I was masterminding with my great friend and mentor, Aaron Parkinson last night and he described simple, easy to follow steps for achieving any goal in life, and it just blew me away.  I was so impressed by its simplicity — yet completeness — that I just couldn’t wait to pass it on to my loyal readers.

Pretty much everyone I know sets goals in one form or another.  Yet very few actually meet their goals.  And the big reason?

Most people are great at setting goals, but have no plan for accomplishing them.

So today I give you….

The 5 Simple Steps To Achieving ANY Goal In Life

Step 1:  SET THE GOAL

Sounds simple, but remarkably many people are unclear about what they want.  Think about it — what do you really, Really, REALLY want?  What is that one thing that you burn for.. the one that you think about before you go to sleep and the one that is on your mind when you wake up.  And when you’ve got it, WRITE IT DOWN somewhere where you’ll see it every single day, several times a day.

Having a strong, passionate goal is the very first step to achieving anything.  And don’t skimp on the PASSION — it’s the most important part.

Step 2:  GIVE YOUR GOAL A DATE

You must put a timeline on a goal.  Otherwise, it simply becomes something that you’ll do “when you get time”.  Make it realistic, but make it concrete.

Remember the saying,

A Goal without a Date is Simply a Wish….

Step 3:  MAKE A DETAILED PLAN

So you’ve made your goal, you’ve put a time limit on it… now what?  How are you going to accomplish this goal?  To me, this is one of the most important parts of accomplishing goals — having a clear, DETAILED plan on reaching your desire.

Here’s an example from one of my specific goals:  Making $10,000 in one month in my Marketing Business….

Goal:  10,000 in a 30 day period

Time Limit:  3 months

Plan -- in order to figure out how I will generate that kind of money, I needed to WORK BACKWARDS to figure out how many sales, applications, and leads I would need.  I also needed to be realistic, so I took into consideration my conversion factors from leads to applications to sales, and did my calculations

In my business, I have 3 top tier financial products plus the money I get from marketing our accompanying Internet Marketing Education and Training curriculum.

Here is a breakdown of how I needed to accomplish my goal… check out how detailed it is, down to the dollar and down to the number of sales.

• One Sale of my Top Tier 2 Product  - commission $4500
• Four Sales of my Top Tier 1 Product – commission 4 @ $900 each = $3600
• Ten Sales of my Internet Marketing Education Product – 10 @ $150 commission = $1500
• Twenty Seven Applications to Join Our Business – 27 @ $25 commission = $675
• TOTAL….   $10,275

Now, how many leads will I need to accomplish this?  I know from my previous marketing and from our company averages that our leads/application ratio is about 5%.  That means for every 100 leads, I should receive 5 applications.  If I need 27 applications to achieve my goal, then I will need approximately 550 leads each month.

Now, that is a finite number to shoot for – 550 leads in one month.

See how this works?  If you work backwards from your goal (monetary or otherwise) and break it down to its ultimate building blocks you can “get down to brass tacks” and truly understand EXACTLY what you’ll need to do to accomplish your goal.

Step 4:  REVIEW, EVALUATE AND ADJUST

You need to periodically review your progress and make changes if something isn’t moving you towards your goal.  In my case, if I found that my video marketing campaign was only generating a few leads per week, I would need to reevaluate this marketing method.  My choices are to either make better videos and more of them, or move on to some other method of marketing.  Evaluation and adjustment are crucial to achieving any goal.

Step 5:  CELEBRATE  EVERY VICTORY

Celebrate every success along the way.  If you generate your first lead, CELEBRATE… because you know that once you’ve learned how to generate one lead, you can generate 10, and then 100 and then as many as you wish.  But celebrate every victory to keep the ball rolling in the right direction.

The 5 steps to achieving any goal — naming the specific goal, dating it, making a plan to accomplish the goal, evaluating your progress, and celebrating every success — is a simple formula that anyone can do.

To your success!

Dr. Bob Clarke

http://LeadersForSuccess.com

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Yesterday I wrote about specific goal setting strategies you can use to meet those New Year’s resolutions.  Today, I want to talk about using accountability to achieve your goals.

What exactly is Accountability?

Accountability is defined as the willingness to take responsibility for one’s actions or results.

The key here is YOU. You take responsibility for meeting your goals or not.  You take responsibility for taking the steps necessary to achieve your goals.

But sometimes we all need help.

That’s where an Accountability Partner comes in.

The concept of Accountability Partners was first introduced to me by Dennis Karganilla during the first 90 Day Challenge Social Media training course offered by MLM Goldmine.  DK called it a Running Buddy, but the name doesn’t matter.  The concept is the same.

Basically, an Accountability Partner is someone who keeps you on track towards achieving your goals. He or she is the person who applauds your successes, commiserates with your failures, and kicks you in the butt when you aren’t doing anything.

My personal running buddy is Curt Frieden, AKA The Mac Marketer.  I met Curt during the 90 Day Challenge, and my wife Rosemary and I have teamed with Curt as Accountability Partners for over a year.

How do we act as each others Accountability Partners? We tried several ways, including phone calls and daily emails, but it became to labor intensive and was destined to fail.

So we turned to Google Documents. We each opened up a Google Doc and began posting daily entries documenting what we did that day that moved us closer to our goals.  We then allowed each other access (called “sharing”) to our respective Google Documents and, in doing so, we were able to comment on the progress being made.

It is a great motivational tool.  Rosemary and I know that if we don’t keep working our business and moving towards our ultimate goals, we will be getting emails and phone calls from Curt wanting to know what the hell is going on.  And vice versa, of course.

Accountability partners or running buddies are not new concepts. People use them in all walks of life, sometimes unknowingly.  Think of long distance runners.  Many of them routinely run with a partner to push them to new heights.  Or the person trying to lose weight, doing a diet program with someone else to keep them accountable.

Another example, perhaps more extreme, is the concept of a diving buddy — two people who dive together to ensure each other’s safety.  Here, not having a buddy can mean life or death.

One thing is a virtual certainty.  If you lack  accountability in your life, you will almost certainly fail to achieve your goals, whatever they may be.

Some people think they can be accountable to themselves.  In my experience, I can count on one hand the number of people who can actually achieve their goals without support or accountability to others.

Why risk it?

Get an Accountability Partner, work out a system of accountability that works best for both of you, and then stick to it.

It’s the very best strategy I know to achieve both short-term and long-term goals.

To your success!

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It’s January 4, 2009… time for New Year’s resolutions and soul searching, looking to achieve bigger and better things in the coming year.   But how many of us actually achieve our resolutions each year?

According to surveys, only 8 percent of Americans successfully achieve their New Year’s resolutions. A whopping 45 percent fail by the end of January

Why?  Are the majority of us simply unable to curb our desires long enough to make real changes in our lives?

I don’t think so.  But I think there IS a problem.

I believe the problem resides in the TIME FRAME in which goals or resolutions are made each January.

It’s a simple trick that most successful people understand, whether it be personal, spiritual, or professional goals.  Rather than make huge yearly goals that seem insurmountable on any given day, there is a better way….

The leaders, the people “in the know” understand this all too well.  They know that setting lofty YEARLY goals is a setup for failure.

That’s why all the leaders choose to make WEEKLY GOALS, rather than YEARLY RESOLUTIONS.

What’s the difference?  EVERYTHING.

Think of it in these terms… compare these 2 phrases:

***************

“I want to lose 50 pounds by this time next year” versus “I will lose 1 pound this week.”

Or this….

“I want to make $100,000 in my home business this year” versus “I will make $2000 this week in my home business.”

*******************

The yearly goals seem enormous, but somehow the weekly goals seem more in line with our perception of what is “do-able”.

Almost every leader in the network marketing industry that I have spoken to set goals WEEKLY, rather than monthly, and certainly NOT yearly.

It’s in the constant repetition of setting weekly goals, reviewing these goals on a daily basis, assessing progress towards the goals, and re-setting goals the following week that keep leaders ACCOUNTABLE and is a key for their long-term success.

GOAL SETTING done correctly is VERY powerful. Goal setting done incorrectly sets people up for failure and feeling worthless.

How is goal setting done correctly?  By creating goals in a shorter time frame, making them more manageable and more easily attained.  And as  you attain your goals each week, you gain confidence in yourself that you CAN meet your goals.

And mindset in goal setting is EVERYTHING.

And what if you DON’T meet your weekly goals? It’s much simpler to access where your goal setting has gone awry and  to correct your original premise to a more reasonable set of goals that CAN be met on a weekly basis.

Weekly Goal Setting — the secret goal setting strategy that all the TOP LEADERS use to make 5-6 figures in network marketing each year.

Here’s to meeting your goals each week!

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Yesterday we received 8 inches of fresh snow, with more on the way tonight.  What most of you don’t know about me is that I absolute HATE shoveling snow. Despise it.  It puts me in a really bad mood.   But as I was shoveling this morning, it occurred to me that there are some very strong parallels between snow shoveling and building a home based business.

Welcome to Day 20 of the “30 Tips in 30 Days” Holiday Blog Special — one business building tip for each day in the month of December.  If you’ve missed any of the previous posts, be sure to click on the Business and Marketing Tips Category on the right sidebar.

So I’m out shoveling snow, feeling older than I already am and passing the time thinking about my next blog post.  And then it hit me.  There are a number of parallels between strategies for snow shoveling and how to build a home based business.  Seems like a stretch?

Check it out.

1)  When shoveling snow, you need the right equipment. We had more snow than usual yesterday, and my usual small shovel didn’t seem worthy of the job.  So I searched my garage and found this old relic — a huge snow shovel that hadn’t been used in years.  I pulled it out and gave it a try.

The surface had become so worn, that the snow just stuck to it like glue.  Even though it looked impressively big, it was just the wrong tool for the job.  What does this have to do with a home business?

Everything.

You absolutely need to start out with the right tools when building a business, first and foremost being a business opportunity that you are proud of, that pays well, and that offers you the support and training you’ll need when just beginning.  Getting the right tools in place from the beginning will reduce your frustrations immeasurably when starting your home based business.

2)  Break large tasks into smaller pieces. Most of you know about the end of the driveway.  You know, the area where the snow plow piles all the snow from the street right in front of your driveway entrance, leaving a HUGE wall of snow blocking your way to the house.  I walked out this morning faced with such a snow wall, and started out trying to lift it all at once.  Big mistake.

I found it much easier to take it in small pieces, level by level.  Much easier on the back, and the heart!  It took me a little longer, but it got me there nonetheless.  Another positive?  I won’t be paralyzed again today.

When you are just starting out, building your home based business can seem an insurmountable task.  But if you break it down into small tasks that can be accomplished in a shorter time, it all seems that much easier.

Let’s say you decide you want to do video marketing.  It can seem a very daunting task, especially for those of us that are technically challenged.  But if you break it into pieces, small attainable goals, you can be making your first video in no time.  For example, your first goal might be to research and purchase the best video camera for your needs.  The second goal might be to practice before the camera, not actually taping but going through the entire process and understanding how it will feel.  The third step might be to complete some online training to become more proficient, like that offered at MLM Goldmine.

You get the idea.  Break your large goals up in to smaller tasks.  It may take longer to get to your ultimate goals, but you greatly reduce the risk of quitting from frustration!

3)  Make it FUN! Finally, when shoveling snow, have some FUN!  Take the snow you removed from your driveway or walkway and make a snowman!  Make it about family time.  When building your business, don’t forget to have fun!  If you’re making a video, have a blast!  Don’t focus so much on the quality of the video as the quality of the message.    If you are talking to a prospect, LIGHTEN UP! Joke around with the person on the other end of the phone.  Show them that having a home business can be alot of fun.  After all, they are probably scared to death, too!

There you have it.  Three very strong parallels between snow shoveling and building your business.

You can probably find similar parallels in all the jobs you do around the house or at your job.  Leave a comment and add to the list.

Until next time,

Bob

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