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goal setting in business

6 Steps For Making Business Wishes Come True

Do your family members write a Christmas Wish List for each other? Mine do. Ever since we were children we made a wish list for Christmas. As kids, it fit right in with writing our letters to Santa. And now that my family members live across the country from each other, the annual wish list is a tool for helping us shop for each other.

When writing letters to Santa was no longer a thing, I started resisting this exercise. I resisted because I thought people should know me well enough to know what I’d like. But I was wrong. On the years when I “forgot” to share a wish list, I got lousy gifts. On the years I shared my list, guess what? I got what I asked for! No more tacky Christmas sweaters and no more black socks….when I ask for what I want it tends to show up!

Do you do the same for your business? Do you have a wish list, a business plan for what you want in your business in the coming year? Too many business owners put off this thinking until well after January 1 (if they ever do it all). Don’t wait! While you’re making your Christmas Wish List for Santa, take some time to make your Business Wish List too!

6 Tips For Writing Your Business Plan:

1) Acknowledge your wins.

What did you accomplish this past year? What results did you create? What are you most proud of?

Too many of us only focus on what’s wrong and what needs doing next. This mindset keeps us in constant state of angst, always looking for the next problem. Take a moment to reflect on your successes! Acknowledging your wins helps you see what’s working so you can set goals to build on this in the coming year.

2) Focus on your top goals.

Write down your most important objectives and outline the steps to make them happen. This makes your goals attainable and easier to focus on. You will start to see how to achieve them by just taking one small step at a time.

3) Prioritize your goals.

Give a higher priority to the goals that mean the most to you, and the goals that will make the biggest positive impact on your life. Even when they are long-term goals, ensure that you work towards them a little each day.

4) Have a clear plan of action to make your goals real.

Key Step! Consider how much time and effort each step of each goal will take to complete! Then, transfer each action into your calendar throughout the coming year. It’s not enough to think about WHAT you need to do, you have to plan WHEN you will take each step to achieve each goal.

5) Measure the progress of your efforts.

Keep a list of your accomplishments as you achieve them. Then, share them with the world. Be proud of every moment and movement knowing that success builds on success!

6) Take your planned action step when you’re most alert and productive.

We all have a time of day when we tend to do our best work. Plan your actions for this time of day (mornings often work well). You’ll feel great taking an important action and getting it out of the way before your day gets busy. And this successful step will lead to another and another.

Business planning and execution is one of those important but not urgent tasks that often fall off track. That’s why I offer a FREE business planning e-book. To get your free ebook, visit: venturecoaching.ca/free-stuff You’ll find lots of helpful, free resources here.

And if you want to look your specific situation, I offer a FREE Breakthrough-Now! Coaching Session.

In this powerful session, you will leave with:

* new awareness of a blindspot that’s holding you back
* a renewed sense of energy for your business and leadership
* a key “next step” for moving forward

Click this link to my Calendly to book your session now

Laura Watson, ACC, MSW is the founder and lead business coach at Venture Coaching International in Calgary, AB. With over 25 years of counselling and business coaching experience, she helps owners and executives across N. America to improve their personal, communication and leadership effectiveness. Laura helps you:

> Uncover blind spots
> Regain focus and traction in your business
> Accelerate your results

If you’re interested in taking your business to the “next level”, call Laura at: 403 669 8684 or book a meeting directly on Calendly.

Achieving Goals Is All About Attitude

Your mindset, beliefs, and feelings all work together to create your attitude. Your attitude influences your choices of action and responses to challenges. In regards to achieving goals, your attitude about goal setting that will make or break your ability to create goals and follow through with achieving them or not.

Holding a positive attitude towards goals and goal-setting will be a THE factor determining whether or not you achieve your goals.

Answering these questions will help you create positive attitudes about your goals and can propel you forward toward success.

How can your attitude hinder your success? What do you feel, think, and believe that may prevent you from achieving your objectives?
How can your attitude empower you? What are your most positive attitudes that have propelled you forward in the past? How did you approach your goal(s) at the time?
Do you feel that your prevailing attitude is helping you or limiting you? Why?
List a goal that you feel challenged to achieve.
What’s your attitude about this goal?
What specific challenges are preventing you from achieving your goal?
For each challenge, brainstorm possible solutions.
Pick your most viable solution, create a plan to implement it, and get started
Use Positive Self-Talk: What can you tell yourself to help you achieve the goal?
Take Control: What are some steps you can take to get control as you move toward your goal?
Compose your own affirmation that will help you work toward your goal.
Who can you talk to about your goal? Can you find a mentor who may be able to help you move forward? Who?

Often we are not aware of what our attitude is or how it is affecting us. Working with a coach who provides objective feedback can help uncover these blind-spots and get you moving forward. If you are struggling to set or achieve goals, why not take advantage of Laura’s FREE coaching session to discuss this. Just click on the link to the right and Laura will follow up with you immediately.

If you’re serious about taking life and business to the ‘next level’, book your Breakthrough-Now! session.

In this powerful session, you will leave with:

* new awareness of a blindspot that’s holding you back
* a renewed sense of energy for your business and leadership
* a key “next step” for moving forward

Click this link to my Calendly to book your session now

> Uncover blind spots
> Regain focus and traction in your business
> Accelerate your results

If you’re interested in taking your business to the “next level”, call Laura at: 403 669 8684 or book a meeting directly on Calendly.

The Science of Goal Setting

Goal setting seems simple on the surface. You define what you’d like to accomplish and take the necessary steps to make those accomplishments a reality.

Setting and achieving a goal is more than simply deciding and wishing. Each year, millions of people set New Year’s resolutions. Few of those people are still on track after just 10 days.

If setting and achieving goals were easy, there would be more happy, successful people running around. How many people do you know who are happy and pleased with their lives? Not very many. If you’re looking to take your life and business to the “next level” you need to master setting and achieving goals.

Set goals and achieve them more reliably:

Set goals that are meaningful. Many people waste time with goals that don’t mean very much to them. Life is short, so create goals that fill you with excitement when you think about achieving them. Reaching any goal requires change, and humans are innately resistant to change. Big changes require a lot of motivation. Set goals that mean a lot to you.
Use small, incremental behavioral changes. Change can be done easily if the changes are small. This requires patience.

Imagine someone attempting to make an overnight change from a diet of fast food, soda, potato chips, and ice cream to one of beans, vegetables, and fruit. His mind and body would revolt. It’s far easier to make small changes each week until the transformation is complete.

Be accountable. Rewards are pleasant and effective if the reward continues. Behavioral changes tend to extinguish when rewards are no longer provided. It can be more effective to make yourself accountable for your poor behavior. For example, each time you skip going to the gym, you give $10 to a charity you don’t like or you wash a friend’s car.

Negative consequences are more motivating for many people. Use this fact to your advantage. How could you punish yourself for non-compliance? Make a list of at least 10 ways.

Keep goals believable. Is it possible to increase your earnings from $50k this year to $1 million? It’s possible, but it’s not likely. And if you believe it’s unlikely, you’re unlikely to even try. The perfect goal is challenging, but not so challenging that you feel overwhelmed.
Track your progress. Measuring your progress is extremely important. It provides information on how well you’re doing. You can’t know if you’re making progress toward your goal if you don’t measure it. You can shift your strategy if you realize that you’re not doing well.

It can also provide a boost of enthusiasm and positivity. When you’re making progress, you feel excited.

Be prepared for setbacks. Achieving any goal is rarely a smooth process. There will be bad days with poor results. Rather than reject your goal when the going gets tough, be prepared for failures.

Have a plan in place to deal with failure and frustration. You might call a friend or remind yourself of the purpose of achieving the goal. Reviewing your success so far can also help.
It also pays to take preventative action. For example, if you know you’re likely to cheat on your diet later in the evening, have some healthy snacks available that you enjoy. Or head to bed earlier and enjoy some extra free time in the morning.

Goals are necessary if you want to consciously change your life. Everything else is a matter of luck and circumstance. Most people struggle to set and achieve goals. I frequently help business owners set and take action on goals so they can move forward, faster!

If you’re struggling to set goals or to follow through with them, download our FREE Goal Achieving Workbook.

If you’re serious about taking life and business to the ‘next level’, book your Breakthrough-Now! session.

In this powerful session, you will leave with:

* new awareness of a blindspot that’s holding you back
* a renewed sense of energy for your business and leadership
* a key “next step” for moving forward

Click this link to my Calendly to book your session now

> Uncover blind spots
> Regain focus and traction in your business
> Accelerate your results

If you’re interested in taking your business to the “next level”, call Laura at: 403 669 8684 or book a meeting directly on Calendly.

Business planning for small business owners

“Failing to plan is planning to fail”, Benjamin Franklin

Some interesting facts about business planning and execution:

Businesses using plans are 12% more profitable
86% of executive teams spend less than an hour a month discussing strategy
Of 26,000 start-up business failures, 67% had no written plan
More than 70% of companies with a strategic plan don’t execute it
Only 30% of Directors of 1,000 public companies say their company is achieving strategic success
Formal planning reduces risk
80% of companies are dissatisfied with their planning and budgeting processes
Only 23% of companies use a formal strategic planning process to make important strategic decisions
64% of leaders who use strategic planning processes say the planning leads to strategic decisions that allow the company to meet its goals and challenges
The top 10% of large companies surveyed experience real and material benefits from their planning processes – far beyond those of average companies. They’re enjoying improved control over costs, increased foresight, improved operational performance, increased transparency and insight into the business, a sense of shared purpose, and increased profit.

*stats originally reported by Mission Facilitators International

I work with business owners all the time who don’t have plan. If they do have a plan, they are usually not executing on it because they have not created actions steps and/or they are “too busy”. Yet research tells us that successful companies have and follow a plan.

I help business owners write simple plans they can execute! Because the planning is simple and action steps are included and scheduled in a calendar, execution rates increase dramatically and so does business success!

Today I want to share the business planning and execution process my clients find so beneficial. Enjoy!

Lead To Succeed: Being Effective – Plan, Calendar, Execute! from Venture Coaching on Vimeo.

Now it’s time to get to work on your plan and follow through! I would love to hear about your discoveries, so please comment on this post to share your experience.

If you enjoyed this post, you can sign up for my FREE Lead to Succeed Email Course (click here) and these posts will come straight to your inbox. Just click on the banner to the left, sign up and stay connected!

Develop a leadership platform: setting business goals

Here are some surprising statistics about business goals:

more than 80% of small business owners don’t keep track of business goals.
40% of people who write down goals don’t check whether they’ve achieved them.
46% of companies review or revise goals throughout the year.
50% of senior leaders, 33% of managers and 19% of front-line employees update their goals throughout the year as business needs change.

And here are some more interesting facts:

Those who write down goals achieve more than those who don’t.
Those who share commitments with colleagues and friends achieve more than those who just write down goals.
Those who send weekly progress reports to others achieve more.

Successful companies set goals. Without them, they have no defined purpose and nothing to strive for; consequently, they stagnate and struggle for meaningful accomplishments.

This lesson discusses goal setting in relation to creating a Leadership Platform. You’ll ask yourself some powerful questions so you can set exciting and inspiring goals for your business. Enjoy!

Lead To Succeed What’s Your Big Goal? from Venture Coaching on Vimeo.

Have fun working on your big goals! I would love to hear about your discoveries, so please comment on this post to share your experience.

If you enjoyed this post, you can also sign up for my FREE Lead to Succeed Email Course (click here) and these posts will come straight to your inbox. Just click on the banner to the left, sign up and stay connected!

goal setting in business

6 Steps For Making Business Wishes Come True

6 Tips For Writing Your Business Plan:

Achieving Goals Is All About Attitude

The Science of Goal Setting

Business planning for small business owners

Develop a leadership platform: setting business goals

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