Making a Declaration

This month my brother and I declared that we intend to grow our business to a 30 million dollar company by June 30th. This is no small task given that this time last year we were more of a screw up than a start up.

Why did we do such a thing? Our business is making a profit now and there is no need to push ourselves unnecessarily. 

We did it because we want the challenge as well as the results.

I abhor mediocrity and couldn’t think of anything worse than going through all of the agony and ecstasy of owning your own business only to achieve a “reasonable” result.

I want to learn who we need to be to make this goal happen. I don’t know what this achievement will take but I can’t wait to find out. Given I only have six months to achieve a 2.5 Million dollar month, I guess I wont have to wait.

So why didn’t I write this goal on a piece of paper and put it in a box like I used to?

By declaring the goal publicly I hope to inspire others into helping to generate the result. Sure it will get a load of scoffs from the knockers, but that should fire up my “I’ll show you” personality. It also puts us on the hook for delivering it. We have an audience now who expect us to deliver. When we do, we and our audience will know us as people of our word for whom anything is possible.

It’s curious what happens when you make such a declaration. Immediately you start to view your opportunities through a filter that asks, “Is this going to contribute to us making a 30 million dollar business in 6 months?”  You begin to realize how much time has been spent on activities that don’t work towards that goal.

You then become aware that it was not going to happen if you hadn’t declared it. It wasn’t going to happen because we never held our opportunities up to the 30 million dollar filter. As a result we might have spent our days working on activities that didn’t produce great results.

So why do we want to make so much money? Is it just ego? Maybe. Someone is going to make it – it might as well be us. We are great at what we do and improving – there is no question in our minds that we deserve the business.

More importantly, we are passionate about what can be achieved with the money. In particular we love to bring opportunities to people that otherwise would not have them afforded to them. Whether they be people living in developing nations that otherwise would not have opportunity, or people in our own culture who are unable to see opportunity or are disadvantaged in some other way.

Also, business is a game and people love playing games. Its time to stop pretending we don’t need to win. Its time to come out swinging!