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The Art of Goal Setting

By Deepak Kanakaraju —
The Art of Goal Setting

Many entrepreneurs set big goals. They want to become millionaires or billionaires. But in my experience, such goal setting is naive and most of them doing it for the sake of money never get there anyway.

When an entrepreneur wants to set a goal, the goal is less likely to be a goal for the sake of the goal. Someone wanting to make a million dollars in revenue or profits with their business probably thinks that the money is going to help him live a better life, unlock more options and the purpose of it might be to have more meaning in life.

Meaning in life is not something that is available for sale, no matter how much money you have. You need to work on different things, learn what is most meaningful to you, and derive meaning from your work. Your work will become meditation and that's where most of the meaningful work in the world is done.

When setting personal or business goals, it is a better idea to set goals on what you want to work on and what you want to accomplish, than just having a revenue goal.

For example, if I have to set a revenue goal for LearnToday, I could say I want to take it to a 100cr per year revenue company. Or a 1000cr per year in revenue. All these goals might look cute. Some might frown upon it and some might appreciate it because it takes some level of courage to set big goals.

However, such financial goals cannot be attained directly. "Wanting" alone cannot take you to the realization of the goal. The financial performance of an individual or a company can be a stressful distractor from the most important things that need to get done. The financial performance is a result of work well done. And sometimes the final result might surpass previous expectations by a huge margin.

So instead of setting goals for how much revenue we can make, we set goals for how much we can do and focus on the doing. If what we do is not enough to reach our financial goals, we would only know after the work has been done. Maybe it is enough, maybe it needs more work, but work is the only input that can be controlled. The output cannot be directly controlled.

So here are the goals for LearnToday for FY 2022-2023

  • Establish an office and create a healthy balance of productivity and freedom
  • Always be on the lookout for great talent and keep adding them to the hiring funnel. Do at least one interview per week.
  • Create a personal productivity routine and habit for content creation. Work on it for 4 hours a day. (For me and other content creators on the team).
  • Invest time, energy, and money in learning new things. Skills and development not just for me but for the entire team. At least for 3 hours a day.
  • Have a mastermind session for brainstorming with the team at least once a week.
  • Create a new advanced course in 2022.
  • Set up a solid affiliate & reseller program for the top of the funnel traffic
  • Work on organic content channels and publish more content, regularly
  • Invite experts to give guest sessions for our students and add their content to the offers we promote.
  • Optimize the process for existing products
  • Optimize the sales process for upselling existing customers and upgrading them to premium offerings.
  • Create one new lead magnet a month (like a free ebook or course)

If we do all the above properly, then we can have a better shot at reaching our financial goals.

The goal is to do the work. The work will bring in rewards. When the end result becomes the primary goal, then the work becomes a necessity. When work is a necessity, it cannot be sustainable.

I do not have a goal for this blog on how many blog posts to publish, and how much traffic I need to get. I can daydream about having 100,000 subscribers for this blog, but then the dream is not gonna move the needle. Also, it would result in me constantly checking on the stats, getting addicted to it, and hoping things will go up on their own when there is a small spike in traffic. It is just a distraction.

You cannot get to your destination if you are looking at the speedometer all the time while driving the car.

Instead, I focus on writing at least 3 blog posts a week. There are plenty of ideas and drafts that I can work on. The goal is to work on the blog regularly. The results will come automatically. And when the work takes meaning, the results are a pleasant surprise for the work. The work can be done for work's sake and that is a reward in itself.

Cheers,
Deepak Kanakaraju