Goal-setting is something I didn’t know how to do before I started my Mary Kay business. I was one of those people that NEVER wanted to share a big goal (I was even to scared to call it a dream) in fear that by vocalizing it, it would never come true and I would be a fool. Ha! How silly. And that is why a lot of people look at where they are and feel stuck. And at least for me, if I continued in this same pattern, in 5 years I was going to be in the exact same place.
So how do you make a big goal for your life or business without being a free-spirited dreamer with no results? How do you move from here to there?
Here are 5 guidelines to setting S.M.A.R.T. goals, I’ll go over working through goals and overcoming setbacks in a later post.
By the way, what ever happened to the old school bow & arrow? This contraption looks like I have more pointing at me than at the target. Anyway, goals!
Specific- If you kind of want to be a better consultant, or would like to sorta make some more money from your business, or even eventually move up the career path, that is not specific enough!! The more specific you can be, the easier you can figure out where to start. Goals like, I want to be a director by the end of the seminar year, or I want to profit $1,000 this month, or I want to have 15 guests at by business debut, allow you to figure out a starting place.
So as I’m writing this I’m working on a very specific goal and when I started working on it last fall, I was tempted to write, “My goal is to increase my business and earn a free car.” And to be honest, that allowed me wiggle room to back out of the goal if it wasn’t happening. I was that afraid of failure. Here’s how my current goal is specific: “Earn the 2013 Chevy Equinox by March 31st.” Another one of my current goals is to “Grow our unit to 100 unit members by June 30, sinching the #2 spot in the Lauchlan National Area.”
Measurable- This had made the biggest difference in learning how to set goals for me. Is your goal measurable? Can your progress be tracked? If your activity/results were written down, would someone else be able to see if you’re making progress? Begin by brainstorming a list of everything that needs to happen for your goal to be achieved and then what things do you have control over? If you’re starting at zero team members and you be a red jacket, you need to add 3 active team members. Although that’s trackable, can you break it down even more? How many guests would you need to have or career surveys done? THOSE you can measure and you can control how many phone calls you set up and how many people you invite. What can you do to start measuring progress? How will you know when it’s achieved? This is HOW you start moving from here to there.
For me, our unit has to hit a certain amount of unit production over the course of a six month time frame for us to be considered a Premier Club Unit for me to earn the Equinox that goes along with that. [By the way, this will gain us better seats at seminar and more recognition at company events!] I then broke that big number down to a monthly production goal. Anyone can look at a report and see if we hit that goal or not. Progress can be measured.
Attainable- I think this aspect of goal setting is best understood once you read the time-bound segment. What is attainable in the amount of time you have set for yourself? I believe most of us aren’t in fear of setting too high of a goal, because there aren’t too many things that are simply unattainable. The question is whether it’s attainable in the time frame set. There have been seasons where I had a big big goal and I had to be honest with myself and admit I didn’t have the willingness to dedicate what needed to be done to finish that goal by that deadline. A good goal WILL stretch you and develop new skills and attitudes and thoughts. So think BIG but be honest with yourself and your readiness.
Relevant- Ask yourself, does this matter? Is it relevant to your business? Your family? Is this the right time? By achieving this goal, will it drive you or your business forward? Big goals require more support and often more resources. Support from your team, from me, or from your family will most likely be there, if the goal is relevant to you or them and benefits the bigger vision.
Time Bound- Setting a time limit on your goal helps you focus on what’s most important to you and allows you to break things down all the way to what do I need to do TODAY? Ask yourself, “What do I want to achieve by ______?” 6 months from now? 6 weeks from now? This month? If you want to do 40 makeovers in a month, that would be 10 every week. That would be 2-3 appointments for most people. Now you know what needs to happen this week, and what you need to do today to make that happen. Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.
My car qualification started October 1st. I asked myself, what is the total production I need to reach by March 31st to earn this car? That helped me break down numbers and tasks down to what I needed to reach monthly to stay on tack, then how many appointments I would need to have every week to produce that monthly number, and then finally who do I need to call today so that I can finish by that date?
My goal: Earn the 2013 Chevy Equinox by March 31st, by doing 30 makeovers each month to reach a total of XX,XXX in production.
What is a goal you’re working on right now? How have one of these aspects helped you achieve a goal in the past? I would love to hear!