My top three goals for 2012

As most of you know I’m not a fan of setting New Years Resolutions because those tend to go away after a month or so.  People don’t seem to achieve their resolutions so I choose to use my Goals for the year to set instead.

Goals are very important for your business and life for they help you move forward in what ever you are doing.  Think of setting goals as your blueprint to getting WHATEVER you want in life.  But merely setting a goal like “I want to make a million dollars this year” isn’t enough.  You also need to have an actionable plan in place for you to achieve that goal and it needs to be realistic yet will stretch you.  I’m not gonna go into detail what kind of goals you need to have set but think of S.M.A.R.T goals when you set goals.

To get a detail on how to set SMART goals check out my post on SMART goals

For 2012 I have my top ten goals but instead of being bogged down with so many different goals I decided I’m gonna focus in on my top three.  I actually learned this from a book called “The compound effect” by Darren Hardy (highly recommended by the way).  These top three goals are something that I want to achieve in my life and it’s not just for my business either.

So here are my top three goals for 2012

1. Top three goals # 1 – Weigh in at 200 pounds by 12/1/12.

A couple months ago I torn a calf muscle playing basketball and it’s kept me away from the gym from the last couple months.  I’ve noticed the decrease in energy so I need to get back in the swing of things before my injury.  Before the injury I would go to the gym at least 3 to 5 times a week not because I needed to but because I actually like going to the gym and I found fun in it.  It also gave me tons of energy that helped me in my life and in my business.  The time off I have gained a little weight so I need to get back into better shape plus I want to prove to myself that I can drop close to 200 and get in the best basketball shape I can get in since high school.

How am I going to achieve this goal:

Well to start things off I go to the gym 3 times a week to start in the first month and progressively start going to 5 times a week like I used to before the injury.  Merely going to the gym daily isn’t going to get me there of course it’s only a third of the battle.  My goal is to have 5 to 6 meals within a day to avoid having huge meals.  By having smalls meals every couple hours I will insure that my metabolism is always firing full blast and I will avoid those binge eating huge meals.  I also made a mini goal of running two marathons within the year.  So training for that will help with the weight lose as well (first marathon I plan to run is in June and another one either October or December).  Once my calf is fully healed and I have gone through rehab I plan on playing basketball again to add variety to my workouts at the gym.

2. Top three goals # 2 – I have a successful internet marketing business by 1/1/13.

Starting an online marketing career is no cake walk and if you are in a similar industry you know exactly what I mean.  The internet changes daily, what used to work a couple months ago no longer works now.  So in this industry you have to constantly improve yourself are you’ll be outta business before you know it.

When I say my goal is to have a successful IM biz I mean I am working this from home full time and no longer work a JOB.  I find internet marketing a ton of fun.  I love seeing how technology works.  I love looking at the numbers to see improvement.  I love doing research on some keywords and my competition to see how I can get to their level.  With internet marketing almost everything you do is measurable.  I’m definately doing this internet marketing thing not because of the money but because of how much fun it actually is to do.  Now of course there are some things you have to do in your business that aren’t as fun but I still power through those task because I know they will help me in the long run and once I get a grasp of them I outsource it!

One of the things I’ve learning with Internet Marketing is learning how to scale things up to the point where you are no longer needed to be part of the process.

How am I going to achieve my second goal?

There’s so much to do in internet marketing that if I tried to learn everything I wouldn’t get anything done and I’d be left in information overload or overwhelm or what ever word you want to call it.  I think this happens to every marketer out there.  Heck I have to stop myself at times to buy software or reports (those dam sales copy are sometimes so convincing).  One area I’m focusing on in my business is the content marketing side of things particularly blogging.  Getting content out there is a great way to get recognized and also you can turn that content into other mediums to market out there.  I set aside at least 30 minutes to an hour of  related training daily to keep my mind fresh but at the same time I have to make sure I take time to IMPLEMENT as well.  What good is the training if I’m not doing anything with it right?

The second half of this is going into the offline side of things, into the local marketing side.  There are tons of small and medium business owners out there that don’t know how to market online and they need the help of us internet marketers.  These business owners might be good at their selected craft but don’t know much about marketing so there’s a huge market for that.  In offline marketing there is also so much you can help them with like website building, social media, seo, rep management etc..  I will focus more on the local seo side of things because some of these business owners know they need to get on google but go about it the wrong way and lose lots of money in the process.

3. Top three goals # 3 – Stick to my daily scheduling

I know I can achieve this goal in under a month but if I want to get anywhere near as successful as I can be I have to stay consistent at what I’m doing.  I have to help myself accountable to do the daily task that seem boring at the time and might seem like they won’t make a difference.  I have a daily list of things I have to do everyday before I do to bed and I have to stick to that list.

I also write out a list of my to dos for the next day and end it with a gratitude list before I go to bed.  In the mornings I have a morning ritual that consist of a couple things off my list and creating content.  I also prioritize my list for that day so I know what I need to work on first and what needs to be pushed back, delegated or totally trashed.

In order to keep myself accountable I use a weekly rhythm register from the compound effect by Darren Hardy (told it’s a good book).  It a scoring system and the weekly goal it to be in the positive range weekly.  What’s a weekly rhythm register?  Check it out here weekly rhythm register

Now these are my top three goals for 2012 what are yours?