April 1, 2025
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Most business owners set goals at the start of the year with the best of intentions. By March, the goal is forgotten. Not because the owner stopped caring, but because the goal was never set up to succeed in the first place. "Grow the business" is not a goal. "Get more clients" is not a goal. "Make more money" is not a goal. They are directions, not destinations. A brave goal is specific, measurable, and uncomfortable enough to require a real change in behaviour. This article walks through how to set goals that hold, what makes them work, and why accountability is not optional if you genuinely want to achieve them.
The problem with most business goal-setting is not ambition. It is specificity. Business owners write "increase revenue" on a whiteboard in January and consider the planning done. But "increase revenue" does not tell you what to change, by how much, or by when. It gives you a direction without a destination.
A brave goal, as Robin defines it, is specific and uncomfortable. It names the exact outcome: "Sign five clients at £3,000 per month by the 30th of June." That goal tells you what needs to happen, how many times, at what price point, and within what timeline. Every decision between now and June has a clear test: does this move us toward that number or away from it?
Vague goals also have no accountability structure. If the goal is "grow the business," there is no moment at which you have clearly succeeded or clearly failed. You can always tell yourself progress is happening. A specific goal does not allow for that ambiguity. You hit it or you do not. That clarity is uncomfortable. It is also what makes it useful.
Before you can set a meaningful business goal, you need to know where you are starting from. Robin's "Knowing Your Numbers" framework is the foundation of any serious goal-setting process.
What is your current monthly revenue? What is your margin after costs? How many client hours does your current workload require? What is your true capacity in billable hours or project slots per month? How much of your current revenue is recurring versus project-based?
Without these numbers, you are guessing. You might set a goal of £10,000 per month not realising that your current delivery model would require you to work 80 hours a week to get there. Or you might set a goal of five new clients without factoring in that your current capacity is already at its limit.
Knowing your numbers turns goal-setting from aspiration into planning. The goal you set after looking at the real numbers is almost always more precise, more achievable, and more connected to what actually needs to change in the business.
Robin uses the phrase "set a brave goal" deliberately. A brave goal is not the most conservative estimate of what you could achieve with minimal effort. It is the number that would require you to make a real change: to raise your prices, productise your offer, close weaker clients, or show up differently in your market.
A useful test: does reaching this goal require you to do something you have been putting off? If yes, you are likely looking at a brave goal. If the path to the goal involves doing more of exactly what you are already doing, the goal is probably not brave enough to change anything.
The connection to pricing is direct. Most meaningful revenue goals require a pricing change to achieve. If you want to earn £10,000 per month with a maximum of 20 client hours per week, you need an average client value of around £500 per hour of delivery. That number tells you exactly what your pricing needs to look like. The goal and the pricing are the same conversation.
Goals without accountability are wishes. This is one of Robin's most consistent observations across 20 years of coaching, and it is supported by a significant body of research in behavioural psychology.
The problem with self-set goals is that the person setting them is also the person who decides whether to stick to them. When discomfort arrives, as it always does, the person alone with their goal has no external structure to keep them on track. They renegotiate with themselves. They find a good reason why this month is different. They lower the target quietly, without telling anyone, and start again next month.
External accountability changes the dynamic entirely. When someone else knows the goal, when there is a regular check-in, when progress is reported rather than just self-monitored, the likelihood of follow-through increases dramatically. This is one of the core functions of business coaching: not just helping someone set the right goal, but creating the accountability structure that makes the goal achievable.
Robin's coaching process is built around specific, measurable outcomes checked at regular intervals. Not "how are you feeling about the business?" but "you said you would raise your prices by the end of last month. What happened?" The specificity of the goal is what makes that conversation possible and useful.
A goal that holds has four characteristics. It is specific, it is tied to a number, it has a date, and it requires a change in behaviour to achieve.
Start with the outcome you want: Not a direction but a destination. "I want to earn £6,000 per month from my coaching business by the 31st of August" is a goal. "I want to grow my coaching income" is not.
Work backwards from the number: If your goal is £6,000 per month, and your core package is £1,500, you need four clients active at any one time. That tells you how many conversations you need to have, what your conversion rate needs to be, and how many leads your current pipeline generates. The number tells you what to do.
Identify the single most important change: For most service businesses, the change required to reach a brave goal is a pricing increase, a new productised offer, or a decision to close the clients who are consuming time without generating enough revenue. Identify it, name it, and make it the first action.
Tell someone: Share the goal with a coach, a peer, or a business partner who will ask you about it. The act of stating a goal aloud, to someone who will hold you to it, is one of the most powerful things you can do to make it real.
If you want a structure for setting and achieving business goals with proper accountability, Robin's goal setting coaching provides exactly that. Or start with the Fearless Business Pricing Scorecard to understand what your current numbers are telling you about the goal you should be setting.
The most common reason business goals fail is vagueness. A goal like “get more clients” provides a direction but not a destination. Without specific numbers, dates, and outcomes, there is no clear way to measure progress or create an effective action plan, and it becomes easy to lose focus.
A brave goal is one that feels slightly uncomfortable because it requires you to make a significant change in your business. It pushes you beyond your current habits. This might involve raising your prices, changing your service offerings, or making other decisions you have been avoiding. If a goal doesn't challenge you, it probably isn't brave enough to create meaningful results.
Knowing your numbers, such as current revenue, profit margins, and client capacity, provides the essential starting point for any realistic goal. Without this data, you are just guessing. This information helps you set achievable targets that are grounded in the reality of your business operations, preventing you from setting a goal that would require an unsustainable amount of work.
Accountability transforms a goal from a private wish into a public commitment. When you share your specific goal with a coach or a peer, you create an external support system. This structure prevents you from quietly abandoning or lowering your target when you face challenges, as you have someone to report your progress to.
Start by defining a very specific outcome, not a general direction. For example, instead of “make more money,” use “sign five new clients at £3,000 per month by June 30th.” Then, work backwards from that number to figure out the actions you need to take. Finally, tell someone who will hold you to it.
