It’s that time of year again. The tourists are coming to NYC for New Year’s Eve. Everyone starts preparing for the emergence of that famed polygonal sphere and its glittering luminescence that will summon the camera-wielding, map-reading, I-heart-NY-wearing sightseers. It’s the welcoming of a new year and with it comes promises of resolutions, commitment to better routines, and the setting of company goals for the next 365 days.
Whether you’re a New Yorker who’s hole up in their apartment sipping a martini (or several,) waiting out the Times Square excitement or you’re partaking in this year’s festivities, it’s a great time to set goals. So, we’ve put together six insights for setting company goals for your event planning business next year to help inspire your efforts. Get real about your goal setting and prepare for a stellar 2024 as a New York event planner.
1. Most Business Goals Don’t Work
That’s right. Most business goals don’t work. A survey of senior executives conducted by Economist Impact found that 90% of respondents don’t reach their strategic goals. The number one reason for failed business goals? Implementation.
That’s why the rest of these insights will focus on the sweat equity side of goal setting.
2. Scratch Some Goals from Your List
By definition, New York event planners have big plans. But here’s the problem. You want to break into the top-tier wedding space and Fortune 500 corporate events, and be featured in the New Yorker, and attract A-list entertainment to birthday parties in Noho.
No matter how realistic your goals for your NYC event planning business are, you won’t achieve them if you have too many. So make like a Broadway casting director and start cutting. Trim down your objectives to focus on the few rather than overwhelming yourself with the slew of impossibles.
3. Create a Range of Achievements
James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, recommends setting lower and upper bounds to your goals. Start by setting a realistic lower threshold for what you want to accomplish, then follow it with a more challenging target. For example, “I want to attend five networking events in January, but no more than ten.”
By allowing yourself a range of achievements, you’re simultaneously pushing yourself to go for the margin that guarantees accomplishment while motivating yourself to stretch your limits.
4. Schedule Milestones and Check-Ins
When you’re creating a year-long goal, scheduling milestones and check-ins will force you to revisit the goal throughout the year.
One of the reasons so many goals fail is that they are easily forgotten once they are written down. You set a goal to have an “x” amount in revenue by the end of the year. Then, poof, the Times Square tourist extravaganza rolls around again before you know it, and you’ve missed your target.
So, create appointments on your calendar right now. Block these times off for reassessing your event planning goals and making any necessary adjustments to stay on target.
5. Perform a SWOT Analysis When Setting Company Goals
SWOT analysis are typically used to identify a business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. You can use a formal SWOT analysis to identify similar attributes that will affect the achievement of your goals.
For example, if you want to break into the top-tier wedding space, you can identify the strengths that will help you achieve that goal. The contacts you currently have who are connected to that space would be listed as strengths. Any knowledge gaps you have about how to plan these events would be a weakness, and so on.
Once you have completed your event business SWOT analysis, you can create tasks or subgoals that will capitalize on your strengths, address weaknesses, make the most of opportunities, and neutralize threats.
6. Prepare Yourself for the Sacrifices
Mark Manson, the wildly popular author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, inspires his readers to think about “What pain do you want in your life?”
His basic premise is that everybody wants to lose weight, retire rich, and be a fabulously successful NYC event planner. But not everyone is willing to experience the suffering required to get there. Saying no to the donuts your partner brought home even though you worked through lunch or going for the cheaper apartment isn’t easy.
Likewise, achieving your goals for your event planning business will require sacrifice and, at times, cause outright pain. Meditate upon and make your peace now with the pain. Then, when you encounter adversity, you can move past the shock of it and persevere to achieve your goals.
Achieve Your Goals for Your Event Planning Business
That guy holding open the subway doors with one hand while he held his oversized DSLR camera set on “auto” in the other can only mean one thing. New Year’s Eve is right around the corner. Forget meaningless resolutions and instead set some company goals with teeth using the insights above. And if you really want to succeed in achieving your event planning business goals, secure your exhibitor booth at The Event Planner Expo 2024.
