Wow. It’s been over a year since I’ve posted to this blog. I miss the good old days when everyone was blogging and I used this site constantly in an effort to keep in touch with colleagues. These days Facebook and Instagram seem to have taken over and sadly, people just don’t blog like they used to, in my opinion. (more…)
Welcome to 2016. It’s time to set some good business goals for the year. Here’s mine.
1. Double Down on Amazon
I’ve spent the last year and a half focusing on Amazon. At one point during the year, I wondered if that was a mistake. But more recently, I’ve realized that it’s the smartest thing I could have done as an Internet marketer and entrepreneur. Amazon is where the money is. If anything, I need to push it harder. At the same time, I need to have a healthy amount of diversification so that I’m not too reliant on one source for income.
2. Teach, Learn, and Automate
This was another grand revelation to me in 2015. The more self-examination I did, the more I realized that these are my true strengths. It’s what I do best. I now believe that the best entrepreneurs are not just the ones that manage finances and people well. It is the ones that know how to identify what they are best at and intelligently outsource the rest. For me, these three things are my sweet spot.
Put another way, if you combine points 1 and 2 above, that is where I need to be spending as much time as possible in 2016.
3. Win the War on Procrastination
What good are goals if you don’t look back at them?
Every year, I try to post on the last day of the year my grades on the goals I set on the first of the year with some comments. Here’s how I did compared to what I wanted to do…
1. Blog Every Day = A
I’m giving myself an A on this even though I did not do it all year. I did it the first couple months and it went very well. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do. But after a couple months, I determined that it just is not a good use of my time.
Personally, I still think that writing every day is the best way to improve as a marketer. Yet, I’m working harder at business and entrepreneurship than marketing these days, so I stopped after a couple months.
2. Focus more on Business & Entrepreneurship and Less on Marketing = A-
I definitely did this. I’m trying my best to stay up on all things Internet marketing, with a special focus on Amazon in particular. But I’m more focused than ever on my businesses and doing the best I can with them.
3. Do a Great Job for my Clients = A-
Here’s my business goals for 2015.
(I do this every year. Writing them down helps me stay accountable to them and hopefully in encourages my readers to do something similar.)
1. Blog Every Day
Actually doing this every workday may be impossible. But it is my goal and has been for years. I am convinced that writing is the most important skill to being a good marketer. Regular writing is extremely beneficial to my business and hopefully somewhat beneficial to my business partners, colleagues, clients, and customers. But even more importantly, it improves my writing skills.
My goal is to write a page of content (typically a blog post) every day. I’m using methods I’ve learned from Peter Shallard to help me make real progress on this. (It’s working already!)
2. Focus more on Business & Entrepreneurship and less on Marketing
After a dozen years of learning and practicing Internet marketing, I’m finally realizing I’m pretty good at it. Plus, it’s not changing much these days. SEO is hard and Google is a pain. Social Media is what it is. Email marketing is under-utilized. Nothing new there. (more…)
What good are goals if you don’t look back and see how you did?
To hold myself accountable to my goals for next year, I first am going back to my 2014 goals that I wrote on January 2 and see how I did.
1. Stay Focused, Stay Balanced: A-
Overall, I stayed focused on my personal goals that are more important than my business or financial goals. But I definitely could do better. I still find myself thinking a lot about work when I should not be.
2. Train and Delegate: B+
Overall, people were not waiting on me too much. I did a lot of training, but I don’t ever know if it could be enough. I need to keep a good balance between learning and training others. (more…)
Here are the four pillars to being the best Internet marketer and entrepreneur you can be.
1. Get More Done (time management)
2. Training (the right information from the right people at the right time – see point 1)
3. Networking (with people that can help you) (more…)
My business partner and I are about six months into running our Amazon business and it’s been an absolute blast learning so much about what it takes to find a product, private label it, send it to Amazon, market it, and collect the money from Amazon. (My favorite part is that last one about collecting money.)
We’ve made a lot of progress and learned a lot along the way. But we’ve also put some effort into outsourcing and even laying out the roles and responsibilities. (more…)
As an entrepreneur, I’m always thinking.
If you are a business owner or self-employed, you know the feeling. You can’t help but wonder if you’re using your time wisely. You wonder what direction your business should take. You wonder when you should quit and when you should shift gears.
This year has been a banner year for me. I’ve been owning an e-commerce business and doing Internet marketing since 2003. Yet, 2014 is the one year where I’ve gained incredible clarity as to what direction I should take.
HERE’S AN UPDATE ON MY AMAZON BUSINESS
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