Goal setting isn’t just about checking off boxes; it’s about aligning yourself to become the best you can be, whether that’s as an advisor or a person.
As a Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA®), you understand that strategic goal setting is essential for success in exit planning. In the Value Acceleration Methodology™, business owners set relevant goals, identify deliverables, and review those goals every 90 days.
Set SMART Goals
If those characteristics sound familiar to you, even if you aren’t a CEPA, that’s because they closely resemble SMART goals. SMART goals are:
- Specific: What will you accomplish?
- Measurable: How will you measure success?
- Achievable: Is it realistic?
- Relevant: Why is this goal important?
- Time-bound: What is your deadline for this goal?
As you, the advisor, work with your business-owner clients to implement the Value Acceleration Methodology, apply these principles to your own advisory practice for better results. See if there are any aspects that you can incorporate into your own goal-setting process by setting specific and measurable goals that you review every 90 days, or whatever timeframe makes sense for you.
There’s a great chance that you’ll find ways to use what you teach business owners to set your own goals for the new year.
Relevancy is Key
Everyone has set a New Year’s resolution that has fizzled out, but CEPAs know that the difference between a pie-in-the-sky goal and something that is truly attainable is relevance. When you sit down to create your goals for the new year, ask yourself if achieving this will provide you with something that will directly advance your practice. If the answer to that is no, take some time to rework your goal.
If your goal is too vague, like “Grow my network,” rework it into a SMART goal. Add in specifics, provide a way to measure whether you’ve made true progress or not, and set a deadline. That first goal, “rework my network,” turned into a SMART goal, might be “attend two chapter events and connect with five new advisors before July.” That’s a goal that is specific, measurable, and time-bound.
When setting your professional goals, it’s crucial to ensure they are relevant, making you more likely to stay on top of them and not let them become out of reach just a few months into the year.
Trust the Process
Even the best thought-out plans sometimes fail. The same applies to your goals. The unexpected often happens, and that’s OK. What does matter is being accountable for missed goals and treating them as a learning experience.
“Accountability does not mean that you beat your people up for missing goals. Accountability is a learning process,” Christopher Snider, EPI CEO, writes in Walking to Destiny: 11 Actions an Owner Must Take to Rapidly Grow Value & Unlock Wealth. “If your team made the goal, ask why? What did we do right? If you missed—why? What did we do wrong? Which assumptions were incorrect? Which resources were promised that were not provided? How can we do better the next time?”
If you didn’t meet your personal goal, apply the same approach. Reflect on what happened: Did more urgent priorities come up that shifted your outcome? What challenges did you run into that you didn’t account for in your planning process?
Progress is built on taking action, observing the results, and moving forward with new insights from experience.
Tying it all Together
Want extra motivation to reach your exit planning goals next year? Accountability is a powerful tool, and there are plenty of places where you can find people other than yourself to keep you accountable.
Consider joining your local EPI Chapter, a webinar, or CEPA Think Tank, exclusive to current CEPAs. If you want to connect with exit planning professionals from across the country, the Exit Planning Summit is an excellent place to discuss your goals and gain new insights that could help you craft new goals you hadn’t thought of before.
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