46 and 47 » Setting Goals

Using Visual Aids As Motivation For Reaching Your Internet Business Goals

47 — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 01:57:43 +0000

How would you like to find more motivation for working on your internet business goals (or your personal goals for that matter)?

One of my favorite stories from Work Less & Play More talks about how the author, Steven Catlin, motivated himself at work. He taped giant pictures of money, the amount he earned after taxes, up in his office. He worked at a terrible job and was holding on just long enough to finish saving money and paying off debts. The huge pictures of money helped him focus on that goal. Now, if you hate running your internet business that much then you’re in serious trouble. But I still like the idea of making your goals crystal clear and in your face.

One of my personal goals, which is most of the reason for our business goals, did a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on me. We want to build up our internet income so we’re able to do lots of extended world traveling. Really a lot of budget travel so I guess you could call it backpacking. Even if we don’t earn enough to quit our day jobs for good, it should still help our trips last longer.

Anyway, I regularly take breaks to look through our copy of Lonely Planet’s Europe On A Shoestring, check airfare, read hostel reviews, etc. That dangling travel carrot used to motivate me but the first couple of months this year I really struggled getting enough work done because of the travel bug. Instead of researching niches and building up our websites, I looked at backpacks and other gear. Yeah, I even started calling it gear. Until a few months ago I didn’t even know people called it that.

The point is, between my day job kicking back into overdrive, for weeks I only had 1 to 2 hours to work on our websites before bed, and wasting the little bit of free time I had surfing travel websites, we didn’t make enough progress toward meeting the business goals. I tried embracing the travel itch again and using it as fuel at first. Failed miserably. I tinkered around and tinkered around and then accidentally found one thing that helped a lot.

An unopened Eagle Creek silk money belt sits right in front of my monitor. I originally bought it as part of our super slow prepping for an overseas trip next year. It stayed on the desk because I couldn’t decide between it and the Eagle Creek deluxe money belt. I kept it there as a reminder to possibly exchange it (either one should protect a passport, cash, and other documents just fine but I couldn’t decide which material would be best). Keeping it on the desk had an interesting side effect though. Every day I see it sitting there staring at me saying “increase your profits and take me to Munich!” I’m not kidding. It really says that I swear! I’ll start wasting time, glance down, it starts talking about ROI and gaining subscribers, and back to work I go.

Once I realized what was happening, I remembered a lot of things I’d read about using visual aids for your goals. Some people make dream boards or dream books or vision boards or whatever. I’m such a visual person that it’s amazing I forgot about this little trick.

We’re going to Mexico soon as a baby, baby trial run (backpacks, money belts, and all) for our bigger adventures next year. When we get back I’m taping a picture of us on the beach to the monitor too. I can already tell the picture and the money belt will have some crazy conversations. Maybe the picture will teach the moneybelt Spanish?

I’m a big fan of setting personal and business goals. I’d written down my goals, which I think is a critical step, but doing this too helped tons. So what are your goals? Can you find a small item or a picture to represent them?

47
Needs to stop reading travel gear reviews.

Making Changes To Our Business Goal Setting Process

47 — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:21:05 +0000

We changed our business goal setting process at the beginning of the year and I’m happy to report that it’s working well. Both of us get more done now so it did help our productivity and motivation a lot. Not everything has been sunshine and candy canes for these last couple of months though. I’m experimenting with a few more changes because I know we can do even better.

First, the list of tasks keeps growing and growing and growing until it’s overwhelming just looking at it. The bigger that list gets, the less I want to work on anything in it. So for this month I’m limiting it to the 4 absolute most important things we need to finish. Actually, it’s really the 4 most important groups of things. Doing that should, hopefully, help us stay even more focused on what’s important too. That ties in nicely with the 80/20 principle which is one of our tactics.

Second, our list of tasks might need more dates. I’ve noticed that I tend to push things out to the end of the week, because that’s when I do the most work, and the end of the month. That means I cram everything into the last two weekends and that’s bad news. Most of that behavior comes from the time required at my day job and the mental exhaustion after each workday. It still needs a solution though. One idea I had was making a 5 or 6 day schedule where everyday I work a little bit on something for one of the 4 groups of tasks. I might still try that in the future but, well, I really don’t like schedules. The freedom to mix things up or blow off a day more naturally fits how I work best when left on my own. I’m just adding end dates to a few things to see how that goes for now.

Since those are productivity related problems, I searched around and found a nice article called 15 Steps to a More Productive Workday that’s geared toward website designers and freelancers. I know there are other systems but I’m trying to keep things as simple and uncluttered as possible. The last thing I want is to get too bogged down in the process and lose the fun of working on my own.

What system do you use to set goals for your internet business and manage tasks?

47
Never gets anything done when the to-do list gets too big.

Revamped Our Business Goal Setting Process

Starting The Right Small Internet Business For You – Part 1

47 — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 04:46:40 +0000

Creating the right small internet business for you is a huge determining factor in your chances of success. The wrong person could run a great business into the ground. The right person could turn a mediocre business into a superstar. It’s not any different just because your business only exists on the internet. Since we started, I’ve seen four things come up again and again with us and they’re all related to finding the right fit.

Business Goals

You’ll make thousands of tiny decisions and several large decisions when you’re calling the shots. Your business goals govern which path you follow. For us, the main goal, at the root of everything else, is freedom. We want a portable business to help feed our travel bug and to have more control over our time. How does that factor into decision making?

We know we can’t be tied to a computer all the time. So taking on a project that requires constant interaction through email, forums, etc just won’t work. The same goes for projects that requires multiple updates per day. It might not sound like a big deal but that plays a role in our decisions on a fairly regular basis.

Avoid The Wrong Small Business Opportunity

For example, a few months ago I considered buying an article directory. It had an express option where an author paid a fee so their article was approved or rejected within 6 hours. This sounds like a great idea to me and it was a nice site. It’s just completely wrong for us. Can you imagine how backed up the article queue would get as we’re flying from the U.S. to say Indonesia? Or how long it would take to run that site when you’re just working from internet cafes in Phuket?

I think we’d have to turn off that feature (or outsource the express approval). Then the site would lose one of its unique selling points and become just another general article directory. We would also lose (or reduce) a great revenue stream. I had to pass for those reasons.

I’ll write some about the other three things a little later. I’d love for you to share examples from your internet business like this too.

47
Fighting the urge to ignore our goals for a buck.

Revamped Our Business Goal Setting Process

47 — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 23:53:14 +0000

We did a poor job of achieving our goals last year so I completely revamped our business goal setting process. So far, it’s working really well so I thought I would share it.

Business Goal Setting Process

Focus on what’s most important – There are fewer goals now (only three) and they’re much simpler (amount of net profit for the year, number of unique visitors per day, number of opt-in email subscribers). These are still very specific, measurable, and have deadlines which is critical. There’s no way of knowing if you’ve met your goals if you can’t measure progress after all.
Don’t fail to plan – I added a plan (a still evolving plan) to go along with those goals. This plan focused on the specific strategies, then the specific tactics, and then the specific tasks needed to achieve our goals. It should change slightly from month to month as tasks are completed successfully, new opportunities arise, etc. All of the basics are there though.
Have a clear reason for doing everything – Everything in the plan was linked together. So completing a particular task helps complete its parent tactic. Completing a particular tactic helps complete its parent strategy. Executing on a particular strategy helps meet its parent goal.
Stay grounded in reality – All of this was reviewed from the bottom up to make sure it was realistic. It’s still going to be difficult to achieve these goals but they’re actually less aggressive than I’d originally planned. The reason is that there was no way the original plan would work. Rather than set us up for failure, I’m being honest with myself and trying to set us up for success.
Regularly measure results – One of the tasks is to measure progress monthly. This has a specific criteria for a passing and failing grade also. A simple checklist will tell us if we’re on target for the year or need to step it up.

A Small Example Plan

Your plan shouldn’t be so specific that you spend all of your time managing it. It shouldn’t be so general that you can’t measure anything either. You could get a little more or a little less specific but I think the end result should look like a fuller version of the following.

Goal – $X of net profit for the year.
Strategy – Expand email marketing efforts to increase net profit by Y%.
Tactic – Increase the size of the opt-in email list for site Z by W to reach Y% more customers.
Task – Offer a free how-to guide on site Z for the first W people who opt-in.

Obviously, nothing is ever as simple as that (and it’s not like your competitors twiddling their thumbs) but hopefully you get the idea. You’re probably already headed in the right direction and know what you need to do. This just adds more focus so you, hopefully, waste less time.

Get To Work

It’s going to be a lot of work meeting our goals but now that’s all it is. There isn’t a lot of mystery in what we need to do. It’s just work. I feel pretty confident that, if we do the work, we’ll succeed.

Everyone is different but this process is helping me out a lot. Let us know if it helps you too (or if you’ve found something better).

47
Meeting our small internet business goals this month.

Struggling To Set Business Goals For 2008

47 — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:38:01 +0000

It seems like every blogger and their dog posted their goals for 2008. Except us. We thought it would make more sense to wait until no one cared about New Year’s resolutions before sharing ours. Just kidding, our dog blogged about his goals already

The real reason is that I am really, REALLY struggling with goal setting for 2008. It is not so much a matter of not knowing what I want to accomplish because I do. My goals are measurable, written, and have commitment dates. But there are two huge problems (to me at least) lurking in the background.

Where Do I Aim?

Unless they are trying to sell you something, people who have been in this game for a while consistently talk about five things:

Most people do not make it as entrepreneurs because they never get started in the first place.
They worked incredibly hard for years, even decades, to become successful.
Many of them fell flat on their faces several times but kept picking themselves up and trying again.
Almost no one makes more that just a little extra spending money.
You need to love what you do.

A few blogs I read regularly have written about these types of things in the last few months like How I Built A Six Figure Internet Income and A Reality Check about Blogging for Money. It is obvious from reading those that it’s tough to beat the odds. So while one of my real goals might be to build a portable, sustainable, online income, it would just be silly to think I can do it right away.

At the same time, setting the bar too low is not healthy either. Since when does anyone care about reaching a goal that is super easy? The more I read and listen to people like marketing extraordinaire Seth Godin, the more I realize that most of us aren’t going after any revolutionary ideas. What kinds of wonderful things are hiding inside of us that we don’t even try to release?

How Do I Get There?

A lot of entrepreneurs tend to fly by the seat of their pants. They have a million ideas swimming around in their heads and can’t focus on any of them for too long before “Boom!” It’s off to the races with the next one. Well, maybe it’s just that I’m a left-brain person but I can’t function that way anymore. I need a better plan than that and some rigor.

I firmly believe that our strategy is sound but our tactics need work in order to take the next step. A lot of work. That’s where having a clearer plan will help.

But I don’t want to stifle my budding creativity either. It’s so cheap to try out new ideas on the internet right now that it’s foolish not to throw a few darts at the wall to see what sticks. There has to be some sort of balance but it eludes me at the moment.