5 Strategies to Kick Start This Year's Goals Even if you took a break, it's no excuse not to set lofty expectations of success in the coming months.
By Grant Cardone Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Coming back from a long break seems to cause a lot of angst for a lot of people. Whether it's a new year, a long weekend or coming back from vacation, sometimes it can take a bit to get going again. Here are a few strategies that I have found useful to explode into the new year or coming back from a break.
1. Treat holidays and weekends like layovers.
If you are going to take time off, which I don't advise, treat your return like a continuation of your journey rather than starting over. For instance, I don't treat New Year's like a new year, I treat it like a continuation of my trip to success. The fact that one thing ended and another began, enforced by some calendar or event, means nothing to those most committed to success.
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Avoid spending time on a moment and keep your attention on the final destination: your success. Events such as Christmas, New Year's, weekends and summer breaks just distract the masses from their end goal. This causes people to always be starting over rather than continuing.
2. Focus all attention on the future.
Last year is over, no matter what kind of year it was. If it was a great year, you will try to repeat it. If it was a good year, you are probably trying to figure out how to beat it. And if it was a terrible year, you are wondering how to avoid it.
Someone once told me, "The neurotic lives in the past, those that settle live in the moment, and the genius lives in the future!"
Whether you had a good year, bad year or a great one, they all have one thing in common -- they are over. Now is the time to move all your attention and efforts to the future rather than celebrating or regretting the past. The super successful learn to stay in the future, constantly outdoing past failures and successes.
3. Set ridiculous targets.
The biggest trick I have learned in my career is to 10 times all my targets. This past year I experienced the biggest income year I ever had. Rather than trying to repeat, I sat down with my staff and shared with them the new goal was to 10 times last year. This is completely ridiculous and one of the most liberating success tricks I have discovered in my career.
Let's say you achieved your best year ever last year and made $80,000. This year's target would be to get to $800,000. Ridiculous, yes, and probably unattainable, but that doesn't mean that it's not worth using to build your year around. Consider that what you achieved last year is unreal for someone else on this planet, and was probably unreal to you at some time in your life.
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Most people aren't excited when they go back to work because their goals aren't big enough to keep them excited. Ten-times goals don't need to be attainable, they are designed to get you to create strategies and take risk that will bring you much further than if you had not had the targets at all.
4. Build your strategy backwards.
When you are building out the logistics of the strategy of how to attain your new target, always build backwards. If your new 10-times target is, for example, $70 million in gross sales, back into it. How many calls do you have to make? How many appointments? How many presentations? How many proposals? How many closes, etc.?
If you are building a house, you don't start with a shovel. You start with a picture of the house, then design the blueprints, put together the constructions documents, gather the materials, build the timeline, set the number of workers and finally determine the cost and funds, then you pick up the shovel. It's the same when building a business or your 12-month goals for the upcoming year. Always work it out backwards.
5. Adopt a "whatever it takes" attitude.
Once you have your new 10-times or new year target in place, you must adopt and be willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish those targets. This is what the genius does that at first causes others to think of them as insane, and then later is seen as genius. It is not that they are smarter, it is that they are willing to put everything on the line.
Consider that Walt Disney almost went bankrupt three times making his company a reality. Are you willing to go into debt, move across the country and give up whatever else you hold dear? If the goals aren't big enough you won't. And if they are big enough, you must be willing to do whatever it takes, including giving up things you cherish. Super success doesn't come without a price.
May this new year bring you ridiculous amounts of success and prosperity.
