It's time for some strategy. If you haven't done so already you need to write a vision and mission for your company (or if you haven't revised these in the pas

It's time for some strategy. If you haven't done so already you need to write a vision and mission for your company (or if you haven't revised these in the past ~3 months). I am not talking about just something to post on a website but what you truly believe and want to achieve. While I would caution you not to read too deep into quantifying (ie: don't write we will have X customers or do X revenue) this article is a good start to understand a "true mission". http://www.fastcompany.com/1400930/how-write-mission-statement-isnt-dumb http://www.fastcompany.com/1400930/how-write-mission-stateme... A quick article on vision: http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch04_Whats_the_Big_Idea.php http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch04_Whats_the_Big_Idea.php Once you write these two statements, assess your current business against them. Are you fulfilling what you have set out to do? Even if you answer yes and especially if you answer no; what needs to change to align the business with the mission, what aspects can you improve? Is the business in a position to steadily grow towards achieving your vision? What would you like the business to ultimately become? Define milestones that you can use to guide the business forward. As you are thinking through these statements it is also good to craft a list or statement of your ideal customer(s). Especially when facing competitors you need to know the customers you want. This article by Jason Fried gives good insight on why knowing the customer you want is very valuable. http://www.inc.com/magazine/201206/jason-fried/huge-accounts-make-me-nervous-it-takes-a-village.html http://www.inc.com/magazine/201206/jason-fried/huge-accounts... Now that you have the backbone of your strategy it is time to define goals. Goals should be two parts: hazy and clear. Why do you want a hazy goal? Because things change and you should not allow yourself to be so set on achieving a clear goal of "500 new customers in 2014" that you compromise the what makes you great. Rather, you should set your goal as "Increase the number of customers in 2014 (by 500 -target, not focus-) while maintaining and exceeding the level of service we provide." I'll admit that sounds like the BS mission statements in the FastCo article, but your well defined mission and vision will guide you in creating these actionable goals. This may be better articulated by qualitative with a quantitative measure, but I'm sticking with hazy because it gives your mind more freedom to explore possible goals. The vision, mission and customer statements and your list of goals provide what would be comparable to a requirements specification. It is now your job to use these requirements to identify the steps you need to take to achieve them (similar to system design and writing pseudocode), develop possible solutions for these steps, implement, test and refine.