How to Set Income Goals and Increase Your Business Income
One of the biggest shifts I've made in my business is becoming much more intentional about the income I want to create.
For a long time, I could be incredibly busy without necessarily being clear about what all that activity was supposed to produce.
I could create content, have meetings, work on my offers, answer emails and spend an entire week feeling productive but productivity isn't the same thing as generating income and I realized that if I wanted to increase my income, I needed to be much more intentional.
I started asking two questions at the beginning of every month:
How much money do I actually want to make this month?
What needs to happen this week for me to move towards that number?
I created a weekly goal-setting worksheet, which I share in the Bank Account Challenge course so my clients can also go throught the process. In the worksheet I start with my income goal for the month and then break it down into a weekly target, from there, I identify the specific actions that could contribute to generating that income.
That last part is important because I don't want my goals to be disconnected from my actions.
If I say I want to increase my income, I need to be able to identify what I'm actually going to do to create sales.
Who do I need to speak to?
What do I need to sell?
What conversations do I need to have?
What offers need to be made?
What follow-up needs to happen?
What activity is actually connected to revenue?
This has helped me distinguish between being busy in my business and building my business.
It has also forced me to become much more comfortable with the numbers because setting an income goal isn't just about choosing a number that sounds exciting.
I need to understand what that number actually means for my business.
What does it cost me in time and money to deliver my offers?
What are my operating expenses?
Am I under-pricing my work?
If I charge too little, I may need more sales to generate the income I need, which can create more work, more pressure and less room to invest back into the business.
Understanding my pricing and profitability has therefore become an important part of setting income goals because I don't just want to know how much money I want to bring in, I want to understand how much I need to sell, at what price, with what costs, to create a business that can actually support me.
And this is powerful for me as an entrepreneur understanding the resources required to run my business and the income I need to generate, helps me make better business decisions.
When I can see where I'm spending and how much I'm earning, I can identify gaps and business opportunities, so I can stop leaving my income to chance.
For me, setting a clear income goal isn't about putting pressure on myself to magically hit a number, it's about creating clarity.
So my income strategy in my business is simple:
Know the number.
Know the actions that can create the number.
Know the economics of the business behind the number.
