As mentioned in the previous post, Geoff and I took at short trip to Asheville, North Carolina on January 1st and 2nd to pray, play and plan (you like that?!  ha!  🙂 ).  Instead of just holing up in one coffee shop all day, we decided to have some fun and take ourselves on a “Coffee Crawl” through downtown and West Asheville.  In our two days, we made it to 8 spots total; on our second day of our crawl, we paid visit to the following:

1. Hole Doughnuts and Coffee

2. Battlecat Coffee Bar

3. Odd’s Cafe

4. High Five Coffee Bar

5. Battery Park Book Exchange

Here are a few images from our crawl….

If you missed part one of our 2015 goal setting process (part one was focused on our family/personal goals), you can view that HERE.

And now….the scary part.  This is the part that I candidly share our business goals….our big business dreams for the year.  Guys, sometimes it is really hard to be vulnerable.  Now is one of those times!

To guide ourselves through the process of goal setting for our business for 2015, we utilized Lara Casey’s powersheets.  Guys, if you like structure and inspiration and process and keeping on track to establish and complete meaningful and purposeful goals…you really might want to consider ordering a set of these sheets.  They were so very helpful to Geoff and I.  They are sold out until March, so you should consider signing up for Lara’s newsletter so you can be advised on when more are available.

I love that one of the title pages has this well known and wonderful quote:

“A year from now, you will wish you had started today.” – Karen Lamb

Sadly, I feel like I have let many, many years go by having wished I would have done something….really done something…about the the things I have wanted to do with this business.  The changes I have wanted to make.  The dreams I have wanted to chase.  And yet, I have let the awfulness of insecurity, fear of failure and judgement and doubt swallow me whole.  How sad is that.  In some very real ways, I have wasted this precious gift of a life given to me by God.  Y’all, we are dying.  Every year…every day…every minute that goes by is one less that we’ll get to do something great with in this life.  I’ll never get this time back.

Enough! 2015 is the year that I say “no” (or “NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNO!” as my two year old would put it) to all of those things that held me back from really going for it.  And for me, the first step in going for it is putting my fears aside to really share what is in my heart for what it is that I would like to make happen this year for this business.

In each of the 8 spots we spent time through our Asheville coffee crawl, we went through a different activity (most used activities were prompted by Powersheets).  A few activities we did through the lens of our business were:

+ Brainstorming our “Big Ideas” (this prompted some GREAT discussion on not only what we really wanted to do this year, but the future of our business…as in, 5, 10, 15 years into the future! We also did this activity for our family life, but for this post, I’m going to stick with business)

+ What Has Worked In The Past Year / What Has Not Been Working (really helpful identify things to start, stop and continue in the coming year…which is another helpful exercise that we have done in the past)

+ Things That I’m “Saying No” to and Things That I’m “Saying Yes” to in 2015 (examples – I’m saying “no” to playing it safe and “yes” to taking risks; “no” to building my kingdom and “yes” to building God’s kingdom; “no” to distracted work days and “yes” to focused/structured work days)

Eventually, it was time to bring everything we had discussed together and formulate our goals.  We ended up with 10 goals that we feel are a good balance of being realistic and scaring the pants off of us.

Goal #1 – Bring our client experience to a new level of excellence.

Goal #2 – Developing a 5 / 10 year plan for our business.

Goal #3 – Plan enjoyable and “just plain fun” experiences for us and those that interact with our business.

Goal #4 – Create space to consistently and intentionally work ON the business instead of only IN the business.

Goal #5 – Create teaching/mentoring opportunities to encourage and develop others in business, family and life in general.

Goal #6 – Increase our level of generosity by doubling the amount we gave in 2014.

Goal #7 – Grow in my craft as a photographer.

Goal #8 – Deepen the existing and develop new relationships that God has placed in my life.

Goal #9 – Permeate every aspect of our business with our core purpose.

Goal #10 – Refresh our current brand to better align with who we are and the direction our business is headed.

Geoff and I feel really great about where we landed, but the real work began when we started making an action plan for each of these.  Since none of these goals are measurable, it was necessary to break each goal down with a set of mini-goals (which really aren’t so mini)/an action plan.  For example:

Goal #1 – Bring our client experience to a new level of excellence.

Action Item A) Record our current experience 

Action Item B) Solicit feedback from past clients 

Action Item C) Determine priorities for improvement

Action Item D) Make schedule of to-do’s with due dates

Action Item E) Write our client experience values statement

 

Yes.  A million times, yes.  This quote is one of my all time favorite Lara quotes.  So simple, so gentle, yet so motivating.  Exactly the motivation I need in 2015.

If you have blogged your 2015 goals, I would MORE than love to see.  Please include a link to your post in the comments.  And if you haven’t put your goals out there for the world to see, I would encourage you to go for it…even if it is scary.  Throw whatever fears you have behind you and just go for it, friends.  Cliche as it might be, life is just too short to be held back by insecurity, fear of judgement or whatever.  Let’s make some great things happen this year!