Using Goal Setting Forms

Achieving Your Long Term Home Business Goals

SETTING LONG TERM GOALS

You can buy special worksheets to plan and set your goals, but all you really need is pen and paper. Here are the main elements you need to include:

• At the top, write your home business goal using the SMART goal format. By the way, you may find it of help to break your overall goal into smaller goals, with a different worksheet for each one.
• Next, describe why you want to achieve it. What financial or other benefits do you hope for? What frustration will you be able to leave behind? You need to find very strong reasons to keep motivated - to keep on going on days when you feel like giving up.
• Then make a list of the steps you need to achieve to reach your long term target. To take a simple example, you may want to sign up 100 customers for a particular service, but you could break this down into 10 customers per month.
• How will you track your progress? You can note this on your form
• Finally, I suggest you write this question at the bottom of the worksheet "Given how hard I will probably have to work, do I really want to do this?" If you're going to stop, the best time to stop is right now - before you start!

TRACKING YOUR PROGRESS

With some small businesses you may start earning money from day one. However, if you are hoping to build sources of residual income, you may not see much return on your time investment for a year. Using a worksheet or form is very helpful for keeping motivated and monitoring progress.

To give you an example, my project with this web site involves writing about 200 articles about various aspects of building a successful home based business. Clearly that's a long term goal. Each week (except when I'm on holiday) I aim to write 3 articles. I use goal setting forms - one form every 4 weeks - to tick off my progress. Sitting down to write 200 articles is a big challenge but breaking the task down to 3 a week is much easier.

I can assure you that successfully ticking off your progress sheet each day or week is a great feeling. Each successful step brings a feeling of 'Yes, I can do it'. Much of the battle in achieving your goals is believing within yourself that you are the sort of person who achieves goals.

In the same way, you can perhaps set small weekly or monthly targets that will eventually help you achieve your long term home based business goals.

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