[megfit]

Hi readers. This is an edited version of my upcoming book for health professionals. Enjoy! Margie

Setting Business Goals: Overcoming the Fear of Failure


It’s not uncommon for new clients to really have no idea what they want to create. Samantha was pretty typical. She knew she wanted a personal training business, but by the simple questions I asked her during our initial conversation, she realized she hadn’t thought much through past the thought of, “I want to work for myself.” She had been attending different workshops and reading various books on how to start a business, so she knew she did need to create a business plan, but every time she got to that part, she got hung up and put the plan, and the dream, away. Even though she wasn’t sure she was ‘ready’, she did want to investigate the reality of starting a business, to at least see if that really was her dream. As we started working through the exercises, though, she became more and more excited. She was a great planner and organizer, so approaching a concept that at first seemed vague to her suddenly started to take on form, which propelled her forward. Today she has her own business providing sports nutrition counseling to athletes, teaching at the university, and doing some personal training in a small club where she collaborates with the owner on other programs through the year.

Everyone starts to envision goals when they imagine what they would like their businesses to look like. You may be in a position where you have been considering starting your own personal training business, or you may have a business but are ready to take it to the next level, such as opening up a studio, but for one reason or another have been putting off the steps necessary to ‘go there’. You have to set goals to make it reality, however. Often fear is what holds us back from setting goals. What if you fail? Or what if you succeed?? You want it but it scares you terribly!

Less than three percent of all Americans have their goals written down. Eight out of 10 businesses fail within the first 3 years because a surprising number begin their business without creating any plans.

They say that if you don’t plan out your journey, you can’t get there. If you envision your business going somewhere, how do you know where ‘there’ is without that plan written down? Another saying is ‘Failure to plan is a plan for failure’. But if you never set up your plan, you can’t fail, right? However, then you will look back at your life, 20-40 years from now and find yourself saying, ‘I wish I had…’

Life is too short to allow yourself to limit your possibilities.

I believe that we all really can achieve anything that we believe is possible. We do need to plan for those dreams, however, and be realistic. Just thinking about them will not make them reality, and just opening the doors and saying we’re in business will not make our dreams a success. As I’ve said earlier, we create our own reality, whether that’s success or failure, based on the research and work we are willing to put into making those goals happen. What do YOU want to achieve?

Goal setting tips

Many people are familiar with SMART goals: This stands for;

S - Specific
M- Measurable
A - Attainable
R - Realistic
T - Timely.

I don’t plan to specifically use this acronym, but if this helps you as you create your goals, be sure to use it.

Let’s consider some tips to help you create and achieve your goals and create the business of your dreams:

1. Challenge yourself with big goals
Often we need support to think big. Most people tend to set goals that are easy, because they are afraid of failing, but you really can achieve anything; it just may need more planning and time than you initially considered. This is one of the benefits of setting up goals and working on plans to make them happen. As you create your business and marketing plans, you are able to tell if your goals can be accomplished within the time frame you envision initially. If you make your goals too big, you can’t realistically achieve them. But if you make them too small, they become de-motivating. The best rule of thumb is to make them challenging but realistic – just a bit uncomfortable but challenging enough to stir up your passion and sense of excitement.

2. Make your goals specific
I always push my clients to narrow down their goals into exactly what they want to achieve, which helps ensure their success. If your goals are vague, how will you know you accomplished them? How much do you want to make, by when and by doing what? Then you create action steps to achieve these goals. If your goals are specific you are able to measure your progress, but if you have not set up specific goals, what will you measure?

When creating your goals, be sure to have the end in mind. As with a trip, to make it successful, you have to know where your final destination is. If you don’t know where you want to go, how will you know when you get there? Then, once you have met that ultimate goal, you will be ready to set new goals.

3. Cut big goals down to manageable pieces
As mentioned above, you want to think big and challenge yourself. But some goals are huge and need to be broken down into sections so they can realistically be accomplished. Cutting big goals down into multiple smaller goals can help you gradually grow into your larger goal and give you an incredible sense of accomplishment.

If you want to create a business that earns $250,000 a year, and you have no access to outside funding, you may need a few years to make it happen. The first step in breaking down that larger goal is to set up ‘secondary’ goal(s), such as you will make $30,000 in the first six months from your business. Even as you create your smaller goals, you must then break them down into daily, weekly and monthly goals. Making them this manageable helps you check them off your ‘to do’ list much more quickly than larger goals. You then get a greater sense of accomplishment, which is very motivating for the next series of goals.

Examples of such smaller goals could be that you will be writing a weekly column for the local newspaper by the end of June and you will have presented to no less than three local community groups by July. Another example is you will complete your business plan and marketing plan in the next month. The point is that these smaller, supplementary goals all help you build your business and name and create the base to a successful business.

4. Share your goals with others
Just writing down the goal and setting it in your mind may not be enough to propel you into action. As a good next step, to ensure you stick with the plan, tell others about your intention. Some clients I work with have not shared their intentions with others. They are staying safe. If they don’t tell anyone, if they decide it’s too hard, no one will know. However, when this is the case, I challenge them to always pick how many people they will tell. I may have them start small, but the goal is to tell everyone! This shows intention and suddenly the back door has closed – no more escape hatch! Now they HAVE to make it happen!

When I talk to a potential client, I have him or her tell me what his/her three top goals are with the business. For some people, this is the first time they have done this exercise, but for everyone it can be a powerful step to help them share goals that sometimes they have never spoken to another person about. That’s one of the tips in accomplishing goals – share your goals with others. In fact, if you share your goals with many people, it does tend to move you forward. Call it fear or call it meeting a challenge that if you failed you would have to live down, but it does work!

5. Set a time
One of the hardest things for clients to do is to set time frames for their goals. This really puts meat into what they want to create! They worry about not meeting their time frames. However, as they set up their action plans for their goals, they eventually see what is possible with planning. Putting a time frame to your goals gives you a clear target to work towards. Without a time frame, your goal of ‘earn $40,000’ could end up a goal you work towards your entire life. In fact, you may relate to this very well, as I have met many people who have created goals without time frames and, years later, are still working on those goals. The number of people I meet who tell me they want to create their own business, but have not done anything about it, is too great to count.

Josh wanted to start seeing personal training clients on his own. He was tired of working at the health club and felt it was a dead-end job. He had actually told himself earlier that when he finished school that he would really do something, but then realized he had been at the club for over a year. When we first spoke, he said he had a goal to make $75,000 a year. He knew other trainers who were self-employed and were making that much, some more! But when I asked him by when he wanted to make that, he had to stop and really think about it. Suddenly just saying it and realizing he had only been giving it lip service was not making it happen. So, in that first conversation, he stepped up and said, “I’d like to be making $75,000 per year in a year from now.” NOW we had something to work on!

6. Measure your progress
As mentioned above, when you create your goals, you need to also create a way to measure your progress. You do this so you can tell if a strategy is working or if your goal is as realistic as you initially thought. One example would be that you launch a website and your goal is to attract 1,000 people within three months. You would want to track the number of visitors to see if you were meeting that goal. If not, you would need to make adjustments in order to meet a new goal or achieve that goal.

But a big question people often have is HOW can you measure progress? In order to really properly measure your progress, your goals must meet two important criteria:

1. Can you quantify the measure? If you can’t put a tangible number or result on it, you can’t measure it. You can’t measure “empowerment”, for instance. But you can measure seeing 2 new clients a week by October. This isn’t really different than if you had a client who wanted to lose weight. You would help him determine to how much he would like to lose. If he states he would like to lose 50 pounds, then you have a measure you can quantify. If he said he wants to lose enough weight to look better, that would be tougher to measure.

2. How often will you measure? You can’t just say you want to attract 1,000 people to your website. That could mean anything at any time, such as by the year 2030! Consequently, using the website example, if you indicate that you want to attract 1,000 people to your website within the next three months, you now have two ways to track your progress. First, if you want the resultant outcomes in three months, then you may want to create checking periods. Perhaps you can split the three months up and set a smaller goal as 300-350 visitors by the end of month one, etc. You then want to check your visitors by the end of three months.

Relating this to health, using the above client example, you could help him determine how much time it would take him to lose that chosen amount of weight and set up intermediate testing periods to see if he’s staying on track with his ultimate goal.

7. Get support.
One great way to move people forward when working on new business goals is by getting support. Everyone who has achieved great success can tell stories of a mentor, coach, colleague or consultant who helped them at various levels of their success. Don’t try to go it all alone; everyone needs someone to talk with to share wins, ups and downs, worries and victories and private doubts. That support can come from a business coach, a support or mastermind group, or even from others in a group coaching program, and that support can change with each stage you are in. Support from others gives the advantage of other perspectives or ideas that may not occur to you. We all need someone to run ideas by, to check to see if we’re on track, or to keep us motivated. Family can be a great support, but often family and friends are too close to you to be able to provide an objective outlook to your goals, and strategies you use to accomplish your goals. Family members tend to want to ‘fix’ things for us, where someone like a coach, professional colleague or group can give ideas or just be an ear to listen to our concerns or thinking process.

It can be scary to consider starting a business from scratch. Many people fail because they aren’t willing to put in the time, effort and work necessary to understand what is realistic and what they can expect. However, any successful business professional will tell you that, with planning and setting realistic goals, you can create a thriving business. Don’t allow fear, uncertainty and self-doubt hold you back from at least taking the steps to investigate creating a business you have been dreaming of for years. Live your life as if this is your only chance to live your dreams. People seldom regret taking chances to enhance their lives, but many people regret not acting on a dream.