When you know what success is for you, it’s easier to plan to achieve it.

It may not be about the amount of money you earn, or the number of products you’ve sold. It really doesn’t matter what

it is, but you need to be really clear about what is success for you.

Just like having a clear vision that you can work towards, understanding what success is is part of your planning and review process.

Working out what is success for you

Here’s what you’ve got in place so far, (if you haven’t follow the links and work through those first):

So with all this done already, what does success look like for you?

Do you need to think about your passion again and what got you into this in the first place? Or is it really clear to you from the business planning and exploring you’ve been doing what success is for you?

For some people I work with, success is being able to earn what they need to do the things they want, during school hours. That’s as simple as it gets for them. It’s clear. If their work spills over into after school time or evenings, it’s not successful in their eyes. For others, if they haven’t sold x product this month, it’s not been successful.

Think about the positives of what you want to achieve and why that’s important for you. Think about all aspects of your life including relationships, business, and your personal development time too. This is also a useful exercise to do every few months to help you review what you’re doing, Is it successful in your terms?

Here’s some suggestions about what to think. I suggest you write a statement about what success looks like for you in each of these areas

  • Family
  • Time spent working
  • Happiness
  • Reading time
  • Travel time
  • Income
  • Relationships
  • Work
  • Business
  • Exercise time &/or quality

Add success measures into your plans

Whether you create 13 week, monthly and/or weekly plans, I recommend you have success measures everywhere to make sure you achieve them. In the 13 week planner I’ve created, each day you’re asked to state “what does success look like for you today?” As simple as that! It could be getting through the day without anyone shouting at you; or getting everyone to the right place at the right time with the right equipment. Or it could be confirming the contract you’ve been working on for a while with a potential client.

Can you see? It doesn’t all have to be about work or business! If you’re worrying about the family taxi run whilst trying to speak to a customer, you then end up feeling guilty that you’re not doing either well! Yes, this is part of implementing your plans, but if you’re not clear what your success measures are, you can’t see if you’re achieving them!

If you need help working out what is success for you, book a free 20 minute explore call. Talking things through helps you get things clear in your mind what’s important to you and what you can measure.

I’d love to hear what your success measures are. Leave a comment below.

This article is part of our first book: Passion is not enough – Why running your own business takes more than just being passionate about ‘your thing’. If you’d like to hear more about the book and it’s publication, please join the list here: