How do you think about your business goals?

At the beginning of our journey together, a lot of the entrepreneurs I work with say something like this:

• “I’d like to get more clients.”
• “I want to have a successful business.”
• “I want to help people.”

These goals are all admirable, but it’s also highly likely they’re adding to Overwhelm.

Because how will you know when you have enough clients?

What does success mean?

How will you know how much you’ve helped?

Let’s see what happens if we rewrite those goals another way:

• I want to increase my revenue by 20-25%.
• I want to pay myself $225 – $250K per year.
• I want my program to impact 750-1,000 girls in STEM over the next 3 years.

These goals are different (and more useful) because they are countable.

Three Reasons Countable Is Better

1. It lets you know when you need to push harder and when you can let up. 

I have a former client, Susan (not her real name), who started a public relations firm when her kids went to middle school. She was completely overwhelmed with the effort she was putting in to bring in new clients. So I asked her, “What does success look like?” She said it means I work 20-25 hours a week while my kids are in school and I bring in enough money so we can have some extras that we couldn’t afford when I wasn’t working. So I asked, “How close are you to getting there?” And as she thought about it she realized she was actually working more than she wanted to, and that she was already bringing in enough to cover those extras. But because she hadn’t defined what success looked like, she didn’t feel comfortable saying her client load was enough.

Today, she knows she still needs to keep networking and staying visible because sometimes clients leave. But now she is more comfortable limiting her hours so she can enjoy the flexibility she was looking for when she started her business in the first place.

2. Countable makes sure that you’ve considered your “why”.

Let’s take a goal of “more clients” for example. Do you want a more clients because you’re spending too much time playing Animal Crossing? Do you want more clients because you’re trying to raise your profile? Do you want more clients because you want to make more money?

Let’s say you want to make more money. How much more? Because that absolutely needs to be a consideration when you figure out who you’re marketing to, whether or not you need more products and how you price them. When I meet clients who don’t have that number in mind, they are often in Overwhelm because they’re trying a little bit of everything. It’s hard to plan a trip when you don’t know where you’re going.

3. Countable is actionable.

Even if you’re creative and qualitative, if you want to get to the point where you’re running your business without Overwhelm, it’s important to embrace some quantitative. You don’t have to become a numbers nerd, but it’s the only way you can tell what’s working and not working. And especially in the early days, this can be the difference between celebrating your second or third year in business or closing your doors.

When you create goals that are countable you are actively managing your business. That means that you’re not waiting until the end of the year to compare it to last year and saying “Yay, we grew,” or “Bummer, we didn’t.” You’re saying I want to be bringing in 20-25% more revenue and so what might I do differently to get there? And then you’re checking each month and each quarter to see if your plans are working. Each time you check you get more information. And that’s a good thing. Because making decisions without enough information is a major Overwhelm driver.

Overachieve Much?

I want to close with one watch out. A lot of us who become entrepreneurs are Type A personalities who tend towards perfectionism and over-achieving. So sometimes we choose not to count things because we don’t want to acknowledge failure down the road. So, if you’ll notice, when I wrote the countable goals I included ranges. If you wanted to reach 1,000 girls in STEM and you only reach 999 did you fail? Of course not. Use counting wisely, as an information assist tool, not as a bludgeon.

Here’s How To Set The Right Business Goal

Now that I hope I’ve convinced you of how powerful setting the right business goal can be for your business, here’s my step by step tutorial that will walk you through exactly how to do it.

More, More, More.

Setting the right business goal can be a powerful way to manage entrepreneurial overwhelm. If that’s a challenge you’re facing right now, I’ve got a free download, “3 Things You Can Do RIGHT NOW to Feel Less Overwhelmed Tomorrow,” with some quick to implement strategies that can help take some of that weight off your shoulders right away.