October can be a scary month for business owners. Why? Not because of Halloween. It’s because now it feels like crunch time to reach your annual goals.

This is actually a great time of year to assess your 2021 goals to see if you’re on track to meet them by the end of December. You don’t want to look at your goals in December only to realize you just barely missed the mark.

During October, I review my clients’ goals for the year as well as audit their budgets for the next year. It’s not meant to be scary, but to empower clients to push themselves to hit the goal or make any tweaks to set themselves up for success next year. Not hitting your goal doesn’t necessarily mean failure but an opportunity to learn and grow.

Suppose clients are on track to meet their goals, great! We can celebrate and work on expanding their businesses. If it looks like they won't, this gives them a full quarter to adjust their approach and expectations.

They should also begin to be looking forward to their plans for 2022 to develop new reach goals! We want to walk into January ready to start tackling projects that will lead your business to success.

Let’s chat about how you can assess your progress this year, make any adjustments, and set your goals for 2022!

Assessing Your Business Goals

Business owners are usually aware if they are reaching their goals or not. The question they typically need answered is by how much? For this example, let’s use a financial goal. Let’s say your goal is to reach $10,000 per month in gross profit, so $120,000 in 2021.

Review your gross profit over the first three quarters of the year. Did you reach your goal? If you did, great! If you didn’t, calculate how much you will be short. Don’t be afraid of this number!

Once you have your number, now we can get to work! Continuing our example, let’s pretend you find that you are on track to be short $6,000 by the end of the year.

Now it’s time to assess if and how you can reach your goal by the end of the year. You have an entire quarter to make it happen!

What can you do to help hit your goal? How many new clients do you need to book?
Overspending? How are your expenses? Are there areas you can cut back on?
Not selling? What is an action you can take to increase sales? Attend 1 networking event each month? Book 3 more sales calls a week?

You don’t want to wait until December to look back on your numbers and think, “Oh no, I was only short $6,000! I could have booked a few more clients and made it happen.” Now is the time to be proactive instead of reactive.

Let’s say you don’t hit your goals, then what? Let’s chat about that.

Setting Your Business Goals for 2022

Goals are your guiding North Star towards achieving your dreams. Whenever you get off course, you simply refer back to your goals and continue working towards them. When we reach our goals, it’s an incredible feeling of accomplishment. When we don’t reach our goals, it can feel like a failure. Let’s reframe, so that when we don’t reach our goals, it’s not a failure but a redirection.

If you did hit your goals, congratulations! We can set new goals for next year to continue your success and put more money in your pocket. If you didn't reach your goals, let’s create reasonable ones for next year.

Setting Annual Goals for Your Business:

Let’s follow a 3-part process for setting business goals.

Review how last year went - Were you over or under? By how much? Take a few minutes to reflect on why you did or didn’t reach your goals without judgment. This is the time to learn and grow.
Perform an expense analysis - Read my in-depth article for this process. Review every expense and find areas to cut back or expand on.
Set SMART goals - Create 3-5 SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely) goals for your business.

There is actually one more step that we need to talk about.

Find Business Goal Accountability

Step four is finding the right accountability to help you achieve your goals. With a financial partner by your side, you can be actively monitoring your goals all year long. Instead of being afraid of looking at your progress in October, you can proactively make tweaks each month to help you reach your goals. If your goal is the North Star, your financial partner is your guide. I’d love to see if we are a good fit for each other. Please feel free to schedule a call or subscribe to my email.