How to Stay on Track With Your Business Goals: A Lesson From a Sedona Trail
When the trail disappears
Hiking in Sedona, it isn’t always easy to see the trail. The red rock stretches out in every direction, and the path can fade into slickrock and scrub before you notice it’s gone.
You think you’re on track. You feel confident. Then you look up and realize you’ve drifted off a bit, sometimes more than a bit.
My GPS check-in
My AllTrails app, with its GPS, became one of my favorite tools on this trip. Every so often I’d pull it out, check where I was against where the trail actually went, and adjust.
That mattered most on the stretches where no one else was around and the trail was less clear. There was no one ahead of me to follow and no one to ask. Just me, the rocks, and a little blue dot telling me the truth about where I was.
What's the GPS in your business?
Out on that trail, I kept thinking about business. So let me ask you: where in your business have you set up a way to check in and see if you’re still on track to reach your business goals?
When we’re blazing a new path, especially alone, it’s easy to not even realize we’re no longer heading where we thought we were. There’s no one beside us to say, “Hey, I think we took a wrong turn back there.”
And realize, sometimes your path might look different than someone else’s, so that internal check is extra important.
What should you track for your business goals?
Choose one or two metrics for each business goal, then track them regularly. A check-in only works if you know what you’re checking, and with my clients, matching each goal to the right number is always where we start.
If you’ve set a revenue goal, are you tracking your sales as they come in? If your goal is to grow your list, are you tracking how many new people join it each week? Your goal is the destination. The metric you track is your blue dot. It is the progress you are making.
Small adjustments beat big detours
Here’s what the trail taught me. When I checked in often, the adjustments were easy: a few steps to the left, a quick backtrack around a boulder, and I was right back on the path.
But when I went too long without looking, I’d drifted further. Getting back took more time, more energy, and a lot more second-guessing.
Your business goals work the same way. Regular progress checks turn course correction into a small tweak instead of a major rebuild.
How often should you check in on your business goals?
For most things, I recommend weekly. When you check your numbers every week, you can make minor tweaks for the next week that help you get back on track, or stay there.
And keep in mind, when you check in often, most of these checks only take a few minutes. The longer you wait, the longer it can sometimes take and the more likely you are to end up on a big detour, just like on my hike.
Your turn
Take a few minutes this week and ask yourself:
- What is my GPS? Which metrics show whether I’m making progress on my business goals?
- How often am I actually checking it?
- Where might I have drifted without noticing?
You don’t need to stop hiking. You just need to look up every so often. The sooner you check, the easier it is to get back on the trail.
