I'm a Digital CEO, Help Me!

A series focused on navigating the creator economy, claiming the Digital CEO title, and answering your biggest business questions.

Your Question: WTAF are My Business Goals Supposed to Look Like??

‍

‍

Time Is Money, My Bébés

🗝️ Start With Your North Star
‍🗝️ Work Backwards, Always
‍🗝️ Make It Sustainable
🗝️ Check In, Don’t Check Out

Let’s be honest: nothing makes a Digital CEO spiral faster than goal-setting season. It’s the one thing guaranteed to give me emotional whiplash every single year.

One minute you’re dreaming about six-figure launches and a podcast empire, the next you’re hyperventilating into your Stanley cup wondering how you’ll get it all done.

I want us to all agree that ~setting goals~ isn’t the problem. It’s setting goals that don’t actually fit your vision, your capacity, or your business model. Couple that with creating *only the goal*, and not the path to achieve it, and you have just DIY’d the most beautiful pit of entrepreneurship quicksand and sat your chair right in the middle of it.

‍This post is part of the "I’m a Digital CEO, Help Me!" series—a lovingly sarcastic but completely sincere exploration of the tools, systems, and mindset shifts that help online business owners build intentional, scalable success without sacrificing their sanity. It’s all about balance, baby!

GOALS THAT ACTUALLY FEEL GOOD

‍Your goals should act like a roadmap, not a guilt trip. Instead of piling your plate with a dozen shiny-but-unrealistic milestones, let’s create goals that:

• Align with your bigger business vision
• Work with your time, energy, and resources
• Connect directly to measurable actions
• Leave space for rest, creativity, and flexibility

When you set goals that fit your real life, you stop overcommitting, stop self-sabotaging, and—bonus!—you actually make progress.

So let’s do this thing!
‍

START WITH YOUR VISION

Forget metrics for a second. If you woke up in three years with a thriving business you love running, what would your day look like?

Would you be working fewer hours?
Have a small, tightly-curated client list?
Sell passive digital products while sipping espresso in Italy?

Before you map your numbers, you have to know what “success” even looks like for you. This is your WHY, your Big Picture Reason, your North Star Vision.

The thing we’re always steering toward when setting all of our shorter-term goals.

Pro tip? BE LOUD. Don’t only write your vision somewhere you can revisit it easily—like an Asana project, Google Doc, or Post-it above your desk. TELL PEOPLE. Especially people who will cheer you on, hold you accountable, and even help you reach it!
‍

REVERSE-ENGINEER YOUR GOALS

Here’s where people usually get stuck: we set big goals without mapping the real, actionable steps needed to achieve them. Do we want to blame public school for this one? Because I’m down to blame public school for this one.

Instead, start at the finish line and work backwards:

‍Pick One Big Goal
‍Something specific and measurable, like: "I want to book X number of 1:1 clients by X date." If you don’t have a lot of practice setting SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) goals, there’s a bonus worksheet at the bottom of this blog post made just for you!

‍Break It Into Milestones
‍What has to happen before you get there? You have to have a 1:1 offer for those dream clients to book, so maybe your services page needs an update (or to be created 🙈). You’ll need an onboarding process to welcome those dream clients into your 1:1 experience once they’ve booked, so get a system in place that’s automated as much as possible.

‍Turn Milestones Into Actions
‍Load each task into your system of choice—hi, Asana 👋🏻—with timelines attached. Ahem, with REALISTIC timelines attached. If you’ve never built an onboarding sequence before, please set yourself aside more than thirty minutes for it 🫶🏻

Don’t rush through this part! This isn’t just about setting a goal or a bunch of menial tasks. It’s about creating a system that supports achievement.
‍

MAKE IT SUSTAINABLE

One of the biggest mistakes I see is setting goals based on your busiest weeks, not your baseline capacity. That’s a shortcut to burnout.

When you’re planning, ask yourself:

• How much time do I actually have?
• What resources are available?
• Where can I simplify or outsource?

Remember: sustainable goals create momentum. Impossible goals create shame spirals.

Bonus Tip: Pair each goal with an “energy check.” On a scale from 1-10, how excited do you feel about this? If it’s under a 7, revisit your why. Brit Carmichael has an incredible philosophy on living your life by the 7 or Above Rule that I think everyone should embrace.
‍

TRACK, REVIEW, AND ADJUST

It was all so fun until this step, I know. But your goals are a living document, not a pinky swear with the universe (though they can be both!!).

You may have read about my Weekly CEO Hour practice. I also have a monthly, quarterly, and annual CEO schedule (sometimes it’s an hour, sometimes two, sometimes a whole day).

A monthly CEO Hour has different goals than your weekly one, and this is a great time to check in with your goals to…

• Review your progress
• Celebrate wins (even small ones)
• Pivot strategies where needed

This helps you recalibrate your actions and your expectations, keeping you focused without trapping you in a plan that no longer fits.
‍

SO GO DO IT, OKAY??

Setting aligned business goals isn’t about perfection—nothing in entrepreneurship is ever about perfection. It’s about clarity, intentionality, and flexibility.

The more you build goals around your real capacity, your unique vision, and your actual systems, the more you set yourself up for sustainable growth. And we love sustainability in business!!

Your next-level business doesn’t require hustle harder energy. It requires aligned energy.

TL;DR – YOUR ACTUAL BUSINESS GOALS

Start with your big-picture vision, not just numbers.
‍Get crystal clear on the vision you’re building toward before setting any goals.

‍Reverse-engineer realistic steps instead of vague resolutions
‍Translate your big picture goals into milestones and actionable steps that fit your capacity.

‍Create sustainable goals that respect your capacity
‍Aligned goals leave room for rest, creativity, and flexibility—not constant hustle. Be real with yourself!

‍Track and adjust regularly to stay aligned
‍Set aside time each month (or sooner, depending on how fast-paced your goals are) to review, refine, and realign as your business grows and evolves.
‍

BONUS: The SMART Goals Mini-Exercise

Because “hope for the best” isn’t a strategy.

‍If you’ve never set a goal using the SMART method before, don’t worry! You’re in the right place to learn. SMART goals help you move from vague intentions (“I want to grow my business”) to clear, actionable plans you can actually follow through on without melting into a stress puddle.

SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. This is a holdover from my ~corporate girlie~ days that has been ingrained so deeply into my business psyche that it, and other acronyms like it, just come out involuntarily.
‍

Step 1: Pick ONE ☝🏻 Focus Area

If you try to do everything at once, you’ll do nothing well, and that usually winds up with you aggravated at the whole process.

That said, we both know that there are so many aspects of a business that benefit from a strong, strategic goal plan. So complete this exercise for as many big-pictures goals as you like and then pick just one to take action on first.

Some ideas may include:

• Clients: Getting new 1:1 clients or retaining current ones
• Marketing: Growing your email list, podcast traffic, or social media following
• Offers: Launching a new service, course, or other digital product
• Systems: Streamlining how you manage projects, clients, or finances

Step 2: Make It SMART

This is where the magic happens. Answer these prompts for your chosen focus area:
‍🌟 Specific: What exactly do you want to achieve?
→ Instead of “I want more clients”, try: “I want to book five new 1:1 clients.”
‍You’re not wishing and hoping, you’re ordering off a menu. Specific goals eliminate the guesswork.

‍🌟 Measurable: How will you know when you’ve hit the goal?
→ Five signed contracts = done.
Pick a number, percentage, or tangible milestone so you can actually track progress. This scares off a lot of people from the method, because what if you fail?? But if you only get one client instead of five, you’ve still gotten a new client! Aaaaand you’ve learned something—hopefully many things—during that process.

‍🌟 Achievable: Is this realistic based on your current time, energy, and resources? The subjectivity of this step throws a lot of people off, so feel free to reach out if you have questions about how to quantify “achievability”.
→ If you’ve booked two clients per quarter before, aiming for five is realistic.
→ Aiming for fifty? Not so much.

‍🌟 Relevant: Does this goal align with your bigger business vision?
→ If your long-term dream is fewer clients and more passive income, focus on building offers instead.
Your goal should feel connected to your big-picture vision for your business.

‍🌟 Time-Bound: When will you achieve this goal by?
→ Try: “I want to book five new clients by the end of Q3.”
‍Deadlines keep your goals from floating endlessly on your to-do list. Just like with Achievability, use past data to try and refine your time frame for achievement. If you normally bring in one new client per month, five months to book five new clients is evidence-based! But it also doesn’t take *growth* into consideration. So try to set a shorter duration to stretch yourself and grow your business.

NEXT STEPS: READY TO PLAN LIKE A CEO?

If you love this post but want more guidance on how to put these ideas into action, grab my MBA Foundations Checklist.

‍It walks you through the essential systems and strategies to build a business foundation designed for your next level.

✨ Grab the MBA Foundations Checklist here ✨

Let’s ditch the hustle culture shame spiral and start setting goals that actually work for you.

‍