It’s that time of year when you should be drafting your goals for the next year.

If you’re serious about growing your business, I want to challenge you to aim high. Don’t just think what you need to do to grow your business by 20% — or even double your business. As you work on your goals for next year, my challenge to you is to consider thinking big. Can you imagine growing your business by 10X?

As you set your goals, I urge you to ask yourself some hard questions, and be brave enough to answer them honestly.

How much do you want to grow your business? Don’t be shy. Admit how much you want to grow it, no matter how high the number.

What client do you want to fire because they no longer fit the model of your ideal client? Who is that person who’s tempting you to compromise? Name names.

How many hours do you want to work? Better yet how much time do you want to take off?

What are your goals with your family for the year?

Is it big enough?

In 2013 I doubled my income, moving from $50K to $100K.

My goal for 2014 was to move to $175K, and I didn’t hit it. I ended up right around $100K again.

I did work less this year, taking about 13 weeks of vacation this year. True I do take every Friday off client work and come in ‘late’ 2 days a week and leave ‘early’ two days a week, but even with that schedule, my goal was to reach $175K.

[Tweet “Are your goals audacious enough that you have to change things next year?”]

As I set my goals for next year, it’s time for me to assess why I missed my target this year.

Which leads me to think that my $175K target wasn’t a big enough jump. I’m now asking myself if a $75K increase in income was enough to really force me to start to change processes, or was I just doing more of the same and expecting my income to go up?

Honest answer? I think I spent most of the year thinking about doing more of what I did in 2013. I looked for ‘similar but better’ clients without redefining the specifics of what those clients would look like.

I really didn’t change any of my marketing to look for those clients that are just a bit ‘aspirational’ for me.

I let myself range around on cool personal and business projects that didn’t really push me deeper in to my niche or do more to establish myself as a category leader in eCommerce and Membership sites.

So doing all the same things in 2014 as I did in 2013 got me right about the same outcome in my income.

Take a second and watch this video:

This week I actually shut down MY client work to focus on my plan for 2015.

My big goal is to turn my $100K business into a $1M business. Obviously, that’s a much bigger leap than $75K, and a target that’s going to force me to make much harder decisions about what I produce and where I spend my time.

I’m going to have to get much more strategic about the type of clients and projects I take.

[Tweet “Does your plan for next year push you to not just do more of the same but do something different?”]

Is it going to happen in 2015? Part of me would love to say yes and my heart races because it feels like a huge scary thing.

Even if it doesn’t happen in 2015 I’m telling you today that SFNdesign will be a $1M/year company and that’s how I’m going to continue to think of it to force myself to make those hard decisions.

Are your goals for 2015 big enough to force you to make hard decisions or are you just going to do more of the same and expect better results?

photo credit: cross_stitch_ninja cc