Get out of your comfort zone!

Comfort zones are insidious. They keep us doing the same old things, the way weโ€™ve always done them. After all, when was the last time you thought about taking your business to new and heady heights, but didnโ€™t actually get any further?

Donโ€™t worry, you are not alone.

There areย plenty of business owners out there who let their brains stand in the way of fundamental changes in their business.

When we consider dramatic change, weย either think that we canโ€™t do it or claim we donโ€™t know how to do it.

Sound familiar?

If you want to do more than grow incrementally then you need to practise some radical thinking.

Itโ€™s pretty easy to set a goal of selling 10% more or gettingย five more customers. This is what I call an incremental target, meaning ‘just a little bit more than last time’. This is better than not having any targets, but it does tend to leave you well inside your comfort zone.

Letโ€™s talk insteadย about radical targets.

To achieve a radical target implies completely altering the way things are done and introducing a new paradigm into the business. To set a radical target you need to make a leap of faith and suspend the part of your brain that tells you thatย you donโ€™t know how to achieve it.

Setting radical targets that you donโ€™t know how to meet can result in creative and out of the box solutions. Itโ€™s unlikely that youโ€™ll achieve these without major changes to the way the business is run. And thatโ€™s the whole point. This ongoing search for innovation and different approaches can keep the business fresh and a step ahead of your competitors.

Want more articles like this? Check out theย setting business goalsย section.

Hereโ€™s some examples of radical targets to inspire you:

  • Double the net profit of the business within 12 months;
  • Become internationally known as a specialist in your field;
  • Shift the business model from 100% face-to-face to 80% web enabled;
  • Create a product set that generates enough passive income to sustain you and is completely automated and online.

Now that youโ€™ve set your radical targets you can start imagining how to make them happen.

This will force you to totally rethink aspects of how your provide your product or service.

Start with an open mind. Just because youโ€™re not sure how to achieve it doesnโ€™t mean it canโ€™t be done. If you even get half way to your radical targets, you will be a much further ahead than if you had never set them.

Expand your world, get out of your comfort zone and aim to set at leastย two radical objectives in your business plan.

If radical thinking has helped you and your business, tell us via the comments.