2008 Goals

written by edavis on November 27th, 2007 @ 09:48 AM

After reading Shane’s post about setting goals I decided I needed to sit down and plan out my next year. 2007 has been a great year for me both personally and professional. I see 2008 as a year of growing and refining what I started in 2007.

2007 Highlights

To see where I am going, I need to know where I’ve been. Some of the major highlights of 2007 have been:

  1. Got married
  2. Started my own business to do custom software development, Little Stream Software
  3. Moved my family up to Oregon
  4. Flew across an ocean (Kauai rocks)
  5. Trained myself in JavaScript and PHP
  6. Meet at least 84 new people

2008 Goals

  1. Grow my business to make $100,000 in revenue in 2008
  2. Finish my personal and business emergency savings
  3. Get 3 paid Ruby on Rails projects
  4. Grow my RSS and newsletter subscribers to 500 people
  5. Redesign my core websites
  6. Participate on 10 Open Source projects
  7. Incorporate my business
  8. Write a short ebook ( 30 to 100 pages)
  9. Contribute a patch to Ruby on Rails

Scare yourself goal

My first goal of growing my business to make $100,000 in revenue is my “scare yourself” goal. Compared to what I have made, $100,000 is such a large number it terrifies me. Even if every month I made as much as best month, I would still come up short. I see three solutions to fill this gap:

  1. Charge more
  2. Work more
  3. Get creative

Option #1 will not work. I am already charging were I should be at, upping my rate will start to price me out of my bread and butter projects.

Option #2 is also a no go. I started my business to have more time with my family, not to have less time.

So that leaves Option #3, get creative. I will be thinking though the details of this option but think of it now as using leverage to complete more work.

Eric

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Comments

  • Shane on November 27, 2007 @ 10:11 AM

    Now this is going to be a great conversation. I can’t wait to explore #3 with you!!!

  • Joshua Clanton on November 29, 2007 @ 01:28 PM

    Congratulations on setting some really challenging goals for yourself. I know that my tendency is to set goals that I know I can meet without too much extra work, but a lot of the time I should be more ambitious.

    Do you have any idea what topic you might write your ebook on? If has to do with RoR, I’d be quite inclined to buy it.

  • Eric on November 29, 2007 @ 02:12 PM

    @Shane: I should have a post coming out soon about it.

    @Joshua: A Ruby on Rails ebook would be good but I’m not sure if it will be my first ebook. I’ll let you know once I decide on the topic for this one.

  • Andy on January 12, 2008 @ 08:15 AM

    Revisit #1.

    Your “bread and butter” projects may very well be getting in the way of landing bigger and more profitable projects. Learn to let go of the “easy” if you want to reach your goal.

    I used to write for InformationWeek. Easy money for me: just get a piece of software, figure it out, slam out a 1000 to 5000 word review about it, and I got keep the software. Back then, the price was $1/word and it took about a day to do a 1000-word article. Very easy money. Then I realized that I couldn’t grow that part of my business past a certain point (because I couldn’t outsource it to anyone else). So I dropped it (in 2000, perfectly timed to coincide with magazines having trouble getting tech ads).

    So I focused full-time on finding the kinds of consulting projects that were profitable and interesting. Now my minimum new client project size is $20K and my consulting business makes a whole lot more than I ever imagined it could with just one person.

    Another story: I work with another consultant who gets paid $90/hr for on-site admin work and $60/hr for at-home programming. Turns out the at-home programming is lots more profitable because he has a 1-hour minimum charge for the on-site work and doesn’t charge for travel time. He needs to change his on-site business model and likely annoy a few clients, but in the end, he’ll end up making lots more money and need to work fewer hours to get to his goals.

    Look at your entire model of operation and figure out where you’re losing time/money and adjust that even if you annoy a few clients along the way. You probably won’t annoy the better clients anyway.

  • Eric on January 15, 2008 @ 05:29 PM

    Andy: Great point. I am making it a major push to move to a new market this year where the projects are bigger, the pay is better, and the work is funner. I’ve had the fear of loss holding me to the familiar “bread and butter” projects.

  • Vipin on July 21, 2008 @ 09:58 PM

    Hi Everybody ! Great Target ! I many times fail to set a target and then realize that I wasted lot of time doing nothing.

    I would like to have short term and long term goals in Life..

    Good to see people succeed with Goal Setting

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