Five Power Steps To S.M.A.R.T Goals

Posted on January 4, 2011

It is a new year and it’s time to put pen to paper and write down your goals for 2011! If you did not achieve the goals you had in place for 2010 in your personal or business life I have put together a few action steps to guide you to turning those dreams into a reality using S.M.A.R.T goals.

During the month of December I took a step back to get a much needed mental break, spend time with my family and start thinking about the what, where, how and if’s of 2011.

In 2010 I transitioned my network marketing business online and it would be an understatement to say that I was not prepared for the roller coaster ride. The learning curve was deep but some of the triumphs and success I’ve been able to accomplish have reassured me that I made the right decision. The one thing I realized was that I had the ideas, I had the vision, I had the dream but I still didn’t have all of the pieces in place. I only had pieces of the MAP. In 2010 the path toward my destination was still a little bit blurry and there were times when I found myself kind of blowing in the wind, hoping for the best. Too many of us treat goal setting the same way. We dream about where we want to go, but we don’t carry a detailed map to get there., which causes a loss of FOCUS. Some of us arrive somewhere in the general area, while others don’t make it at all.

If a man knows not what harbor he seeks, any wind is the right wind.

During the month of December I took a step back to get a much needed mental break, spend time with my family and to start thinking about the what, where, how and if’s of 2011.

I began to MAP out (not just a mental MAP put a physical MAP) WHAT I wanted for my business and in my personal life, WHERE I wanted to be financially, physically and mentally, HOW I was going to achieve these goals and IF I was even going to be able to do it!

It is critical to be S.M.A.R.T about the goals we set. Here are 5 Power Steps To Achieving Your Goals in The New Year:

S: Specific: No more general goals allowed. When you take the time to go into detail your chances of successfully accomplishing those goals increases significantly. So for example my goals in 2010 were to increase my Facebook Friends, Facebook FanPage Followers and Twitter Followers. Well in 2011 my goal is to have 5000 Friends, 2000 FanPage Followers and 4000 Twitter Followers by the end of the quarter (April 1st) and reach the milestone of 1000 Blog Subscribers by May 1st. Increasing my follower base will allow me to make generate more product sells, sponsor more people into my business and give great validity to by brand and online presence creating social proof that the content and resources I am providing is of value.

I know specifically who is involved. I know what I want to accomplish. I know where. I know when. I know why.

So when setting your goals ask yourself the following questions:

*Who:      Who is involved?
*What:     What do I want to accomplish?
*Where:    Identify a location.
*When:     Establish a time frame.
*Which:    Identify requirements and constraints.
*Why:      Specific reasons, purpose or benefits of accomplishing the goal.

Now how does this compare with the goal I set for myself in 2010. Well because my goals were so general, even though I accomplished hitting 2000 Facebook Friends by the end of the year, I completely neglected my goal of increasing my Twitter followers because I did not have a detailed “MAP” of what I actually wanted to do with that account. For 2011 I have created a more focus set of goals and I know exactly what I want to do and why and which action steps I must lay out to help me reach my goal of 4000 Twitter Followers by April 1st.

M: Measurable: Establish rules and criteria for measuring your progress toward the attainment of each goal you set. By measuring your progress you will stay focused and on-target, and you’ll be able to carry with you the feeling of accomplishment that will keep you motivated and excited toward reaching your goals.

So in the Example above I could break down my goals into smaller milestones. Let’s use the Facebook Friends. As I am writing this post, I have 2093 FB Friends. So to reach my goal of gaining 2,907 Friends by April 1st I need to meet the following criteria.

January: 969 Friends
February: 969 Friends
March: 969 Friends

and I can break that into a daily goal of

28 Days left in January: 35 Friends per Day
28 Days in February: 35 Friends per Day
31 Days in March: 31 Friends per Day

A: Attainable: When you identify goals that are most important to you, you begin to come up with ways to make them a reality. You develop the attitudes, mindset, skill-set, and financial capacity that will get you closer to achieving what it is you desire.

The key to attaining the goals you set forth for yourself is to develop a Daily PLAN of Action or a Focus MAP along with a reasonable time frame that allows you to actually carry out your plan, follow the steps laid out in your map and ultimately reach your destination. Goals that may have seemed far fetched or impossible to achieve eventually become more attainable, not because your goals diminish, but because you are taking the necessary actions and discovering the skill-sets that will allow you to grow to match them.

So using the same example here is my Focus Map:

Monday: Send a broadcast to my Subscriber lists reminding them to connect with me on Facebook.
Tuesday: Take 15 minutes to request 20 new Facebook Friends from people who follow me on Twitter
Wednesday: Take 20 minutes to request new Facebook Friends from people who follow me on Youtube, Digg, and other social media networks such as LinkedIn, MySpace, BetterNetworker.
Thursday: Cross reference my FanPage Followers at Andrea Bolder (The Gold Medal Marketer) to see if they are Friends . If no request them.
Friday: Request Friends from Ning Sites I am member of
Saturday: Send a broadcast to followers of My Facebook Group Page, Andrea’s Step By Step MLM Success Online and ask them to become friends or suggest friends.
Sunday: Take 15 minutes to send out 15 friends requests to like-minded colleagues that are in the same FB Groups as me.

R: Realistic: Are you willing and capable of achieving the goals you set forth for yourself ? The tricky thing about goals is that you are actually the only one who can decide just how aggressive your goal should be, but be sure that every goal you set for yourself is a step up and will represent progress. You’ll find that some of the most difficult goals we set for ourselves become the easiest to accomplish because we want it so badly that it ends up becoming a lour passion, our labor of love.

T: Timely: Any and all goals you set should have a time frame, a date of completion. This will create a sense of urgency. If I want to get to 5000 Facebook Friends by the end of the 1st quarter, I will have to intentionally take action to begin working on my daily goal. If you have a goal to finish a product launch, ask yourself when do you want to launch that product? “Sometime this year” is not going to cut it. If you attached a due-date, say “by May 15th”, then it will be ingrained in your mind and your subconscious will continually remind you that you should be in a state of motion if you are to meet your deadline.

As you navigate toward accomplishing your goals this year always remember this:

Goals are dreams with deadlines. ~Diana Scharf Hunt

As I close out this post I want to leave you with this, in an effort to work on being more accountable and responsible for my own success, I hope this process of setting S.M.A.R.T goals will help me and YOU gain the power you need to focus and commit to achieving some very specific goals in 2011 and to no longer settle for mediocrity.