Wouldn’t it be great to wake up, open your email, and find out that you:

• Won one of the American Made Awards?
• Will be featured in Vogue?
• Got the gig to work with your dream client?
• Be speaking at Alt Summit?
• Got the “big break” you’ve been dreaming about?

Every creative business should have a list of three to five big goals that they are working towards. These goals will vary depending on the type of creative business you run and the stage that your business is at. Your goal might be winning an award, getting a speaking engagement, working with a dream client, or obtaining press to feature your product.

These goals should not be pipe dreams, but something that can realistically be accomplished if you buckle down and make steady progress each day for the next 6-9-12 months. I like to call these “stretch” goals.

Stretch goals are doable but only if you step outside of your comfort zone and grow, even if it’s painful or messy.

(huge h/t to Todd Henry’s book Die Empty for the stretch goal name and concept.)

Before you finish the rest of the post, take 5 minutes and a Post-It Note and write down your 3-5 stretch goals. Then stick the Post-It in a place that you will see each day. Refer to this Post-It when you are plotting out your daily/weekly to-do lists so that you can prioritize making steady progress on these goals.

Accomplishing your stretch goals

When you are determining the steps that must be accomplished to reach your stretch goals, you should run down the list of “departments” within your business and see what changes need to be made to support accomplishing this goal. (Yes, even sole proprietors should think of their business as having departments!)

Say your stretch goal is to be one of next year’s American Made Award winners. There are several aspects of your business you might need to change in order to make this happen.

• The marketing department might need to focus on growing your social media presence and hiring a web designer to update your website.
• The sales department might need to focus on finding more stockists.
• The production department might need to find a production assistant so that you can increase your production.
• The legal department might focus on making sure you have the right contracts and business structures in place to take advantage of opportunities and protect the long-term future of the business.

While I know that many of you would rather pretend you don’t have a legal department, you do. And putting on your legal hat and identifying areas of improvement within this department is critical for reaching your stretch goals. The legal department of your business helps assure structures are in place so that you can: get paid, protect yourself and your loved ones, take advantage of opportunities when they land in your lap, and grow and scale your business.

How you can easily apply this today

• Write down your stretch goals and put them somewhere you can see them everyday.
• Take the very next step for one of your stretch goals, right now.

In the comments below, let us know what one of your stretch goals is for your business and the one action you are taking today to make progress on that goal.