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3 Tips For New Entrepreneurs In 2021 Derek from "More Plates More Dates" shares actionable steps for achieving your goals

By Julian Lim

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Julian Lim

Each new year is a new opportunity to go back to the drawing board and map out your goals. Many do this, but the majority does not follow through, and then they're left feeling disappointed in themselves and their lack of accomplishment at the end of the year.

We've been asking successful entrepreneurs to give their top tips on what actionable steps they recommend to stay on track and capitalize on the year.

Derek (known as More Plates More Dates on his website, YouTube channel, and other social media platforms) has built his company Gorilla Mind into a multi-million dollar enterprise, and these were the three tips he shared with us.

Reverse engineer your year

It's way too overwhelming to reach large goals if one does not break them up into smaller micro-goals that cumulatively lead to reaching end target by the end of the year.

At the start of each year, he writes down where he wants to be, whether that be average monthly sales, subscribers on YouTube, or anything related to end targets.

Then, he reverse engineers his year into how much he needs to do on a monthly basis, weekly basis, and even daily basis to realistically achieve that goal.

Setting lofty goals is great, but one has to reel in the expectations and lay out something realistic that can be achieved with 365 days of compounded effort, otherwise one is setting up for disappointment.

He breaks down how many subscribers and dollars he needs to get by day to know that in 365 days he will have reached his yearly goal.

It becomes much more manageable to achieve huge goals when you have a daily target that you can know for a fact you are on track with hitting.

Break down your day into a timetable

I'm all about achieving small goals to give you momentum.

Momentum is everything in entrepreneurship, and it only takes a small streak of wins throughout the day to get your mind right and start checking off your daily micro-goals.

Every night he spends 15 minutes breaking down his next day of work into a timetable.

"If you're anything like I was when I was a student, when a homework assignment was due the next day, or an exam was coming up the next day, all of a sudden I became 100x more productive than I was the entire previous month."

This sense of urgency and knowing that you literally have no choice now but to sit down and focus and get your work done is what you want to bring into your daily work life as an entrepreneur.

If you just set broad lofty goals with no micromanagement, you will never reach them.

If you literally break your day down by the hour though and set yourself a firm time limit to complete even the smallest of tasks, you create this sense of urgency in your mind to get each task done by a certain time, or else you feel that sense of failure.

This urgency pushes me to get daily goals checked off consistently and gives me huge momentum that carries me through the year.

Get uncomfortable

You will never become successful if you stay in your comfort zone.

You probably already know this, but 99 per cent of people still operate their entire lives in their safe cozy little comfort bubble.

I'm not saying you need to be such a daring risk-taker that you gamble your entire life savings on your next business, but you will never reach your true potential if you stay in your comfort zone.

That's just how it works.

When you ask older people what their biggest regrets were in their lives, it almost always has to do with things they didn't try.

This isn't a coincidence.

Everyone has dreams and aspirations, and more often than not those dreams and aspirations will require you to take chances.

As obvious as that sounds, the majority of people will still not take the advice and capitalize on it.

Julian Lim

Tech entrepreneur, researcher and editor at Startup Fortune

Julian Lim is a technology entrepreneur and researcher. Julian has graduated from NUS in intelligent systems and started his career pursuing data analytics and research. He’s also an editor and senior writer at Startup Fortune, covering technology, startups, AI, blockchain and entrepreneurship.
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