Business 101: Set goals to grow your business in the New Year

By ANDREW VAN HORN
Business Columnist

Editor’s Note: Willisburg-based business coach and consultant Andrew Van Horn will be writing columns for the Nelson County Gazette offering tips and strategies for business owners and entrepreneurs. Send your business questions to him by e-mail andrewvanhorn@actioncoach.com or call  (859) 940-5517.

ANDREW VANHORN

Monday, Jan. 2, 2012 – With the New Year upon us it is important to set the goals for the year. Although we start the year making good on the resolutions, they seem to falter in a couple of months. To avoid faltering in our goal attainment we need to divide to multiply.

Although this may seem counterintuitive it is an important part to goal achievement. It means that goals are broken down into manageable parts. For example:

Goal: 500 more customers this year.

This means that we need about 42 new customers a month, 10 a week, or 2 per day, allowing for vacations and holidays.

Breaking down our numbers allows us to see if our goal is attainable in a year. 500 new customers a year seems like a realistic goal for many businesses; however once a business realizes that it is 2 customer a day it may not be so realistic. It also gives us a specific way to measure our progress towards the goal.

With the smaller week and day goals we are able to formulate better strategies to meet the goals. In the above example a strategy could be a newspaper advertisement, daily networking, or speaking at a seminar. What the actual strategy is does not matter as much as the results that we achieve. The key is to breaking the large goals into smaller, more bite size chunks, and then implement the strategies that get us the goal.

By dividing our goal up, and then multiplying our efforts in the right ways, we will accomplish our goals. Divide to multiply, a strategy to keep the new year resolutions moving forward and getting accomplished.

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