Do you want to know what makes a business successful? It’s not profit, reputation, or impact. It’s not marketing or finance. It’s not whether you’re sitting in a Herman Miller chair or on a park bench. It is when you set business goals and achieve them.

Without business goals, you will never know “What’s Important Now?” You can work on anything you want and never hold your business accountable. If you don’t set business goals, success will remain intangible and impossible to find. After all, how can you reach for what you can’t see?

So how do you set business goals and achieve them?

One or Two Goals, Max

We have enough going on with just “living” our lives. We have to shower, eat, work, clean, and the list goes on and on. You need to set one or two goals, max, because you won’t have time for anything else. You need to put all of your eggs in one basket and devote your time to fortifying that basket. You’re a business person and your time is limited. You simply won’t have time for more than one or two goals.

Command Your Ship

The leadership expert John C. Maxwell said, “A Pessimist complains about the wind. An optimist expects it to change. A leader adjusts the sails.” And that my friends, is how you create a business goal. You need to look at something you control and aim to control it. Don’t focus on the weather, focus on what you can do to change the weather.

Two Versions Of Your Goal

You need to have two versions of your goals. You need to have one goal that you think you can achieve and then one goal that is much higher than the first. You never know what you might accomplish and you don’t want to sell yourself short by setting your goals too low.

Make Your Goals Public

When I started this “Success Factors” series I committed to one article per day. Let me tell you, it’s hard. It’s real hard to find one unique article per day to write about. Yet, here I am, staying up all hours of the night and losing sleep to make sure I get one article up per day. My goal is public and I don’t want to fail.

Do Something Today

I just launched Prevential.com and I kept asking myself, “What can I do right now to grow my audience?” So I started a blog series. Instead of trying to optimize my website for search engines, I focused on what I did best and started writing immediately.

Forget Effort. Manage Activity

It doesn’t matter how hard you work. What matters is how much you do while you work hard. So, if you’re trying to sell shower doors, you should contact 500 people instead of 400 people. Don’t work on improving your conversion ratio because that could take a lifetime of practice. Instead, focus on what you control and that’s how many people you talk to.

Now, how about you join the conversation?

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