Every coach on Instagram has already told you to set your financial business goals for the year.
Dream big, they say.
Get excited about all the money that is coming your way.
But you did that last year!
And your business still isn’t that much further along. You’ve even thought about giving up on your business a few times. Why keep going when you aren’t making the money you want to?
Well, I promise that you are not alone. And with these 7 steps, you will ACTUALLY reach your financial business goals in 2020.
#1 Make your budget
I know that the word budget makes your skin crawl.
But in 2020, you are a business owner. Not a side-hustler, not a hobbyist- a business owner. That means that finances matter. It matters how much money is coming in and out!
The sooner you make friends with your budget and your money, the sooner you will feel like a business owner.
A budget is simply looking at all of your expected income and expenses. You should have a system for planning how much will be coming in over the next few months.
In this exercise, I want you to make TWO budgets. One real budget, and one dream budget (in step 2).
In your real budget, you need to figure out what your baseline is currently.
In this step you need to be completely honest! Do you like to go out with friends every week?out? How much do you need to take care of your car?
What is your minimum for surviving and keeping your business afloat?
I need you to write down EVERYTHING. This will tell you how much you need to make every month to move forward.
To get you started, click here for a simple budget template for entrepreneurs that I created!
Side-hustlers and freelancers hope for the best. Business owners plan and know exactly where their money is. So make a budget!
Related post: How to budget as an entrepreneur in a way that brings value to your life
#2 Dream Bigger
Next I want you to create your dream budget.
Once you have your monthly baseline from step 1, you need to add your dreams to it.
Sure, you need to pay rent and insurance. But what about taking a holiday?
Buying nice things for your family?
Investing in yourself and your business so it can grow?
To make money for these things, you need to get excited about money.
Money is the tool that can make all of your dreams a reality. However, you need to let it into your life first
In your dream business, how much would you spend on business expenses? Think about things like:
- Software that improves your services
- Paying a virtual assistant to do things that you don’t want to do
- Hiring a coach so that you can grow and expand your wealth and knowledge even more
- Putting away savings so you can take a month off
- Buying Christmas gifts for your clients
I don’t just teach my clients to build wealth.
Instead, I teach my clients to make money and be wildly happy.
In corporate, I was making a ton of money, and thought I was living my dream, comfortable life. However, I still got to the point where I was so sick that I fainted in public.
Start working towards your financial business goals by designing your dream life and business!
#3 Calculate how many packages/products you need to sell to reach your financial business goals
Now you have established your monthly budget (and income goal for the year). Awesome!
But setting your income goal is only step 1- next you need to write down the figures.
You need to figure out how many packages/products/clients you need to make this financial business goal.
For example, you might set a goal for a $5k month.
You would write down all of the offers/products you have and figure out how many you would need to sell of each one to reach $5k.
This will give you an actual number to work towards!
#4 Break it into actionable steps
From step three, you will have a number of clients/products.
It is important to have this tangible number so you can create steps to get there.
What do you do in your day-to-day business that acquires new clients/customers?
What are the steps you need to take to onboard say ONE client?
Focus on just one client at a time. This will help you break down your marketing steps and give you a repeatable process.
#5 Identify your limiting beliefs around money
If you want to build REAL wealth this year, you have to get comfortable with money.
And that means getting UN-comfortable with your limiting money beliefs.
Don’t feel bad- everyone has broken money mindsets.
Some common money mindset mistakes entrepreneurs make are things like:
- Making money is hard
- Being rich makes you a bad person
- I don’t know how to make money
- I don’t have enough money to grow and invest
Before you start trying to create wealth, I encourage you to sit down with yourself. Sit quietly and think about money.
What words come up? Are there any feelings that tug on your heart strings?
Once you have identified some of your money blocks, you need to re-write them.
Let’s do an example. Let’s say you think that making money is hard (which newsflash, it doesn’t have to be!).
You need to write down
- Why you believe it- what has happened in the past that makes you think that?
- Rewrite the words you say to yourself to something more affirming (if you need help rewriting your negative money mindsets, read this blog post)
- Examples of times that you made money easily- find proof in your own life where you got a client easily, where money came into your bank account without you expecting it to etc.
Related blog posts:
- 10 toxic money mindsets that are keeping you broke and poor
- 3 steps to radically fix your money mindset
#6 Get help with the things you can’t do yourself
Think logically for a second.
If you have never made a lot of money in the past- what makes you think that you will magically know how to do it now?
If you suddenly decided to become a world class concert pianist, I can guarantee that you wouldn’t just try and figure it out yourself. Know why? Because you KNOW that you don’t know how to do it.
And I want to assure you- it’s OK to not know what you’re doing yet.
It’s OK that no one in your family ever talked about building wealth and starting a business.
But it’s not OK to stay where you are because you are too scared to admit you need help.
Talk to people who have made it in business. Hire a coach. Read books about money and investment and doing big scary things with your money.
But don’t let your financial business goals pass you by for another year!
#7 Believe that you are worthy and capable of reaching your financial business goals
This is maybe the most important step of all.
If you don’t actually think that you are capable of making a lot of money, you never will.
If you think you don’t deserve the same success that other entrepreneurs have, you won’t get it.
It seems simple, telling you to believe in yourself.
But you will never be the happy, wealthy business owner you have in your head if you can’t believe in it yourself.