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Step 1 - Set your Goals

July 16, 2007 | Author: Mark | Filed under: Step by Step

If you have ever been in a field of sales or marketing.. OK any field in any industry, you know everything starts with a set of goals! Even if you are flipping burgers at the local McD’s - you have a goal of serving up 100 burgers in a typical lunch hour! Back in the day of working for Gateway Computer Corporation as a retail manager, we got to go (OK - they made us go) to this Richardson People Skills training course in Atlanta - one of the primary things we focused on was how to build up our people to succeed by setting SMART Goals!

SMART Goals - Specifc, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely

While alot of what I took away from my years at Gateway was very useless, this was one of those things that has stayed with me and helped grow personally as well as in a business sense. Having a few retail stores, several ecommerce websites and a few good SEO projects over the course of my short life… the one thing I always try to do is have a set of goals. I find it impossible to begin without them! :-) Just a couple quick blurbs about your goals.. dont aim high right away… which of the following is more easily attained?

  • Make a million dollars in 5 years
    (or)
  • Make $1000 the first year

Of course - the second goal is much easier to reach AND measure! The key that I have found with setting goals is that you MUST be able to reach them! If you set goals that are either long term (5-years) or over the top of your reach, you will eventually give up! Are your long term and high goals important - ABSOLUTELY - BUT… they should be staged according to what you can actually do! For instance each of those goals above are very legitimate, they just need to be broken down…

  • Earn a Million in 5 Years (Ultimate Goal, which should be made up of a bunch of little goals!)

Like:

  • Earn $200k in a year or
  • Earn $16,500 a month or
  • Earn $550.00 every day!

Even with smaller and much more attainable goals, you still need to have a plan on HOW you will reach those smaller goals. For us, we have a group of larger and smaller goals… Long term, we want to bank 1 million a year, within the end of the 5th year of this venture. We hope to do that by ultimately owning 1000 domains, which, through very different methods, each generate $2.50 per day in ad revenue. Is it possible? Sure is! We already have 4 sites that are each generating about $200-$350 per month with roughly 500 content pages on each site and approximately 350-500 daily unique visitors, all driven by the search engines!

In summary - set yourself small step goals at first… make them easily attainable so you can often feel like you are BEATING your own goals! Eventually, you will adjust to higher goals and reach them just as easily as the first because you know you KNOW you can do it!! Its almost a game… set a goal, build yourself up to reach it… then reach your arm up and pat yourself hard on the back when you do! :-) Its kinds like losing weight… Is it easier to drop 100 pounds, or 5 pounds? Either way… the 5 pounds has got to be reached before you can even think of the 100!

Next Installment - Where to go next?

Peace - Mark!

This entry was posted on Monday, July 16th, 2007 and is filed under Step by Step. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.



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[…] another success, once you have your first sale… you got it, another success! Revisit the Setting your Goals page for a good […]

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