Hard to believe we're already at the end of February! What's even more difficult to fathom is that you should have already made significant progress in hitting your business goals for 2010.

Have you?

Are you well on your way to making those goals a reality?

Today I wanted to share with you a formula I use for myself, my students, business partners & clients.

If you follow it, you will hit those goals … guaranteed.

If you don't make significant changes in your business model right now (with or without this formula), you may be setting yourself up to relive 2009, and for most entrepreneurs, that is not a pleasant thought.

Six Steps To Making 2010 Your Best Year Yet

1. Know your big picture goals. Sounds pretty obvious, right? Yet I know for a fact that nine out of 10 entrepreneurs have no clue what their big picture goals are. Not only have they never been thought of, but they've never been put in writing. Hard to imagine a successful entrepreneur that has zero thought or plan on how they will get there!

2. Do you know what you want your business to look like in five-10 years?

3. What will your business be? What will it stand for in the minds of your buyers?

4. Who (exactly) will be your best clients?

5. How you will benefit your industry?

6. What will make you the best of the best?

7. How you will personally benefit by building a business like this (monetary and non-monetary)?

8. What is your ultimate payoff when you build this business?

9. What will your typical day look like?

10. What will your office look like?

11. What will your revenues be? Your profits?

12. How many clients will you sell to?

13. At what point will you initiate your exit plan?

14. What will you do once you exit your business?

15. What types of investments or toys will you own?

16. What will you do in a typical day? (Again, this may seem obvious, even simple to you … but it is useless for building your business unless you have a pad of paper in front of you making notes along the way. It does take some time. I average three-plus hours to do this initial process.)

17. Reverse engineer your big picture goals. If your big picture goals are five years out, and your annual revenues then are $23 million (as an example), what do you have to do to get there?

18. If you have revenues now of $1.5 million and want to grow to $23 million – what is your plan?

19. Today = $1.5M ($125,000/month or $31,250/wk)

20. One year from now=$3M ($250,000/month or $62,500/wk)

21. Two years from now=$7M ($583,000/month or $145,000/wk)

22. Three Years from now=$13M ($1,083,000/month or $270,000/wk

23. Four years from now=$19M ($1,580,000/month or $395,000/wk)

24. Five years from now=$23M ($1,916,000/month or $479,000/wk)

As you can see, a very aggressive (but realistic) growth plan needs to be put in place. You need to think through the annual or monthly growth and what it means to you.

If you don't go through this process, the numbers are just being made up with no tangibility to them.

This puts dollars to your plan, and helps you see what exactly will need to happen if your big picture goal has any chance of becoming reality.

3. Where are your biggest opportunities right now? Now that you see it in writing and you plan on growing at 200% during the next 12 months, you need to leverage what got you where you are today.

4. Look at each and every sales and marketing tool you use now. Your brochures, your business cards, your websites, your phone scripts, your e-mails, your direct mail, your word-of-mouth marketing, etc.

5. Lay them out on paper and make sure you get them all. Your lead generation tools. Your conversion tools. Your retention tools.

6. Analyze how each of them is doing, and has done. Were some of them blockbuster winners two years ago … but haven't been looked at since? Are some of them still knocking it out of the park now?

7. Take a very analytical look at each of your existing tools you have. Think through how you can accelerate the response you are getting with each of them, without additional investment. It may be better copy you need. Or it may be a better guarantee or risk reversal plan in place.

8. Think through each customer touch point you have now. Are you maximizing them properly. Things as simple as invoices can become a factor in your growth. If you mail out invoices once a month, and aren't including additional marketing pieces, the simple addition of that could easily add significant numbers to your growth.

9. Put a weekly schedule together that ensures each and every marketing and sales piece is revamped and tested to improve its results.

10. Some of them are going to emerge as winning pieces that add substantial value to your entire business model and growth.

11. Start replacing a sales mindset with an informing or educating mindset. Consumers today demand more. They don't want to be sold more "stuff." They already have enough. They want you to go out of your way to educate them. Show them that you have far more to offer as you are the expert in this industry and being of assistance to them is far more important to you than getting the sale.

Offer them books you have written, in place of a business card. Leverage information products to show them why you are the only logical choice in a very cluttered marketplace.

Be the one they can go to for advice. They will reward you with their loyalty and sales.

5. The winners that you develop have to be leveraged properly. If you find one of your lead generation ads continues to pull exceptional numbers, then you need to increase the frequency and coverage of that ad. Find new media that you can run it in (while still running it in your proven media).

6. If you are running two proven ads a month now, double it to four, eight, even 12 different places.

7. If you are running your ad once a month, start running it every week. This is where significant growth happens. It often surprises entrepreneurs how fast they can start growing their sales with one single ad that is simultaneously run in four new places, twice as often as it used to be.

8. If you have successfully used joint ventures in the past, use the same scripts and sales letters that worked before, but find three times as many partners to work with.

9. If you successfully are converting 15% of your leads into buyers in the first month with a three-step follow-up sequence – double the steps and measure the difference it makes.

10. Note: during the rapid expansion stage like this, you need to put some serious effort into developing a cash reserve to support your growth and give you the breathing room you will need as the growth continues.

11. Create two brand new strategies to help you achieve the numbers you set in step two above: A new lead generation strategy and a new back end monetization strategy. They both need to be implemented immediately.

12. An effective lead generation strategy should be more concerned with getting the maximum numbers of clients in your system … even if it means you break even or lose money on the initial sale.

13. You already know that the big dollars are in the back-end sales you make, or re-orders – so make sure you have the most possible clients coming in the front so they can take advantage of your back-end bundles.

14. What can you offer that would steal a significant number of your competitors' clients? Maybe they charge for a front-end product that you decide to start giving away, knowing full well that the majority of your new buyers will buy again, at higher price points and frequency especially with the right program/system.

People like you and I are critical for the financial future of the world economies. Entrepreneurs with a dream and passion to tackle the business world are the ones that add jobs, encourage innovation, and keep the money flowing.

When we put our work ethic into learning how to build a small business into a big business, things happen that can change the lives of generations to come.

The steps above will help you make 2010 your best yet. But it means you have to think it through and put a proven plan of attack in place.

As much as entrepreneurs like to "wing it," the real serious growth comes when you have a big dream, then reverse-engineer it so that it has a real chance of becoming reality.

Please invest a few hours over the next few days on this.

February is almost gone … and you need a step-by-step plan in place over the next 10 months.

The difference it can make is immense … but you have to actually learn to do the right actions to see the results.