If you want to make big changes in your life, you need to get serious about goal setting.
I’ve spent about 20 years studying this subject. I’ve read the books, attended the seminars, and taken the courses. Goal setting has changed my life on several occasions.
Perhaps the biggest change came when I went from worst to first as a full-commissioned salesperson in the publishing industry. With the goal-setting skills I learned, I was able to stay in the top 5% of that profession for 18 years. I am using those same skills again this year as I make it as a full-time freelance copywriter!
Effective goal setting involves three major components. Follow them, and your success is certain. (And it will probably happen a lot sooner than you think.)
Step 1. Write Your Goal Down
With a pen and paper. Seriously, you must write it down. There is something about the act of writing your goal that does wonders. Until you write it down, you don’t really have a goal, you actually just have a wish. A pipe dream.
When you write down your goal, express it in the present tense, and include a deadline. Doing it this way is important because it will program your subconscious for goal-achievement.
The subconscious works best when you involve multiple senses in your goal-setting activities. By writing your goal down in the present tense with a time frame, it will become ‘real’ in a physical way.
You may also want to try visualizing your goal as already achieved and state your goal out loud each morning to help with this subconscious programming.
Many freelance web writers set an income goal, so let’s use that as an example. If $100,000 is your target income, your written goal would look something like, “I earn $100,000 from web-based copywriting by December 31, 2014.” Fill in your number and let’s move on to Step 2.
Step 2. Identify Your Bottleneck
This is where a lot of goal-setting programs fall short. It is absolutely critical that you identify your bottleneck. What is the main reason you haven’t accomplished your goal before now? If you could eliminate one obstacle to help you achieve your goal faster, what would it be?
With our copywriting example, what is holding you back? Do you need more training? Do you need to spend more time writing? Improve your marketing? Identify the biggest thing that is holding you back and write it down. Keep this bottleneck in mind as we move on to Step 3.
Step 3. A-B-C, 1-2-3
This step is all about prioritizing and creating an action plan. Again, with your bottleneck in mind, sit down with a pen and paper and think of at least 20 action steps you could take to accomplish your goal. This is a personal brainstorming session, so write down anything that comes to mind.
With your list of action steps in front of you, go through the list and identify anything that is absolutely essential to accomplishing your goal and label it with an “A.” If you have 20 items on your list, you should have about 7-8 A’s.
Next, take a look at the remaining items and select anything you think is important to accomplishing your goal, but not quite as important as your A-list items — label them with a “B.”
Anything else left over should be given a “C” or eliminated altogether. C-activities are things that would be nice to accomplish, but are not that important to achieving your goal.
Next, take a look at your A’s and identify the absolute most important one. Number it with a 1. The next most important A will get a 2, and so on. Do the same for your B and C items.
Your goal-setting action plan so far may look something like this:
Goal: I earn $100,000 from web-based copywriting by December 31, 2014.
My Bottleneck: I have not given marketing a high enough priority in my copywriting business.
Activities:
A1 — Develop mail piece to promote my copywriting services to local companies in my niche.
A2 — Commit to mail new promotional piece to 25 companies per week.
A3 — Follow-up with an email or phone call to previous week’s prospects every Wednesday.
B1 — Read and study Copywriting 2.0 by Nick Usborne.
B2 — Spend a half-hour, 2 days per week reviewing Wealthy Web Writer’s new articles.
And so on …
When you finish, you’ll have a prioritized plan of action based heavily on your bottleneck. When writing out your monthly, weekly, and daily to-do lists, look at your plan and work on your A’s as much as possible.
You may decide to update your goal every so often. I often revise every quarter or at least again in the summer. Do whatever feels best.
Bonus Step: If you really want to assure your success this year, after writing down your goal, your bottleneck, and now your action plan, sit down and think about WHY you want to accomplish your goal.
If you come up with a list of 10 important reasons, that’s good. You’ve given yourself an incentive for making the money you deserve as a copywriter this year. If you can come up with 100 reasons, you’ll be practically unstoppable.
Review this incentive list each week. As you look them over, visualize them coming true.
If you were a betting person, who would you wager on? Copywriter A, who has written down a goal, identified their biggest obstacle to success, created an action plan for accomplishing the goal and eliminating their obstacle, AND has come up with 100 or more important reasons for achieving their goal … or Copywriter B, who has a vague idea of wanting to add a few more clients this year, or to make “a lot of money”?
Become an A-type copywriter in 2014. I’m betting on the both of us!
