1. Introduction: The Illusion of Progress.
Bill Gates once said, “You can achieve incredible progress if you set a clear goal and find a measure that will drive progress toward that goal.”
I love that quote because it captures one of the biggest truths in business, and one of the biggest traps. Every business owner I’ve ever met sets goals. But very few set clear ones.
Most goals sound something like this:
- “We want to double our revenue this year.”
- “We’re aiming to grow our client base.”
- “We want to improve our online marketing.”
All admirable ambitions, but here’s the problem: none of those statements actually tells you what to do tomorrow morning. There’s no direction, no measurement, and no clear link between what you’ll do and what you’ll get.
Let me give you an example.
A business owner once told me his goal was to “hit £1 million in sales this year.” When I asked how he planned to achieve it, he said, “Well… we’ll just push harder.” That’s not a plan, that’s wishful thinking. He was measuring his success by revenue, which is actually a result, not a driver.
Revenue is like the speedometer on a car. It tells you how fast you’re going, but it doesn’t control the accelerator. The accelerator, the thing that actually makes the car move, is made up of actions and inputs: generating more leads, converting more of those leads into sales, increasing transaction values, or encouraging repeat purchases.
If you focus only on revenue, you’re staring at the dashboard instead of driving the car.
When I work with small business owners, I often find they’re frustrated because they’re “doing everything” but not seeing results. Nine times out of ten, the issue isn’t effort, it’s focus. They’re tracking the wrong things.
They might say, “We want to grow our business,” but they’re not measuring what drives that growth. For example:
- If you want more sales, track your leads and conversion rates.
- If you want higher profit, track your margins and average order value.
- If you want stability, track your retention and repeat purchases.
Progress comes from identifying the right measurements, the ones that drive results, not just record them.
That’s why I use the GAME Plan framework: Goals, Actions, Metrics, and Evaluation. It forces clarity. It transforms vague ambitions into specific, measurable plans that actually move the business forward.
Because the truth is simple: “You can’t manage what you can’t measure, and you can’t measure what you haven’t clearly defined.”
2. The Problem with Vague Goals.
Most small business owners think they’re setting goals, but in reality, they’re setting intentions. Intentions sound good; they make us feel productive, but they rarely produce results because they lack clarity and structure.
Here’s what I mean.
When someone says, “I want to grow my business,” I’ll usually ask, “By how much? By when? And through what actions?” More often than not, they pause because they haven’t thought that far ahead.
The problem isn’t laziness. It’s that vague goals feel safer. They’re hard to fail at because they’re impossible to measure. If you say, “I want more clients,” and you get one new client, technically, you’ve achieved your goal. But has it moved the business forward? Probably not.
I see this all the time in planning sessions. A business owner sets a revenue target, let’s say £500,000, and feels like they’ve done the hard work. But that number, on its own, doesn’t tell you anything about how to get there.
Revenue is an output, not an input. It’s the result of dozens of smaller, controllable factors like:
- The number of leads you generate.
- The percentage of those leads you convert.
- The average value of each transaction.
- The number of times a customer buys from you each year.
If you only track revenue, you’re measuring the symptom, not the cause. Let me give you an example from a real client.
A marketing agency I worked with had a goal to “grow revenue by 30%.” After a few months, nothing had changed. When we looked closer, we found they weren’t tracking any of the activities that actually drove that growth, no targets for new enquiries, no metrics for proposal conversions, and no focus on client retention.
Once we broke their revenue goal into the components that actually create revenue, leads, conversion rate, and average order value, they finally had something they could act on. Within three months, they’d increased enquiries by 40% and improved their close rate from 18% to 27%. Revenue followed naturally.
That’s the key point: You can’t improve what you don’t measure, and you can’t measure what you haven’t clearly defined.
When goals are vague, three things happen:
- You can’t prioritise. Every task feels equally important because you don’t know which ones move the needle.
- You can’t delegate. Your team doesn’t know what success looks like, so everyone pulls in different directions.
- You can’t stay motivated. Without tangible progress markers, you never feel like you’re winning, just endlessly busy.
Clarity turns confusion into momentum. When you define exactly what success looks like and what will drive it, you turn guesswork into a plan.
That’s why vague goals are dangerous. They look like progress, but they deliver none. And that’s exactly why I developed the GAME Plan, to translate big ambitions into structured, measurable action.
3. The Revenue Trap — Why Outcome Metrics Mislead You.
If there’s one trap I see business owners fall into time and time again, it’s this: they measure success purely by revenue.
On the surface, it makes sense. Revenue is visible. It’s easy to track. It’s what most people talk about. But it’s also deceptive. Because revenue is a lagging indicator, it tells you what’s already happened, not what’s about to happen.
Think of it like stepping on the scales at the end of the week. The number you see isn’t the cause; it’s the result of everything you ate, drank, and did over the last seven days. You can’t change it in that moment. The only way to influence it is to track and adjust the inputs, your meals, your exercise, and your habits.
Business works the same way.
When you track revenue alone, you’re watching the scoreboard, not the game. You might see an increase one month and think things are going well, but have no idea why. Or revenue might dip, and you panic, but you don’t know what to fix.
I worked with a client who ran an e-commerce business. They were obsessed with their monthly sales figure, which was their only measure of success. When sales dropped one quarter, they immediately assumed their marketing had failed. But when we dug into the data, the issue wasn’t marketing at all; their website conversion rate had fallen from 3.1% to 2.2% after a design change. They were generating plenty of traffic; they were just converting less of it.
Revenue had only told them something was wrong. It didn’t tell them what.
That’s why I separate metrics into two types:
- Lagging indicators – tell you the result (e.g. revenue, profit, customer count).
- Leading indicators – tell you the drivers of those results (e.g. leads generated, conversion rate, average order value, repeat purchase rate).
If you want to improve outcomes, you must focus on the inputs that create them.
Let’s take revenue again. It’s actually a function of several key drivers:
Revenue=(Leads)×(Conversion Rate)×(Average Transaction Value)×(Purchase Frequency)
Each of those is something you can act on.
- You can increase leads with better marketing.
- You can improve conversions with clearer offers and stronger sales follow-up.
- You can raise transaction value with bundles or upsells.
- You can boost frequency with retention programs.
Now you’re not just measuring outcomes; you’re managing performance.
The moment you shift your attention from lagging indicators to leading ones, your business becomes predictable. You can see problems coming before they show up in the bank account. You can forecast results with accuracy. And, perhaps most importantly, you can hold yourself and your team accountable for actions that make a real difference.
Revenue tells you what happened. Metrics tell you why. And that’s where progress starts, not with the result, but with the levers that drive it.
4. The Solution — The GAME Plan Framework.
Once you understand that results come from actions, not wishes, the question becomes: how do you turn your goals into something you can actually manage and measure?
That’s where the GAME Plan comes in. It stands for Goals, Actions, Metrics, and Evaluation, and it’s the backbone of how I help business owners move from vague intentions to concrete progress.
Let’s break it down.
G — Goal.
A goal defines what you want to achieve and why it matters. But it must be specific and measurable. “Grow the business” isn’t a goal; it’s a hope.
A real goal looks like this:
- Increase monthly recurring revenue by 20% in 90 days.
- Generate 50 qualified leads per month.
- Improve customer retention from 70% to 85% by year-end.
The key is clarity. If your goal doesn’t tell you exactly what success looks like and when you’ll know you’ve achieved it. It’s not a goal, it’s just noise.
A — Actions.
Goals without actions are just daydreams. This is where most business owners fall short. They write down what they want but never define what they’ll do.
Actions turn your goal into a plan. They should be specific, observable, and within your control.
For example:
- Run a weekly email campaign to re-engage dormant leads.
- Introduce a referral program with an incentive for both parties.
- Review and optimise Google Ads campaigns every Friday.
These are behaviours you can execute, not outcomes you can only hope for. You can delegate actions, track them, and hold yourself accountable.
M — Metrics.
This is where the real magic happens. Metrics tell you if your actions are working. The problem is, most people measure the wrong things. They track the lagging indicator (revenue) instead of the levers that drive it.
When you set up your GAME Plan, you identify the key performance drivers that actually move your goal forward.
For instance, if your goal is to increase revenue, your metrics might include:
- Leads generated
- Conversion rate
- Average order value
- Customer retention rate
Each metric acts like a dial on your dashboard. If one’s off, you know where to focus. I often tell clients:
“Don’t measure what’s easy. Measure what matters.”
It’s better to track three meaningful metrics that drive performance than twenty vanity stats that make you feel busy.
E — Evaluation.
This is the step everyone skips, and it’s the one that turns planning into progress. Evaluation is about reviewing your results regularly and adjusting your actions based on what the data tells you.
I recommend a 30-day review cycle. It’s short enough to react quickly but long enough to collect meaningful data.
Ask simple questions:
- Did our actions move the metrics?
- What worked? What didn’t?
- What do we need to do differently next month?
That’s how businesses grow consistently, not through random bursts of activity, but through structured cycles of action and review.
Why GAME Works.
The GAME Plan framework works because it creates a closed feedback loop:
Goal → Action → Measurement → Adjustment.
It keeps you grounded in reality, forces accountability, and builds momentum through clarity.
Compare that to the traditional “set and forget” annual goal process, where you write something down in January and revisit it next December.
With a GAME Plan, every 90 days you get a reset, a chance to review progress, learn, and refine your approach. That’s how you achieve compounding progress. Small, measured improvements every quarter lead to exponential results over time.
In short, a GAME Plan turns hope into strategy. It replaces “I think we’re doing okay” with “I know what’s working.” And in business, that’s the difference between surviving and scaling.
5. Example — Turning a Vague Goal into a GAME Plan.
Let’s bring this to life with a real example. Imagine a small business owner says:
“I want to increase my revenue.”
It sounds like a sensible goal, but it’s actually meaningless on its own. There’s no timeline, no strategy, no measurable steps. It’s like saying, “I want to get fit,” without deciding how, when, or what success looks like.
Now let’s turn that vague statement into a GAME Plan.
G — Goal.
Let’s make the goal specific and time-bound:
Increase monthly revenue by 20% within the next 90 days.
That’s clear, measurable, and ambitious enough to create momentum.
A — Actions.
Now we need to decide what will actually make that happen. If revenue is the outcome, the inputs are:
- More leads
- Better conversion rates
- Higher average transaction value
- Increased repeat purchases
So, let’s translate those into actions:
- Launch a referral program to bring in 15 new leads per month.
- Optimise the website landing page to improve the conversion rate from 2% to 3%.
- Train the sales team to upsell premium packages on 30% of sales calls.
- Create a 3-email sequence to encourage repeat purchases from past customers.
Notice how each action is specific, measurable, and within the owner’s control.
M — Metrics.
Next, we identify the metrics that will tell us whether those actions are working.
For this plan, the key performance metrics might be:
- Leads generated (goal: +15 per month)
- Conversion rate (goal: +1%)
- Average order value (goal: +£50)
- Repeat purchase rate (goal: +10%)
Each metric connects directly to a driver of revenue.
Now, instead of staring at a bank balance and wondering why it’s not moving, the owner can monitor the dials that actually influence it.
E — Evaluation.
Finally, we set up a regular review — every 30 days. In that review, we ask three simple questions:
- Are the numbers moving in the right direction?
- Which actions are having the most impact?
- What needs adjusting before the next 30-day cycle?
Let’s say after the first month, leads are up 20% but conversions haven’t improved. That tells you where to focus; perhaps you need to refine your offer, improve follow-up, or train the team further.
The review isn’t about blame; it’s about learning.
The Result.
Over three months, the business now has structure, focus, and control.
- Leads are increasing.
- Conversions are improving.
- Average order value is rising.
- Revenue follows naturally.
The owner has gone from chasing outcomes to managing inputs.
- From guessing to knowing.
- From hoping to measuring.
That’s the power of a GAME Plan; it transforms big, vague ambitions into daily, manageable actions that produce real, trackable progress. And the beauty is, this works for any goal, not just revenue. You can create GAME Plans for marketing, recruitment, operations, customer service, or even personal productivity.
Once you start thinking in terms of Goals, Actions, Metrics, and Evaluation, you stop drifting and start driving.
6. Why Clarity Creates Confidence.
Clarity is the ultimate performance enhancer in business. When you know exactly what you’re aiming for, what to measure, and what to do next, confidence follows naturally.
Most business owners don’t lack ambition or work ethic. What they lack is clarity. They’re constantly busy, juggling emails, meetings, and client work, but deep down, they’re never quite sure whether what they’re doing today is actually moving the business forward.
That uncertainty creates anxiety. It makes decision-making harder. It leads to procrastination, overthinking, and firefighting instead of planning.
I’ve seen it hundreds of times. A business owner tells me they’re “spinning plates,” but when we unpack it, they’re just reacting, responding to whatever feels urgent instead of what’s truly important.
The moment we build their first GAME Plan, everything changes. Suddenly, they can see, in black and white, what’s driving results and what isn’t. They know exactly which actions produce impact and which are just noise. That clarity brings a calm kind of confidence, the kind that lets you make decisions faster, communicate priorities clearly to your team, and measure progress objectively.
Let me give you an example.
I worked with a business that constantly felt under pressure. Every week, they were chasing targets, adjusting prices, and reworking their marketing, but they never really knew why revenue went up one month and down the next.
Once we broke their goals into measurable drivers, leads, conversions, and transaction value, something clicked. They realised that 80% of their revenue volatility came from inconsistent lead flow, not from pricing or delivery. So they stopped obsessing over everything else and focused on generating a predictable number of leads every week.
Within two months, the chaos disappeared. They had clarity, and with that came control, confidence, and stability.
That’s the beauty of measurement. It turns business from guesswork into science.
When you can say, “We’re on track because leads are up 12% and conversion is holding steady,” you’re no longer relying on gut feel. You’re relying on evidence.
Clarity gives you the courage to make hard decisions, too. You can stop doing things that don’t work, even if they’re comfortable. You can double down on what’s effective, even if it’s challenging.
It’s not about perfection, it’s about precision.
Every action has a purpose. Every metric has meaning. Every review gives you direction.
When you have that level of clarity, confidence isn’t something you need to find; it becomes the natural outcome of a well-structured plan. And that’s why I say: “clarity isn’t just a planning tool; it’s a competitive advantage.”
7. The 365/90 Approach to Goal Setting.
Most business owners set goals once a year, usually in January, and then forget about them by February. The year drifts by in a blur of activity, and by the time December rolls around, they’re either celebrating by accident or frustrated that nothing really changed.
That’s why I built the 365/90 approach, a system that turns long-term goals into short-term, measurable progress.
Here’s how it works.
You start by defining your 365-day goals — the big, meaningful outcomes you want to achieve over the year. These are your destination points:
- Increase profit by 25%.
- Build a stronger recurring revenue stream.
- Hire a sales manager to free up the owner’s time.
- Launch a new product line or service.
These are important, but they’re also too big to tackle all at once. That’s why most people never achieve them.
So instead of trying to climb the entire mountain in one go, we break the year into four 90-day GAME Plans.
Each 90-day cycle focuses on the next measurable step toward that annual goal.
For example:
- If your annual goal is to increase profit by 25%, your first 90-day goal might be to improve your gross margin by 5%.
- If your annual goal is to build recurring revenue, your first 90 days might focus on creating and testing a subscription offer.
- If your annual goal is to launch a new product, your first 90 days might focus on validating demand and building a prototype.
Each 90-day GAME Plan then follows the same structure:
Goal → Actions → Metrics → Evaluation.
This keeps your planning cycle short, sharp, and agile.
It means you can adapt to what’s happening in your business and in your market, without losing sight of your longer-term direction.
Most importantly, it creates momentum.
When you plan in 90-day sprints, you create a natural rhythm:
- You plan the quarter.
- You execute the actions.
- You measure the results.
- You review and reset for the next 90 days.
Each cycle builds on the last. Small wins compound. Problems get spotted early. Motivation stays high because progress is visible.
I’ve used this process with hundreds of business owners, and the results are consistent:
- They become more focused.
- Their teams become more accountable.
- Their results become more predictable.
And here’s the real magic: over 365 days, those four focused 90-day GAME Plans add up to a year of genuine progress, not just movement, but measurable growth.
It’s how you turn a strategy into a system. It’s how you stop “hoping” for better results and start engineering them. And it’s why I always say:
“You don’t need a perfect plan — you need a plan you can measure, adjust, and repeat every 90 days.”
That’s the 365/90 way.
Final Word — From Hope to Progress.
Bill Gates was right when he said, “You can achieve incredible progress if you set a clear goal and find a measure that will drive progress toward that goal.”
The challenge for most business owners isn’t ambition; it’s alignment. They have big goals, but no structure to achieve them. They’re working hard, but they’re not working to a clear system. That’s why so many plans fail. Not because the people are lazy, but because the plan itself is vague.
- A goal without clear actions is just a wish.
- A goal without meaningful metrics is just guesswork.
- A plan without regular evaluation is just noise.
When you use a GAME Plan, all of that changes.
You stop measuring results after the fact and start managing the things that create them. You move from being reactive to being proactive. You gain clarity, control, and confidence, and that’s when real progress happens.
I’ve seen this transformation hundreds of times. A business owner who felt stuck suddenly finds traction. Not because they worked harder, but because they started measuring the right things and adjusting in real time.
They go from saying, “We’re trying to grow” to “We’re on track to increase revenue by 20% because leads are up 15% and conversions are up 10%.”
That’s the difference between hope and progress.
And that’s exactly what the 365/90 system is built for, turning long-term ambition into 90-day focus, measurable actions, and consistent improvement.
So if your business goals feel vague, or your progress feels slow, don’t throw the plan away; rebuild it around clarity.
- Define your goal.
- List the actions.
- Choose the right metrics.
- And evaluate every 30 days.
Do that consistently, and progress stops being accidental; it becomes inevitable.
Because success isn’t built on good intentions. It’s built on clear goals, measured actions, and constant improvement. That’s the power of a GAME Plan, and it’s how you move from hoping for growth to engineering it.
Your Next Step:
If you’re tired of setting goals that never quite turn into results, it’s time to change the way you plan.
The 365/90 GAME Plan is designed to help you take control of your business by turning vague ambitions into specific, measurable progress every 90 days.
Start by defining your next 90-day GAME Plan:
- Set a clear Goal.
- Map the Actions that will drive it.
- Identify the Metrics that matter.
- Commit to regular Evaluation.
If you’d like help building your first plan — or reviewing your current one — book a free 30-minute Business Planning Session. We’ll identify the key levers in your business and create a measurable 90-day plan that gets results.
Twelve intensive half-day meetings.
