To focus your business efforts and be able to monitor your progress, you should take time to regularly set and review goals.
There are three types of goals that need to be set in a business: long term goals, intermediate goals and immediate goals. When setting your goals, you should plan a time to review your goals and progress. All goals should be interrelated to the main goal of making your business as profitable as possible.
When setting goals, you should start by setting your long term goals and working from there. Long term goals can be somewhat more general than other types of goals and can be adjusted over time. Your long term goals are your destination and that can change over time and depending on the circumstances. Your destination in business can change based on market conditions as well. There can be many different ways to get to your long term goal and all of these are filled with intermediate and short term goals.
Your intermediate goals are ones that are smaller steps to the long term goal and are more measureable and are the goals that you can use to keep your enthusiasm and motivation up when you may be feeling discouraged. These goals are more detailed and should be set with a specific, measurable element so that you can check your progress.
Immediate goals are short term and may arise out of an urgent need to meet an obligation, and emergency, or a client request. Many of these goals are not set until the day they are needed to be met.
A possible example of the different types of goals is as follows – Long term: where you want to be in 5 – 7 years, intermediate: goals to be met in 1 to 6 months, Immediate: goals to be met in 1 to 5 days.
Planning sessions should be made to check progress on these goals on a regular basis and to make any necessary adjustments. You should take time to plan on a weekly basis, review your performance and make adjustments to your work plan so you can better meet your goals. It is good to set these planning periods for either the first thing at the beginning of the week or the last thing at the end of the week. You should make these planning times sacred so that they do not get changed or interrupted. That way they become habit and you do not get distracted into doing something else.
Setting goals, tracking progress and making necessary adjustments is a strong way to increase your chances of success. As the saying goes, “Fail to plan and you plan to fail!”
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Monday, September 10, 2007
You Must Focus Before You Can Get the Full Picture
If you are like me, and most other people trying to start a business online, you have been searching for information on what to do. It seems that all you have to do is think about internet marketing and your inbox will fill with offers, "gurus" making all sorts of claims, people claiming to have the solution for your every problem, and people offering small tidbits of information. The sheer volume that's out there and trying to get into your inbox can be staggering.
This overwhelming flow of information mixed with useless junk quickly exhausts many people to the point that they just give up. Besides, who has time to read all the information and letters that come your way. If you are like most, you have a hard drive full of e-books, free products, audio downloads, and video clips, all meant to be the source of that one tidbit of information that will make your business start to roll. Getting all this information, whether you paid for it or not, is great, but the problem becomes putting it into practice. To sort through all the pdf's and mp3's that you have, and then figure out where to start can be a daunting task to say the least.
That's why most people just give up. But as Winston Churchill said, "It's always too soon to quit."
So what do you do?
First, you should unsubscribe to as many lists as possible, leaving only a couple that you trust and that have been sources for good information in the past. Next, it is important to plan your business. You can take the time and plan it out in extreme detail, into a formal business plan, or you can just do an informal preliminary outline and get started. Either way, you should have an idea of what exactly you plan to do in your business, whether it be selling handmade coffee mugs, or being an affiliate for other businesses and putting ads on your website, you need to have a clear idea of your business direction.
With all the different sources of business information out there, it may seem difficult to focus on one business type. This is true, and you may wish to expand into other areas later, but trying to do it all at once will quickly become a mountain that looks impossible to cross. Break it up into smaller parts, and work on one or two at a time to get them running well. On the internet, once you do something, it can be set up to run automatically and continue to provide revenue while you turn your focus on other endeavors.
Focus your work on one aspect of your business, guiding that area to success and then moving on to another area and focusing on that. That will help move your business forward without seeming impossible.
This overwhelming flow of information mixed with useless junk quickly exhausts many people to the point that they just give up. Besides, who has time to read all the information and letters that come your way. If you are like most, you have a hard drive full of e-books, free products, audio downloads, and video clips, all meant to be the source of that one tidbit of information that will make your business start to roll. Getting all this information, whether you paid for it or not, is great, but the problem becomes putting it into practice. To sort through all the pdf's and mp3's that you have, and then figure out where to start can be a daunting task to say the least.
That's why most people just give up. But as Winston Churchill said, "It's always too soon to quit."
So what do you do?
First, you should unsubscribe to as many lists as possible, leaving only a couple that you trust and that have been sources for good information in the past. Next, it is important to plan your business. You can take the time and plan it out in extreme detail, into a formal business plan, or you can just do an informal preliminary outline and get started. Either way, you should have an idea of what exactly you plan to do in your business, whether it be selling handmade coffee mugs, or being an affiliate for other businesses and putting ads on your website, you need to have a clear idea of your business direction.
With all the different sources of business information out there, it may seem difficult to focus on one business type. This is true, and you may wish to expand into other areas later, but trying to do it all at once will quickly become a mountain that looks impossible to cross. Break it up into smaller parts, and work on one or two at a time to get them running well. On the internet, once you do something, it can be set up to run automatically and continue to provide revenue while you turn your focus on other endeavors.
Focus your work on one aspect of your business, guiding that area to success and then moving on to another area and focusing on that. That will help move your business forward without seeming impossible.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Getting Rich as a Science
With current self-improvement trends, "The Secret" and "The Law Of Attraction" getting so much hype these days, it's good to know that they have many of the same ideas as the classics written in this genre. "The Science of Getting Rich" was written almost 100 years ago by Wallace D. Wattles, but stills holds value in today's world. This book and several written within that same 20 year period hold many of the key concepts being re-emphasized today. The Science of Getting Rich could easily be applied today and still create some incredible results.
In the early 20th century, when Wattles wrote this manuscript, several other leaders of business and prosperity thought also came out with their own books on similar subjects. There is a singular theme throughout several of these books, that you must focus on your one purpose and pursue it completely until you have acheived your success. Mr. Wattles does an excellent job portraying this concept. starting with the idea of a singular Intelligent "Thinking Stuff", the author leads you through the steps of developing faith, and using this universal intelligence to move things towards you to create your riches.
If you are of the belief that wealth is a finite quantity, you should read this book and let the arguement be made to the contrary. Napolean Hill and others have also written on this idea of an unlimited wealth and a universal force of intelligence designed and working to create more always. The explanation here is a bit different, but has the same point, that you can bring into being that which you create in your mind, and constantly focus on.
Mr. Wattles goes further by giving you step by step instructions on how to change your thinking and way of doing things to begin your journey to wealth. His approach is very straightforward and does move the process of getting rich into a science of sorts. The ideas put forth by Mr. Wattles are similar to those in "Think and Grow Rich" and other contemporary books on the subject. Speakers like Tony Robbins and others also use the techniques espoused by Mr. Wattles.
To apply these teachings, it is best to read the entire book once straight through. Then you should go back through it, studying one chapter a day and to continue going through it until the principles found in it are almost second nature. When you can apply his teachings without forcing them, they will begin to work wonders in your life. The biggest thing to remember is to keep faith that what you are learning are proven techniques and merely need to be applied faithfully. You can find "The Science of Getting Rich" several places on the web as well as in many online e-courses, which will help guide you in your study.
In the early 20th century, when Wattles wrote this manuscript, several other leaders of business and prosperity thought also came out with their own books on similar subjects. There is a singular theme throughout several of these books, that you must focus on your one purpose and pursue it completely until you have acheived your success. Mr. Wattles does an excellent job portraying this concept. starting with the idea of a singular Intelligent "Thinking Stuff", the author leads you through the steps of developing faith, and using this universal intelligence to move things towards you to create your riches.
If you are of the belief that wealth is a finite quantity, you should read this book and let the arguement be made to the contrary. Napolean Hill and others have also written on this idea of an unlimited wealth and a universal force of intelligence designed and working to create more always. The explanation here is a bit different, but has the same point, that you can bring into being that which you create in your mind, and constantly focus on.
Mr. Wattles goes further by giving you step by step instructions on how to change your thinking and way of doing things to begin your journey to wealth. His approach is very straightforward and does move the process of getting rich into a science of sorts. The ideas put forth by Mr. Wattles are similar to those in "Think and Grow Rich" and other contemporary books on the subject. Speakers like Tony Robbins and others also use the techniques espoused by Mr. Wattles.
To apply these teachings, it is best to read the entire book once straight through. Then you should go back through it, studying one chapter a day and to continue going through it until the principles found in it are almost second nature. When you can apply his teachings without forcing them, they will begin to work wonders in your life. The biggest thing to remember is to keep faith that what you are learning are proven techniques and merely need to be applied faithfully. You can find "The Science of Getting Rich" several places on the web as well as in many online e-courses, which will help guide you in your study.
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