What’s Your Blogging BHAG?
The what? I first learned the term BHAG from a former boss and CEO quite a few years ago. If you know what it stands for, you’re smiling right now. If you don’t, you’ll probably laugh.
BHAG= Big Hairy Audacious Goal
(You say it BEE-HAG in case you were wondering. Keep scrolling and I’ll explain it more.)
The 10-Minute Touch Up is a quick, weekly challenge to get you DOING, not just reading about doing. Consider it a way to touch up your blogging just 10 minutes at a time!
Challenge: Write a BHAG for your blog.
Why: Because a BHAG gives you something to work towards. And even if you never reach it, you’ll push yourself harder, take more risks, and perhaps even make better choices about running your blog. If you reach the goal, jump up and down and throw a party. If you don’t, you’ve still learned and grown as you strive to reach it.
How to Do It
Let’s back up with a little WHAT first. A Big Hairy Audacious Goal is a clear, compelling goal that’s almost seems so out there it’s unattainable. The term was coined from the book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies
by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porrins (in case you’re curious).
A BHAG is typically an amped up, am-i-crazy-or-what mission statement. But you know what? I don’t think it HAS to be mission-statement-y, especially since we’re bloggers and don’t have a big staff we need to motivate. It can also be a specific crazy goal that you keep to yourself.
A BHAG has these two qualities:
1. It’s something really audacious.
Well, duh. That’s in the name.
How audiacious should it be? I love this advice from Collins (that was published on Inc.com):
Do you believe that the company has less than a 100% chance of achieving it, but that the organization can achieve it if fully committed? A 50% to 70% chance of achieving it is ideal. Not 100%. Not like 10%–gosh, if we did everything right and everything went our way we have a 10% chance of achieving this BHAG. A 50% to 70% chance is better than 100% and better than 10%.
2. It’s something that could take years to attain.
Ouch, right? But see this as an opportunity to have your BHAG in the back of your mind as you make decisions for your blog business. The corporate BHAG can be something that doesn’t happen until 10-25 years down the road. For us, I’d say 2-5 years in a solid BHAG timeline.
So while a normal goal might be to grow your pageviews from 40,000k to 70,000k, a BHAG goal might be to reach 300,000k. Or 500,00k even.
You might not even achieve it. And that’s okay. It’s all about the “why” I mentioned earlier.
Creating a BHAG means giving self-doubt the heave ho for a minute so we can push ourselves towards a crazy goal. We can do this, right?
BHAG examples from companies
According to Wikipedia, Microsoft’s BHAG was computer on every desk and in every home.
Back in the 60s Nike’s BHAG was to simply “Crush Adidas.”
Starbucks, while maybe not officially their BHAG, grew with the notion of being the “third place”– a place between work and home.
When coming up with yours, think about these as options:
- Income or other money goals (earn $50,000 a year from your blog or donate $x to a charity through your site)
- Competition goals (like the Nike example)
- Niche-leader goals (“to be the Netflix of books.” or to be a high-level influencer in your niche)
- Life-changing goals (ex. JFK’s proclamation that the US will land a man on the moon. A more down-to-earth goal- pun! – could be something like have x go through your life coaching program or to write a book through a publisher)
- Traffic goals (get 1 million pageviews in a month)
A BHAG should make you sweat in your boots a little about how the holy hell you’re going to achieve it. Got it?
Your Turn
Ever created a BHAG before? Got one you want to share? Spill it in the comments!
