Its a cold, but sunny day in NY today. I have a work flow going, my grande cafe mocha is in hand and I am comfy and warm with my laptop. And of course, my Buddy is laying at my feet. I am in a somewhat reflective mood. As an entrepreneur, you tend to be all over the place with your business. You are blogging, you’re on Facebook and Twitter, you are talking to clients, you are working on projects. Its really easy to get “lost in the sauce” (hence the picture of the meatballs and sauce – I’ll bet you were wondering about that photo. There is always a method to my madness).
We often start off the week, month, or even the year with certain business goals in mind. I think the biggest issue for a lot of us is we don’t write out our plan. If we don’t write it down, we don’t have to commit to actually making it happen. I put up a post on Facebook the other day that really rang true for me this month:
“A GOAL that is not written down is simply a WISH.”
Let’s think about that for a moment. I am not telling you not to dream. One of my favorite things to do is to sit quietly in a room and envision all that my business can become, and “feel” the success and abundance. I can envision all that I would do and share when that success arrives for me. Dreaming and manifestation is how I have managed to NOT just throw in the towel when things were not going so well for me in the past.
But, let’s face it. If you really want to have a successful business – you need to plan and you also need to hold yourself accountable. And the accountability factor is what tends to hold most of us back. If we don’t talk about our dreams – then we don’t have anything to shoot for, which means there are no goals. And if there are no goals, there is no plan. With no plan, there is no action / accountability. And without accountability – you aren’t going to build the type of momentum you really need.
This month I did a little experiment on Facebook. I announced that my GOAL for the month of January was to hit 18,000 followers on Twitter. I knew I could leverage Twitter for traffic purposes and I had built up my following the right way. By sharing good content, being consistent and offering guidance when asked. I even took screenshots of my Twitter profile page to “show” my Facebook friends my progress. To me, that’s “social proof”. Don’t tell me what you are doing, SHOW me what you are doing. And on top of that – I offered to TWEET to my following for FREE. So if you posted a tweet and a link on my Facebook business page, I would tweet that link for free. Well a couple of things happened:
- I felt compelled to get onto Twitter each and every day and check people out, retweet things that would be interesting to my following, post blog links, and send out inspirational messages. After all, I had put this on Facebook and people were looking at my posts. I felt held accountable, whether anyone on Facebook was actually checking or not.
- By tweeting for others, I connected with some cool people on Facebook that I hadn’t spoken to before and I actually added 22 new friends to my business page.
- People so appreciated the free tweeting, that I also had three people book new client consultations with me and I now have a new client!
- And last, but not least, because I took CONSISTENT daily action on Twitter – I hit my goal. As of today, I added 780 new followers to my Twitter following. I now have 18,039 followers and more people are connecting with me every day.
So the moral of this story is – set a goal and be CONSISTENT. You don’t have to move mountains, it doesn’t have to cost you a fortune. I did everything myself when I could fit it in (hint: install Twitter and Facebook apps onto your phone, MUCH easier). With just a little effort each and every day – you can see some amazing results in your business. So don’t get “lost in the sauce”. Sit and write down THREE goals for the month of February – and start taking action consistently to achieve those goals. Let’s chat again next month and see where you are at.
Have a great week!
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