How do you forecast your business growth?
Like when you’re projecting revenue and profit for this year, next year, and 3 years out?
The easy thing to do is calculate a reasonable % increase based on what you’ve done in the past, or what others in your industry are doing.
You can do that. It seems logical and safe.
But you’re playing a small game.
There’s only one place you really need to look that matters.
Your mind.
Your mind is the source of what’s possible because your mind is the source of your thoughts.
Everything that’s ever been created in the world started with a thought.
That means what’s possible is up to you.
It has nothing to do with your past, it doesn’t depend on the market or your customers, or the economy. It’s also not up to your family or friends.
If you haven’t done something before that means right now it exists only in your mind.
So don’t look to your past for evidence to support it.
Don’t say you can’t create a big, bold future because you don’t know how.
You’re already creating the future every day with the thoughts you think.
Besides, no one knows exactly “how” until they do it.
How someone else did something can give you ideas, but their context is different from yours so how they did it will NOT be the exact way you’ll do it.
That means you get to create the future your way.
You figure out how by deciding, doing, evaluating and iterating.
Let the future you choose to create be what shapes you in the present.
Ask yourself what your “future you” would do right now. This future you is the one who’s already reached the forecasts you make today.
If I had listened to my friends and family, I never would have quit my high-paying IT job to start my first business over 2 decades ago.
If I’d let the market dictate what was possible, I wouldn’t have chosen to bootstrap a data analytics company in a male-dominated field with only a statistics undergrad.
If I’d let my past inform what was possible for me, I would never have been able to scale and sell my first business, write a book about it, create a thriving marriage and be in the best shape of my life along the way.
Your mind is the source of what’s possible.
Focus on the future you want to create.
Make your forecasts based on the future you’re living into. Then make them a reality in the present with the actions you take.
