It’s that time of year when you start looking ahead and thinking about what you want to achieve in 2023. There is a technique to setting goals that make it more likely that you will achieve your goals. Let’s set your 2023 business goals.
What Kind of Goals to Set to Grow Your Coaching Business in 2023
There are many different types of business growth. The first step is to decide how you want your coaching business to grow. Do you want to:
- Increase profits?
- Help more people?
- Improve your industry standing?
- Hire employees?
- Work less?
- Build additional income streams?
You may find more than one of those growth goals attractive. If that is the case, rank the goals in terms of importance. A lot of these business growth goals will be connected to a certain extent, but the approach will be different depending on the primary goal.
For example, let’s say your main goal is to increase your profits, and your secondary goals are to help more people and work less. There are a number of different ways you can increase your profits, you could just increase your prices, but the secondary goal identifies how you want to increase your profits. We’ll take a look at how to reverse engineer these growth goals later in this article.
The most important thing to consider when setting business growth goals for 2023 is whether they are coming from you or an external source. It is really easy to get caught up with what we think we should aim for instead of setting our own goals. Create your own definition of success and set goals based on that.
SMART Goals
The SMART goals mnemonic offers an easy way to check if you are setting goals you can actually achieve. You may think setting any goals is going to improve your chances of success, but unrealistic goals can be detrimental to your success.
- Unrealistic goals can be demotivating
- Low goals can lead to missing out on your potential
- Goals without a plan can cause anxiety
Specific
Be as specific as possible when setting your goals. Let’s say you want to make more money in 2023, be specific about how much money you want to make and how you want to make money.
Start with how much money you want to make. What is your profit goal for 2023? Write down a specific number.
Then, think about how you want to make that money. Your secondary goals may contribute to this. In the above example, we had a coach who wanted to make more money, serve more people, and work less. In their case, they might want to brainstorm ways they could serve more people while working less. That could be through creating digital products, writing a book, offering group coaching, or hosting regular masterclasses. When we reverse engineer the goals, we will look more at how to create a plan for exactly how you will achieve these goals. The important thing at this stage is to identify ways you can achieve your goals.
Measurable
Identify how you will track your progress towards the goal. If your 2023 business growth goal is to increase your profits, that is easy to track. You can check in every week or month to see how much money you are making.
Growth goals like working less or improving your industry standing are less tangible at first glance. In those cases, you want to define how achieving that goal would look and put it in terms you can easily measure. When you do this, remember to focus on things that you can control. For example, winning an industry award would improve your industry standing, but it is largely outside of your control. Examples of measurable goals to improve your industry standing could be:
- Meeting specific criteria for an industry award
- Building a relationship with a certain number of affiliate businesses in your industry
- Being published a certain number of times in industry publications
Attainable
Is your goal something that you can realistically achieve based on your current circumstances? We’re all for setting really big goals and pushing yourself, but a goal that you have very little hope of achieving is not motivating. In fact, it can be demotivating to consistently fall short of your milestone goals.
Relevant
Is your goal something that is relevant to you and something you are excited to achieve? The best growth goals for coaching businesses build upon where you are now instead of requiring you to scrap everything and start over. Perhaps you need to scrap or rethink certain aspects of your business to achieve your growth goals, but you shouldn’t have to start from scratch. That would be less of a growth goal and more of a pivot, which requires a lot more planning than goal setting.
Here are some things to consider when determining if your business growth goals are relevant:
- Do your goals fit into your business values and mission?
- Do your current circumstances can support that goal?
- Does achieving the goal mean something to you or is it a vanity metric?
- Does the goal fit with your other personal and business goals?
Time Bound
Set a timeframe to achieve the goal. This seems like an easy one. If you’re setting business growth goals for 2023, then your time frame is 1 year. Think about if you have an ideal date you want to achieve the goal by. Alternatively, there may be things you are working towards as part of that goal that has an obvious deadline.
For example, let’s say you want to work less; specifically, you want to work 4 days a week, and you want to take all of October off for parental leave. That goal is really about creating better work-life balance so you can spend time with your family. October is a deadline for you to have things figured out so you can take a month off and focus on your family.
When you are breaking your goal into smaller milestones, you should also set deadlines for those smaller goals. We’ll talk about this more in the next section.
Reverse Engineer Your Big Goals
Now that you have a big goal for 2023 and you have determined that it is a realistic goal, it’s time to create a game plan to achieve that goal. The best way to do that is to start with the goal and work backwards.
Let’s say your goal is to have 200 people join your membership community by the end of 2023. What can you do to make that happen? The very first thing to do may be to create a membership community and the initial content. You need to figure out things like what your membership community is about and what kind of value you want to create to keep your members.
Break Your Goal into Smaller Milestones
Where are you going to find 200 people to join your membership community? Start brainstorming ways you can promote your membership community. Where will you promote it? How will you communicate the value of your membership community?
Now that you have your big 2023 growth goal and you have a list of ideas, it’s time to create milestones. Let’s start by breaking the goal down into quarterly goals. Where do you need to be in each quarter to achieve your goal by the end of 2023?
If we look at the previous example of the membership community, this could look something like this:
- Q1 – Create the membership community and initial content
- Q2 – Launch the membership community at the beginning of Q2 with a great offer and get 50 initial members
- Q3 – Sign up 75 more members
- Q4 – Holiday offer to attract 75 new members
Then, let’s break this down further into a series of specific goals. For example, you could have goals around the number of members you want to attract and goals around how you will get those members that month. Brainstorm offers, promotion ideas, collaborations, and even membership community content/resources. These goals may change and grow as you put them into practice, but the important thing is to create a plan and then revise it instead of just winging it.
Next, break this down into fortnightly or weekly goals depending on your coaching business. Look at how many members you need to sign per week and how you plan to do it.
Create Small Habits to Achieve Your Goal
One of the most effective ways to achieve your 2023 business growth goals is to turn them into a daily or weekly habit. Taking regular action, no matter how small, removes the friction of big goals. When that regular action becomes second nature, you can build upon it to achieve more each day. Think about working out. If you’re not used to working out at all, it is easier to commit to a 10-minute home workout than a 1-hour gym session. After a while, that 10-minute workout is a part of your routine, and your fitness has improved to a point where you can scale to a longer or more intense workout.
Think about a small action that you can make every day or every week to achieve the goal. For the membership community example, it could look something like this. Every Tuesday and Thursday, I will share a sneak peek at what goes on in my membership community. This could be a quote, a short video clip, or a look into the discussion.
Let’s say you need to increase your following to achieve your 2023 business growth goals; that could look something like this. I will show my face in Instagram stories every day, even if that is just sharing what is on my mind while I have a cup of coffee.
Ready for a Copy Refresh in 2023?
Do you need brand new copy to help you achieve your 2023 business growth goals? We help coaches to capture their ideal coaching clients’ hearts and get them excited about the transformation awaiting them. Whether you need launch copy, website copy, email copy, thought-leader content, or a lead magnet to start growing your coaching business, we can help. Browse our copywriting for coaches services here and contact us if you have any questions.
We currently have space for January and February 2023 copywriting projects.