Goals? Success?
 

This question is not so much directed at the veterans as it is the guys still building and struggling, although all input is appreciated....

What are your goals?

Nowadays things are different then the way they used to be so id imagine the goals are different too.

Do you have income goals? How do you define your success?

bump bump

My goal is to stay alive until tomorrow.

My success is waking up.

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For me personally, I set monthly goals and have done for a while now. Recently I have set myself a yearly goal (July 2014 to reach it).

Monthly is based on what I have achieved in the past (percentage increase in income each month). The idea of my monthly is to make it a realistic goal and at the same time a goal that requires work to achieve.

For my yearly, it is basically to reach a certain amount of revenue per month by July 2014 along with a few other bits and pieces - nothing to do with percentages (the monthly percentage gains lead to the yearly goal).

Then I have a few rules for myself to reach these goals.

Stay consistent.

Don't try and do too much (ie don't spread myself too thin).

Don't let a few bad days of sales put me off track (look at things in a monthly / overall manner rather than day to day / second to second).

Do not over work myself, take time off when needed, exercise regularly, see friends & family - believe me this is the most important part.

When I first started setting goals, I was basically just making shit up as I had no clue what was I could realistically achieve. So my advice is to record the data you currently have for 2 or 3 months, see what you can achieve and set goals based on this. Then keep track of what you are doing to increase revenue - figure out what works.

Once you start tracking things, setting goals that you can realistically achieve becomes far easier. Then you can set a few goals that are maybe a little out of reach :)

Defining success for me is to increase revenue each month. However if I reach my percentage gain per month, I reward myself with something - nothing huge - a day off, buy something, go out / big drink up / massive feast etc...

Hope that is of some help - I am by no means anytype of player and struggle through like anyone, just found setting goals a great way to get all my ducks in a row.

Good luck.

My goal is to constantly improve. I went to Hawaii for a few weeks last year, and just put my feet in the sand and said "how can I improve". (First thing was to not to try to use a netbook while on vacation.) I gave it some thought, came home, and started to put these things into place. A few minor changes and I was golden - working smarter, not harder, and getting a lot more done.

Paying the bills and still having some left over to enjoy life.

Health and happiness.

One of my goals is to find the time and resources to spend a year on the backroads travelin' the U.S. from coast to coast with the Nikon. And then eventually publishing a photo book of the trip.

Retire by the age of 35. That's my goal. :thumbsup

Heh so funny you say that.

One of my goals is to do just this in Australia :thumbsup

Drove to far north Western Australia earlier this year (5,000k one way) and that cemented the idea for me as it was amazing to say the least!

Sweet...hope you have a safe and enjoyable success with it. :thumbsup

This morning my goal was to get up at 5:45 AM to get some plant poison put out, then I broke my poison delivery pump and I am now drinking coffee and starting the day early instead ><

On a more serious note, some overall goals are:

1. My holding company need to reach 500K in ready "cash" since that's what appears to be the ticket to move to the US.
2. Move to FL with the family since it has a nicer climate and nicer people (see 2).

More short term goals I have a long ass list of, that we work towards on a daily basis and it's being evaluated often.

Thanks everyone for the very insightful and detailed input. I appreciate it.

Monthly goals base don covnersions, gross profit and net profit... at times they can take the fun out of just doing what you love if focused on to heavily

I agree. I have always told the people around me that "money isn't everything". I have worked grueling jobs where I made good money, but I was miserable. Even in this line of work, I could never get myself to commit to boring things like building/submitting galleries daily, even for a decent payout. My heart wasnt in it. And the long term projects I had put aside did.

In thinking of working solely on those projects Ive put off for so long, I knew there wouldn't be an immediate payoff. I need something other then just money to keep me motivated and moving forward. I received quite a few ideas in this thread