Goal Checkup - Part 2

Hi, this is Dave Kats with Therapist Consultants and I have a tip for you. Not too long ago, we did a tip on making and reaching your goals. Well, I want to talk to you a little bit about how high you should set your goals. So let's do a little bit more of a goal checkup. If you have goals that you have each month and you try to improve your goals, don't be too aggressive on your goals. That sounds strange. You'd say somebody that's building practices, should tell us to set aggressive goals, but don't set aggressive goals because your practice will grow plenty fast if you just have very logical goals.

Let me give you an example. If you have a goal to increase your growth by 10 to 15% a month, it probably isn't going to happen because after the six months you'd have doubled your practice. Probably not going to happen. But if you set a goal to have 10 to 15% growth during the year, that's more logical. So when you set your goals, make sure that you set logical goals, not too high.

And then the other thing I want you to do to make it realistic, since you're checking goals a month at a time, make sure that you take into consideration what's going on around you during those months. Let me give you an example. I had a case where there was a company that there was a group that we consulted that they had a goal for, I think it was October. It was October and they had a big goal that they made. And then as we went into the new year, they had another goal that they didn't make and they thought it was bad. But I said, think about this. In October, there are no holidays. There's no snow in the north. There's no hurricanes in the south. And there's just 31 days. It's the longest month of the year as far as business is concerned.

Now take February, you might have leap year, but you might have 28 days in February compared to 31. That's 10% more days in October than there is in February. So if you did something in October and you just hit it again in February, you'll be doing just fine. So as you go through, say, was this a long run? Did it have holidays? Is there a chance of snow? Is there a chance of hurricanes? And take that all into consideration. I know you don't know that ahead of time, but you have just a little thing that you can make decisions on.

So make sure you set your goals according to what's happening in the month. And I think you'll find that you're much happier. Now you'll find that you're reaching your goals more consistently if you do it one step at a time, one month at a time and take account what's going on in that month. This is Dave Kats, thanks for listening.