Below you’ll find some common financial goals broken down into actions, making it easier for you to accomplish your goals. It’s easy to tell yourself that this year your business will earn ££££, but it’s harder in practice. Even more so if you’re a sole trader or freelancer.

I know; I’ve been there, and I’m still there.

This page is updated with new additions after being featured in the Sunburst Success newsletter. If you have a request for a financial goal to break down, make sure to subscribe to the newsletter and email me your requests.

Goal: Earn ££££ in one financial year

Everybody will tell you that it helps to set specific financial goals. Ideally, you should have an idea of how much money you need to earn to cover all of your business needs… and also how much you need to pay yourself.

If you’re starting out or you feel like you’ve been struggling with this, try these steps:

• Work out how much money you need to cover all outgoings (web hosting, email hosting, software subscriptions, marketing costs, materials)
• Work out how much you want to pay yourself this year
• Add the two amounts together: this is your target for the financial year
• Create a plan for how you’ll earn this amount
  • You could break it down across all of the products and services you want to sell in a year
  • You could create a marketing plan for how you’ll gain clients
  • You could review what you’re already doing and how that translates into income
• Set regular check-ins to review your finances
  • If monthly is too overwhelming, try reviewing every season or “quarter”
  • If monthly feels like it’s not often enough, try setting a day of the week where you handle finances, including looking at your bank account or bookkeeping software
  • Use these check-ins to understand where your income is coming from and where you could do more; you might want to set a task to complete before your next check-in, so you can review whether it works

Remember, every business – and business owner – is different. If you set unrealistically high goals, you’re going to disappoint yourself (at best, and add extra stress at worst). If you set underwhelming low goals, you might find it too easy to achieve. Some people prefer to set “stretch goals” with income, where you first strive for the minimum you need to earn to cover business costs, then your next goal to cover your income, then your next goal can be that high goal you’d love to reach.

Goal: gain new clients

Every business needs clients, customers, or however else you’d like to refer to the people paying you. But this is a daunting goal and a lot of people feel lost on how to actually make progress, let alone achieve the number of clients they need.

Here are some actions you can take to gain new clients:

• Assess your current number of clients, including what services or products are actually bringing in income
• Decide which services and products you want to gain more clients for; it can help to pick 2 or 3 things to sell more of
• Think about what your ideal client is (try researching “buyer personas” or “customer profiles”) and how you might market to them
• Set regular tasks to market to new clients
  • You could regularly post on social media about your services or products
  • You could attend a regular networking event to introduce yourself to other business owners
  • You could plan to attend industry-specific events to network
• Take notes on what your current or past clients have said about you, and use their words (especially adjectives) when marketing yourself

Marketing is an incredibly important part of gaining new clients, so you might find it useful to set (and break down) marketing goals that feed into this. Don’t forget the importance of testimonials and client reviews either – it’s not just “social proof”, it’s what people actually think about your work.