The 2010 Goals Challenge – Can You Do This

How long have you thought about starting an online business?

What have been the main fears you've overcome to take the plunge?

Or are you still debating whether or not online marketing is really for you?

I've consulted with thousands of people on how to start an online business; I've learned a lot about the keys to success.

One of the most important factors that all successful business owners have is not knowledge. It's not money or advanced education. It's not necessarily computer experience or programming and design strategy.

The simple key to success with eCommerce, or anything, is self motivation WHY you do what you do!

As an online entrepreneur, you are now your own boss. You're completely in charge of what you do or don't do everyday with your business. Some of you may be still working the JOB (just over broke) while getting this business started. That's ok. I don't necessarily recommend you drop everything today to dive head first into a pool that may not be full yet.

Tony Robbins once said:

    Do what you fear, and the death of fear is certain.

Are you ready to break your fears about online marketing and being an entrepreneur?
The Power of Goals

    If you're bored with life you don't get up every morning with a burning desire to do things you don't have enough goals. Lou Holtz

Why is this important?

Goals are a self motivation indicator. If you don't know where you want to go, you'll probably never going to get there. If you don't have the self motivation to stick with the task, how can you really expect success?

I'm always doing research on goal setting and found a great article by Heather Allard. She gave 4 main points about goal setting.
4 Ways to Achieve Your Goals

   1. Drill them down.
   2. Hire help.
   3. Keep goals in front of you.
   4. Make them public.

The one I want to focus on today is Drill them down.

As you think about your goals, what you want to accomplish with your online business, or with anything, ask yourself the question:

    How much control do I have of that outcome?

If you can honestly say you have COMPLETE control, this is the type of goal you go after. Here's a ficticious example:

Goal: Make $150,000 this year with my online business.

Let's break it down:

    * To make $150,000 this year, assuming we are starting today, Tuesday, January 5th, 2009, means we have just under 12 months to make it happen. 360 days to be exact.
    * $150K / 12 months = $12,500 per month.
    * $12,500 / 4 weeks = $3,125 per week.
    * $3,125 / 7 days = $446.42 per day.
    * OR $150,000 / 360 days = $416.66
    * OR $150,000 / 8640 hours = $17.36 per hour

As you can see, there are quite a few different ways to Drill Down As Heather states: take your goal and drill it down into the specific action steps it will take for you to achieve them.

By doing this break down I can actually see what it's going to take on a day to day basis if I want to achieve this financial goal.

Now I have to ask myself that important question:

    How much control do I have of that outcome to make $416.66 per day?

Some might say this is debatable but think about it, can I actually MAKE a visitor buy the products I am offering on a specific day? From my experience, the answer to that is NO.

However, there are things I can do every day that will improve the likelihood of this happening.
Things I Have Control Of

What are they?

    * Phone calls per day
    * Emails sent
    * Weekly or daily promotions
    * Testing different wording strategies
    * Client feedback and referral systems
    * Offline marketing tests
    * Joint venture contacts
    * Guest blog posts

The list can go on and on. But look at this list.

How much control do I have of [these] outcomes?

All the control!

I can set a goal to make X amount of phone calls today, send Y amount of emails to my database. Then, after doing these things, I can monitor my progress. Maybe today I called 20 people and 5 of them purchased for an average of $50. That means 25% of my contacts purchased something and I made about $250 today. If I contact 50 people tomorrow I have a chance to sell to 12.5 people for about $625 in sales. The numbers won't always be perfect every day, but keep track of your progress (what was working, what didn't seem to work), and then duplicate your successes more and more and more!
Turning Goals in to Reality

Now pretend you have already achieved these goals:

Get a pen and paper and take 5 minutes to describe how you feel now that you have already finished the task you have been postponing. Act as if you're already successful. I call this the Moller Mission Statement. Here's one of mine:

    Today is the best day of my life. I am achieving my goals as an online entrepreneur at [put in your company name] with a 6 week average of over [specific amount of money] in revenue. I am making [specific amount of money] per week which is helping me achieve and exceed my six month goal of [specific amount of money] by June 30, [year] and [specific amount of money] by Dec. 31, [year].

    My keys to success have been confidence, focus, overcoming all fears, hard work, persistence, patience, and expecting to succeed, along with listening to and reading from the best, taking effective notes which I apply immediately, setting specific performance goals that I review daily, and focusing on getting [pun in number of sales you need to achieve your goal] new sales per day, clients that need the products and services I'm offering.

    I never worry about things I can't change. I focus only on what I do have control over: attitude, knowledge, skills and work ethic. I'm happy to be running my business successfully and will continue to develop multiple streams of income. These multiple streams of income will help me achieve my life goal: [specific long term goal].

You will be surprised at how well this simple process works.

    * Write out your goals in the form of actions, things you are already doing.
    * Read your personalized mission statement frequently.
    * Engrain it in your head and believe it. It's amazing how the mind works and things just start happening.

    We become what we think about. Earl Nightengale

    Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve. Napoleon Hill

By reading your mission statement frequently, you'll feel a boost of self-motivation that gets even better each time.
The 2010 Challenge

   1. Drill Down Your Top Goal(s)
   2. Write them out in the form of your personal mission statement
   3. Share this mission statement with readers here in the form of a comment (the Make Goals Public approach)
   4. Keep us all posted on your progress!

For more information