The Four Questions Every Entrepreneur Must Ask Themselves To Achieve Success in 2017
Envision what you want the year to look like and work backwards to reach your goal.
By Carrie Green •
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
We all want to achieve incredible things in 2017. We want to have a bigger impact, create more growth and reach new business heights.
Creating this isn't going to happen by accident, it's going to happen because you make it happen.
In order to do that, you have to show up like never before for your goals and dreams. So how are you going to do that throughout the year?
Over the years of building the Female Entrepreneur Association, I've come to realize that there are some key things we must focus on in order build the business success we desire.
Ask you work toward your goals, take these four steps to make your vision a reality.
Related: 5 Powerful Rules for Women Entrepreneurs to Live By
1. Get clarity: What does success look like for you?
You need to be clear on what it is that you want to achieve. Close your eyes and imagine it's the end of the year. You're thinking about the year that's just passed and you feel amazing, because you accomplished some wonderful things.
Think about what you made happen -- what did you achieve in 2017? Write it all down and make a plan. Break it into manageable pieces. Make it the first thing you look at before you start your work every day.
2. Get discovered: How will you get the word out about your business?
In to order create growth in 2017, you have to get your message and company out there in front of your target audience -- you have to get discovered. So what's going to be your core strategy for the year? Don't try to do everything. Instead, find where your audience is most engaged, and get committed to leveraging one or two key social strategies.
Related: 5 Unstoppable Female Entrepreneurs Making Their Dents on the World
3. Serve your customer: How will you wow your audience?
You need to make a plan for how you're going to go above and beyond to serve your audience throughout 2017. Think about what specific value your business is adding to the lives of your customers. What will you create that they will resonate with so much it makes them want to get to know your business more, and become a fan, subscriber and a customer?
4. Condition yourself for success: What is holding me back?
The entrepreneurial journey can be a crazy one. At times, things can feel very overwhelming and even hopeless. So often we end up getting in our own way and holding ourselves back, usually because of fears or doubts.
To make sure you don't hold yourself back in 2017, you need to work on conditioning yourself for success, so that you can move past any resistance that arises and keep making progress towards reaching your goal.
Start to focus on what you do want, instead of what you don't want. Begin to visualize the business and life you want to create, and build on what you have already created.
Read about the people you admire, and incorporate some of their habits into your routine. Reach out to others in your field who have made it their own. Make it your mission to do all you can to grow as a person, while you grow your business.
Success is not an accident, so go out there and create it for yourself in 2017.
