>Phil what kind of goals did you all achieve? I'm just
>curious.
We have had the same goals since we entered the business. They are (1) increase our income, (2) simplify our lives, (3) spend more time together, (4) share a business project, and (5) see the country. All have been achieved each year we have been in the business (entered August, 2003).
These goals were set with our past careers in mind, which makes sense since we set the goals when we were still in those past careers. Now that we are well-settled in this business, goals 2-5 are pretty much taking care of themselves. Increasing our income was goal 1 in the beginning and continued to be through 2007.
Above, you mentioned setting new goals for 2008. We are in the process of doing that now, as we review our year-end numbers and year-ahead plans. I cannot tell you today what our 2008 goals are because I do not know myself.
With our truck to be soon paid for (two to three months until it is fully paid off), 2008 will be a different kind of year for us. We are thinking about a proper, away-from-the-truck vacation, something we have not given ourselves since we got into the business.
Since we don't make money if we don't haul freight, vacation goals and revenue goals conflict. Increased industry involvement that would take us off the road also conflicts (truck shows, conferences, etc.). Those are the kinds of trade-offs we are weighing now.
While the above goals do not address the need to retire, we did take certain actions in 2007 with retirement in mind. Retirement is not a goal for us. It is something we will be forced to do when our health deteriorates to the point where we can no longer haul freight and/or live on the road. Some of the money we made in 2007 was invested with that in mind. We may set some specific retirement-savings goals for 2008. We'll see.
Let me mention two things. First, setting goals has been very helpful to our business success. Doing so helped us know if we were on track or not and what changes needed to be made. Taking the entire month of December off would seem not to support goal 1. But goal 1 also told us we made it by November 30. That gave us the freedom to take December off without feeling guilty about not working.
Second, our goals are exactly that, our goals. To highlight the fact that individual goals are unique to individual expediters (at least for the expeiters that have goals), I started a thread called "How Do We Expedite? Let Us Count The Ways." See:
http://www.expeditersonline.com/dcforum/DCForumID1/6474.html
While I have often advised expediters to set goals, I have never said what one's goals should be...except that business profitability should be one of them. Without profits, an expediting business will not be around long enough to help achieve other goals.
