What should I set goals about?
Set goals about the life first, then the money, then the activity that produces the money, in that order. Most consultants start at the money and skip the life, which is how you arrive at a number you hit and don't care about.
The order I'd use:
- The life. How you want your weeks to look, what you want the money to make possible, what you want to be known for.
- The revenue. The figure that would let you make real progress toward that, chosen because it excites you.
- The arithmetic. What you'd have to charge and how many clients that means.
- The activity. What you'd have to do each week for that number of clients to exist.
Skipping step one is the most common error and the most expensive. A number borrowed from your old salary, or from a peer, or from a round figure that sounded impressive, produces a year of effort aimed at something that was never yours. Working out what you're building toward is the step that makes every number after it meaningful.
How do I turn a revenue goal into something I can act on?
Divide the target by your typical engagement size, and keep dividing until you reach something you can do on a Tuesday. A revenue goal is a result, and results aren't actionable until they've been converted into activity.
Here's the chain, with numbers you can swap for your own:
| Step | The question | Example |
|---|
| Target | What would make real progress toward the life you want? | $300,000 |
| Engagement size | What does one piece of work typically bring? | $60,000 |
| Clients needed | Target divided by engagement size | 5 |
| Conversations needed | Enough live opportunity to cover it several times over | See below |
| Weekly activity | What produces those conversations | Your habit |
Two things fall out of this immediately. First, most consultants discover the gap is a pricing gap rather than a volume gap, because the number of clients the arithmetic demands is more than the year has room for. That's the useful part of the exercise. What you should be charging is where that question goes. Second, the conversations line has its own rule of thumb, and how many you need going at once answers it.
Should I set outcome goals or activity goals?
Set activity goals, because the activity is the part you control and the outcome is the part a client controls. This is the single change that makes goals stick, and it's the one I'd argue for hardest.
I learned it somewhere unrelated. In 2013 I was badly out of shape and I wanted to lose weight, and instead of setting a weight goal, I set a habit goal: two days on, one day off. That was the whole target. I got into the best shape of my life, lost the weight, and felt better than I had in years, because I set a habit rather than an outcome.
Applied to a consulting business:
- Not "sign five clients." Five outreach emails a week, and two conversations a month.
- Not "grow the newsletter." One issue a week, sent.
- Not "be more visible." Two posts a week in one place.
The outcomes still happen. They're just no longer the thing you're graded on weekly, which matters because you can miss a revenue goal while doing everything right, and that's a demoralizing way to run a year. Building the habit so it survives a busy month is the mechanics of this.
How often should I revisit my goals?
Revisit the habit weekly, the arithmetic quarterly, and the life goal once a year. Different layers move at different speeds, and treating them all the same is why goal-setting turns into an annual ritual nobody looks at again.
The three cadences
- Weekly, the habit. Did you do the activity? One question, two minutes, no analysis. Miss two weeks running and adjust the number down until it's boring.
- Quarterly, the arithmetic. Has your engagement size changed? Is the client count still realistic? This is where a pricing change shows up.
- Annually, the life. Is the thing you're building toward still what you want? People change and the vision should be allowed to.
The quarterly review is the one that gets skipped and the one that catches the most, because it's where you find out that the plan assumed a number you've since outgrown. And when the honest quarterly answer is that the activity happened and the results didn't, that's a signal about the lag rather than the plan.
Leah's take
The reason I push habits so hard is that outcome goals put you at the mercy of other people's timing, and then you feel bad about it.
You can do everything right in March and sign nothing, because your client's budget cycle moved, or her reorganization landed, or the person championing you took another job. None of that is about you. But if your goal was "sign two clients by April," you spend April feeling like you failed at something you didn't control.
Set the habit and the scoreboard changes. Did I send the emails? Did I show up? Those you can answer on a Friday, and the answer is about you.
The other thing, and I'd underline it: when you write down the revenue number, don't censor yourself. Don't negotiate against yourself before anyone else gets a chance to. Those voices saying that's not possible, or that's greedy, get loud precisely when you don't have a plan for getting there. The plan quiets them. So write the number that excites you, and then do the arithmetic, and see what it would take. Usually it takes less than you feared and something different than you expected.
