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Did Cross Stitch Country Crafts magazine go out of business? If so when was the last issue made?

It's gone. Better Homes & Gardens bought it but stopped publishing in 2000. You can find old issues on eBay and at www.oldstitch.com

Goal setting is something every good business coach or author will tell you to do. Things won't go the way you want them to go unless you make it clear what you want by way of goals.

But it's easy to treat goal setting with "jump through the hoop" triviality. And trivial goals are energy sinks - they take your energy and enthusiasm and time, but never give them back.

Goals that do help you transform your business (or your life for that matter) are goals you feel passionate about. Unless you feel internally driven to achieve something, chances are you'll just waste time and energy pursuing it and you won't likely achieve it.

When you've scanned your business for its greatest improvement opportunities with the traditional tools like SWOT analysis, stakeholder value analysis and business process analysis, add one more step to ensure you choose goals that pass the passion test.

The following questions can help you to both identify important goals, or test the potential goals you've already identified:

• What have you been tolerating in your business for a long time now, that won't go away by itself?
• What do you secretly wish for in your business, that perhaps you haven't dared to admit yet?
• What's waking you up at 2am in a cold sweat or mild panic?
• If you knew you couldn't fail, what difference would you love to make in or through your business?
• Is there something that consistently keeps holding you back from taking your business to the next level?
• Is there an area of performance in your business you'd be too embarrassed to talk about with a business colleague or friend?

YOUR CHALLENGE:

If you took the challenge in the last issue of Lift The Barr, and chose your 3 most important business results to achieve in 2009, then give them the passion test. If they fail, give some more time to choose results you do feel passionate about. Share them at the Lift The Barr blog. When you make a public commitment, you're more likely to achieve it!

Stacey Barr is a specialist in performance measurement, helping micro and small business owners to move their business results from where they are, to where they want them to be, using powerful, transformational measures. To grab your free copy of Stacey's Special Report "7 Clues to Measure What Matters In Micro & Small Business", visit http://www.staceybarr.com/smallbusiness.