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