Episode 400: SMART Goals

I'm going to say something a little unpopular.

Most SMART goals don't work. Not because the framework is bad. Not because I don't believe in it. I make SMART goals every quarter for myself. But what I actually see with the voice actors I coach is that they use them to create the appearance of a plan, not an actual plan. They check all the boxes, put it in a document, and never look at it again. And then at the end of the year they feel like they failed.

And that is awful.

What Goes Wrong

Here is a real example, completely anonymized. A student submitted this goal to me. By the end of September I will post once a week on LinkedIn, send five follow-up emails daily, and reach out to one voiceover buyer weekly. My goal is to book at least two new clients and generate $5,000 in new revenue within 12 months.

On paper that looks great. There is a date, there are numbers, there is a revenue target. But here is what is actually happening.

The timeline is a mess. The activity goal says by the end of September. The revenue goal says within 12 months. Those are two totally different timelines bolted onto the same goal. So which one runs the show? What happens in October?

Five follow-up emails a day is 150 emails a month. To who? If you do not have a large existing prospect list you will run out of people to follow up with within three weeks. The goal becomes impossible on its own terms before you hit month two.

And the goal contradicts itself. One section says one LinkedIn post per month. The main goal says once a week. If your goal contradicts itself it is not written yet. It is just a draft.

These are fixable problems. But they are the kind of thing that quietly kills your momentum before you have even started.

How to Know If Your Goal Is Actually Written

Read it out loud to someone who will ask questions. Not someone who will be supportive. Someone who will push back. See if they can tell you from that goal alone what exactly you are going to do on a Tuesday in month seven.

If they cannot, you do not have a goal. You have an intention. Intentions are fine starting points. They are terrible execution plans.

How to Do This Correctly

Start with the real outcome. What do you actually want? Be honest. Five thousand dollars in new revenue from direct marketing is a real outcome. Get more clients is not. Name the number.

Then work backwards. If your average booking is $500 and you need 10 bookings and your close rate from outreach is roughly one in 20, you need to contact 200 people over the course of the year. That is about four contacts a week. That is a real activity target.

Then check it against your actual capacity. Four targeted contacts a week is doable for most people. 150 follow-up emails a month is probably not. I know because I used to send three to four hundred emails a month and I was burnt out and hated my life. If your targets require more time than you actually have, you either need to scale down the activity or scale down the revenue goal. Both are honest choices. The worst choice is setting an activity level you cannot sustain and then feeling like a failure at month three.

Build quarterly checkpoints. At the end of Q1 ask yourself, am I hitting my activity pace? Is that activity generating early indicators? What do I need to shift? You are allowed to adjust. A goal is not a contract you signed with the universe. It is a plan, and plans get refined.

Where Is the Goal Coming From

This does not come up enough in the goal-setting conversation. A lot of voice actors set goals from a place of I should be doing this instead of I have decided I am doing this.

I should be sending outreach emails is a guilt goal. It lives in the same category as I should be going to the gym. You know you should. You don't. You feel bad. You repeat it forever.

I am a voice actor who runs a direct marketing operation and three days a week I do outreach for an hour. That is an identity-based commitment. You are not motivating yourself every morning. You have decided who you are. And people who have decided who they are do not negotiate with themselves about whether to show up.

The Bottom Line

Name the real outcome. Work backwards to the activity that produces it. Check that activity against your actual capacity. Build quarterly checkpoints. And decide before you start that you are the kind of person who will follow through because this means something to you.

The SMART goal framework is a tool. If you use it well it builds a real plan you can follow. If you use it as a checkbox exercise it builds something that looks like a plan and functions like a wish list.

You deserve a real plan. Build it that way.

Want to Keep the Conversation Going?

Pull up whatever goal doc you have right now. Run it through the test. Can someone else read this and tell you what you are doing on a Tuesday in month seven? If the answer is no, tighten the timeline, reconcile the contradictions, replace aspirational math with real math. It might take you 20 minutes. Those 20 minutes are the difference between a goal that gets executed and a goal that just makes you feel bad every time you remember it exists.

Reach out at mandy@actingbusinessbootcamp.com. I am here to look at your goals and tell you whether you have an actual goal or whether you need to go back to the drawing board a little.