Every business owner, no matter what stage the business is at, needs to use goal setting to keep moving forward.
Goals keep us motivated, focused and allow us to measure the success of the business.
Goal setting can play an important role in many areas of your reflexology business from marketing to finances, to the redecoration of your treatment room.
Each one can be successful if the goal is clearly defined, and a plan is devised for how to achieve it.
Without goals, and a process for tracking them, you may have difficulty seeing the big picture and staying focused.
Here are five goal setting steps towards turning your reflexology business dreams into reality:
1. Dream
The first step is to consider everything you dream of accomplishing within your reflexology business.
Avoid limiting your thought process as this stage and think about everything which may be possible. Now is the time to consider every possibility – there are no boundaries.
Once you have taken the time to think about what you would love for your business, take a piece of paper and write down where you would like your business to be in one year, five years and ten years.
2. Develop the Dream
Now you have your dreams down on paper, you can start to develop them further. A great way to develop the ideas is list making.
Here you can focus on one idea at a time and create an outline of the possible goals for it.
Mind mapping is also a great tool. You start with one idea in the middle of page, then use words and drawings to create a visual map of related ideas. This is a good idea if you like to work in a more visual way.
3. Organising the Dream
Now you have your ideas developed, it is time to organise them. Sort your ideas into categories, based on measures which are important to you and your reflexology business.
For example, you could organise your ideas based on:
- Attainability – how easy will it be to achieve it?
- Desirability – how much do I want this?
- Financial impact – does this goal require financial investment?
- Time commitment – how much time will this goal require?
Working through this process helps you to develop your dreams and ideas further.
You may see an overlap in some of the ideas and themes; this is a positive sign you are on the right path.
4. Time to Plan
Once you have completed steps 1 to 3 you should have established a couple of goals that you really want to focus on. Write each goal on a separate piece of paper – so you have lots of room to make notes.
Under each goal heading consider SMART goal setting.
SMART stands for:
SPECIFIC
MEASURABLE
ATTAINABLE
RELEVANT
TIME-BASED
Working through each area of SMART allows you to create a plan to accomplish your goals and the specific actions you need to take.
It helps you to understand why you want to do it and what it will mean when you achieve it.
5. Focus on Today
Striving toward larger business goals can be overwhelming for a small business, so breaking it down into bite-sized chunks allows you to take a series of small steps each day to get closer to your goal.
Of course, you don’t want to lose sight of the bigger picture, but if you take one larger goal a step at a time, you will grow in confidence as small business owner.
You will progress, and you will reach your destination – the dream for your reflexology business.
Good luck everyone,
Kelly x