Blowing Out Your Goals, One Step at a Time
It can hurt to not hit your goals. But not setting goals at all can hold your business back. In this blog post, you’ll learn how I went about increasing 2023 revenue 175% from the year before. And the ways that I took my time to take Downstage Media to the next level.
Setting goals feels great. Not hitting them hurts.
Setting goals feels great. Not hitting them hurts.
Doesn’t it feel great to set goals? You feel so accomplished. You’re on a path! Yes! You know what direction you’re headed in. I’ve been there. I’ve set goals ever since I started Downstage Media in 2017.
Not meeting those goals can demotivate you. I’ve been there too. For five years I set yearly revenue goals and didn’t hit them. And then things started to turn around. In 2023, I wanted to increase Downstage Media’s revenue by 66%. In increased it by 175%. From 2021 to 2023 I wanted to increase my revenue by 206%. I increased it by 407%.
In this blog post I’ll break down what I did to make that happen.
First, though, I want to acknowledge what can happen
In a brilliantly named piece of research titled … wait for it: “Goals Gone Wild,” Maurice E. Schweitzer a professor of operations and information management at the Wharton School at UPENN talked about the emotional fallout of goal setting. “Too much emphasis on goals can inhibit learning and undermine intrinsic motivation,” the report says.
Yup.
“Too much emphasis on goals can inhibit learning and undermine intrinsic motivation.”
In fairness, no one would blame you for whatever got in the way of you making your goals. Life is crazy. Business is crazy. Blend the two together and you’re bound to stumble along the way.
Of course, what motivates you often is the question, “But what if I did hit my goals?” And you think how that would affect you and the people in your life. That “what if I did” perspective can be very motivating.
What hitting goals looked like for me
Percentage of Revenue Increase
Going into 2023, I was tired of not hitting my goals. So I figured I’d try to increase revenue by 66%. I had heard from someone or other in the business world that a number like that was lofty, but not insane. I decided that I’d abandon the three year plan I’d had and just go for a number that wasn’t so high.
I’d spent five years not hitting my revenue goals and I was pretty bummed out about it. I just wanted to have a number that was a stretch, but reachable.
Take your time. I thought to myself. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Go a little slower and you’ll get there eventually.
What actually happened, though, caught me by surprise. Instead of increasing revenue by 66%, I increased it by 176%.
Overall, I’d hoped that over the course of two years I’d increase my revenue by 206%. In actuality it grew 407%.
I was asked to speak about this growth to fellow members of the Do IT MBA program so I took a hard look at what changed for me this year. Here are the steps that I took.
The steps I took to 400+% growth in two years.
Here’s the method that I used:
Set the Goal (s)
Listen to Strategic Mentors
Follow the Plan
I will be the first to tell you that these ideas aren’t earth shattering. But they worked for me because of my consistency with them.
Step 1: Set the Goal (s)
I read about the importance of having three economic goals in Donald Miller’s book How to Grow Your Small Business. I started the year, then, having three main goals in mind. My big 3 economic goals for 2023 were:
Revenue goal (achieved)
40 blog posts (didn’t achieve)
Write book, Simple Social Media (achieved)
I would review these goals weekly in my Monday Morning Meetings with Myself. I don’t meet with clients on Mondays and take the mornings to review goals, look at key metrics, plan the week out, and organize my receipts and stuff for my taxes. This is based on the Weekly Meetings laid out in the book Traction.
This is a simple practice that you can do too. Set a goal. Review the goal regularly. You don’t have to take a whole day (I don’t). But you do want to take the time and put it on your calendar. I find giving it a snappy name and putting it on my calendar helps. Because then it’s a thing.
Revenue Goal (achieved)
I knew that I wanted to hit a certain revenue goal. Traction had taught me to create three year and ten year goals. So I already had an inkling of what those numbers would be. Plus, I became acutely aware that my oldest daughter would be gong to college in a few years and figured I had to start making some income that could support that. I turned to the book Profit First to help me understand what my income as an owner of the business would be based on certain revenue amounts.
Okay, yes, I’m a book nerd. There, I said it.
That being said, when I hit my revenue goal halfway through the year I had to readjust. I readjusted this two more times between June and December.
40 Blog Posts (didn’t achieve)
I figured that writing a number of blog posts in the year would help organize my thoughts for the book while growing my email subscriber list and my affiliate revenue amounts. I had the goal to pretty much blog weekly, but figured I’d have a harder time keeping up the rhythm during the summer when my time is at more of a premium. (Honestly, who is a ten week summer vacation serving? Really. Like, ten weeks? What? Why?) So 40 blog posts seemed a better number.
I did not achieve this goal. And de-prioritized it since it wasn’t directly linked to income producing activities.
Write a Book, Simple Social Media (achieved)
Accomplishment unlocked! In June the first draft of the manuscript was finished. In October I started taking pre-orders. In November Simple Social Media was released. I had a few reasons for writing a book, a main one, though, was how it would build my authority to propel me to more speaking and training opportunities.
Step 2: Listen to Strategic Mentors
One way to stay focused it to make sure that you don’t chase too many thought leaders’ ideas. By listening to too many voices you can get pulled in too many directions. I keep my list of chosen advisors and mentors close and block out all other advice. My strategic mentors and advisors are:
Some of these gents are pinned to my favorites and I can text them. Some of them barely know me in real life. All of them have helped propel me to beat my goals in 2023.
Step 3: Follow the Plan
Okay, so now that you have your goals, and you have been given strategies, frameworks, and plans from your mentors and advisors, it’s time to get to work.
So, basically, just. follow the plan.
Here’s what following the plan looks like for me:
Morning routine
Do what your mentors say to do
Collect the ideas that you can’t do right now
Morning Routine
Annie’s 2023 morning routine.
It dawned on me that if I write Simple Social Media in the morning then I don’t cut into my work hours. So, I started waking up early to make my coffee (I’m a Chemex girl, so it takes a while), meditate, write in my gratitude journal, and write for an hour.
And I just started saying to myself, “I write for an hour in the mornings. That’s what I do.” For some reason or other the “that’s what I do” really changed my thinking.
Do what your mentors say
Isn’t it weird when someone asks you for advice, and you give it to them. And then they don’t take it. And then they’re asking you for advice again? I didn’t want to be that person. So I made sure that I simply followed the advice of my advisors and mentors.
By the way: the advice that I don’t take is just as important for my process as the advice that I do take. If I listen to too many voices I lose focus. As Jerry Seinfeld said, “Lack of focus is the single biggest enemy of greatness.”
“Lack of focus is the single biggest enemy of greatness.”
Collect the ideas that you can’t do right now
If you have thousands of brilliant ideas every day (girl, same!) then you know how hard it can be to follow a plan. So you want to make sure that you have a place to put all of those ideas. And, you want to have a time to review them to evaluate when to work them into what you’re doing.
I keep an Issues and Ideas list (again, borrowed from Traction). The idea is here that you can’t work on that issue or that idea now, but you don’t want to forget that it exists. I revisit these during my weekly, quarterly, and annual meetings with myself.
Take Your Time
The top two people behind my why.
Overall, you have to remember that your time is yours - and it’s also not yours. So you have to hold in your hands the idea that achieving your goals will not happen right away. In 2021 one of the reasons that I didn’t achieve my goals was because I had some major personal stuff happen in my life. For about a third of the year my life was upside-down. So although I was raring to go with my work, there were obstacles I wasn’t in control of. I had to keep in mind that I was taking my time.
On the flip side, no one is going to give you more time. So you have to take your time as in take hold of it. By claiming my mornings and realizing that so many obstacles from years past had been cleared I knew that if I didn’t make the most of the time that I had, it would slip through my fingers.
During this year I realized the big why behind what I do which has also helped me keep my goals in sight and continually strive harder to take my time and set newer, bigger goals.
If you want an accountability partner, or just want to talk through your goals (especially marketing goals). Schedule a real quick chat.
