SDH 431: How To Set One Yearly Goal As A New Entrepreneur with Amanda Boleyn

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Hi friend! How are you doing?! I can’t believe this is the final episode of 2020. We did it!

Next month on the podcast I’m going to be talking about goals from my 5 step process, your goal support system, and more.

Today I want to unpack how to set goals as a new entrepreneur. Let’s say you’re someone who is planning on starting your business in the next year or maybe you’re embarking on your second year in business, setting a goal that feels good and inspires you can be tricky because you don’t have as much data to work off of. It is much easier to work off of experience and results than setting a goal for the first time in business.

The further along you are in business, the easier it becomes to set goals and have more clarity because you have more years of results under your belt to assess and therefore more clarity on setting goals for yourself and your business in the next year.

What to avoid…

Deciding a revenue goal because it is what you think you should have as your revenue goal
Picking a revenue goal that doesn’t inspire and excite you
Using someone else’s revenue goal as yours (unless it makes sense)
Comparing your goals to others
Judging your goals

Instead...

Set purposeful revenue-driven goals.
Use the “Good, Better, Best” framework to set a range
Then pick one and work backwards

Decide…

Your revenue goal is YOUR revenue. You want it to make sense for you and the results you want to achieve. Setting false revenue goals could actually bottleneck you in achieving more financial revenue.

If your goal in the new year is to quit your Corporate job, then your goal must allow you to do that.

If your goal is to start your business and generate 50% of your Corporate income, then your goal must reflect that.

First, decide what you want the outcome or result to be at the end of next year. Do you want to go full-time in your business, do you want to fully replace your income, do you want to start your business and make 50% of your income? If you want to go full-time then you’ll have to answer the question of, “How much do I need to make in order to go full-time?”

This will help you be purposeful in setting your revenue goal rather than being tempted to pick something simply to pick it. If we pick an arbitrary goal, our brain won’t be able to connect with it.

Start with understanding your personal finances; how much do you need to make every month in order to support yourself and continue living the way you want to live. And maybe you decide you’re willing to cut some things out of your budget in order to live more simply so that you can quit your job or go full-time sooner.

Scenario 1 - 0 years in business:

You’ve always wanted to start your own business and this coming year is the year you decide to go for it! You have a good idea of what you want to help people with and coach them on, you just need to take action. You make $60,000 in your Corporate job ($5,000 per month). You’ve decided that you want to prove your business model in the next year, keep your full-time job and generate 25% of it in your business, meaning $15,000.

Scenario 2 - 1 year in business (side-hustle):

Let’s say that next year you want to go full-time in your business and this past year you made $10,000 in your business while working full-time. This was a combination of group programs, e-books and a few 1:1 clients. Your Corporate salary is $60,000 ($5,000 per month). You’ve gone through your personal finances and decided that you could live off of $3,500 per month ($42,000 salary) if you had to. Not ideal but you know that you could make it work.

Use the Good, Better, Best method to set a range. Rather than trying to pick just ONE goal to start, you create a system that allows you to identify a range. Then from there you pick ONE to work from.

The way I like to use this method is my good is the absolute minimum, my best is my impossible goal and better is the sweet spot (somewhere between impossible and base). Option to double your base or half of your impossible.

Scenario 1:

Good - $15,000 ($1,250/month)
Better - $30,000 ($2,500/month)
Best - $60,000 ($5,000/month)

Scenario 2:

Good - $42,000 ($3,500/month)
Better - $60,000 ($5,000/month)
Best - $84,000 ($7,000/month)

Using the GBB method helps you create specificity with numbers so you can then work backwards.

Once you set your GBB goals, pick the one that makes you feel excited and inspired by it. It doesn’t have to be your BEST, impossible goal, although it can be.

Let’s say for Scenario 1 this person picks their “Good” goal because that feels doable and achievable to them as their first year in business with no previous experience.

Let’s say for Scenario 2 this person picks her “Better” goal of $60,000 annually. She already has a year’s worth of experience under her belt, she made $10,000 last year so she’s feeling confident about her ability to hit the “Better” goal and maybe even beyond that.

Once you have your annual revenue goal selected, you want to figure out HOW you’re going to achieve this goal.

In scenario 1, she needs to make $1,250/month to hit her $15,000 revenue goal. In year one you’re typically trying a few different offers to figure out which one sticks. So the question for her becomes, “What can I offer to reach my goal?” Maybe it is coaching, maybe it is downloaded products, group coaching? Now that you know the number, you can work them.

In scenario 2, she has the first year of business and results to work off of. Since her goal is $5,000 per month, she can look at her previous offers and results to determine how she wants to reach her goal in the new year. Maybe it is increasing the price of her 1:1, introducing a group program to get leverage of her time and money. If her 1:1 is a 3-month high-intensity coaching program at $1,000 month, she needs to get 5 clients every three months. Now that she knows she needs to get 5 clients, she can then do the math to know how many conversations she needs to have in order to convert that number of clients.

Achieve your revenue goal is all math and numbers supported by systems that allow you to take action to produce the results you want.

I’m so excited for what is ahead in 2021. I can’t wait to talk to you in the new year. Have an amazing rest of your week!

Insights:

“If your goal in the new year is to quit your Corporate job, then your goal must allow you to do that.”
“If your goal is to start your business and generate 50% of your Corporate income, then your goal must reflect that.“
“If we pick an arbitrary goal, our brain won’t be able to connect with it.”
“Achieving your revenue goal is all about doing the math, and numbers supporting the systems that allow you to take action to produce the results you want.”