It’s the start of a new year, and now that the excitement of the holidays has started to fade away it is a great time to think about setting goals for your business.

While we always hear a lot about why it is so important to set goals, very few people will tell you how to set goals or what your goals should be. This is why so many of us struggle with setting goals. If you make the same mistake everyone else makes when setting goals, you may find you never get what you really want or helps your business grow.

Most people will tell you the biggest mistake to make with goal setting is to not make any goals at all. I disagree. A bad goal is just as bad as no goal. It might be worse than no goal at all. If you put all of your time and energy into a goal that doesn’t help your business succeed, that is usually worse than doing nothing at all.

A Goal Should Be a Journey, Not a Destination

Most goals are along the lines of “make more money” and “get more customers”. These are things all of us want for our business. But will these goals actually help us? How will you make more money? How will you get more customers?

Smart goals are not where you want to be, but things that will help you get where you want to be.

Imagine you are standing at the edge of a river. On the other side is a giant pile of money. Sure, of course you want that pile of money.  But your goal should not be the money – your goal should be to build a bridge so you can walk across!

When you set the goal of building a bridge, it’s so much easier to think about what you need to do to get that bridge built – and as soon as you reach your goal of building the bridge, you’re going to be able to cross to the other side and get what you want all the much easier.

Instead of generic goals about how much you want to accomplish, make goals that will help you accomplish more.

Rather than setting a goal to earn more or do more, set goals that will do this all on their own.

Once you know what type of goal is a good goal, you may be wondering how to decide what goals are right for you. Not everyone should build a bridge. You could take swimming lessons. It might be better to build a raft. You could fly in a helicopter to the other side.

Just as there’s more than one way to cross a river, there’s many different ways to help your business be more successful.

If you are struggling with planning your goals this year, here are two questions to ask yourself:

What were your accomplishments last year? Looking back at the things you were successful with the previous year can help you identify your strengths as a small business owner. For example, maybe you were great with attracting new clients or turning customers into repeat customers. Maybe you tried an online advertising campaign that really brought great results or held a special promotion that caught a lot of interest. By identifying your strengths, you can easily write a goal to repeat it – and your success rate will likely be good as well!

Where Did You Struggle?: No one is perfect, and it is likely you may have had a few obstacles. Looking at the things you struggled with can also help you identify goals. For example, if it was difficult for you to keep track of business expenses and other records, your goal could be to make a daily record or to take a business accounting class at your local university. If you found it hard to meet new customers, your goal could be to network with others who could help your business be more successful.

Goals will vary for everyone. And even though I said earlier that a bad goal is worse than no goal at all, there are no “wrong” or “right” goals when you make sure that the goal is one that will help you get to where you want to be with your scrapbooking business.

Need some goal setting help? If you are a ScrapVenture member, you can ask us anything at all in our forums – and don’t forget to check the Goal Setting Workbook we added to our Members Resources area this week.

Not a member yet? What are you waiting for? Join ScrapVenture and get access to all of our member’s resources to help your business be successful.