Welcome Back!
I hope you had a nice break and are feeling refreshed and revitalized!
I mentioned in my post at the end of December that it’s a really good idea to make the most of the quiet period to get your store in order and start setting goals for the new year.
Today I want to go into more detail about how to set goals that will be meaningful to you and will help you to improve on your business, rather than simply be this thing hanging over you and stressing you out all year.
- Use data. Unless you have a crazy marketing strategy in mind, there’s no point setting yourself the goal of making a million dollars this year if last year you made a thousand. Look at your stats from last year and use them to work out what goals make sense for the next.
- Make it realistic. Pretty similar to my last point but it bears repeating. Your goal should be challenging so you need to push yourself to achieve it but still something you can get to if you do put in the effort.
- Make it measurable. You need to know when you’ve achieved it and you need to know how close you got if you didn’t. Don’t say “I’m going to use social media more this year”, instead try something more like “I’m going to tweet once every day and post on facebook once a week”.
- Be sure it’s relevant. Particularly if you run your own business, it’s very easy to stay within your comfort zone. If you are already very active and successful at selling at in-person events, it may not be the most useful to set yourself the goal of doing more of that. Maybe you need to encourage yourself to focus more on the online side of things instead, for example.
Setting goals is the easy part, sticking to them is harder but having other people around to support you helps a lot. Bonus points if you join our Facebook community group for store owners to get and give support from and to other sellers. Another good idea is to find a buddy (local or online) who also runs a business so you can be accountable to one another and help each other stay motivated when it gets tough.
With all that in mind, we wish you a wonderful 2014 and, armed with your new goals, I’m sure it will be your most successful year yet!
