No matter what type of business you operate – or plan to operate – there always needs to be clear goals in mind. The reason for this is that you can not march haphazardly towards success. Yes, there is a little luck to be found in the biographies of a number of rags to riches entrepreneurial success stories but there is a lot more cohesion than luck in these stories. Without clearly defined goals, then the ability to achieve one’s goals is greatly compromised. Goal setting is not a complicated process. Often, it merely involves looking at where your business is at the present devising where you want it to be and then drafting the necessary plans to get there. For example, if you operate an online subscription news service and want the number of subscribers to grow by 15% over the next year you may devise a direct email marketing plan to get there. Then, you follow through with you plan. Granted, it is not always possible to achieve the goals you set. Sometimes there are unforeseen circumstances that can undermine even the most brilliant plans. Case in point, if you are in the travel business and a recession hits then odds may be against any plans of company growth you may have had. But, when under the circumstances where the factors that derailed you goals are correctable then it is becomes prudent business sense to take the necessary steps to remove those obstacles to your goals in order to keep progressing forward. Now, that may sound like ominous words but it is not a call to start acting as ruthless as J.R. Ewing. It simple means you modify the means in which you achieve your goals. If that aforementioned email marketing strategy is not working it may be prudent to switch to a new marketing strategy. Not achieving your goals is not a crime if it yields critical information that you can use to help your business grow. After all, knowing what not to do is often as valuable as knowing what to do. Businesses are hardly static and market/industry changes can affect the goals of a business. This means a business needs to be flexible in defining its goals. On the surface, McDonald’s looks like a company that stays the same from year to year. But, if you were to look at the various image makeovers and marketing strategies it has followed over the past 50 years you will notice that it has always been a company that is in a state of flux. Perhaps your business needs to do the same.

Teachers are all at sea: despite a great deal of effort over the past 20 years, academic achievement among high school students continues to lag behind. In their attempt to improve school results, the educators are trying to find roots of poor academic achievement of high school students. Some point the finger at the outrageous homework loads students are snowed under. Supporters of this idea argue that students are overburdened with academic demands of questionable value and, as a result, end up indifferent to studies, exhausted, and worn out. Probably, there is some grain of truth in this claim. However, recent investigations have rebutted these suggestions…The recent Pew Research Centre poll has produced unprecedented results: it’s not high pressure, but low expectations that are bringing the American students down! This claim was corroborated by Denise Clark Pope, a Stanford University lecturer who has written about the effects of stress on students. The research she conducted in comfortable San Francisco Bay Area communities proves that the reason of poor level of knowledge is not the heavy workload students are exposed to but the lack of challenge in the school environment.Thus, it gets straight that the problem of low academic proficiency lies with what rather than how much students are asked to do. And now, the main contributing factors that lead to low learning proficiency of high school students are wrong approach to assessments, incoherent assessment tasks, teachers’ and parents’ indifference. Unfortunately, this list is rather long…1.Incomprehension of the Studying Purpose The main reason why so many students don’t feel interested in what they are doing at school is the incomprehension of their studying routine. In fact, a vast majority of teachers are even not bothered to explain to their students what the learning outcomes are, why they need to achieve them and how they will be assessed.Thus, students read stacks of books, write hundreds of essays having no idea of the initial purpose of all this hassle and bustle. They accomplish their tasks by command which needs to be bluntly carried out. Studies become a real must, a dreadful duty, which results in lack of interest, reluctance to study and show initiative.2.Wrong Assessment Approach Another contributing factor to the downward knowledge proficiency is the wrong approach of assessment. The matter is that assessment is often wrongly intended by teachers as punishment for students, or traps to catch them out. Grades seem to exist in order to show students’ errors, mistakes and drawbacks in the study area, rather than to give students reasonable chance of demonstrating their achievements of specific learning goals.Needless to say, such attitude creates a fearful attitude of students towards assessment. They are learning not for acquiring some knew exciting facts, but for getting a “pass.” Education comes to grades rather than knowledge.3. Incoherent Assessment TasksIt is deplorable that the everyday practice of most teachers is to set numerous, time-consuming and unrelated tasks that ask for a great deal of work to be done in the shortest time period. Consequently, this approach makes students adopt surface approaches to learning by clutching at facts and memorising them as best as they can in order to pass. Things would have changed, if teachers built the unrelated assessment tasks into a coherent whole. This way, students would be able to work on coherent projects, gain systematic and profound knowledge in the subject area. Moreover, they would be more challenged to do their own research, show initiative, and be proactive.4. Lack of Personal Approach With mass classes consisting of more than 20 children, many students feel deprived of the due attention on their teacher’s part. They are placed among the great lot of students without their personal interests, and problems with studying being taken into account. As a result, students don’t feel cared about, lose their identity, become indifferent to studies and lose faith in the brighter future. It is a problem of a great lot of students. 5. Parents’ Attitude Unfortunately, a great number of parents also contribute to the problem of low interest in studies. Many of them have a “performance orientation,” which emphasises results such as students’ grades, rather than whether they master the material. On top of that, they are reluctant to weigh-in and help their children with home tasks for the fear of being unable to answer a question and lose children’s respect.However, these fears are unjustified. This way parents mislead their confused children, refuse to give them a helping hand with studies and aggravate the existing problems.Thus, it gets clear that children are wrongly aimed at quantity of knowledge rather than quality. As Denise Clark Pope has put it, “There is too much content-and-coverage stress. It should be about challenging and engaging students on multiple levels.” And if radical steps aren’t taken in the nearest future, the situation is likely to be aggravated.

When I was growing up, my parents would always tell me to have a goal in life. They keep on telling me that I should know what I want to be when I grow up so that I’ll learn to work on how to get there.

Now that I’m all grown up and have a business of my own, I still adhere to what my parents told me. When you want to achieve your dreams, you got to have a goal to get it.

Even with the regular things that you do, you need to set a goal to achieve it. Without a goal in mind, you wouldn’t even amount to anything that you’ve hoped to accomplish.

I remember what one conference speaker said about goals being the essential ingredient in achieving success in every business. When you want to have your dreams fulfilled, your goals would be your schedule to achieve your dreams.

For example, a student’s goal would be to finish college to get a good job. The good job is his or her dream. And in order to get it, his or her goal is to finish the rest of his or her schooling.

For someone building a house, five to seven months would be their family’s goal to completely finish their dream home.

Simply put, a goal is your deadline to get your dream. When you clearly set a deadline, you are most likely to achieve your goal and have success.

Similarly, when you start your business, you need to have a specific and tangible goal to attain the success you want. Everything you do to operate your business should have timetables and schedules to help you get closer to the success you’ve always dreamed of.

Even your most routine task such as your postcard marketing campaign needs a specific timetable in order for it to be effective in helping you achieve the growth you want for your business.

What’s your timetable in coming up with your postcard printing? How long will it take before you are able to send them out to your target customers? What’s your timetable from the start of the design until you bring them to the post office to be mailed?

The common mistake of everyone, even with business owners, is to have a fuzzy goal. Saying for example that you want to be successful in your chosen field someday, is not helping you to define what you need to do to get there. Or saying that you’ll do your postcard printing this month and will just wait for it to come out of the printers, just won’t do.

The key to being successful is to have goals. Without your goals, you won’t get anywhere with your business. You alone can set your goals so it’ll be easy for you to achieve what you want. Providing a goal for yourself gives you a clear target that you can plan for and give direction to your business. So get yourself a goal and see your dream become a reality.

For comments and inquiries about the article visit: Postcard Printing, Postcard Marketing

Copyright (c) 2009 Meredith Liepelt

Goal setting is a critical skill to learn for any business owner. If you don’t know where you are going, “any road will get you there,” as was said so poetically in Alice in Wonderland. Without a clear understanding of where you are heading, you are almost guaranteed to become side-tracked by opportunities that will pull you off of your true course and original intention.

There are four simple things that you can do to help you define your goals and stay on track:

1. Create a Written “Contract.”Research shows that less than 5% of business owners actually write down their goals. However those who do write out their goals generate up to 10 times the revenue that others do! Now if that’s not incentive to take 30 minutes to write down your goals, I don’t know what is!

2. Know Thyself.Ask yourself why you want the goal. Dig deep to find out why it’s important to you. This will help you experience the root of your desire. For example, if your goal is to create an additional income stream of $20,000 in the next six months, make sure you know why that is important. Do you want to take the summer off? Go on vacation? Pay off your car? You can even post a picture of your goal in your office if that is helpful to you. Knowing the essence of why you want to reach a goal is extremely motivating!

3. Get Detailed.Create a list of all the different things you need to do to in order to reach your goal. For example, I brainstorm each step, write them individually on post-it notes and put them all on my wall. From there, I organize the post-it notes into categories and/or into a flow chart so I can see what needs to happen first, second and so forth. From there, I put each step into my calendar so I can be assured that if I just accomplish one or two things toward my goal on the assigned day, I will be directly on target to meet my goal.

4. Share.If you share your goals with a trusted and supportive resource, you are much more likely to achieve your goals. It takes courage to put yourself out there and tell others what your goals are, particularly if they are financial goals. But if you choose wisely, you’ll find the support to be uplifting and very helpful.

There sure is! Applying the Biblical word “plan” for goal setting, it’s clear that God has plans and so do people. God blesses righteous plans and blasts away ones that aren’t so righteous! Above all, goals and plans are subject to the will of God.

Is goal planning even Biblical? You bet! God gives people plans:

“[King David] gave [Solomon] the plans of all that the Spirit had put in his mind for the courts of the temple of the Lord and all the surrounding rooms, for the treasuries of the temple of God and for the treasuries for the dedicated things. (1 Chronicles 28:12)

Don’t discount goal planning as being “worldly!” Not unless you want to discount God too. But there are evil plans in this world and plans that are opposite to His will and moral will. These he will frustrate.

“He thwarts the plans of the crafty, so that their hands achieve no success.” (Job 5:12)

The LORD foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples.” (Psalm 33:10)

“Crafty” means the schemers, the no-good-doers, the plotters. The nations get into the act too. God works both on the individual and global planes of the world; He is sovereign! And he warns those who plot in the darkness and who plan apart from his known will.

“Woe to those who go to great depths to hide their plans from the LORD, who do their work in darkness and think, ‘Who sees us? Who will know?’” (Isaiah 29:15)

“‘Woe to the obstinate children,” declares the LORD, ‘to those who carry out plans that are not mine, forming an alliance, but not by my Spirit, heaping sin upon sin…’” (Isaiah 30:1)

Did I mention not making evil plans? Goal planning for unethical means is bad. So is planning goals that take you right out of the mainstream of God’s will for your life. Now be careful here ? God’s river is big and wide. I don’t believe in a one-choice-or-you’re-out narrow view of God’s will for you. I believe that for the Christian, there are many paths to many good outcomes and God is there on all of them. But there is a general direction and flow to the outcomes and we can observe it if we care to.

So goals and plans can be good things!

“May he give you the desire of your heart and make all your plans succeed.” (Psalm 20:4)

“‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29:11)

And God has his sovereign plan! Planning and goal setting is a fine thing. But subject everything to the Lord’s guidance.

“But the plans of the LORD stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations.” (Psalm 33:11)

“Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.” (Proverbs 19:21)

Biblical Advice about Plans

I love the book of Proverbs. Along with great advice for faith, business and life, comes this counsel about planning:

Don’t plan in a vacuum, but run your plans and goals past other people. You don’t want to do this with every goal and at every stage in the game, but you should with big and important plans. Especially if they impact other people.

“Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.” (Proverbs 15:22)

Pray, pray some more, and then pray again! Surround your goals and plans with prayer and ask the Lord to bless you in their doing.

“Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and your plans will succeed.” (Proverbs 16:3)

Ask God for wisdom as you plan and set goals. Involve him every step of the way as you go along and chart your progress. Don’t be afraid to make mid-course corrections as necessary.

“In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.” (Proverbs 16:9)

Don’t forget the action part of planning! None of your work and thought will make a smidgen of difference if you don’t actually do something.

“The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty.” (Proverbs 21:5)

Planning isn’t only all right to do, it’s positively wonderful!

“But the noble person makes noble plans, and by noble deeds he stands.” (Isaiah 32:8)

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  Dressed in all black Tuesday night, Oates decided to lay to rest the “Can’t brothers” by placing the words “I Can’t” and “You Can’t” into a box and burying them during the school’s orientation.  “We’re dropping these words from our vocabulary and replacing them with the ‘Try Sisters,’ ‘I’ll Try’ and ‘You’ll Try,’ ” Oates said. “Students who drop out often believe ‘I can’t’ or they’ve been told that ‘you can’t,’ so I wanted to have a funeral to give these students a fresh perspective on school.”  The informal ceremony not only represented a fresh start for the nearly 50 students attending Tuesday night’s orientation, but it also symbolized a new beginning for the school that has been plagued with changes for the past two decades.  Mosley, formerly known as Lakeside School, was New Hanover County’s alternative school for more than 20 years and has been restructured several times over the years to meet student needs. The focus of the school has shifted from catering to high school students with discipline problems to helping students not promoted to the ninth grade transition into high school to dropout recovery.  The school is now undergoing another change by becoming New Hanover County Schools’ first performance learning high school. It’s a transition that teachers, administrators and school officials plan to make permanent.  “We have all intentions of making this school work,” said Rick Holliday, assistant superintendent for support services with New Hanover County Schools. “We’re committed to this as part of our high school reform initiative.”  Isaac Bear Early College based at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and Wilmington Early College at Cape Fear Community College also are schools based on the reform initiative, Holliday said.  “Mosley just takes us to the next level,” he said.  Non-traditional learning  The performance learning center uses non-traditional learning approaches to offer students who have already dropped out of school or are at risk for doing so greater access to personal support services in a small business model.  Each classroom is equipped with computers and students learn and are tested on course material from a computer program called NovaNet. Students also are given projects and role-playing exercises to assess their knowledge on the subjects, Oates said.  The number of teachers and students in each classroom also are reduced. At Mosley there are seven teachers or learning facilitators and 100 students enrolled at the school.  Students are taught in small classes where they are able to complete courses at their own pace. Students are enrolled in four classes a semester. Once they complete the course material they can sign up for another course, even if it’s in the same semester, Oates said.  Teachers at the school are responsible for supervising classes and helping students with concepts they don’t understand, Oates said.  “It eliminates the one-size-fits-all approach of learning in the traditional classroom,” Oates said. “The performance learning center allows students to learn at their own pace because the cookie-cutter approach doesn’t work for all students.”  A business environment  In addition to changes in instruction, the school day also is structured differently. Classes begin at 9 a.m. and end at 4 p.m., and students are paired with mentors in their chosen field to shadow during the year. Mosley students will complete an internship during their senior years, Oates said.  “Our focus here is not only on academics, but we want to prep students for post-secondary education or their chosen career path,” Oates said. “Our goal is for the students to come in, take their classes and move on.”  Students must apply and interview to be a part of the school, Oates said. He said they also are required to wear uniforms, which consist of white, navy blue or black polo shirts and khaki, navy blue or black pants, to go along with the school’s business environment.  The performance learning center is a national model put together by Communities in Schools, an organization that focuses on student dropout prevention. The first performance learning center was started in Georgia about years ago. According to the Georgia Communities in Schools Web site, there are now 29 sites in the state. The model has been duplicated in North Carolina, Virginia, Washington and Pennsylvania. Mosley is North Carolina’s fifth performance learning school, Oates said.  Learning a new way  Mosley’s staff, which includes the principal, teachers, counselors and administrative assistant, participated in training at performance learning centers in Georgia and North Carolina to prepare for the school year, said Louise Hicks, executive director of Communities in Schools of Cape Fear.  Hicks said New Hanover schools officials studied several schools before deciding to implement performance learning at Mosley.  Regina Watson, who taught at Mosley when it was Lakeside, said she’s excited the school system decided to make these changes.  “The school system is moving in the right direction by giving these students an alternate learning setting,” said Watson, who’s been teaching at the school for 10 years. “They have the traditional schools and the early college high schools. This is the missing piece of the puzzle.”  Sophomore Crystal Tart will be attending Mosley this year after attending New Hanover High School and Lakeside School. She said this the first time she’s been excited about starting school.  “I really think the teachers are going to care if I do well here and that will make a lot of difference in my grades,” Tart said. “My outlook on school has already changed.”

What do you think the dictionary definition of power is? It’s simply: the ability to act. So, if you have the ability to take action, then you have the power to achieve.
But are you achieving what you want in your life? Ask yourself: what drives my behavior, what is it that makes a difference in my performance? It all comes down to one thing: your goals. If you have the ability to act, you can achieve anything. All it takes is a direction for you to focus your actions, and your power into. Pick the direction, stake out your goals, and you can achieve anything. I’ll show you how.
This article is the first in a series of articles I’m planning about goal setting. I believe it to be a cornerstone of training. Think of it as the core workout for your mind during the training process. And the first sets of excerises are going to burn that extra fat out of your mind. We’re going to give some shape and focus to your life, by identifying just what it is you want to achieve—what your goals are—and the fun part: thinking about what achieving those goals is going to do for you.

If you’re onboard so far, then you’re ready for the first step. What I want you to think about here is two types of goals you’re going to set for yourself: the micro and the macro. All you have to do is generate a list of your micro goals, and another of your macro goals. Think big and small here. Nothing is too outlandish. If you dream it, you can achieve it. So when you write do it in the positive. For example don’t write: I will never eat chocolate cake! Write: I will eat healthy. Once you’ve laid out all your goals, you’ve already taken the first step in achieving them.

The fun part is thinking about what achieving those goals is going to do for you. Once you’ve generated your goals, try writing about what the outcomes of those achievements will be. Again write in the positive, and visualize exactly what it will feel like. It will help you with the next installment of my goal setting workshops.

When first setting off for college, it is important to sit down with your parents and determine a budget. This not only includes loans, but also for books, food, entertainment, and miscellaneous expenses. Many college kids are given a credit card to use “only for emergencies”, but you will quickly learn that it is used far more often then that. When determining how much you are allotted to spend per month it is imperative to allocate those resources efficiently and responsibly. For example if your parents are giving you $300 per month for living expenses, the necessities must come first. Most likely if you are a first or second year in college you will be living in the dorms and being supplied with a meal plan. This enables you to plan for what the rest of your expenses will be stemming from. Now that your budget has been determined you must set realistic goals to what you will be spending your money on. By allotting a specific amount of money for entertainment for example, will provide you with boundaries so that you do not over spend. Budgeting can seem overwhelming at first, but there are great online resources you can visit to aid you in the process. Online software is available to help you efficiently manage your budget enabling you to stay on the straight and narrow when it comes to spending.College students have the reputation of spending all of their money on pizza and beer forgoing buying books. However, if you start to budget early you will be able to have your books and eat your pizza too. A useful tool to use to budget for college is online banking and other financial management tools. There are even useful websites that track all of your spending from your different bank accounts, credit cards, and loan payments that you can use to amplify your budgeting. Saving is also a must for college students because most of the time college students have limited income, usually stemming from their parents. Saving is a part of life and it will pay in the long run if you start in college. I know this might be difficult but it is definitely worth it, for you can find savings everywhere you look. This might include searching for better interest rates on your credit cards and student loans.Setting a budget for college should be weighed with high importance because it sets the stage for the rest of your financial life. Using tools that allow you to manage your accounts online give you a competitive advantage over the rest of your fellow classmates. For when you graduate 4 years from now you will have the skills, knowledge, and experience needed to make it in the real world of financial planning. Budgets are a part of life and it is time for you college student to jump on the bandwagon and start your journey to becoming oiled budgeting machine.

In my last post, I mentioned that we should set goal clearly and do it daily. Now, the question is, when is the best time in a day? Of course, the answer is in the morning. However, it should not be just anytime in the morning; it should be first thing in the morning! Yes! The first thing when you wake up, instead of brushing your teeth, you should rush to your desk, and start writing your daily goal!

I mentioned in my other posting that there are long-term goal and short-term goal (which for me I called it as daily goal). It is this daily goal that you need to write down everyday! It is important so that you are aware of your daily activities are geared and swift towards it. On top, in the morning, when you just awake, your Alpha wave is at its most active period and according to many scientists’ researches, Alpha wave is presence when a person is engaging into his superb learning mode!

Have you ever experienced, when you were young (or maybe you still doing it now), rushing to study as much as possible only at the night just before a test or examination, trying to utilise and grasp as much as you could; and unfortunately, those you studied earlier, usually tend to be forgotten and seems that they were never ever be a way to register in your mind, however, those that you had studied while you were almost dozed off, surprisingly, can be recalled easily during the exam! Did you ever asked yourself, did I really come across this subject? Why is it so? The answer is because of Alpha wave, which begin to sync in just when you doze off!

What I’m drifting here, it is important to write down your goal in the first thing in the morning, so that you can leverage on your morning Alpha wave which present in your just awaken brain so that you can subconsciously register it and deeply root it into your brain.

Alpha wave also present during at night just before you doze off. So you should also write down your daily goal at night, just before you turn for the bed! This action not only help you to review your day time activities if it gel with your daily goal, but also, help you to register again better, leveraging again on the alpha wave to sink into yourself about your daily goal!

Goal setting is like sharpening a knife. The more you sharpened it, the sharper it will be! Thus, best time to set goal is in the morning, first thing in the morning. And for best result, set again just before you doze off!

Try it! You will be amazed of the result and your goals begin to fall in place. You will be more aware of your behavior towards your daily activities. If it does not work, it’s OK! You will not lose anything! But what if it works? You are in no lost situation! So, just do it!