Setting Goals For Q1

“New year, new me!” We have all said it, and hopefully, follow through with it too! With a new year comes a new chance to set goals for your personal growth and the growth of your business. Q1 is a great time to make sure you know where you want your business to go. But, it’s not just about setting goals - it’s about setting the RIGHT goals for your business.

Our CEO and Co-Founder, Nico De Bruyn, has some great insights on what to do and not to do when you’re setting goals for the new year. Let’s look at what he does for Boundless Media and how that can help you with your goals for Q1.

First, we will look at what you shouldn’t do when setting goals. Trending goals aren’t always realistic when it comes to setting goals. Trending goals are things like only working three days a week or making seven figures your first year in business. Nico’s advice is, “Don’t worry about trending goals. Focus on what you actually want.” Goals that are trending sound amazing; who doesn’t want to make seven figures their first year in business? But is making over a million dollars feasible for your company in its first year? Do you have the resources to handle that amount of business and maintain it?

Next, don’t keep your goals a secret. If you are the only one who knows your goals, you don’t have any accountability to achieve them. Telling employees, a co-founder, coach, or mentor your goals will help you stay on track to meeting your goals and even surpass them. Think about it like this – If you want to start going to the gym every day, but you don’t tell anyone about it, it’s easy to stop going when it gets hard, or just not go at all. If no one knows about it, how will they help you? Now, if you tell your friend, partner, sibling, or someone else, they’ll probably ask you how the gym was. If you tell them you didn’t go, they can hold you accountable. Business goals are the same way. Tell one person or a million people; it doesn’t matter, as long as you tell someone what your goals are.

Finally, don’t ignore KPIs and check-ins. When Boundless first started, Nico wanted to do $85,000 a month in the first year, “We missed that because I didn’t have any KPIs… Which made it very hard to achieve that goal.” Without knowing your KPIs, you’ll never be on the right track to hitting your goals.

Check-ins are another critical part of reaching your goals. This doesn’t mean you check in on your team, but check in on your goals. If you have a goal of doing $20,000 by March 1st, on February 1st, you should check and see how far away you are from your goal. If you’re only 20% to your goal, you need to look at changes you can make to push a little harder. But, if you’re already 90% of the way to your goal, you can see what’s worked best to help you reach this point and continue using that strategy for your current and future goals.

So we’ve talked about what not to do, but what should you do to help your goals become a reality in Q1? Knowing what you want to accomplish is the biggest thing you can do. Look at where you were last year, and see where you can improve. Maybe last year you only had one meeting a week, and you want to have five meetings a week this year. That’s a feasible goal that you can achieve. Small goals are still goals. Meeting your smaller goals is better than falling short on lofty goals that are difficult to meet.

Do you have a plan on how to meet your goals? You should! Nico said, “You need to build a plan around your goal and have the ability to iterate and change, as you see opportunities and market changes, towards that goal.” And that’s excellent advice. When you have a plan of attack, the rest of your team will know the best ways to achieve your goals. If you want to book five meetings a week, how are you going to do that? Will you just hope it happens? Or, will you do more cold outreach or message leads from the past that you haven’t talked to in a few months? Maybe you decide to go in an entirely different direction with reaching out to people to set meetings. Whatever you want to do, plan it.

Finally, use resources to help you set, plan, and achieve your goals. There are a lot of different resources out there. You can hire a coach, have mentors, read books, subscribe to blogs, or do anything else that will help you with your Q1 goals. Hiring a coach is something Nico did early on in the days of Boundless Media, and he has had a coach on his side ever since. Having a strong support system will enable you to crush your goals.

Remember, if you need support with your goals, we’re here to help. Boundless Media can help you reach your lead gen, cold email, content creation, and other B2B goals. We know the struggle and the hustle needed to crush it on a daily basis, which is why we want to help other businesses. Shoot us a message or email if you’d like to know how we can help you smash your goals for Q1!