Five Secrets for Writing Truly Successful Goals

Be happier, healthier, and more successful in 2016! Writing relevant goals is just the beginning of a record-breaking year!

“Hello, my name is Ashley and I am addicted to writing business goals.”

Anyone who knows me and knows the way I work in my business has had to listen to me spout ideas, reconfigure goals, or talk about Quickbooks for the last two months or so. In fact, my friends could probably track the changes of season directly by my level of 2016 planning frenzy. As a small business owner and a Type A personality, I find myself incredibly driven by the next goal or opportunity to develop myself and my team to the next level. Professional development, going out on a limb, and creating an all encompassing client experience have been such a part of living and breathing for me over the past few months that it even guides me in my dreams.

So on the first Monday of the first month of the new year, I’m here to talk goals. To hell with unrealistic resolutions or lofty, idealistic dreams. My goals are SMART, aggressive, and incredibly addicting (sort of like me). And I’m writing today, because I’m here to bring you along on the fantastic ride of 2016.

Know your Destination.

This is another way of saying define success for you, but it’s a different way of approaching success. I have no problem with taking the scenic route from point A to point B, but I always want to know my destination.

As small business owners and creatives, I often hear people describing success in very small terms: I just need to book four more weddings to hit my goal this year or If I could only get on this venue’s preferred vendor list, I’d be set. Stop it. I hate to be the person to break this news to you, but four more weddings probably won’t change your life. One preferred vendor listing will not make you happy.

I’m not saying that these can’t be good landmarks along your journey, but before you start writing goals for the next month, 90 days, or even a year, try this exercise:

Unplug your computer. Pack a bag with your favorite notebook and a nice pen. Leave your house. Head out to a restaurant, a coffee shop, a park or someplace where you can focus. Take an hour out of your life to think about what you really want to accomplish. Think about what you want to be doing with your life in five years. Ten years. When you want to retire, even. Write this down. Spell out your ideal lifestyle or long term career goals on paper. Take your time with it. THEN, write your goals for this year. Make sure that they are all leading you to your success story happy ending.

And after all of that, go back and remove the words “IF,” “JUST,” and “ONLY” from your goal statements and replace them with confident words like “WHEN” or “AT LEAST.” Your goal statements should be confident, strong, and deeply motivating. So should you!

2015 was such a successful year for Ashley Gerrity Photography that we can’t wait to see what 2016 has in store!

2. The “Relevant” part is the piece that will drive you to success.

I’ve done my share of unsuccessful goal setting. My mentor has sat on the phone with me for countless hours walking step by step with me through goals only to have these goals get filed into a google drive folder and ignored for the rest of the year. Guess how many of those goals I’ve accomplished. (If you guessed “zero” or “I have no idea, because I had no follow up,” you would be right).

I’ve found the only way to really invest in my business goals is to make them relevant. I’ve seen the “R” in “SMART” goals mean so many different things from one speaker or worksheet to the next (realistic, results-oriented, reachable), but the only “R” that matters to me is Relevant. And I’m not just talking about business relevant, these goals need to relate to your value system, your destination, and your life goals. As small business owners, every decision and goal we write has the potential to impact both our business and life.

Here is an example of relevance to business. A big goal for our company is to build up our lead photographers, Rachel & Serena through 2016 and 2017. It is relevant to our business from a profitability standpoint (an obvious benefit). But the biggest reason why I decided to move from a one woman show to a strong team is much more relevant to my life. By growing our team and bringing on talented lead photographers that aren’t just me, I am creating a business that will allow me to travel and spend time with my husband in Seattle. And in a few years, when the time is right, this business model will allow my company to grow and manage when Mike and I decide to grow our family, too. It is because of this strong relevance to my own life goals that this business goal has become one of my biggest focuses in 2016.

3. Track it. Measure it. Get addicted to data.

Spreadsheets. Studio Management Software. Inspiration boards. Dry erase. Chalkboards. Google Docs. Notebooks. Accountability Partners. We all have a particular poison. Your success may happen or the may not. But if you aren’t tracking your progress, how will you know it? How will you know if you are off-course?

We write measurable goals, specifically so that we are able to track our progress and evaluate our performance. If you write goals, but then leave them in a desk drawer to get dusty, what you did was really just waste time in the first place.

What kind of data should you be tracking? Do you have a budget? Do you know where your business is coming from? Do you know your conversion rate from inquiry to booking? Do you know your average sale? Do you know how much money you need to make to survive in your business? How much more money do you need to make to thrive in your life? How will you make it happen?

Tracking will look different from one goal to the next and tracking a similar goal might look different from one person to the next. But share your goals, check in on your goals, and if needed, adjust your goals along the way.

Budgets, Goal-setting, and Coffee in hand. . . it must be the new year!

4. Celebrate the successes. Dig deeper on the failures.

A few weeks ago, I reached a booking milestone for my business. I celebrated by taking a long, lazy nap with my two dogs in the middle of the afternoon when I should have been wrapping Christmas presents. I didn’t feel guilty, I felt spoiled. I had earned it.

Celebrating success doesn’t have to be a humongous thing. If you break a new ceiling on your annual earnings or achieve a new level of professional success, by all means, feel free to take a trip to Europe or buy yourself a new diamond. If you manage to balance more than you expected in a week, check things off the to do list in record time one day, or handle a particularly difficult client situation–don’t forget to treat yourself for the small successes. Maybe you really want a manicure or massage–tie that reward to a small goal and get to work. The treat will be even better when it is linked with your success.

But don’t forget, there will be days when the to do list isn’t completed, you may hang up the phone with a client and feel like nothing is resolved, or have to push things into next week behind your ideal deadlines. Maybe the contracts that you had planned for in your budget weren’t secured in time, or you’ve overspent on office supplies. We don’t need to punish ourselves for our mistakes, as long as we learn how to avoid them the next time around.

So much time is spent setting goals and talking about our successes that we can often personally feel like failures when we miss the mark. Don’t. No one hits every goal, some people just talk a great game. The goals that we miss will often teach us more about how to be successful than our successes. If you can track the data (see tip #3), find where you went off course, and come up with a game plan to overcome next time around, then your failure is a success in it’s own way.

I heard an interview on NPR with an incredibly successful entrepreneur this past year. When asked about whether or not he has ever failed, he simply responded (paraphrasing) “I have tried so many different things that I was bound to find success eventually. And I just make sure that I succeed loudly enough that my successes bury my failures in the ground.”

5. Savor the journey.

When is the last time that you stopped to think about what it is that you are doing? You are building a business, a dream, a life, a new year from the ground up. You are creating something from scratch. You are only limited by what you believe and will work to accomplish. I’m not a super mushy motivating type, but even I have to step back and think about how awesome it all is.

We set goals so that we can celebrate the supreme victory of accomplishing goals. Sometimes, we may feel the deep defeat of not reaching our goals. The emotional roller coaster of small business is part of the reward.

I want to know what you are striving for in 2016. Share your goals in the comments. Email me at ashley@ashleygerrityphotography.com if you are looking for a mentor/accountability partner to check in on your goals periodically. And most importantly, don’t forget to shout it out loud when you find your success (no matter how big or small) in 2016. Here’s to your success in 2016!

Five Secrets for Writing Truly Successful Goals