Why reaching the goal isn't the point

"I don't create an annual growth plan. I just see where the year takes me."

That was Jim, one of my first clients as a business consultant. He said it with certainty. "I had to create annual sales plans in corporate, and I refuse to ever do it again."

He'd been in business for 20 years. He was having success. When I'm being objective, he was winning his own way.

But no plan on how to grow the business?

Coming from corporate sales, I had never heard of such a thing. An early sales manager's mantra was "Plan your work and work your plan." I love annual planning. To meet a successful business owner who refused to set a goal was a first for me.

Since Jim, I've come to find that many founders don't take the time to sit down and really think about how they want to grow their business and what it would take to get there. For most, it wasn't part of the culture when they were in a job.

That's where the fun begins.

Where I see it differently now

My early sales years were developed in setting and revising an annual goal and breaking it down into monthly targets: pick a number bigger than the year before, work it backwards, do the activity to get there.

Today, I see it a different way. Goalsetting really isn’t about setting a revenue goal, going after it and attaining it.

Thinking about the way your business is today and what you want from it in the future is an opening to expand possibility. It's also an opening to rethink what kind of business you want (maybe it’s different than when you started). There are many reasons it may shift over time, but making it deliberate, so you can play offense and create the business that fits your life, can be huge.

The year the goal didn't matter

The biggest year I ever had as a seller was the year I set a goal so big that even my managers encouraged me to take it back. I developed a plan to hit the number and ended up exceeding it.

That doesn't always happen. As a business owner, I set goals at levels I've never achieved before, and I don't always hit the numbers. But they're still getting me to the next levels of accomplishment I hadn't been at before.

Being short of a 10x, a 5x, or a 3x goal is still almost always significantly better than where you ended the year before. That's why the goal itself isn't the point.

Think about it: what's one goal you missed that still moved you forward?