It's OK to be a goal digger. 

Hello hello and welcome to the Blog to Business show, I'm your host, Kristy Ellington and today we're talking about pretty much the same thing I've been talking about all month: goal setting! We're creeping up on the new year very quickly so NOW is the time to set your sights on the future, establish your blog business goals, and get focused on the most important ones.

So before we get into it, I want to give you a heads up that there's a free download on the show notes page that's all about planning for 2016. It's a free workbook packed with list-builders, goal identifiers, and action items to get you focused and organized next year. If you can't tell I'm SUPER excited for what's ahead in 2016 and I want you pumped right along with me.

I also want to give you a quick heads up that the FREE and LIVE workshop on The Blocking Method is in TWO DAYS! If you haven't heard about this yet, it's a system I've perfected over the years that allows me to create more content in less time and actually run my blog on autopilot in as little as 3 days per month. Impossible? No way. 

RSVP for free workshop here and get a workbook delivered to your inbox before the training! 

This story may not be what you think.Back in, 2009, I was blogging along and finding some small successes. Nothing crazy, but I was just finding my groove on a new blog I had just launched (I've launched a lot of them BTW) so a couple thousand page views a month was pretty great for me.

I did what everyone said I should be doing and set goals, and I hit them every single month without fail. I thought this was a good thing but after a few years of staying relatively small, I wondered why j wasn't doing better if my goals were being hit.

Here's the thing: if you find that you are comfortably hitting goal every month, your goals aren't big enough.

You're not challenging yourself.

And when your goals are too small, you won't need to look for ways to improve because hey, you're a great success cause you're hitting you target month after month.

This is the wrong mindset.

How big of a goal should you set? Let's get into it.

There are three key elements to setting a good goal, and they are: Actionable, slightly out of reach, and challenging. Let me get into these one by one here.

1. Actionable. Rather than saying "I want to grow my traffic," you should say "I want to increase visitors to my site by 5% every month."
2. Slightly out of reach. If you're getting 1,000 visitors per month, setting a 5% growth goal is totally phoning it in. That would be only 50 visitors per month. You could do that with your eyes closed, so set goals that feel slightly out of your reach. So you may want to double those 1,000 visitors, or even triple them in a month. At least you're aiming high and TRYING to get more than 50 new visitors per month. Which brings me to . . .
3. Challenging. Break a bit of a sweat when you're setting and working towards your goals and get out of your comfort zone. More than just saying you want more traffic to your site, add in a left-fielder, like "take and complete a copywriting course by March." Expanding your knowledge is an awesome goal to set since you can carry those new skills on with you as you progress.

So what goals do you have this year? Share them with the crew over at the Fempire Academy Facebook page. I'll have a link in the show notes for you, and you know what else will be on the show notes page? A FREE 7-day goal-setting challenge for you to take on before the clock strikes 2016. This 7-day challenge will have you setting big goals, getting organized, and staying motivated and focused on growing your blog from a hobby to a habit that brings in the cheddar with heart. Head on over tokristyellington.com/episode/13 to get all these freebies and links.

And hey - if you like what you hear then holla back and leave a rating and review on iTunes and subscriiiiiibe to get all the latest episodes delivered straight to your earbuds.

Show Notes: http://kristyellington.com/episode/13

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/935875569808602/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/kkellington

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/kristykorcz/