It doesn’t guarantee it 

It’s that time of year again — when we all look at the big number in the date flipping over and consider it a fresh start.

I wasn’t always much of a goal setter, but since I’ve started my business I’ve become one — and it really has helped.

Throwing out goals isn’t hard… but where most people get stuck is coming up with an action plan to achieve those goals (which is actually the important bit).

So, in today’s newsletter, I thought I’d share how I ideate to help turn my goals into actionable steps. Of course, I’m not saying this is the only way to do it (or the right way!), but it’s what’s worked for me — hopefully, it helps you.

Just to have an example, let’s say my goal is to get to 10,000 YouTube subscribers this year (coincidentally, that is one of my goals — so consider subscribing 😂)

First, let’s assess the gap between where we are now, and where our goal is…

Currently, we set at 3,461 — which means we’ll need to gain 6,539.

Next, let’s break that down into some milestones (because measuring over a year is too broad)…

To achieve that goal, I’ll need to gain 1,635 new subscribers each quarter (or 545 per month).

After that, let’s brainstorm ideas and things we’ve done in the past…

• Post a new video every week (consistency has not only helped the algorithm, but it’s also make the process easier and helped me improve)
• Interview “bigger name” guests (the video this year that brought in the most subscribers was interviewing Kevin Powell)
• Promote the channel across different platforms (I can look back and see when I share the video it gets more views than when I don’t (pretty simple!))
• Spend more time on the thumbnail and title (I don’t always spend time on these, but when I do the video always end up performing better)
• Being a guest on someone else’s channel (this helps introduce me to someone else’s audience)

Finally, let’s take some of those ideas and put them into plans to move forward…

1. I need to be posting videos weekly, at minimum.
2. I need to book a “big name” guest once per quarter, at minimum.
3. I need to promote each video across 4 different platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Email, Website).
4. For each video I need to come up with at least 3 different title and thumbnail combinations and get feedback.
5. I need to make a guest appearance on at least 5 different channels.

With these action steps in place, I can start setting up some systems to help me stay on track, like: recurring tasks to produce a video each week, writing down a post-publish process for sharing content, create a spreadsheet to track subscription growth each month (what gets measured, gets managed!), start a list of potential guests and try to book one per quarter, etc.

All of this, of course, doesn’t guarantee I will hit my goal — but having each of these action items makes it a lot more likely that I will than if I just said “10K YouTube subs” with no plan on how to take steps towards it.