Have you ever entered a room and forgot what you were looking for? You continue searching with the idea that once you see the item, you’ll remember, but you’re aimlessly poking around, looking through everything.
The same goes for setting goals. If you have very defined, actionable goals it can be clear what the next step is, but if you only have a general idea of what you want to accomplish, the path to success can be cloudy.
Limit the Number of Goals you Set
If you’re a solopreneur like myself, you need to avoid stretching yourself too thin. Focus on one or two main goals at a given time, and be laser focused on those goals.
When I first started Cloud Campaign, I was running around like crazy not achieving any of the goals I had set for myself. Taking a step back, I realized the first goal I wanted to achieve was getting 100 people on the platform.
With only that goal in mind, I began posting on forums, writing guest blog posts, and published the site on popular product discovery sites. Cloud Campaign got to 100 users in less than a week.
The next goal was to increase user engagement, but more specifically, have 100 social media triggers be created. I created an onboarding process that helped users create their first trigger and created a ‘get started’ checklist that included ‘create 3 triggers’. Users created over 200 triggers by the end of the month.
The goals will vary depending on what you’re hoping to achieve, but the same methodology can be applied.
Set Actionable Goals
David Hauser, co-founder of Grasshopper, exposed his secret for success. He and his team create a spreadsheet each week for actionable goals that they want to achieve. He tracks metrics he can actually control.
Rather than striving for 10k visitors on the website, David will suggest focusing on writing 10 blog posts or some other controllable metric that in turn can help you achieve your end goal.
Noah Kagan, founder of Sumo Group, does something similar with his team, and he mentions one other aspect to it that’s very important. Noah tracks whether or not they completed the goal in a shared spreadsheet. This helps hold you and your team accountable for the goals that you set.
In conclusion, focus on a couple goals at a time and make sure you’re hitting your controllable metrics. Leverage transparency if you struggle with motivation or accountability.
