I sat down with someone today who wanted to know my goals. Specifically she wanted to know the personal ones, but because I run my own business, the professional is personal. Everything is intertwined.

So I actually had to think about my goals. It’s been quite a while, due to various personal disasters, since I’ve had the time to revisit them. Because my personal life has so changed, my professional goals are a little different, too.

Originally my mid term goal was to earning as much as I did at my last corporate job, which was $45,000 per year. The long term goal was to beat that, and to earn at least $45k after taxes.

If you’d asked me a month ago, I would have said my short term goal was to earn enough for the next meal. Mid term would be the meal after that, and long term would be meals for the week.

Now I have a little breathing room, and I can set some realistic goals while still having enough ready cash to feed myself.

Short Term Goals (three months)

• Gain two backbone clients within the next 2 months
• Produce my own marketable work

Medium Term Goals (6-12 months)

• Finish my memoir, pitch it
• Create further marketable work
• Earn a set monthly minimum

Long Term Goals (18-24 months)

• Publish the memoir
• Have 5 backbone clients
• Be clearing $4000/mo (doesn’t seem like a lot, but it is to me right now!)
• Be earning predominantly through my own products

What are your freelance goals? More money? More freedom by XX date? If you’ve not yet made the leap to full-time freelancing, how are you structuring your transitional goals?

Anyway, Naomi wants to give a workshop in the UK – live and in person, which is something she never does – before she heads back to Canada.

It has a typically Naomi-esque name: Fuck Realistic.

And if you live in the UK, she wants YOU to attend.

It will be really small. 6 people? 12 people?

It will be called Fuck Realistic. I don’t even really know what that means but my gut says that’s what I should be giving a seminar about, so that’s what I’m gonna do. Probably something to do with skyrocketing the living shit out of your ittybiz.

So I personally think one of the main things a freelancer can invest in is a good coffee maker. Seriously. You laugh now, but you won’t be laughing if you are stuck with cold French Press or worse yet, instant! Gah, oh the humanity! Freelancers don’t have a lot of time to dilly dally, so we need a coffee maker with a large keep-warm carafe. This is the one my hosts in Kansas had, and I want one for here.

Google Reader. If you aren’t loading your reader up with great small business and freelancer sites like this one, you should be. Knowing what others are doing can help inspire you as well as educate you on trends in freelancing and your niche. Reader is free. Use it.

A voracious reading appetite. Fiction, non-fiction, trade journals, cereal boxes… doesn’t matter. Keeping the words flowing in will keep them flowing out. It’s brain stimulating, whether you read a journal related to your niche or just a good novel.

A website and good hosting. If you have a business – especially a writing business – you need a web presence for it. Build a static page or a blog, or both if you can. Many companies offer good pre-made templates to help the less web-savvy types along along. I use 1&1 for both domain registration and hosting. It’s not expensive and I’ve had almost zero downtime in the five years I’ve been with them. GoDaddy is great for searching and registering domains, but I’ve heard only bad things about their hosting and support, so beware.

And yeah, I do blog consulting and web copywriting if you need help. Just sayin’.

A good chair. I don’t practice what I preach, and am currently sitting on a dining room chair. I have chronic back pain and a sore neck. Don’t be a dork, like me. Get an ergonomic chair that offers adjustable height and lumbar support. If you don’t, then unspeakable things will happen to you. You’ll become a cripple, your eyes will cross, you’ll grow hair on your palms and we’ll lose the war. All because you didn’t spend $90 on a good chair. Tightwad.

A condom for your computer. You don’t casually date riding bareback, and you shouldn’t casually surf without protecting your computer. AVG and Avast are both free virus protection services. Free. Doesn’t get cheaper than that. Carbonite offers unlimited online backup for your business or home PC for less than $50 a year. It backs up all your files and folders for you on a secure web server. They are always running a try it free offer, so there’s no harm in checking them out. I use them, even if I’m not smart enough to have a good chair.

A backbone. You can’t be entertaining neighbors and other local moms just because you work from home. If you run a home business, you have to have the discipline to tell those who just pop by unannounced to take a hike. Thankfully I have been practicing the fine art of misanthropy for many years now, and my friends are well-trained in leaving me the hell alone. Are yours? If not, it’s time to start the training. Begin with subtlety, but be warned: If subtle doesn’t work, you will have to escalate to blunt. Grow a pair and put your livelihood first.

What are some of the things you use that you just can’t live without? Share in the comments.

Anyway, it was a Thursday afternoon around 2 o’clock. The bookstore was full. It wasn’t a deep downtown mall location – I live uptown. The high schools hadn’t let out yet by that hour. And the people in the store weren’t just browsing to stay out of the cold, either. There was a line at the till.

What is driving all these people to spend their scarce dollars on books and magazines?

Hope.

President Obama does not hold the trademark on hope. Biz books on managing finances and starting a home based business are flying off the shelves. Books about investing and recovering your investments are gaining popularity.

Books from the bookstore are expensive, yet people are still buying books en masse. Think about that from an internet perspective… If you are marketing e-books with this same investing and home business information, you are selling them for probably half the price of a book from Indigo or Barnes & Noble, and you are getting more profits on each sale than you would be if you sold your book in a bookstore.

Day after day people are scouring the internet looking for jobs, business ideas and most of all hope. Is your marketing in line with today’s needs?