December Goals and Actions

Even with the holidays I was able to hit all my goals with some adjustments.

1. $4,000 in revenue

   Wrapping up my current projects was just enough for me to hit my revenue goal.

2. Complete planning on my redesign

   After starting, I found I needed to define my market better so this goal was changed to Create 2008 Business Plan. Nothing else I did in December helped me solidify my future path as well as my business plan.

3. Meet 5 new people

   I slacked on this goal until the end of the month, when I met a few of the people for a project.

January Goals

I’m using January to tune up my Ruby on Rails skills and to scale up my marketing again.

1. Find an accountant – I need to start thinking about my taxes for 2007 and to plan out 2008. My goal is to evaluate some accountants in the Portland area and pick one whose advice will help my business.
2. Complete 10 “Back to Ruby on Rails” tasks – A lot has changed in Ruby on Rails since I worked with it. I’ve kept a pulse on the community but it grows so fast I need to schedule time to upgrade my skillset.
3. 40 new RSS Subscribers – I’m planning on doing some more blogging this year and adding 40 new subscribers will help give me more points of view on my topics.
4. Meet 10 new people – I’ve found I can easily meet 5 new people a month so shooting for 10 will be a nice stretch.
5. Open Source 2 projects – I have a couple of internal plugins that I’ve been using for a few months. Open Sourcing them would benefit the communities and will also add to my portfolio of Ruby work.
6. Write a guest blog post – My last guest post generated a good amount of traffic for both my business website and also this blog so it should be a good way to get some more exposure.

Some lessons I learned from this month:

• Get out of your comfort zone: It’s hard to turn away from something comfortable, especially when you turn towards the “unknown” but you will never grow unless you push yourself. For me this means leaving my sidetrack to PHP development and heading into Ruby on Rails again.
• Take time to reflect on your business: I spent a lot of time during the December holidays thinking about my business and what it means to me. Now I have a clear focus of where I want to go and how to get there.

Eric