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Greet from the deep,

The no. 1 reason why most solopreneurs aren’t experiencing the success they want is because they don’t have a clear goal, and no clear plan to act on it.

And it’s not their fault.

Nobody ever told us about how to set goals, and even less how to reverse-engineer them into real plans.

That’s why I’m writing this edition.

You will learn:

• Why you should almost always start with the end in mind

• How to set business goals in a way that you’re maximally likely to achieve them

• How you can use ChatGPT to reverse-engineer it to a weekly actionable roadmap

Want a map to guide you to the treasure? Or, in our case, dream business goals?

Well, octopreneur, let's dive!

Why you should almost always start with the end in mind

It’s quite straightforward, to be honest:

Before plotting a treasure hunt, you need to know where X marks the spot.

To plan how to get anywhere in business, you need to know where you want to go.

If you're sailing with no direction, you’ll be lost in the vast seas of noise.

To explain it with one of those cringe hustle p*rn Instagram quotes:

This is why you need a goal.

Most people know why goals are important - but few know how to set meaningful ones.

And as I learned on a recent Huberman episode, how you set goals matters more than which goals you set.

So let’s dive into the goal-setting 101:

How to set business goals in a way that you’re maximally likely to achieve them

Rule 1: Don’t tell anyone about your goal

Against what everyone says on Twitter, you shouldn’t announce your goals to other people.

Why?

Because when you tell someone a goal you’re aspiring to achieve, they will give you positive feedback which triggers a dopamine hit in your brain.

You feel a sense of accomplishment just by telling the goal to others.

And this minimizes your odds of success.

Or to tell it with another hustle success quote:

oH i fEeL sO iNsPirEd!

(sorry, this is really my humour today)

Rule 2: Actions over outcomes

Your goals should focus on actions that you can control directly, not outcomes that may or may not result from them.

This is because the more you feel in control of your progress, the more likely you will achieve your goal.

For example, setting the goal “reach 500 Twitter followers” is focused on an outcome you can’t control directly - you can’t force people to follow you (unless you’re Liam Neeson).

A more sustainable, action-oriented goal would be:

“post 3 Tweets a day, 2 Threads a week, and spend 30 minutes engaging every day for 3 months”

Another example:

❌ Outcome oriented:

“reach $2500 monthly income from my services”

✅ Action oriented:

“send 20 cold DMs a day and post 5 pieces of content that talk about my offer a week for 3 months”

Rule 3: Set 3-month goals

According to scientific trials, 3 months is the ideal time period for a goal.

It’s just long enough to set ambitious goals, but also not too long to loose motivation.

Rule 4: Choose 1 goal to focus on

I have ADHD, and often feel the motivational surge to just change EVERYTHING in my life.

“I’ll set goals for my health, business, social life… and now that I think of it, I also wanna start making music again”

Don’t make this mistake.

The problem is that having too many goals to focus on makes you much less likely to achieve them.

So how many goals should you set?

One.

Having only 1 big goal that you’re working on makes you more likely to reach it, stay motivated, and get where you want in life.

Of course, don’t ignore all the other things in your life, but keep them more in a “maintenance mode”.

Rule 5: Use the 4% rule to set challenging goals

The difficulty of your goal is another vital factor for setting meaningful goals.

❌ If the goal’s too easy, you won’t be motivated to work towards it.

❌ If the goal is so hard that you feel like it’s impossible to achieve, you will also loose motivation.

You also want to make your goals just challenging enough.

I use the 4% rule for this.

Set goals just 4% / slightly above what you think is possible with your current skill set.

This ensures that the goal excites you, but doesn’t feel too hard.

Now that you know how to set goals, let’s dive into today’s ChatGPT prompt:

The GPT Goals Guaranteer

How to use the The GPT Goals Guaranteer prompt to reverse-engineer your business goals.

This prompt helps you:

• Craft a clear 3-month business goal.

• Break that goal into measurable and achievable milestones.

• Define weekly actionable steps leading you closer to that goal.

I want you to create an actionable business roadmap for me.

The time horizon is 12 weeks.

My 3-month goal is: [INSERT GOAL]

For context, [INSERT CONTEXT]

Using the specifics of my business goal and my context, help me reverse-engingeer my goal into a 3-month actionable roadmap that I can follow to reach it.

Your output should contain two roadmaps.

Constraints:

1) The KPIs for each week should be quantifiable

Every of the 3 months of the roadmap should be formatted like this:

# Month 1: [BIG GOAL OF Month 1]
Summarize the month's goal and KPIs
## Week 1: [BIG GOAL OF WEEK 1]
Summarize and quantify weekly actions that I need to take to reach week 1's first goal (in a way that I can put it into my calendar)
## Week 2: [BIG GOAL OF WEEK 2]
Summarize and quantify weekly actions that I need to take to reach week 2's first goal (in a way that I can put it into my calendar)
## Week 3: [BIG GOAL OF WEEK 3]
Summarize and quantify weekly actions that I need to take to reach week 3's first goal (in a way that I can put it into my calendar)
## Week 4: [BIG GOAL OF WEEK 4]
Summarize and quantify weekly actions that I need to take to reach week 2's first goal (in a way that I can put it into my calendar)


Important: If the goal I give you is not action-oriented and quantifiable, ignore all previous actions and tell me:

"Retry with a quantifiable and action-oriented goal. You can do this!"

Here’s an example of it’s output:

Continue the chat

The beauty of the The GPT Goals Guaranteer is that it can also help you to get back on track.

If you fail to hit your weekly targets, just tell it:

“I was unable to reach the goals for week 5 (insert your week), and I’m now at (list your current progress) can you please adjust the roadmap to my current situation so I still hit the original 3-month goal?”

Wrap up

Last week I visited Cologne in Germany.

Besides weirdly small beer glasses, they also have this crazy church called the “Dom”.

It was a construction site for the last trillion years.

I haven’t seen it for around 7 years.

But when I did, it took my breath away.

It’s beautiful.

But imagine how much faster they would have been with ChatGPT-fueled roadmaps (LOL).

Keep diving,

Ole

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