Changes to Business in a New Decade

With every new decade we reach a logical milestone to mark a new era. Often, we refer to decades when we are looking back through history. The 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, etc. TV series are made about decades and what happened during those 10-year periods. So, what will your business look like during the 20s?

We are 20 years removed from the supposedly-fatal Y2K bug that never happened. Sometime I can’t believe how fast these last 20 years have flown by! What an exciting 20-year period in American history. The technological improvements have been incredible.

My question to you is this, what will you build in the next 10 years?  What are you going to do differently to accomplish your goal?

Too often people set New Years resolutions that ultimately fail before Valentines Day. The reason being that most fail to build a disciplined-process focused around change. Setting goals requires you to make changes. There is really nothing more to it than that. If you just try to extract more from what you already do, it won’t work.

Let’s say your goal is to grow your sales to $3 Million per year over the next 10 years. Currently you are doing about $50k annually. That is a large disparity that you will have to overcome. That means going from $4,166 per month in sales to $250,000. To accomplish this goal, you must completely change everything about your business. Processes, accounting, back end systems, employees, management, order taking, sales, operations. Saying that you want to accomplish $3 Million in sales sounds great, but getting there is a whole other process. Anyone who has grown a business to that level and beyond will tell you, it is a whole new world.  There will be problems that occur that you never even took into consideration, like cash flow shortages, hiring issues, benefits, employee retention, and even problems in logistics. Things just don’t scale with simple multiplication. 

Changing yourself is the first step in accomplishing whatever goals that you have set for the next decade. You have to put in the work to change your process. The goal must be bigger than what you think is possible. It all starts with discipline and processes. It’s getting up everyday ready for the challenge, and putting in the work needed to succeed. You won’t lose weight by sitting on the couch. And you will never accomplish a goal by wishing.