Starting a business is an exciting venture. You may have a general idea of what you wish to accomplish and the ultimate goal you’d like to reach. These big-picture goals are important but even more important is how you go about achieving those larger-than-life goals.  You need to set monthly goals for your business. Don’t believe me? Just watch:

Why You Need Business Goals

Business goal setting is probably the single most important thing you can do to ensure future success. When you set goals, you have a general roadmap that will guide you daily, weekly, and monthly toward success. Without this roadmap, you will find yourself following paths that don’t serve you or your customers and ultimately end up spending money where you don’t need to and wasting valuable time.

With clear and concise business goals, you know where you’re headed and will be better poised to see when what you’re doing is working or recognize when something is failing and be able to switch gears when necessary without any major disruptions. Business goals will guide you toward your success if you set them in such a way that you can easily track, measure, and maintain momentum.

Why You Need to Set Monthly Goals for Your Business

You may have an overall picture of where you want to be with your business in five years, but what you need in the present, are attainable goals to reach that will lead you there. Setting monthly goals for your business will keep you motivated because you’ll be able to see the results of your daily and weekly actions. Monthly goals will also help you reassess when something isn’t working and adjust accordingly. Without a monthly set of goals to work toward, you’ll just be spinning your wheels as the weeks tick by.

How to Define Your Monthly Goals

Now that you know why it’s important to set monthly goals for your business, you may be wondering exactly how to go about doing so. There most common school of thought on goal setting is that people set S.M.A.R.T. goals. This is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based. If you’re setting monthly goals, you’ve got the time-based factor covered. You’ll need to ensure they’re very specific and you can easily determine whether they’ve been accomplished or not. Attainable goals mean they need to be something that can actually be accomplished. If you want to be an Olympic swimmer and you’re 40 years old and can’t swim, then that goal is clearly unattainable. Goals also need to be relevant and actually relate to the future of your business or the success of attaining your long-term goals, which we’ll address below.

Determine Your Long-Term Goals

The first step in setting monthly goals is determining why you’re even working toward them to begin with. Monthly goals should be in direct relation to your long-term goals. If you look at what you want for your business in one year, it’s helpful to work through how you can get there. Use those steps to determine your monthly goals.

If for example you have a brand new blog and you want to build up your page views so that you can apply for an ad network and increase your income, there are several steps you need to take before you apply for the ad network. Your first step may be to create relevant, quality content, share that content regularly, and build your email list. Break down each of those steps to determine how many monthly blog posts you want to create, determine how many people you want to increase your email list by each month, and figure out a social sharing schedule that works for you so that you’re getting as many eyes on your blog as possible each month.

Create Monthly Goals That Align With Long-Term Goals

Figuring out the big picture means, in the case of the example above, isn’t the most important part, however. There’s more to that big long-term goal. It is incredibly important to know why you’re so invested in reaching that long-term goal. If you’re wishy-washy on the big goal, chances are you’re going to go into your monthly and weekly goal-setting with a substandard attitude. This is why its important to get crystal clear on whether that long-term goal is something you really feel strongly about reaching; does it align with your why, does the idea of working toward that long-term goal, even in the drudgery of the daily tasks, still light you up and bring you joy? If it doesn’t, you may want to reevaluate your long-term goal. If it does, then you’re well on your way to future success.

Work Toward Monthly Goals Daily

Now that you’ve determined your monthly goals and they align with your big picture business goals and you’ve determined that you’re truly passionate about bringing those big long-term goals to fruition, it’s time to put in the work. Set daily and weekly goals that will help you reach the monthly goals. There are countless ways to do this and you can even join online mastermind groups or accountability groups through Facebook that will help keep you on point and focused on reaching your goals. If you’re more of a lone wolf, that’s fine too. Often, all you need to stay on task is a good business planner or occasional consultations with a business strategist who can help guide you.

A Common Pitfall in Monthly Goal Setting

One common mistake people make is confusing daily tasks with goals. A task is something that you do on a regular basis that leads you toward reaching a goal. If your goal is to get the Instagram Swipe-up feature, there are several daily tasks you need to do to get to that point.

The tasks you perform on a consistent, daily, and weekly basis are often mundane and tedious; they don’t provide you with the sense of accomplishment or ‘high’ you get from seeing their ultimate results. Reaching monthly goals, however, does provide that sense of accomplishment. It may make sense for your business to hire out some of the daily, administrative tasks to help free up time as you work on the bigger picture of your business. Spending too much time agonizing over the details and wondering if you’re pinning your content correctly or saying the right things in your Instagram posts can truly derail your success. The best choice is to do the thing, hire someone else to do the thing, or hire an Instagram expert to help you and keep it moving!

Setting monthly goals is the way to achieve overall success in your business. By performing the daily and weekly tasks that lead you to reach your monthly goals, you can measure your success, adjust accordingly when things aren’t’ working and realize your overall, ultimate big-picture goals much faster.

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