Leap Into Goal Setting

It’s just another day on the road, right?

It’s Leap Year and today’s that extra day on the road.  No big deal, right?

It can be just another day, but maybe this could be the day that you choose to make extra. An extra day to think about more than driving.

Smart Goal Setting

Lots of people make New Year’s Resolutions.  Almost as many forget their resolutions or lose their motivation by the end of January.  Here it’s the end of February and I’m talking about goals?  But we’ve got an extra day this year, so why not think about what you want to do for the rest of the year?

Goals are supposed to be SMART:

• Specific
• Measureable
• Achieveable
• Results focused
• Timely

What are your goals this year?  Do you want to move from being someone else’s driver and get your own rig?  Get your own authority to start building your own fleet?  Increase your customer base?  Move into LTL shipping?

Setting Your Own Goals for Your Trucking Business

1.  Sometimes people just don’t know what’s next.  Maybe what you need is more information.
2. If you’ve got some ideas about what you want to achieve, write them down.  Studies have shown you’re 42% more likely to achieve your goals just by writing them down.
3. Find ways to measure.  If you can’t measure it, you can’t be sure you’re getting closer to your goal.  Set some benchmarks to help you assess if you’re making progress or falling behind in achieving your goals.

For example:  Do you want to increase your customer list?  Set a measurable goal:  25% more customers by the end of the year.  You’ve got 10 more months – that makes an increase of 2.5% per month.  Easy to measure, easy to count.

There are lots of websites with goal setting advice on the Internet.  You can be overwhelmed by them all.  Find someone that makes sense to you and concentrate on that one and spend the rest of your time learning what you need to do to achieve your goal.  Want to get more customers?  Do a search for trucking leads or how to maximize your load board searches.  Spend your time learning what you need to get you to your goal.

Setting Big Goals

When I started out as a trucker, I knew I didn’t want to drive for someone else.  I wanted my own fleet.  I knew I needed to learn a lot.  I had to start out as a driver and learn that to be able to move up.  Every step has taught me more and shown me more opportunities.

So dream a bit.  Where do you want to be in five years?  In ten?

What do you need to get there?  Those are the smaller goals that you can set for every year to help you get where you want to be.

Measuring Your Progress

It’s tricky trying to measure your progress without good metrics.  That’s our specialty here at TruckingOffice.  If you’ve got questions about how your trucking career is doing, consider trying out TruckingOffice trucking management software for a month on us.  No charge for the first 30 days.  You’ll get an idea of what you need to do to reach your goals.