How to Set your Goals for Success

All right. Goal setting, this is the shortest piece of the GPS, but it’s the one that most people have the most trouble with. A goal needs to be three things in your business if it’s going to matter.

One, that goal has got to be smart and you remember smart, specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, time sensitive. You can Google SMART goals. If you haven’t heard the acronym before, SMART is an acronym. The point of that whole thing is just not to be ambiguous. Your goal needs to be super clear, so you know exactly what you’re going for.

Two it’s got to pass the Goldilocks test. Do you remember Goldilocks wandering in the woods? Found the Bears cabin? Too hot porridge, too cold porridge just right. Right? Like too hard bed, too soft bed, just right! A goal that’s too small and not very exciting, you’re not even going to try for that. A goal that’s too big and overwhelms you. Guess what? You’re also not even going to try for that, so you need to find that sweet spot that’s big enough and exciting enough to get you moving, but not so big that you’re overwhelmed. OK, that’s the Goldilocks test of a goal.

The third part is it needs to fit within a one year timeline. You cannot have a goal that’s further out than a year that’s going to be called Vision outside of the year. There are too many variables to get very, very clear because a lot of stuff can happen, so we don’t want to call it a goal. That’s vision. A goal should fit in the context of vision. A goal should be one step closer to vision. It needs that context, but a goal needs to be within a one year timeline, so your goal should, again, get you that one step, one piece closer to vision. Like if you decide what you want for your life, big context, big vision. And then, all right, if I’m going to nail this, where do I arbitrarily want to be in five years to feel kind of like I’m on pace? And then looking at that 5 years, where do I need to be at the end of this year? Where do I need to be in one year if I’m going to nail this five year vision? So we’ve got a specific goal here that’s Goldilocks approved fits within a larger context of vision, right?

And if you need more help on vision versus goals, check out episode one of the multilevel leadership podcast, and I kind of dive into that. OK, in network marketing, I like money goals, not title goals. Most of us did not start our businesses to hit diamond platinum global master ambassador of excellence, right? We didn’t even know that title was a thing. We started to make money.

So let’s keep it super simple. In one year, how much do you want to be making? That’s both again, big enough and exciting enough to get you moving, but small enough not to seem overwhelming. What is that money? Now write that down. That’s your goal. How simple is that?