SETTING BUSINESS GOALS & SUCCEEDING THROUGH FAILURE

There I was in 2011, fresh out of school, and felt the need to get busy. I loved creating and designing, and I was looking for my happy place. Little did I know I would find myself owning a jewelry business ten years down the line.

My name is Anthonia Ashade, and I am the Creator of Hadash Jewelries. I became a small business owner in 2012. To be honest; I was clueless when I started my business; I was going with the flow. I attended an entrepreneurship workshop back in 2011 after being invited by a friend. That was the first time I came across jewelry-making. I immediately fell in love with how the trainer explained the different types of gemstone, how she was stringing up the beads, and how a piece of jewelry could accentuate a woman’s beauty. There and then, I knew I had found my happy place.

I started buying all types of gemstones, metals, pearls, beads, and jewelry findings to create something beautiful. I signed up for a jewelry training class with a local jewelry school and trained for two months. After the training, I felt I was ready to go. I did not set any branding or advertising goals, learn how to make sales, differentiate my niche, organize my finances, or fix my price. I was buying, creating, selling, and enjoying the flow, and in the space of a year, Hadash Jewelries collapsed.

Since then, it has been an incredible journey of successes and failures, trials and errors, and I would say that Hadash Jewelries is now thriving because I am intentional about setting goals and achieving them.

Here are a couple of tips on setting business goals and achieving them. These tips have been most influential to my success:

DEFINE A CLEAR PRIORITY.

When the business collapsed, I did not know what to do. I remember taking a step back and consulting a friend who was a brand strategist. The questions she asked me were, “What are your SMART goals? What do you hope to achieve? What are your priorities?” Then it dawned on me that I never actually set any goals for my business. I was going with the flow. Getting your business priorities clear and written down from the beginning is particularly important. Recorded SMART goals give you, the business owner,

a clear picture of where you want to see your business in a given timescale. It also provides clarity about what your priorities are.

REVIEW YOUR BUDGET AGAINST YOUR SET GOALS.

As a small business owner, having goals and priorities are essential, and developing a budget for the goals is equally important. Working with a financial plan is a step I started since the recent pandemic. Before, I could buy inventory and supplies for my business just because I loved them, not because I needed them. I did not have a budget/financial plan, and then the pandemic happened; I just had to go back to the drawing board and strategize all over again. I had my goals, but I did not tailor my plans to a budget, and I was spending way beyond what I had in the bank and on the less critical projects. I took a break from my business, arranged my SMART goals, and reviewed my budget against each plan in order of priority. This step saved much cash in the bank and reduced my anxiety over my financial position.

LEARN TO MOTIVATE YOURSELF

Motivating myself was something I had to learn when I immigrated to Canada. As a new immigrant, my major headache was moving and continuing my small business in Canada. It was a whole lot of struggle for me because it was a different culture, and economy and I had to start creating my niche all over again. A month after the move, my box of supplies and inventory arrived from my home country (Nigeria). While I was unpacking the boxes, I found the first piece of jewelry I ever made, and it took me back to the reason I started Hadash Jewelries in the first place. I took time throughout the proceeding months and learned how to restrategize my business in a new economy. Less than a year later my business took off, and I was getting sales; before I could fully settle into the new economy, the pandemic occurred. But guess what, I did not allow that to stop me. I used self-motivation to help me achieve my goals for my business.

As a small business owner, there are days when progress is slow. There are days when you have a huge sales volume; there are also some months where you spend a lot of money stocking up on inventory, only to end up having no sale. There are times that the goals and priorities you set are seemingly impossible to achieve. It can be frustrating, but my advice; Find what motivates you and lean on those things. During the slow periods, your motivators are the things that will keep you going.

Goal setting for a small business can sometimes be tricky and tedious, especially when trying to find your niche or starting. The best approach is to wake up every morning and put one foot in front of the other, one step at a time. What has always worked for me is sometimes to take my eyes off the bigger picture because it can be overwhelming. I break my SMART goals into smaller tasks that can be more readily achieved one at a time.

Always have fun setting those incredible goals, and cheers to you achieving each one!