Every year I set public goals for my blog and business so that you can see exactly what I’m working toward. Last year, I set my 2008 goals. How did I do?
I had four main goals:
- Launch Inspiring Innovators. I did not achieve this, primarily because I changed its business model in November. Inspiring Innovators will launch this month — more details on that coming this week!
- New car. Yes! I bought a 2008 Mazda MX-5 hardtop in January, 2008. So far, my new LIL ZOOM has treated me quite well. I’m still extremely pleased with both Mazdas I’ve owned. (I donated my old 1999 Miata to a local charity in early 2008.)
- Moving. This was a “maybe” from the start. We didn’t move, but we plan to do so in 2009 — probably in the June timeframe — and it looks like we will be heading to San Diego. I’m excited for a change — August would be my 10-year anniversary in the Bay Area, and although I enjoy the many friends I have here, I’m also ready for something new.
- Start a new (offline) business. The business I wanted to start was office space for small startup companies — getting a big office and then subletting it to startups, complete with great working space and good coffee!
I looked into this pretty seriously, but ultimately decided the timing wasn’t right and the demand wasn’t there. Real estate was too costly and there wasn’t enough profit to make it worthwhile. This may change as the economy tanks, and there may be another opportunity for this type of company in the future. I’m open to the possibilities and not disappointed that it didn’t work out in 2008.
- $10,000/month in writing income. This is the hardest one, since I talked about this a LOT and it generated a lot of interest. I didn’t make this goal. My highest income was in September, when I earned $1,199.21.
I don’t feel 2008 was unproductive in this regard, but there were a few good reasons I didn’t hit the goal:
- There was a lot more learning to do than I had originally accounted for. I studied affiliate programs, membership sites, went to 2 Internet marketing seminars, and absorbed hundreds of hours of books, audio, and videos. Invariably, I decided affiliate marketing was great on a small scale, but to build quickly to $10K I would need to create my own products.
I started with the interviews, and sold 2 of them, giving myself an opportunity to write my first sales copy (fun!) and sell using a membership software backend (even though it was a one-time purchase.)
- I didn’t have a clear focus on how to make the money. It took me far longer than expected to develop a clear plan, and when I finally did — in December — I decided to launch Inspiring Innovators in January instead. This is probably the biggest problem for most who want to make money online. Many spend their time trying every new trick that comes out (SEO! List building! Affiliate marketing!), but without that focus, it’s hard to move forward.
- A purely monetary goal didn’t excite me. Even though I broke it down into manageable chunks, there just wasn’t any emotion behind it that got me motivated to work.
- There was a lot more learning to do than I had originally accounted for. I studied affiliate programs, membership sites, went to 2 Internet marketing seminars, and absorbed hundreds of hours of books, audio, and videos. Invariably, I decided affiliate marketing was great on a small scale, but to build quickly to $10K I would need to create my own products.
2009 Goals
Now that I have a clear focus, I feel that $10,000 a month and then some is easily achievable for 2009. Since I’ve learned that purely monetary goals don’t motivate me, though, I’ve decided to reframe my goals for 2009. I’ve picked just three goals that will be meaningful for my future. Here they are:
- 350 paying customers for Inspiring Innovators by the end of 2009.
- Grow erica.biz to 4000 subscribers.
- Complete our move to San Diego.
January 30-Day Trial
In addition, I have decided to start a new 30-day trial for January.
One of the biggest failings of this blog, as I see it, is my inability to write consistently. I notice that my traffic patterns fall off after 2-3 days, suggesting that you (my readers) would prefer to see me post 2-3 times a week. However, I’m lucky to stick to my predefined schedule of once a week, and my posts can be erratic. I feel this has cost me subscribers, and it’s also bothered me personally.
Therefore, I decided to set a goal to simply write for 30 minutes every day in January, no matter what. I also decided I wouldn’t necessarily force myself to write a blog post — if I felt my time would be better utilized doing a mind map, writing in a personal journal, or writing a how-to for an interview, I would do that instead. So long as I was creating instead of consuming information, I would count it.
My goal is to get over whatever it is that’s preventing me from writing every day. So far, it’s been working. Even though I’ve been sick and running a fever the past two days, I still hauled myself out of bed and wrote for half an hour. The results so far? A ton of clarity on Inspiring Innovators, and this post, which has taken me 2 days to write. So far, this is working out great! I’ll report back at the end of January.
The #themeword meme
Last year I set a “theme word” for the year in my 2008 goals post: “connect”. In my post, I defined a theme word as one word that describes what you want out of the next year. What I didn’t expect was that, due to the influence of Tara Hunt and Laura Fitton (among many others!), that the “theme word” meme would take off on Twitter. This year, hundreds of Twitter users Tweeted their #themeword! That’s awesome, and I’m glad that this has helped so many people.
If you want to set a theme word for 2009, just Tweet what it is and put the tag #themeword into your Tweet so it’s searchable.
My theme word for 2009 is growth. 2009 will be the birth and growth of Inspiring Innovators, and I have no doubt that it will be a huge personal growth year for me as well. I’ll also be helping other entrepreneurs grow their businesses through this blog and Inspiring Innovators!
Even though I didn’t meet most of my original goals for 2008, I feel that what I learned in 2008 laid the foundation for huge amounts of future success — and opened the door for me to achieve some really BIG goals in the future. Stay tuned, and don’t forget to subscribe to see if I can carry out my 2009 goals!
Bookmark in Del.icio.us
Technorati
Digg This!
Review on StumbleUpon
January 4th, 2009 at 10:27 am
Small startup meeting space: the planets aren’t quite aligned for success in this venture if you want to bootstrap. I recall another space opened in SF a couple of months ago, I don’t recall the name. From the “feature list” it looked to me like they had some serious backing, 5 figure.
I’m still interested in doing this myself, but not until CRE in SF gets thoroughly beaten with the clue stick.
January 4th, 2009 at 11:28 am
Hi Dave,
Totally agreed in all respects. The venture you are thinking of might be Sandbox Suites (http://www.sandboxsuites.com/) — I have visited their space, talked to them, and was considering doing something similar on a larger scale on the Peninsula.
I always felt the market would be better suited toward small companies rather than individuals, as when your company hits 3 people it is suddenly difficult to have everyone working from home. (This is what I discovered from my own experience!)
I still have a lot of great contacts in this area, but as I decided to pack it up and head to San Diego this year, I probably won’t open a space in the Bay Area. If you or anyone else reading is interested, I’ll connect you with the people I know who are also interested.
-Erica
January 4th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
I like the startup space idea; having spent far too much time last year just trying to get and keep a working phone line and DSL (apparently “I’d like to change this line to the Business Plan tariff please” is confusingly close to “please disconnect the line” for telco purposes), providing some of the infrastructure we’d take for granted working in an existing company. That problem alone left us with no Internet, phone or fax access for over two weeks. We had to get our own electrical, Ethernet and phone wiring installed, then get our own phone line, DSL, a little PBX, router etc – I’m sure we’d get better service for less money if the landlord had put in building-wide Ethernet, Net access and VoIP instead.
I imagine you should be able to lock in a decent rate on a large space to subdivide in the near future, then get it set up to make a good home for small businesses moving in with much less hassle than we’ve had with ours.
I think I might cheat and use a phrase for my theme “word” this year: ‘moving on’, hopefully in career and life. I’m not sure about specific goals though: I’ll give that some thought over the next few days.
January 4th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
When it comes to growing your readership and subscribers I’ve found having a consistent posting schedule to be most important. Not necessarily the frequency, but the consistency of whatever schedule you choose. Helps the readership stabilize, and your fluctuations will be less.
Best of luck with your goals in 2009!
Matt
January 5th, 2009 at 5:43 am
Hey Erica! Somehow reading your goals were more interesting than the hundreds of other blogs that posted theirs.
As for writing every day on your blog, you’ll want to read some of the articles that CopyBlogger has on writer’s block. Blog commenting is also a great way to help with that too.
Eventually you’ll get to the point of being able to hammer out short articles in about 10 minutes, and then go back and edit/clean-up, etc. afterwards.
Good luck!
January 5th, 2009 at 5:53 am
Erica – Thanks so much for being so real & honest in your assessment of your 2008 goals. I received so many e-mails & blogs that tell me what great year it was & how they won a Nobel Prize as one of their minor achievements.
You’re a REAL person – just like me – and therefore inspiring!
January 5th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
San Diego!!! Nice!!! Excited to see someone whose blog I read decides to move to my city.
Go Chargers!
January 6th, 2009 at 10:05 pm
Really like the idea of office space renting. How trying it in the OC?
Welcome to Southern California!
January 8th, 2009 at 2:40 am
Hey, I just wanna say great job for setting the $10k goal, most people don’t even set such a goal and never get anywhere, but you set it and now you’re making an extra $2k/month than you would’ve been making otherwise. Great job, and I’m sure that this year, or the next, you will make this goal. It may take longer than one expects to achieve a goal, but as long as you remain persistent on it, it will happen!
Well done
January 11th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
It’s often hard to hit ones goals because, well, life and reality just gets in the way. Trust me, I know, as I only hit one of my goals from last year, and even that goal wasn’t the way I had expected it to go.
This year I have 15 diverse goals; I hope to hit at least 5 of them.
January 26th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
I started a blog (soon to be a website) for photographers interested in photography (not equipment) in December and I recently posted my 10 New Year’s Resolutions. It’s an important motivational tool to have them written in the public domain, but maybe it’s even more important to have actually sat down and written them thanks to the forced (OK, maybe “induced”) thinking that needs to be done in order to identify your goals. The brain tends to only think if it *really* has to.
But I’ve found that even more important than those goals are the paths that lead to them. The goals must be clear, but the steps you need to take in order to be successful must be even clearer. My goals for 2009 are to become a better photographer and grow my blog/website; to this end I wrote 10 resolutions:
http://enticingthelight.wordpress.com/2009/01/04/10-new-years-resolutionsfor-photography/
Keep up the great work, Erica. I only recently found your blog but I know I will enjoy reading it through 2009.
Cheers,
–M.
January 28th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
$10,000 a month writing? Are you Truman Capote? That’s so great, thanks for the best laugh I’ve had in months. Unless you’re a name brand writer, with a big assignment from Vanity Fair, that figure is a joke. You need to brush up those pitching skills if you’re going to clear ever $2000.