If I asked you right now, “Is your revenue goal high enough to pay yourself…
Want to know the real reasons most business goals aren’t achieved and how you can ensure you achieve yours? Not every business owner sets goals for their business, so if you’ve set some goals (or are thinking of setting some), then no doubt you are serious about the future of your business and want to ensure you achieve your goals. But the reality is that for all the business goals that are set only a small percentage are achieved. This happens for numerous reasons as you’ll discover. Keep on reading to find out the real reasons most business goals aren’t achieved and how you can ensure you achieve yours.
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THE REAL REASONS MOST BUSINESS GOALS AREN’T ACHIEVED AND HOW YOU CAN ENSURE YOU ACHIEVE YOURS
Reason #1: The goals are forgotten
Let’s start with a reason that business goals aren’t achieved that you can easily avoid – the goals are forgotten. I know this might sound crazy. You might be thinking as if a business owner would set some goals for their business and forget. But I’m not lying. There are goals that are set. Goals that are written down in notebooks and docs around the world that get forgotten. Months down the line the business owner has forgotten all about the goals, and unless someone else knows about the goals it is very easy for those goals to be forgotten forever.
How you can ensure you don’t forget your goals
A great way to ensure you don’t forget your goals is to keep your goal top of mind by ensuring that you see it on a regular basis.
You could decide to make a screensaver for your laptop, computer or mobile so that you constantly see it. If you have a work diary, calendar or planner you could write them down in there so you’ll see them. If you have an office or desk, put your goals somewhere visible. Just make sure that you have a written-down version of your goals somewhere that you’ll see them frequently enough, you’ll never have the chance to forget your goals.
Reason #2: The goal was impossible
A very common goal-setting technique for business goals is SMART. In this acronym the R stands for REALISTIC. Now I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the idea of setting realistic goals. I’m all for dreaming big and aiming high, so do all of your business goals need to be realistic? I would argue they don’t. But there is a difference between a goal being unrealistic and a goal being impossible.
Over the years, I’ve come across numerous impossible goals. Most commonly it will be an impossible financial goal. I know it might sound crazy. You might be thinking, “Who sets an impossible financial goal?” but it happens for a number of reasons.
Firstly, there will be service providers who hasn’t properly crunched their numbers. They haven’t thought about the number of hours they have available to work on client work, what they are essentially making per hour/day and their financial goal. I have worked with numerous business owners who very quickly it’s been obvious to me that their financial goal is physically impossible (unless they worked 24/7 and all of us are human).
Secondly, if the financial goal is a profit goal or a take-home pay goal then often the business owner hasn’t properly calculated their income and expenditure (and sometimes tax) to ensure those numbers are achievable.
How you can ensure you don’t set impossible goals
For all of your financial goals make sure you haven’t just picked a number out of thin air and not checked whether it is possible or not. Grab your calculator, get a spreadsheet (I’ve got loads for clients) and actually map out how you can achieve your goal. The point isn’t that the way you map out achieving your financial goal is the exact way it will happen. But it proves there is at least one way you can make it happen.
Reason #3: Didn’t have a plan
Having goals is a great start. As I’ve already mentioned not every business owner sets goals for their business, but setting a goal isn’t enough to ensure you will achieve your goal. Goals need plans and one of the real reasons most business goals aren’t achieved is because the business owner sets a goal and then stops there. They don’t make a plan for how they could achieve the goal. Without a plan it is far to easy to carry on with business as normal and no time, energy, money or other resources is devoted to actually making the goal come true.
How you can avoid not having a plan
Create a plan for every goal you set. If you’ve set annual goals create an annual plan. If you’ve set quarterly goals create a quarterly plan. Ensure that you’ve spent the time thinking about how you can achieve your goal and what time, energy, money and other resources are needed to help bring your goal to life.
Find out more about annual business planning here.
Find out more about creating a quarterly plan here.
Reason #4: No accountability
This is a big reason most business goals aren’t achieved for solopreneurs and micro business owners. In bigger businesses accountability is naturally there. If before creating your business you worked for a big business the fact is you’d most likely have had numerous people holding you accountable (even if you didn’t think of it that way). You could have had a manager or boss above you. They’d set goals or give you responsibilities, and you knew you had to deliver on those. You could have been part of a team and been working alongside people. Whether you did or didn’t complete something would impact them so that meant you wanted to deliver. And then you might have even had people working below you. You are likely to have felt that whatever you were working on that impacted them you should do. Can you see how in a big business accountability is everywhere.
Now let’s think about the solopreneur or micro business owner. The soloprenuer or small business owner has no one holding them accountable for work that relates to the future of the business. If they are a service-provider with clients they’ll have a client that means they’ll deliver on client work. If it’s a product-based business and a customer buys something they’ll deliver the product. But when it comes to working on the business, rather than in the business, it’s a different story. Whether they decide to do or not do something no one will ever know. That often means even if a business owner went that step further and set goals and then created a plan there is no one holding them accountable to implementing that plan and so they don’t implement it.
How you can ensure you don’t make the mistake of not having accountability
Ensure that you have someone holding you accountable. For many business owners, accountability makes a massive difference and yet it is something many business owners feel weird admitting they need or paying for. As I just showed in big businesses accountability is in-built, but it isn’t if you are a solopreneur or solo business owner. And even as a micro business owner is the only accountability is coming from those below that might not be enough in terms of taking the actions that are around business growth.
There are multiple ways to get accountability. You could have a peer-to-peer accountability partner. If you do this then please make sure it is something you genuinely will hold you accountable and not let you off the hook when you don’t follow through and what you said you were going to do. The other way is to pay for accountability. It might be you pay to join a mastermind where accountability is part of the offering. Or you sign up to work with a business mentor or coach who holds you accountable.
Accountability is a key part of my one-to-one business and marketing mentoring. I know what a different accountability makes and I’m someone who is known for being great at holding people accountable and not letting things slide when they aren’t done. Tough love all the way!
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Reason #5: In conflict with personal goals and life
One of the real reasons most business goals aren’t achieved, and that doesn’t get spoken about enough, is that the business goal is in conflict with the business owner’s personal goals and life. They set the goal of speaking 50 times throughout the year, but also want to develop their relationship with the local running community that runs three times a week. They set the goal to create a membership, which would involve multiple monthly commitments, but personally they want to take August completely off and be with their family.
I know it probably seems obvious to ensure that your business goals and personal goals are aligned, but many business owners set their business goals without properly thinking through the reality of achieving that goal and how it will or won’t work with what they are trying to achieve in life. You can find out more about how to ensure your business and personal goals align here.
How you can ensure you business goals don’t conflict with your personal goals and life
One way to ensure your business goals and personal life / goals are aligned is when you are planning for the year really thinking about what boundaries you need to have around your personal life and then ensuring your business goals can be achieved within those boundaries. That could be anything from how many hours you work per week/month, the specific timings you do or don’t work, where you work and more.
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Reason #6: Too many goals
Being ambitious is great, but if you set too many goals you are likely setting yourself up to fail. The more goals you have, especially if they don’t work together will mean your resources are being split in different directions. More goals also means more goals to remember and more goals to plan for.
How you can ensure you don’t set too many goals
Be strict when setting your business goals. When annual planning with business owners, I’ll say they are allowed a max of 5 business goals and ideally, it is best to have 3 business goals. Whilst 3 might feel very limiting the reality is that you can plan for all 3 goals and isn’t better to set and achieve 3 goals then set 7 and achieve none?
Reason #7: Didn’t monitor progress
Some business owners really go make a good effort to achieve their business goals. They set the goals, they make the plan, they take action, but they forget this crucial step – to monitor their progress. When you plan, you are making assumptions. You say you are going to do X and hope it results in Y. Sometimes it will and sometimes it won’t, which is why monitoring your progress is key. Without monitoring your progress too many business are taking action, but not realising how useful or not those actions are. This is what can mean, for example, they get to year and haven’t achieved an annual goal, but in reality they were off track all year.
How you can ensure you don’t make the mistake of not monitoring your progress
Track your progress. Decide for each of your goals what monitoring you need to do. The final part of my annual planning framework looks at monitoring and the two different types of monitoring you need depending on the goal. There is regular monitoring and milestone monitoring. It is your responsibility as a business owner to work out what type of monitoring is required for each goal you have and then ensure you monitor your progress for the time you are trying to achieve the goal.
That’s it. You now know the real reasons most business goals aren’t achieved (and how you can ensure you achieve yours).
As you have hopefully seen, some of the reasons business goals aren’t achieved are easily avoided. In the grand scheme of things, it isn’t that hard to not set too many goals, keep your goals top of mind, ensure your goals are possible, make sure your business goals and personal goals are aligned, create a plan, get accountability and monitor your progress.
And these are ALL things I help business owners with.
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