With the new year now in full swing, it’s time to start thinking about what you actually want to accomplish in the next 365 days and how a 2021 goal template can help.
Whether you’re looking to start a new business, create a new product or grow your existing company, it’s time to create a plan.
While many of us often already have goals floating around in our heads, sometimes it’s hard to create an actionable plan to achieve them.
That’s why it’s important to come up with a 2021 goal template. For Groundhogg, we’re using our own Year Planning Master Template (which you can download here).
Prefer to watch instead of read?
If you’d rather watch a 30 minute video instead of read this article you can watch Office Hours session #72 to get all the information!
The Big Vision
The first thing to do when starting off the new year is to answer the four big questions that will help define your company “vibe.”
These will help to determine which direction your company is heading in and help you come up with decisions throughout the year.
What is your mission?
When answering this question think about where you are going. What measurable and quantifiable results are you working towards?
What is your purpose?
The purpose of your company is the “why” you are doing this. Think about who you are trying to help and why.
How are you going to do it?
List the ideas that will help you accomplish your mission, and how you will fulfill your purpose. (These can be big picture concepts)
What are your core values?
Here, you can list the values that you are going to uphold yourself and your team to. This will be useful when it comes to making hiring decisions, spending money etc.
It’s important to remember that the answer to these questions can change throughout the year and that they are not concrete.
You may learn that your mission is too small or too far, or that your purpose has changed as you develop new skills. This is okay!
But these general ideas for your year will help to inform the rest of the decisions that you are going to make over the next 365 days.
The Big Ideas
When it comes to planning our goals, most people have multiple ideas floating around in their head that they want to accomplish, whether it be content and products you want to create, people you want to hire, etc.
However, reaching these goals becomes easier if you can condense them in a way that makes them feel more manageable and obtainable.
By asking yourself the next few questions, it will help you prioritize which goals you want to work on first and help to inform you what your next steps should be.
What are your big goals for 2021?
Write down that list of goals that you have had floating around in your head. What do you want to create? What do you want to have done in the next year?
What strengths can you leverage?
Think about what strengths and skills your team already has that can help you reach the big ideas that you have above. Like support expertise, content experts, etc.
What skills do you need to develop?
What are some skills that your team doesn’t currently possess, but you will need to have to reach your goals?
What opportunities exist?
If you identify opportunities that exist in the marketplace or in the world that you can take advantage of, it will help move the needle of your company forward. For example, the WordPress ecosystem is growing quickly, which is a massive opportunity for Groundhogg.
What are some potential threats?
It’s just as important to list your threats as it is to list your opportunities. By acknowledging the hurdles that you will need to overcome, you can recognize the problems before they catch you by surprise.
Key Performance Indicators
After answering and breaking down some of your big ideas, it’s important to break these concepts into even smaller chunks.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are what businesses use to quantify success and sustainability in the numbers. Examples of this include revenue, site traffic, number of employees, size of your email list, etc.
It’s important to think about which of these matter to you and your company. Once you figure out your most important KPIs you can plot them down to help measure your success for the upcoming year.
First, write down where you were on December 31 with these KPIs, if you’re a new company, just start at zero!
Next, think about where you would like to be by the end of 2021 and break it down into a good, better and best option. Giving yourself a range is a great way to ensure you aren’t demoralized from not reaching your goals.
When planning out your 2021 goal template in good, better and best remember that:
Good = Your absolute minimum number to still be satisfied with what you accomplished this year.
Better = Halfway to the best goal that you can imagine achieving this year.
Best= The highest number that you hoped to achieve in 2021.
Break Everything Up Into Quarterly Targets For Your 2021 Goal Template
Once you have everything above sorted, you are going to start breaking it down into quarterly targets.
The reason you want to do this is so that your big goals don’t seem unreachable and too far away.
By removing the farout goal and breaking it up into smaller pieces, what we need to achieve becomes much more reachable.
However, you don’t want to break up your goals into something too small, like months. Things change, new skills happen, and events can put our lives on hold. If we condense too far, it’s not flexible enough to adapt to the new circumstances.
Once everything is broken up into achievable goals for your first three months, do it for the next quarters of the year as well.
And there you have it! A progressive 2021 goal template to measure your goals and results in a manageable amount of time!
If one of your goals is to launch your funnel, grow your list and scale your business, Groundhogg may be the option for you.
To get started with Groundhogg today, make sure to register for our free Official Quickstart Course.
If you have any tips on how to plan your goals this 2021, comment below. We would love to hear from you!
