I know, I know, it’s already February! How did that happen?? Anyhoo, I wanted to chat a little bit about 2018 goals. You might think it’s too late for any goal setting past the first few weeks of the year, but that is definitely not the case. It’s never too late to set goals, people! So let’s talk a bit more about them. Why do you need them? How do you set them? And most importantly, how do you reach your goals?
Goals – Why do I need them?
The need for goals can be explained pretty easily: you need motivation. Otherwise you’re just doing stuff without really going anywhere. Setting goals makes you more aware of where you are at – in your life, in your business, in your relationship, your health.. they can be implemented for many things. Once you know where you are, goals help you to reach higher, higher than you would without having any goals! Imagine going to the gym, but not really having any specific muscle gain or weight loss goals. You’ll just be going to the gym casually, working out for the sake of working out, without really knowing what you are doing or aiming at. Working with a goal makes you more motivated so you’ll reach it faster, and the feeling of reaching your goal will give you so much satisfaction that you won’t wait to set another!
How to set goals
Okay, now we’ve established the benefit of goals, how do you find which goals apply to your own situation? First you’ll have to think about what you want to reach. I’ll give you an example. For me, my ultimate goal for 2018 is to grow my business. Okay, that’s great, but it’s very vague, isn’t it? Vague goals aren’t any better than having no goals, since you won’t know when you’ve reached your goal, and you won’t have that satisfying feeling!
So, I’ll have to make my goal more concrete. What do I actually want to reach? Well, since I’ve gone parttime (40 hours to 32 hours) this year with my dayjob, I’ve lost some of my income, 20% to be exact. I’ll have to make up for that loss by earning more with my creative business, which will be my goal for this year.
Having such a detailed goal makes it easier to find a way to reach it, and it will also be easy to say when you’ve reached your goal. If I’d just gone with ‘grow my business’, I wouldn’t have a way of knowing if I’d actually reached it, and it would have left me unmotivated and unsatisfied.
How to reach your goals
This is the exciting part! Now you’ve set your goal, you have got to think of ways of how to reach it. Try to set small steps. For me, there’s several options on how to reach that goal of making X amount per month. Of course there’s pattern sales, which will be my main source of income in my creative business. But there’s also crochet kit sales, affiliate income, possibly Youtube ads income (when Youtube FINALLY gets around to reviewing my channel!).
Now I’ve established my ‘smaller’ goals, I can write down steps on how to get there. To have more pattern sales, I can 1) design more paid patterns 2) design more free patterns so people can try out my designing style before committing to a paid pattern 3) promote existing patterns by having a sale. Second is affiliate income – which is where I place a link to for example a yarn store, and if people use my link and buy something at that online store, I’ll get a small percentage without the customer paying any extra. To increase affiliate income, I’ll have to think of a pleasant way to help my readers find the yarn they want, without being too obnoxious and commercial. Same goes for Youtube ads; I have to use them to pay for the cost of my business, but I also don’t want them to be too annoying.
So, that’s it: first set your main goal for the year, being detailed enough so you know when you have reached your goal. Then, divide it into smaller goals and write down steps you can take to reach them. And by writing down, I really mean writing them down on a piece of paper. Place it somewhere you can see it everyday, whether that is in you studio or in your notebook.
And remember – You can do it!!
