Establishing goals is important in every aspect of your life, including setting goals for your business, but one of the worst things a new business owner can do is set the goals so high that they are not attainable. Setting goals will take more than pulling a figure out of the air, especially when it comes to income from your business. To be accurate any target number you are aiming for must be within reach of the arrow or else it could fall harmlessly to the ground considerably short of the target. Every business owner has heard the advice to aim high to achieve high results. However, aiming too high could have the arrow fall straight back down hitting you in the head. In order to establish realistic goals, you will also need to set intermediate goals as well as way to achieve them. Once you have gone through the goal-setting process you will know if you have any chance at all of hitting the income target. Setting income goals for your home business has no relationship to daydreaming about what you would do if you hit the lottery. This process has to be grounded in reality. You can begin the process by pulling a number out of a hat, but then you have to go back and calculate what it will take to meet that number. Kind of like eating an elephant, it takes one bite at a time to establish a realistic goal for generating cash. For example, if your plan is to make $10,000 a month, break it into weeks, showing you need $2,500 a week to hit the goal, or $333 a day. Look at your sales or production goal to determine if the current level of production can earn an income of $333 a day and if so, maybe the number was not as arbitrary as initially thought. On the other hand, if production indicates you can only produce enough to make $250 a day, then the weekly and monthly and subsequently annual income project will have to be lowered to meet expectations. You can then look at your production schedule to determine if any streamlining can be done to improve output as well as looking at many issues that could slow you down and lower your income projections. Whenever you pencil in a number you have to also write down how you are going to meet that daily and weekly goal, taking into account anything that might hinder you achieving that goal. The most devastating affect of setting lofty goals that cannot be met is the disappointment that follows. On an individual basis, if goals are set too high, and targets are consistently missed, you might simply stop trying. What this means to the business owner is they can end up closing up shop and trying something else. For any employees, it can mean the loss of their job. Setting the goals at a realistic level and hitting them is cause for celebration, but only for a few minutes as you now start looking at the next level in the goal to meet your long-range projections. About the Author: William Drapcho is owner of http://williamdrapcho.com and writes on a variety of subjects. Visit his site and sign up for his free home computer business ideas newsletter. |
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