It is the new year and like most everyone else, I am full of enthusiasm and hope for the best year yet. For the longest time, I have been in the bracket of those people whose new year convictions never got to the end of the first quarter and looking back, I understood why.
Think back to any project or brand campaign that you are working on. As you start digging your way into actualizing the vision of the campaign or activation, you will more often than not start with defining what your objectives are, the budgets involved, the target audience you need to speak to and more importantly, the desired results. In the same vein, I concluded that I needed to look at my life through a business lens for my personal objectives to have the same results as my marketing campaign objectives.
Take a product launch, for example. The objective of such a project would be to bring awareness about the new product and eventual sales to the company. To effectively launch the product, defining who the target audience is, what route to market I need to deploy and how much I need to spend on the product is very key to the success or failure of the product. Can you imagine selling makeup kits at a husbands’ forum? Trust me when I say this, no matter how good the product is, the husbands may not be well received by their wives when they get back home.
When I mirror this to my life, I want to take this new year as a new product that needs to be launched; a new lease of life that God has graced me with. Following this logic: the desired sales become the goals I need to work towards; the budget becomes the financial requirement needed to actualize the goal I have put in place; and route to market are the habits that I need to learn and unlearn to get to my destination. Hopefully, with this, I will have a better story to tell by the end of this year.
One final ingredient that I believe is necessary is the recognition of the fact that, as in a business set up where we have our colleagues and bosses to hold us to account, the same should be the case with our personal resolutions. We need an accountability partner that is aware of what you are working towards who can push you when they need to.
This year, I have challenged myself to write more and I look to my LinkedIn family to hold me accountable.
If you haven’t put in place your goals for this year, I challenge you to think of yourself like you would your business or marketing/sales campaign; would you not be doing your annual review right about now? Do the same and once you have that going, get a partner you trust to hold you accountable.
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