What is a S.M.A.R.T. Business Goal?

Are your business goals smart? Are you sure you’re going to accomplish your goals? Hi, I’m Doug Barra, and in this video, we’re going to cover what are smart goals and what does that mean for your business?

Now you may have first thought, well, what do you mean smart goals? Of course, might be my goals are smart. I’m smart. No, no. Smart is an acronym. And if you haven’t heard it before, there are many ways people define what smart means. For me, smart is the acronym of specific. So S stands for specific, is your goal specific? Not, is it I would like to make more money, but exactly how much money are you looking to make? Specific.

Second, M is measurable. Can you measure it? You need to be able to measure your goals because, in order to manage your goals, you need to be able to measure them and to measure them, you have to be able to see them. You can only manage what you measure, and you can only measure what you can see. So you have to be able to measure progress towards the goal.

Then we have A. Now there’s some confusion around A. Actually, I shouldn’t say confusion. There’s many different ways the A could be defined. For us, the A is achievable. Now, what do I mean by achievable? I mean that you know that you could achieve it. It, it is possible to achieve. Now. You shouldn’t know how to achieve it.

People are like, what, wait a minute, what are you talking about? Of course, I need to know how to achieve it. This is why goals don’t work… No, no, no. You don’t need to know how to achieve it. As a matter of fact, if you already know how to achieve your goal, don’t bother making it a goal. You want your goals to actually expand who you are. That’s part of why we create goals. They give us direction, they give us movement momentum, but they also are about who we become, trying to achieve that goal. What’s the growth that we’re going to have. And if I already know how to do it, then just put it on your to-do list and do it.

A goal is about what do I need to learn? What do I need to do to achieve this? But it shouldn’t be so far out there that you just know you can’t possibly achieve it. You want to know that it’s in the realm of achievable. And I’ll give you an example of this.

Let’s say that my goal is that I have achieved a weight of 120 pounds. Well, that’s not achievable for me. I’m almost six feet tall, 120 pounds is not an achievable goal for me. Right? But I could say I’m going to achieve 165 pounds. That should be an achievable goal. I don’t know how I would ever get there, but that is an achievable goal. All right, then we have the R in smart. For us, the R stands for results-oriented. And what does results-oriented mean? Results-oriented means that it is a result, a ‘having’ in the world.

Let’s go back to an exercise example. Or, the losing weight example. I could say, and many people do, my goal is I’m going to exercise three times a week. No, that’s not a goal. That’s not a result. The result is what does exercising three times a week provide. For example, it could provide weight loss. It could provide a particular sort of health that is defined by your doctor or by some norm, some measurable result. Going back to the M. Alright.

The final T in smart is for time. All of your goals have to be based in time. See, as human beings, we will allow our goals to go to infinity. And when we allow our goals to go to infinity, they never occur. So we give it a time frame. Now, for business, we say 90 days. We work on a quarter system. So every 90 days, you create a goal for the end of that 90 days. And then you work to achieve that goal. When we have this kind of a goal, we have a very clear understanding of what we’re trying to create. However, it is also important to understand what’s the underlying, why that goal is important to you because that’s, what’s going to have you accomplish the goal, regardless of what’s going on.

See, we accomplish goals for the why, not the result. We think it’s the result often because we think we’re these, this very logical human being, but human beings are not necessarily logical. I’m not saying we don’t have logic. I’m saying that logic isn’t necessarily what drives us? What drives us is emotion.

So your why has to touch the emotion because that’s what will drive you. So please, in the comments below this video, please leave me a comment. What’s your goal, and why is it important to you? I’m going to read the comments. I want to know what you had to say. So please leave me a comment.

And if you’d like to really get your hands on, what can make a difference for you in your business? What’s the goals. What’s the plan. That’s going to make a difference for you and your business. Then download our Insider’s Guide To Success In Business. There’s a link below this video. You can also go to www.insidersguidetosuccessinbusiness.com and download your FREE copy. I hope you got major value from today’s video.

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