Growing your business

[vangogh]

When it comes to growing your business do you have a plan or strategy in place to make that happen?

I can't say I have a specific plan written for how I'm going to grow, but this past year I did set three specific goals for myself that I wanted to accomplish in each third of the year. I accomplished the first on schedule and should accomplish the second about a month later than I would have liked (in part because of unexpectedly starting this forum). The third goal is one I've started a little in advance and it's more open ended so I should be able to call it accomplished as the year ends.

While it's not a written there has been a plan in place to grow this year and based on the results come December I'll set more goals for next year. The idea being that I'm always working toward something that's reasonably attainable that will grow my business.

Is anyone doing anything similar? Are there written goals? Do you have long term and short term goals and do the short term goals lead you toward your long term goals?

What do you do to make sure you work at your short term and long term goals.

[orion_joel]

Good to hear that you are succeeding with you goals or are at least on track for them.

Unfortunately i have really shot myself in the foot on goals for quite some time. While i do set goals and often work hard towards them, i find that i pretty much always set goals that are much harder to achieve then i imagine, like financial goals that may seem simple enough to achieve but in reality would require a doubling of my income almost immediately and maintaining this for the next 3,6 or 12 months. Which i initially believe i could do just by doing a few things however it never seems to work out as easy as i think.

The only goal that i have actually managed to get within the time frame i gave, was on 9th Sep 2006 i gave myself 4 months to get a new job, well almost exactly 3 months later i started a new job a month early. Then there have been ones that failed miserably i am currently about $20K short of the goal i set mid last year to achieve by the end of 2007, so currently only 7 and a bit months over due. The second goal is more how most of my goals end up though.

[vangogh]

So far so good. Setting reasonable goals is one key. That's why sometimes breaking down the one big goal into a series of smaller and very doable goals is helpful.

My firs goal for the year was redesigning my site and moving to a new domain. There was a lot involved, but I took it in small chunks. I went into each week with a small goal in mind that would take me a little closer to the long term goal. The other key was persistence. There were days I didn't do anything toward moving the site, but most days I put in a few hours to keep moving forward.

I try not to make monetary goals anymore. I have hopes about it, but it's too easy to set goals you want to happen instead of aiming for realistic goals.

[orion_joel]

I can defiantly understand the will not to set monetary goals, it is very hard to track them sometimes without spending a bit of time working everything out. When i have made these sort of goals before it has been relatively easy to track as i have the spreadsheets all set up that i put in the numbers and i have an exact financial position, however this took me a lot of time to set-up exactly how i wanted it, and that is not everyone's thing.

Taking a large goals and breaking it into chunks is the best way i think, i have done this on smaller scale for some of my sites, but was probably a little smaller scale then your site move.

[vangogh]

For me the money goals is it's hard to set realistic ones. I think I set those goals based more on what I want to have happen than what's reasonable to have happen. Not that I don't have monetary goals, but I'm trying to focus more on the things that need to get done to get that money instead of the money itself.

Breaking it down into smaller goals helps a lot. Before I did that I would look at something I wanted to do and think how much work there was in it all and let it overwhelm me to the point where I never got started. When I broke it down to chunks I worked one chunk at a time. It was easier to get started that way and keep the momentum until it was all finished.

[theGypsy]

I think that goals for me are more like projects in many ways...

- new businesses/income streams to create
- new services for existing businesses
- new products for existing
- infrastructure upgrades

yada yada... it's not usually as simply as 'increase revenues by X' for me in as much as larger development cycles for the business.

At this point we're re-assessing all of our current operations to move towards a more residual income model than the current service heavy one... those are generally how our goals work... sure there are some 'nuts and bolts' stuff, but not as much.

Financial is always sooooooo wonky... for example we ingested an entire web design firm (and 10 clients) in one shot this year as a cohort decided to get out of the business. This was a challenge considering the new staff and resources required to incorporate it... but did we plan for a 40% growth such as that last quarter? Not a chance... just how it worked out...

...then the looking econonomic down turn...and well... financials are always fuzzy... I consider forecasts to be nothing more than potential baselines to work from...

[vangogh]

I think you and I are looking at things in similar ways. My goals are pretty much in line with yours too.

I spent the end of last year re-evaluating my entire business and decided what I thought was missing and where I thought it could grow. Moving the site was in part to better define and focus my services and promote a different USP than I had been.

I'm working on new revenue streams at the moment. This forum just happened to fall into that unexpectedly, though I'm not really expecting to see revenue from it in the immediate future.

I do have goals in mind for how much more money I want to be taking in next year over this one, but I don't like setting the goals that way. I think it can too easily lead to thoughts of failure when you have actually made progress.

I prefer to set goals for actions I can take. I wanted to move my site. I did. I want to create new revenue streams. I am. If you keep setting those kind of goals and then working to meet them, the financial will come.

[rocketman]

One of the key things to define early on is what is the worst case scenario and how far in terms of time, money, and cost are you willing to take on. Many people get hurt when they don't set clear points for killing the venture.

[vangogh]

That's a good point. I think we all have a tendency to want to focus on the positive side of things, but it's important to think about wht can go wrong so you can prepare for it.

[Blessed]

The only goal I've set for myself for this first full year of self-employment is to make enough money that I don't have to find a "real" job and put my daughter in daycare. So far it's working - I'm expanding my network, meeting more people, trying new things. The next thing on my goal list is to take a couple classes to learn some basic HTML and CSS - Print design is gravy work for me, but people are looking for a one-stop shop now - someone who can do emailed newsletters, basic websites and their print stuff too. I'm lacking in the technical aspects of the web design world so that's what I'm working on now.