m thinking that I’m going to start doing my monthly goals differently. Maybe not so many. It seems like I end up focusing more on certain ones & leaving others by the wayside therefore not accomplishing all that I wanted to.  So, I’m going to set more high-leverage goals. Here we go!

Website

Finish up one-on-one services & branding group coaching program

Shop

Get new product line ready to launch

That’s it. Short & sweet…except that there’s a lot that will go into those goals, but I want to focus all of my efforts this month on accomplishing these goals.

What is your big goal for April? The one thing you are going to work towards this month!

Sorry for the background noise in the video. Gotta love the kiddos! I promise to work on making them better!! LOL!

Okay, so it’s the beginning of March, & with that comes a review of last month’s goals along with some new ones for this month!

So, I’m a bit bummed to tell you that I didn’t meet all of my goals I had last month. I almost met them all, so I didn’t totally slack off, but I jumped ahead of myself on something which caused me not to do my best in others.

So the goals that I did meet for February were:

• Blogging 3 x week
• Establishing 1 product line

I was very consistent in my blogging, & that’s definitely something that I will keep up with for this month as well. I did work on establishing 1 product line in my shop…my Washcloth Bibs. The only thing that I didn’t do for them was to retake all of my photos. I know photos are something that you continually work on, & since I came across this great article on Mayi Carles blog, Heartmade, today I will get to work on this area. It’s a guest post from April Bowles-Olin of Blacksburg Belle titled 7 Ways To Improve Your Product Photography Without Buying New Equipment. It’s definitely worth checking out!

Now the goals that I didn’t meet:

• 3 guest posts – I did 2. I did land 2 contributing writer spots on those blogs so I will be writing there on a weekly basis & that will be fun. I did get 2 other opportunities for guest posts on some great blogs, but they were full during February & so one will hopefully be up this month. The other will definitely be up in April! So I sort of met this goal!
• 5 sales – I only made 2 sales this month, but I sold 6 items so I’m not sure about this one. My goal was 5 actual sales.
• 2 shop/item features – I only got 1
• 50 newsletter subscribers – I got 43, but that’s a big improvement from the 14 from the previous month!

Okay, so here are my goals for March:

Blog

• Blog 3x wk
• 1 interview
• Set up website
• 60 newsletter subscribers
• 3 tutorials

Shop

• 5 sales
• Wholesale account
• 1 product feature

Now, seeing as you’re here on my new website, I can now tell you that this is the thing I jumped the gun on. I decided I’d waited long enough to get my website going, so I dove in head first & this has taken up so much time that I slacked on meeting my monthly goals 100%. Getting my website up is one of my long-term goals for the year & since I’ve now completed that it doesn’t seem so bad. The point of short-term monthly goals are to help you reach your long-term yearly goals anyway.

So did you struggle with meeting any of your goals this month? If so, let me know what it was & how you struggled with it below.

Goethe Quote Clock – MBartStudios on Etsy

So in my post January Goals, I told you I’d let you know how I did on achieving the goals I’d set for myself for that month. Here we are in February, & I’m here to let you in on my successes…& yet, shortcomings. Not failures, shortcomings. Failure seems to harsh a word although it shares the same meaning as shortcoming.

ANYWAY, I’m happy to report that I met my goals of:

• blogging 3 x week
• finishing up my blog series “ReVAMPing Your Etsy Shop – 2011″
• 2 guest posts
• 3 sales in my shop
• 2 affiliates {I actually got 4!}

The two goals I did not meet were:

• 2 DIY projects
• 30 newsletter subscribers {I got 14}

And this month I want to:

• continue to blog 3 x week - {I think this is a good pace for me}
• 3 guest posts
• 5 sales
• 50 newsletter subscribers – {I think last months goal was a tad premature since the blog series doesn’t even start till this month!}
• 2 shop features on blogs
• establish 1 of my shop’s product lines: revamping those listings, marketing, branding, creating, etc.

Okay, so send me some good energy this way!

What are your goals for February? How did you so on January’s goals? Let me know!

hugs, Meagan

I am learning so much from so many amazing people out there! Thank you Brittni of Paper-N-Stitch, Laura Roder, April of Blacksburgh Belle, Tera Gentile, Mayi of Handmade Blog, Jessika of Oh My Handmade Goodness, and so many more.

There’s so much information when it comes to running a business. Doing this or doing that, I mean. So much that I would never have thought of, and I’m having a blast learning it all slowly but surely. Now, through this blog I want to be able to share what I’m learning about creating a successful business with all of you! If you’re like me, a mom who wants to have a successful indie business, than I’m here for you as are all of these other experienced people I just mentioned.

Mini Goals Chalkboard by Mary Kate McDevitt on Etsy

One of the things I’m learning about is having a blog and all that it entails. “What’s the point of having a blog”, you say? Well, it’s one more way for you to get out there and let people know what you and your business is about. It’s a way to share knowledge and insight with others who are searching. It’s a way to connect with potential buyers. There are so many reasons why it’s important to having a blog. I’m still learning many of those reasons, but one thing I have learned is that it’s important to have goals for your blog. You have goals for your business {I do monthly goals}, and you should have goals for each area of your business…blogging being one of those areas. So, you need goals for your blog, and they need to be measurable otherwise how will you know if you reached them.

So, how to come up with goals for your blog!

Step 1: Make a list of things you want to accomplish with your blog. For instance, have 50 followers, set up a newsletter, have sponsors, use affiliate marketing, etc. Anything and everything you can think of that you want for your blog. Don’t worry, you’re going to narrow this list WAY down.

Step 2: You need to order the items on your list from most important to least important, and decide what your short term goal time period is going to be. And by short term time period, I mean monthly or quarterly. For my business I have monthly goals because I like to see myself achieving things quickly, but with my blog, I’ve decided that quarterly goals will be fine.

Step 3: You need to pick 5-6 of the most important things you want to achieve with your blog over the next 3 months, and these will be your short term goals. Now if it’s something that you think may take a tad longer than 3 months or something you’re not going to have time to work on achieving, then put it on your long term goal list and move on to the next goal. When you list these things as goals, you need to be be specific. Use numbers, percentages, times, and so forth.

Mine are:

• 100 newsletter subscribers
• 3 posts a week
• average 30 visitors a day
• average time visitors spend on my blog – 10 minutes

Step 4: Take each goal and write down what you can do to reach this goal. Be specific, but don’t go overboard. Your plans need to be realistic and attainable. For example, one of my goals is to post 3 times a week. So some ways that I can reach this goal would be to 1) brainstorm valuable post topics for my readers, 2) schedule posts into my calender, 3) write posts ahead of time and more I’m sure. I think you get what I’m saying.

Step 5: Decide how you’re going to measure the outcome. For instance, I’ll be measuring my goals a couple different ways. I use Mail Chimp for my newsletter so it will be easy to see how many newsletter subscribers I get, and I’m in control of how often I post. So no problem measuring those two goals. The number of visitors a day and the average time spent will be measured through Google Analytics. If you want to know how to set up goals on your analytics page, stay tuned for that post in my upcoming blog series ReVAMPing Your Etsy Shop – 2011 which begins at the end of January!

Step 6: Get to work! Take the plans you came up with in step 4 and stick them in your planner. Whether it’s one thing a day or five, you need to schedule them in your to-do list so you don’t forget about them. These goals aren’t going to just happen because you want them to. You have to chip away at them bit by bit.

Good luck coming up with goals for your blog!

Leave me a comment below and let me know what they are!

See you at the end of March, and I’ll let you know how I did on mine then!

hugs, Meagan