Today I want to share my thinking process for setting smart business goals with you. I like to work backwards from a financial goal to daily to-do lists. Here’s how that works. It always starts with a money goal. It helps if that goal has a meaning beyond the dollar figure. For example, let’s say that I want to buy a new car. The payment is around $300 or your country’s currency equivalent. To account for things like taxes and just to be safe, I’ll bump the goal up to $500. In other words, I need to add an extra $500 (or more… more is always better) to my monthly bottom line. Once that’s done and I am seeing that level of income on a regular basis, I’m ready to order my new car.

Once I know how much money I have to make, I can start to think about different ways to do just that. I could find more customers for one or several of my existing products. For example, if I have a $10 eBook, I would have to make an extra 50 sales per month. From there I can work backwards. If I know that on average one out of 10 email subscribers buy the book within the first month of signing up, I need to add 500 new subscribers to my list. I would then need to figure out how I would make that happen.

Of course that’s not my only option. I can also focus on offering all my existing services. A higher priced item means a lot fewer monthly sales to reach my $500 goal. For example, if I offer an existing service or create a nice new $100 product, it would only take 5 sales per month to pay for the car.

But, since the car payment will be an ongoing thing, it also makes sense to look into recurring payments. I could create a membership, have a commission-based offer or focus solely on marketing and promoting my services regularly and when I have the evidence that the service I am banking on to bring in the extra $500 is a consistent thing then I will go ahead and buy the car. Personally, I feel, 6 months of this regular extra income is good evidence.

With these options, I have a concrete goal to work towards which is attracting 5 clients to my $100 service or 1 client per month to my VIP $500 coaching session. My daily tasks will include things like creating marketing, emailing my list, social media campaigns and promoting my service at all the networking forums I attend. If I had the budget for it, I would do a short radio ad or to run frequently, especially if I know I need that $500 to be monthly for the next couple of years or more. How will anyone know about my service, if I don’t let them know it exists?

Of course, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. If I really want that car, I can set aside time for a brainstorming session with myself to think outside the box and put in some time and effort initially, to try something different to get sales rolling. Because I really want that new car, I’m going to be motivated to get it done and grow my business by those extra $500 per month.

What do you really want in your life or business, that would motivate you to work backwards from today?

In Your Support!