Behind the scenes we’re one of the least corporate companies in existence. We don’t have meetings about reports, or reports about meetings. Or even reports or meetings at all.
We give people roles they enjoy and are great at, and all of us prefer to do the core tasks of those roles (instead of a bunch of side things that don’t add value). Plus, it means that we’re always focusing on what helps, adds to, or improves things for you. It’s a huge advantage to be a small company that can move fast, and we spend as much time as possible on support and development instead of long meetings with existential crisis questions like, “If Lyrical Host were a flower, what type of flower would it be?”
Currently reading: How We Set Goals At Lyrical Host (& How You Can Too!) Share on XIf you work alone or as part of a very small team, chances are you work like we do – lean and efficient, with a to do list that’s always longer than the time available. So while goals are important – and as the saying goes, if you don’t track it, you can’t improve it – it’s likely you want to keep them as quick and simple as possible. This post is an insight into how we do things, and we hope it will inspire you to set or review your own goals, whether you’re a blogger or business owner.
An overview of goal types
In no particular order, our goals fall into the following categories:
- Creation goals
- Team goals
- Monetary goals
You can pick any types of goals you like to create your own path and focus. Giving them a specific category name helps you make sure you’re covering all the top-level areas that are important to you (and also makes it easier to organize your goals). They definitely don’t have to be the same categories as ours – pick what makes sense for you.
Creation goals
As a company, we love to build and create. There are always multiple different projects at any one time, which can vary from our WordPress video tutorial series to courses to cross-team blog posts (like Google Analytics Alternatives) to development projects.
We have both monthly and yearly creation goals as well as longer-term projects. For example, every single month we add at least one new resource to the customer Resource Library, send out a set of stock photos, and publish a blog post. All our resources are exclusive and created by us in-house, with no AI involved (unless it’s literally a resource about using AI!).
Bigger projects, such as courses or plugins, are ongoing throughout the year, with rough deadlines that can change easily depending on what else is happening and how much free time everyone has. These are sometimes requested by customers, but more often are from our internal ideas list. We track projects in a super simple way, with a spreadsheet that has a tab for each quarter and a breakdown of the tasks by month.
Side note: There are several project templates and organisational spreadsheets in the Resource Library if you want a done-for-you option!
Team goals
Rather than being goals set within the team or to be completed by our team, these are goals that we as co-founders set for ourselves for the team. As Lyrical Host has grown, so have the goals – one of our original goals was to hire a team in the first place, and then to make sure they had a good space to work (not helped by covid!).
Sometimes these goals have been fun things, like booking a chocolate making workshop for the team or flying everyone to a WordCamp. Some are more serious or form an ongoing part of our culture, like setting ourselves the goal that all full-time employees should be able to afford to buy a house (if they want to!) by 25.
If you don’t have employees, you could set yourself the goal of having a meetup with your virtual assistant/remote team, or even just creating a vision board of your own goals, or doing something to treat yourself. You deserve it, honestly. It’s so difficult to take time out for yourself without feeling guilty, but you could tie it into something else to make it part of your process. For example, some people book a spa trip after they’ve launched a new service or product so they have something to look forward to after all the chaos!
Monetary goals
This is the most conventional category. Money is the lifeblood of any business, and so we set turnover and profit goals just like everyone else. We tend to do these yearly while keeping an eye on the monthly to stay on track. Quarterly or monthly could work better for your own business – experiment if you aren’t sure!
If you’re doing this in your business, remember that you likely want to compare the same month the previous year (rather than just the previous month). So for example, you would compare May 2025 to May 2024 rather than comparing May 2025 to April 2025. This helps account for seasonal fluctuations and shows you how much you’ve achieved (especially as continuous growth month by month forever is unrealistic and likely to show you a skewed picture or depress you unnecessarily!).
We break monetary down into three different figures:
Baseline – The minimum we achieve regardless of anything that happens. If we do nothing, we should still easily meet this goal. This is usually a higher percentage than our turnover the previous year, but not by a huge amount.
Regular – This is the goal we expect to achieve if we do the work for it. We may have to concentrate to reach it, but it’s doable.
Stretch – A bonus level, which is a “nice to have but we don’t really expect to reach it” goal. There have been many, many years we’ve not met this goal – for example, last year we didn’t meet it because we were waiting to get government approval for a new income stream. A stretch goal gives us something to work toward after the regular goal has been achieved, so it keeps us hungry while not adding undue pressure because we don’t expect to hit it.
Most years, we fall somewhere between Regular and Stretch. You can always adjust your goals quarterly or yearly if you know that the upcoming season will look different for you (for example you’re planning to take the summer off!).
When setting money-based goals, we don’t have an emotional attachment to the numbers. (Numbers don’t have emotions about you, don’t have emotions about them!)
We think of Lyrical Host itself as the most important “employee” – what it needs money-wise comes first, because it needs to pay everyone else. This is the opposite of the “Profit First” method because our business model is based on low ticket/high volume subscriptions (meaning our income is very predictable month to month and also cumulative). If you have a high ticket/low volume business model, such as web design or coaching, you may want to follow the Profit First method instead.
When you’re thinking about goal setting, keeping it simple and specific is always the key to success. Too many goals and you just have a regular to do list. Give yourself some different levels to hit and be flexible. If you struggle with organization or need templates, there are lots of PDFs and Google Sheets in our customer resource library. Enjoy!
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