Reflecting on Your Technology Business

I'm sure like all other business owners, you are doing some reflecting on how well your technology business has done in 2008. If not, I suggest you do and make it a habit.

Actually, you should be doing this a lot more often than just the end of the year, but I won't bother you about that today. For now, let's look at how your technology business did in this past year.

Did you reach your goals? Did you actually have any goals?

Many business owners go through the years without any goals at all. Or at least none that make too much sense. I find this to be an interesting way to operate a company. It tells me instantly that the owner is sitting on more of a job than a business and is taking an extra long time to accomplish things including growing the business.

Concrete long term and short term goals is the name of the game. Things such as: Revenue based goals, profit goals, expense goals, etc are just basics.

Many have no goals in their head except some pie in the sky goal like "I want to make a million dollars to solve all of my problems". A million of what? Revenue, gross profit, net profit? What problems would that solve and how?

Of course, goals are just the tip of the iceberg. The real reason to set a goal is to give you a start and end point that you must build a structure inside of to make it happen.

Did I just tell you that you have to actually DO something to reach a goal? Well, yes I did. Writing it down is a must for a start. But reaching a goal can't happen unless you actually do something.

Even a goal of winning the state lottery requires you to do something such as actually buying a ticket!

How else do you achieve a goal of going from $100,000 in profit to $150,000? Something has to be done to make it happen.

So... if you had any goals for your technology business in 2008 did you actually reach them?

If you didn't I would suggest the following formula for 2009:
- Write out some reasonable and achievable goals
- Determine what you need to do to reach those goals
- Get help on the easiest and most effective ways to achieve those goals
- Make a plan to execute the steps necessary

I would also suggest breaking down long term goals into short term. For instance if you want to increase revenues from $200k to $240k, break it down to "what do I need to do to make $20k a month or $4600 a week in revenue".

Notice my 3rd step above. If you had goals you didn't conquer, was it because you didn't know the best way to go about making it happen? This is very often the case and if this particular type of goal always seems to elude you, you are probably employing the definition of insanity way too often in your business.

For a refresher, that means you are doing the same things over and over again and expecting a different result. I say stop the insanity.

You wouldn't send a tech or engineer to a client when they always take 2 hours to do a 30 minute job task would you? You wouldn't. But you would teach them how to do the task correctly. Right?

So why keep doing it in terms of how you operate your business? It makes no sense and you're too intelligent to get stuck on that hamster wheel.

Before you go and throw money and precious time at making things happen in 2009, first spend the time and money to do things the best way possible. This will truly save you time and money as you execute your plan for the year.


To Your Business Success-

George Sierchio
The Consultant's Coach