In my last post, I went back and thought about why I am doing this and reaffirmed that my ultimate goal with my affiliate marketing business is to live my dream life. I can visualize that dream life.
Achieving that ultimate goal does not happen right away, but in a series of smaller target goals. Dean observed that we shy away from setting our own targets in our business because we most likely had targets set for us when growing up, such as graduating school, getting a job, entering the military, getting promoted, etc. Another reason is that we might be afraid of failure. If we do not set a target then we will never fail. However, not setting targets guarantees we will never reach our ultimate goal.
In my April 15th Blog post – What is Your Number, I explained how to calculate your ideal life goal number. The income you want to achieve to live your ideal life. Once you have your goal number, you can backwards plan your target goals. Backwards planning is setting goals in reverse. For example, my ideal life goal is $960,000 per year, or $80,000 per month. Yes, almost $1 Million per year. If you’re going to dream, dream big. It is not just a number I made up but a number I calculated after thinking about the ideal life I wanted to have in 10 years and estimating the cost. So that is my 10-year goal to achieve. Will it be easy? No. Will it be worth it? Yes.
Now that I have my 10-year ideal dream life goal, I can start setting my targets. To achieve $80,000/month in 10 years, I want to achieve $40,000/month in 5 years. That doesn’t seem so astronomical now. To achieve that $40,000 target, I want to achieve $10,000/month in 2 years. That seems much more doable. To achieve that $10,000 target, I want to achieve $5,000/month by the end of this year. $5,000 per month is $1,250/week. With hard work, dedication, consistency and building on successes, I have no doubt I can achieve that $5,000/month target.
When I said my 2-year goal of $10,000/month seems achievable to me, I refer back to what Dean said during my Accelerator Pro training. When people are asked how much they would like to make per month with their own business, many say $10,000. A very popular amount that equates to $120,000 per year. However, most people have never earned $120,000/year and thus have no idea how much that really is. In the United States, the medium annual income for 2024 was $61,984 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkyeng.pdf). According to the US Census, in 2023 only 15.3% of American households made more than $100,000 per year (Sofi.com, https://www.sofi.com/learn/content/is-100000-a-good-salary/). While making $100,000/year can definitely be achieved, for most people it is well above any income they have ever earned. Thus it may or may not be a realistic goal.
For me, I can definitely envision making $10,000/month. In September of 2022, when I quit my civilian job for the military because I was sick and tired of putting up with an idiot boss and no longer enjoyed working, I quit a job making $107,000/year, or $8,900/month. I was fortunate to have a retirement income I could live on, but that was a huge amount I gave up. I had to make some adjustments in my lifestyle. However, I had every intention of starting my own business to not only make that income I gave up, but much, much more. Everyone is different and everyone has their own expectations. If you have thought about the ideal life you want to have in detail and that is the basis for an ideal life goal of $10,000/month or more, then have confidence in yourself and go for it!
I’ve set my ideal dream life goal in 10 years, and I’ve calculated the Target goals I need to reach in that 10-year timeline. Every Target is comprised of a series of Tasks. Task vs Target. A big problem I’ve had last year was being a busy fool. As Dean mentioned, as you develop your business, there are a lot of shiny distractions out there. Every time you buy a new course, you have a new to-do list. It is common to fill time doing tasks without attaching any targets to it. That is a busy fool. There is no outcome attached to the task, other than getting the task done. A busy fool is a hard-working person, just not in the right way. Unfortunately, if you persist with this, you will end up frustrated and eventually give up.
Last year I was in the Beginners Advantage course and built and managed my Blog, establish a Facebook business page, and learned how to create video content. However, I got distracted along the way with a couple shiny objects and became a busy fool. I made progress but also wasted a lot of time on things that did not help my business. As I looked back on my business last year, I saw many mistakes made and many areas for improvement. I also went back and reevaluated my ultimate goal and adjusted my Targets to get there. I am starting this new year with a renewed sense of purpose for my business and clearly defined and attainable targets. What I am working on now is defining all of the tasks needed to accomplish to reach my first target of $5,000/month by the end of this year.
One thing I will do better is this year is take advantage of the coaching and mentorship available with being an Accelerator Pro, attend the Monthly Hangouts and Founder Q&A, and actively participate in Affiliate System Community. Dean sets three targets – monthly leading to quarterly leading to yearly. My first immediate target should be to make $1. My first monthly blog post should be a review of last month and the targets for this month and how I will get there. Use coaching if needed for this.
Dean also said that to be truly successful I need to master my craft. The skills I want to learn and master this year are Facebook Lead Ads, Autoresponder, Blog Hopping, Capcut, Canva, and Artificial Intelligence. Now the work begins to identify all of the tasks needed to develop my business, reach a large audience, get people to double opt-in to my Newsletter, create and publish weekly video content and make that first $1 in income. It will be a lot of work, but the goal is worth it. If it was easy, everybody would do it. I hope you are as excited as I to continue my upward voyage into this year.