elephantjournal.com: in 2012, our sole aim is to crush the competition.

After a good, long, hard, fun 10 years—first as a magazine, now as a web site, we’ve rallied from zero readers online to a peak of 1.3 million/month (a real number: Google Analytics). We’re now bigger than 90% of the sites in the world. And we’re far smaller than the 10%, like Huffington Post, that are far, far, far, far, far, far bigger.

We’ve reached 1.3 million readers a month (that’s a Google Analytics number)–and typically grow 0-30% a month.

Most of our “competitors,” while wonderful and stronger than elephant in various ways, are lucky to have a 10th of that connection with yoga-green-mindfulness readers. We passed yogajournal.com last year (though we’ve both passed one another on several occasions, since, and including their magazine and conferences, they’re far, far, far, far, far bigger). This year, we’re aiming for treehugger.com level traction. Next year, Huffington Post. We’ve worked hard and long to do what we do, just celebrated our 10th anniversary.

Our goal is to grow, but only in the sense of reaching beyond our core or choir and to those who don’t already agree with us. Respectful, constructive dialogue is vital to society—and, over the last 10 years, it’s a muscle that’s atrophied, both in the halls of Congress, and online.

That said, our era is not, as those before us, merely about competition—though healthy, fun, spirited competition (as on last night’s sand volleyball court) is always welcome—and our critics help to improve us, just as our loved ones’ feedback makes us better human beings on an individual level.

This era is about (as many have said before me) radical cooperation or collaboration. When challenges mount, it’s time to team up. And, more importantly, this era’s about service. It’s time to find ways to partner to be of genuine benefit to others and our world, and to have fun doing so along the way.

In the next year, we’ll find a way to pay our loyal, consistent, best writers. We’ll find a way to “reinvent journalism in a new media context.” Journalism, which we don’t yet often do, is essential to democracy—the fourth estate is the watchdog of both our government, and our corporations.

elephant’s first 10 years were about entrepreneurship, success, hard lessons, and perseverance. We’ve had a small effect, now, for a long time. Now, however, our garden is established. It’s time to let the sun shine in. It’s time to water, weed, cultivate, and continue to get our hands dirty.

It’s time to grow.