If you’re failing with your online business, you’re still far ahead of those who aren’t even trying. A “failure” is never truly a failure until you quit, it’s actually feedback for those who stay in the race! So if you can keep going, and choose never to quit, you’ll eventually learn from your mistakes and hit a winner. Then you can use that winner to create more and more of the same. Ultimately, your mindset will determine whether you will continue or not, and whether you continue or not determines whether you win (or not)!
In the middle of July I set myself the goal of getting 1000 website hits on my blog through organic only means. Here’s the post I wrote explaining my method: how to get 1000 website hits without paying. Yesterday was the deadline and I was inspired to write this post: the importance of goal setting, to mark the occasion!
I actually had a shortfall and didn’t hit my target of 1000 website hits in a single day. Here’s my stats. They show I had 746 hits yesterday, a shortfall of 254 from my target! Today is Thursday, which is why it shows only 247 hits so far.
Failing With Your Online Business?
So, did I fail? Certainly I failed at hitting my target of 1000 hits by the end of July! However, the goal itself served its purpose and I worked much more diligently towards my blogging that I would have, had I not set a goal. Have a look at my stats for the rest of the year as a comparison:
I decided on this goal in mid July, to spur me on in my blogging! If traffic was my intention, which it was, (and content creation of course), the this is surely a success? Before this point, I was blogging fairly regularly, and you can see I was getting regular traffic to my blog. However, once I set the goal, my activity increased because I had a stronger intention – to reach 1000 hits by July 31st!
In my drive to hit the 1000 figure, I wrote more, and I promoted my blog posts more too! Previously, I was held back by thoughts like:
- It won’t make any difference if I blog more
- I don’t want to annoy people with too many emails
- Will blogging even help my bottom line
- Should I be doing something else, such as paid ads?
- Am I taking the right course of action here?
But once I set my goal, these thoughts had no space because I needed to focus on every single effort I could make to reach my goal. The doubting thoughts in my mind had to take a back seat – my goal was what mattered! There was simply no time to entertain negative thoughts like these. If I did, I wouldn’t be taking consistent action towards my goal!
Failing With Your Online Business? – Set A Goal
“If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes” – Andrew Carnegie
If you feel as though you’re failing with your online business, set a goal for yourself. A goal should inspire you and excite you. I’ve set many goals in the past which I quickly forgot about. Nothing came of them because I either didn’t care about my goal, deep down, or I didn’t believe I could achieve it!
But set a goal which motivates, inspires and drives your behaviour, and you know you have set a good goal for yourself.
When I set the goal of 1000 website hits in mid July, I was already blogging, knew I needed some motivation, and knew my goal was more traffic. So the goal was pretty logical.
If you’re unsure of a goal to set, think about an area of life which you’d like to change. With an online business, the goal is likely to relate to achieving more sales. You don’t have to know how you will achieve your goal when you set it, just that you want it, a lot and you believe it’s possible, even if it’s a stretch.
Failing With Your Online Business?
I recently found an old goal I had written (and laminated) in a recent house move. It was dated 2010 and said “I now earn £1000 a month online”. Earning an income online was a goal of mine for a long time, and once I achieved it, I rested on my laurels. I sat back, forgot about my goal, and slowly my online income dropped down again.
I had forgotten about all the actions I had taken to get me to that goal of £1000 a month online. As a result, I stopped doing the things which drove my business forwards!
Had I set another goal, of perhaps hitting £2000 a month online, I would have continued taking the right actions to move my business forward! See my post on contingency goals.
The same thing happened after I set a goal to become a stuntman in 1998! Once I got my first stunt job, I thought I’d “arrived”. I had achieved my goal! I rested on my laurels and stopped setting new goals. Sure enough, the work dropped away and I found myself back in my default settings – scraping by and doing jobs which made me unhappy.
If you’re failing with your online business, maybe you have let your intentions slide? Can you set a goal which will help you get back on track? One which motivates and inspires you?
“We are not the highest version of ourselves that we can imagine, we are the lowest version of ourselves that we can accept” – Sam Ovens
Summary
So if you’re failing with your online business, perhaps you have fallen into the same trap I did? Perhaps you have let your intentions slide. The negativity has crept in and drowned out your inspirations and aspirations?
You need to refuel your aspirations and intentions by writing out a meaningful goal which inspires and liberates your hopes and dreams!
Set a new goal. Decide where you want to be in 5 years time and choose the outcome you desire. Without a conscious choice of your direction, your arbitrary actions and habits will decide for you!
If you haven’t started an online business, you can begin the journey here! Good luck!