Forward motion is very important in your home based business. As important as it is to keep producing as much work as you can, it is also important to periodically evaluate the path that your home-based business is taking. By setting aside a little time at regular intervals to evaluate whether you are headed towards the goals that you have set for yourself and your business, you can make sure that you are always moving in the direction of your dreams.
A good rule of thumb for how often to assess your progress towards your goals is to do it quarterly. It is a regular interval, but not so frequent that it will prove to be difficult to fit it into your schedule. Also, the amount of time that you will want to set aside for thinking about your progress depends not only upon your schedule but also upon how long it has been since you last assessed the path of your business.
Once you have marked your self assessments on your calendar, it is time to talk about what you will do when the time arrives for the first one. One way that you could do it is to first take out the list of goals that you had set for yourself when you started your business and read through them. Before you start assessing whether the things that you are doing now are compatible with those goals, it may be useful to asses the goals themselves to ensure that they are still appropriate goals for you. If find some that no longer seem to fit, or if you have never written down a list of goals for your home-based business, think about what you want to accomplish and write it down. Keep in mind that the best goals are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely – think SMART.
Once you do have a list of goals that are appropriate for you and your business, take a look at what you are doing and how your business is doing right now. Are you doing the type of work that you had envisioned? If not, think about what you can do to change that. Also, are you making the amount of money that you had anticipated? If not, are there things that you can do to change your price structure, improve your sales, or do things differently with new clients and future customers? These are just a couple of questions that you can think about to get started. Let your imagination be your guide, and let your goals be your inspiration to keep yourself moving along the path to achieving that which you aspire to.