How to Plan Your Online Business Goals

I’ve been talking about goal-setting a lot lately, but it is that time of the year when we solopreneurs are thinking about planning our online business goals for the year. There is so much ahead of us, and it can be overwhelming…but don’t let it overwhelm you. We can really do this.

Remember, it’s never too late in the game, even if January is over. (Or February, or March for that matter!)

You still have time in front of you, so it’s never too late. Remember the old saying that goes, “Better late than never?” In many ways, I believe that to be true, even if I prefer not to be late. It’s still better to act upon what you know you should do- even if it’s far down the road and you feel that you should have done it a lot sooner. So why not start now?

Why is planning our online business goals important?

Planning your online business goals helps you plan not to fail.

It just does so much for us in terms of getting us moving in the direction we plan to go for the year. When we have goals in front of us to achieve, we’re more likely to go in that direction. We’re more likely to take action and less likely to be stuck. Goals help us plan to be successful. Even small successes add up to big ones and before long we’ve seen improvement and made progress.

Planning your online business goals boosts your confidence.

The more we plan our goals, the more confident we feel about them. There’s just something about getting our hands on our plans and tackling them one by one that brings a measure of confidence to us, unlike anything else.

I love to plan out what might be ahead in my business, even if I don’t accomplish every single goal on my list. For me, it’s simply the act of planning out my goals that makes me feel more confident that I can achieve them. Once we write down our goals, we make them plain. Choose a favorite notebook or online system for planning and write down your goals.

(I share one of my favorite notebooks in the video above). I typically go with very simple notebooks with blank pages that I can edit according to my liking.

Goal-setting gives you a long-term vision.

When planning your online business goals, you’ll start to see yourself a few weeks and months out. You might even be able to have a vision for your business and where you want to be a year or so from now.

This is great! Now we can see what can happen over the year provided we take the necessary steps to achieve those goals!

Goal planning gives us short-term motivation.

The smaller goals and subtasks are things we have to do to put our larger goals into action. Like I mentioned above, even with long-term vision planning, it takes smaller steps (our daily tasks) to achieve what we want to accomplish.

What are those things you have to do each day to make your long-term goals a success? Sit down and write those tasks down in your notebook.

I honestly find this part of the process to be quite relaxing because now I will have tangible work to do where I can start to see some immediate results. Planning can’t be all long-term or we’ll never benefit from the satisfaction of immediate return on investment. So, I love that goal-planning gives me bursts of satisfaction to be motivated for the short terms.

How should we begin planning your online business goals?

Reflection.

I ask myself what happened last year that worked out well for me? What can I do to continue working along those paths so that I will achieve my end goals?

Reflection is a time to truly take not of any and everything that worked or didn’t work for me.

I celebrate that and I’m happy for my accomplishments. For example, as a result of reflecting on my business goals last year I discovered that I was covering way too many topics on this blog. In order to niche down even more effectively, I ended up starting a brand new blog where I teach mompreneurs specifically how to blog (and nothing else). This gave me some relief here at this blog where I don’t need to cover blogging topics at those.

Reflecting on what worked and didn’t work last year gave me a better picture of how to proceed this year.

Celebration

One of the best things we can do for ourselves in staying motivated is to celebrate our successes. No matter how small the achievements, it’s worth giving your own self a pat on the back! Celebrate yourself- treat yourself to something nice, enjoy some alone time, do something you enjoy.

Celebration is all part of gratitude. Being grateful for our business and solopreneur life means we’ll often find ourselves celebrating even our smallest achievements. So don’t forget about making a big deal of every little “small” success!

Release

There are also things I want to do that I didn’t focus on. I got too busy so this year I’d love to accomplish those goals this time around.

Ask yourself what worked for you and what didn’t. If it didn’t serve you, let it go and release it.

Sometimes we try to hold on to what didn’t work by tweaking it, or even by holding on to the idea of “what was”. We might feel disappointed that things didn’t quite work out in the past the way we’d wished.

We have to let go of those things so that we can move forward. If it didn’t work it’s either because it didn’t serve you well, it didn’t serve your audience, or you didn’t have information or resources you needed to pull it off. Don’t stay stuck in the disappointment of it.

Time to let go and release so that you can move on. There is so much more ahead for you!

Visualize your online business goals.

You have to see yourself somewhere that you’re not at the moment. You have to believe that it’s possible for you and that you can get there.

Once you get past your mental blocks that you can’t achieve something, then you’ll allow yourself to visualize yourself where you want to be. That’s where writing down your goals is such an important aspect of achieving great things in your business.