2009 Goal #1: 350 paying customers for Inspiring Innovators.
As an explanation, I incorporated my company as Inspiring Innovators, so any product I release will have that as the company name behind it. But the actual inspiringinnovators.com site is what I am referring to here.

I did launch the site, and got some paying customers. But, frankly, the back end sucked. It was confusing.

So, I didn’t meet this goal. I want to redo the backend and launch again in 2010. I plan to scrap Amember and move to Wishlist Member, which is far more intuitive. Lesson learned: Test your back end before you launch.

Also, I never had a sales letter set up for Inspiring Innovators. Another lesson: Do a sales letter! I tested it as a blog site where people could preview the audios and then sign up after listening to the preview, but people were confused by that, too. When I re-launch, I’ll probably just do a straight long-form sales letter on the front page, and you can preview the interviews here on erica.biz.

I also plan to hire a VA to schedule interviews for me, as I found I slacked on getting interviews set up.

2009 Goal #2: Grow erica.biz to 4000 subscribers. Done, and done! I had about 800 subscribers or so when I set this goal. Truly, it has been an awesome year for erica.biz.

2009 Goal #3: Complete our move to San Diego. Done, and loving it here! We moved July 1.

As they say, two out of three ain’t bad!

On to my goals for 2010. I have an exciting announcement to make!

Goal #1: “10 Products in ‘10″

My primary goal is to release 10 products in 2010. Most of them will be information products, like Guest Post Secrets.

To release 10 products in ‘10, I have to have a laser focus. I can’t start all 10 projects at once; I’d never accomplish anything. Part of my goal is to finish one product and release it before starting on the next one.

This is really a “can’t lose” goal. If it’s the end of 2010 and I’ve released, say, 6 products and achieved goal #2, I’m going to be really proud of myself, even though I didn’t technically meet this goal.

Goal #2: Launch a Startup (You Heard It Here First!)

One of my 10 products is going to be a new website with potential for strong growth and revenues.

That’s right–the really exciting news is that I’m actually going to launch my own startup!

I don’t plan to take on any venture capital; I don’t need it. I still haven’t decided whether I want to code the site myself myself or hire someone. My little company is going to take on some big players, including at least one that is VC-funded.

I am really amused about this. 10 years in the Valley and I never once created a “Web 2.0″ website. I stuck with blogging and running a web hosting company. Now that I’ve moved to San Diego, I’m going to launch a startup with a Web 2.0 business plan that competes with other Web 2.0 companies (and, frankly, a lot of Web 1.0 companies.)

Although I can’t say more details about the startup now, I can say this:

The idea came to me in 2009 and just would not leave me alone. There is a venture-backed company doing this exact thing, but they are doing a piss-poor job of it. Since, at its core, it’s a relatively simple idea, I looked around for other companies that were doing this, and shockingly, I didn’t find any.

I ran Google keyword searches, and there are over 250,000 people a month searching for this. Most of the sites in the search results aren’t productive to the person searching for these terms.

I expect the development cost for this site to be minimal–about $1500 if I code it myself, and only a few thousand dollars if someone else codes it. I have a monetization plan.

This is a simple idea. There are other companies in this space. It’s just that I think I can do it better than they can, and I have a specific plan to achieve that. Plus, since I didn’t take $32 million in venture capital, I can achieve profitability quickly and (hopefully) make money month after month.

Goal #3: 20,000 Subscribers for erica.biz

erica.biz had massive growth in 2009, thanks to you! I easily hit my goal of 4000 subscribers. Here’s my stretch goal for 2010: 20,000 subscribers. That’s going to require more blogging than I did in 2009, but I’m ready for that.

To summarize, here are my big goals for 2010:

• Create and release 10 products in 2010. This includes Guest Post Secrets, my startup, and whatever other information products or pieces of software I choose to release.
• Launch my startup. Of course, I’ll be detailing the startup costs and more about it right here. Stay tuned!
• Grow erica.biz to 20,000 subscribers. A big “stretch goal” that requires me to write a lot more…but it will be fun!

My #themeword for 2010

My #themeword for 2010 is CREATE. 2010 will see me release several products, including Guest Post Secrets, and my new startup.

I created the #themeword meme in 2007, and I’m so excited to see how it’s taken off! To participate, just think about one word that you would like to describe your new year. I encourage you to make it positive. Your #themeword can unfold in unexpected ways!

Other people who have posted their #themeword (click on their links to see what their #themewords are):
Erica O’Grady
Tara Hunt
Kathy Sierra
Donna Maria Coles Johnson
Kendall Ruth
Cati Brown
Ruth Kalinka
Andy Dolph

If you’ve posted your #themeword on your blog (and used #themeword in your blog post), please let me know, and I will update this post!

Search #themeword on Twitter to see everyone who has been Tweeting their #themeword.

Happy New Year! Please feel free to post or link to your own goals in the comments.

Recommended Reading:

• My 2008 Goals
• My 2009 Goals

How to make a mind map.

I felt that way when I first started writing my Blog Success Manifesto. I started with a blank document and quickly got lost. I had so many ideas, and it just seemed impossible that I could address all of them. The document gathered dust on my hard drive for a few months…until I figured out how to make a mind map.

I brainstormed out at least 20 topics I wanted to talk about, then realized I could sort them into five sections. Once I did that, I easily completed the entire 10,000-word ebook in just a few weeks!

This, too, may seem like a pipe dream to you…so I created a video to walk you through the process of making a mind map. In it, I show you how to map out a project to break it down into manageable pieces, so you can finally finish whatever that big project is that’s been languishing in your head for months or years. I also show you the exact mind map I used to create my Blog Success Manifesto:

Highlights

[0:10] I start off by answering the obvious question: Why should you care about making a mind map?
[0:45] I use a free tool called MindMeister (link opens in new window) to create my mindmaps. Why do I use it instead of other tools?
[2:00] The first thing that you see when you create your mind map…
[2:25] There are a ton of keyboard shortcuts in MindMeister. I show you the two that will save you a lot of time.
[4:12] How MindMeister helps you override your perfectionist instinct.
[4:40] How to easily create a layout for an entire book or product just by dragging and dropping.
[5:29] My favorite part of MindMeister!
[6:20] I wasn’t able to finish my ebook until I mind mapped the entire thing.
[7:15] The exact mind map I used to fly through and finish an over-10,000-word ebook in just a few weeks.
[8:20] After my mind map was done, I set a simple goal…
[9:20] This should help you get your next project done much more quickly!

How Making A Mind Map Can Help You

Think about a project you would really like to start. Maybe it’s a book, an ebook, or a new product. Maybe it’s a conference you would like to run (I used a mind map to run a conference in 2008!) Any big project you undertake should have a mind map as its basis.

Mind maps help you understand the scope of your project, break it down into manageable chunks, and complete it faster. They reduce overwhelm and help you overcome your perfectionist instinct.

But quite possibly the best part is that great feeling you get when every piece of your mind map has a little checkbox next to it, and you suddenly realize…you’re done! For a project that may have seemed impossible just a few weeks ago, that’s quite a feat!

MindMeister FAQ

Your free MindMeister account won’t expire, and you can have up to 3 mind maps. If you want more features, like unlimited mind maps, the ability to use MindMeister offline, or to search your mind maps, the Premium version is $49/year.

Check out MindMeister for free right now.

(Note: I recommend starting out with the free version and upgrading as you see fit. The link above makes me money if you choose to upgrade to the Premium version. )

Recommended Reading:

• Creating a New Product. The first post in this series; discusses market research.
• How to Start A Business with No Money. It doesn’t take a lot of money to start a business…
• How to Get More Profitable Clients. A quick brainstorming method I dreamed up (literally!) to help you make your business more profitable.

On January 4, I published my goals for 2009. Now that we’re over halfway through 2009, let’s take a look at each of them and how I am doing:

1. 350 paying customers for Inspiring Innovators by the end of 2009.

In April, I mentioned I wanted to stop procrastinating and launch my new site, Inspiring Innovators. What is Inspiring Innovators? In a nutshell, I’m giving you access to some of the Internet’s top entrepreneurs, with audio interviews and how-to guides so you can start your business by replicating their businesses. There will be a huge demand for this from those of you who want to start an online business, but are looking for an idea or more guidance.

Internet entrepreneurs are hard to get in touch with! Since they can work from anywhere, many of them live in remote locations. They travel often and you aren’t likely to bump into them in traditional networking venues. You can go to Internet marketing conferences, but they’re usually speaking at those and are just swamped!

I decided to use my influence to ask them the same questions you would ask. How did they get started? Do they have any special skills that lend themselves well to making money online? Where did they find customers? I am picky about who I am interviewing, only picking entrepreneurs who started by working from home, bootstrapped their businesses, and are making a full-time income online.

I was surprised at how well the first interviews turned out! These successful people offer a wealth of information. Each case study is at least 30 minutes long and includes a transcript and a how-to guide so you can follow in their footsteps.

Inspiring Innovators will be a paid membership site; the price will be $27/month, with a discount to the first folks to sign up. Why paid and not free? I want to create a community of people who are serious about taking their Internet businesses to the next level. Also, I can do cool things, like hire people to write in-depth articles, bring in paid experts to help you, and do webinars myself and answer your business questions. I will be working tirelessly to ensure you get amazing value from your investment!

The site isn’t up yet, mainly because I am waiting on final approval for a merchant account so we can process payments, and because I’m tinkering with a few technical issues. However, the first interviews are there and ready to go. I will work hard to make my commitment of 350 paid members before the end of the year. Considering the value proposition, I don’t think it will be too hard to meet this goal. It entails some fun challenges, too, like attracting affiliates and learning Google Adwords. I look forward to this!

Every time I write about Inspiring Innovators, by the way, people worry that I will stop writing here, or that this blog will become a members-only paid site. That will not happen! erica.biz will always be free, and I will continue to write at least one high-quality blog post per week.

2. Grow erica.biz to 4000 subscribers.

As of today, I have 3,749 subscribers, which means I am most of the way there! I will hit this goal easily. So what’s next? I have a lot up my sleeve.

I have been wanting to release an ebook for a while. Good news — I am close to being finished with my first one! The even better news is that it will be totally free; you won’t even have to sign up for my free business tips to read it.

The ebook is called Blog Success Manifesto. Its goal is to help you gain your next 1000 blog subscribers in record time. In it, I pour out a ton of secrets, including a recent easy tweak I made that doubled the number of new subscribers per day here on erica.biz.

This will be a great resource for those of you who are blogging now or who are interested in starting a blog. I’ve read a lot of information on setting up a blog, and honestly, I haven’t seen a free guide as comprehensive as the one I am about to release.

Expect it in August at the latest. (If you get my free business tips, I’ll notify you when I release it!)

My stretch goal for the end of the year is 10,000 subscribers, but really, I’ll be happy as long as I see continual growth. Blogging is a marathon, not a sprint, and I know as long as I keep posting great content, things will continue to go well.

3. Complete our move to San Diego.

This one is DONE! We moved to Solana Beach, CA as of July 1. I really love it here. We live less than a mile from the ocean, and get a nice cool breeze throughout the house. (No A/C required!) Plus, there is plenty of great food (including Mexican food — my favorite!), interesting people to meet and hang out with, and lots of stuff to do.

San Diego is expensive compared to the rest of the U.S., but it is surprisingly cheaper than the Bay Area. It’s also more relaxed — I don’t see as many people slaving away late at night in offices, and I see a lot more people outside enjoying the great weather. Not long ago, I grabbed a burrito to go from a local taco stand and walked from the taco stand to the beach. I sat on a big rock on the beach and ate dinner while watching the surfers catch waves and folks walking, playing football, and enjoying the late afternoon sun. (You Bay Area folks have no idea what you’re missing!

One great thing about living here is I don’t feel the need to jet off to paradise very often. Why fly somewhere and pay for expensive hotels when I can walk to the ocean from my house?

When people ask me why I moved to San Diego, I usually reply, “I can work from anywhere, so why not live in paradise?” It’s totally worth starting an Internet business in order to be able to live where you really want!

An Update: Health Problems

About a month ago, I revealed some health problems that were causing me to become exhausted and sleep for some 12-15 hours a day. These problems were the primary reason I did not launch Inspiring Innovators as intended in April. Here’s what I found out:

My blood test revealed several issues. The chief issue was that I had an acute infection — which, based on the test, was mono! (No wonder I was sleeping so much.) Currently, the doctors are performing another test to see what else, if anything, is going on in my gut. These problems are very common, so if you’re feeling tired and you don’t know why, see a qualified health practitioner and get as many tests as you need to help track it down!

The test also revealed two nutrition-related problems: reactive hypoglycemia and insulin resistance. I now have several supplements that I take with each meal. Also, I recently switched to a low-carb diet. I have to watch my intake of things like bread, flour, and beans. Since meat wasn’t the issue, I stopped being pescetarian and started eating healthy lean meats — turkey and game meats. (I still don’t eat chicken, and I eat minimal red meat.) I’ve noticed that these meats no longer give me indigestion; a sign that something is going in the right direction. I still cannot eat many high-glycemic index fruits without feeling sick, so I eat vegetables instead.

I assembled a team of three natural health practitioners — a nutritionist, a chiropractor, and an acupuncturist. I found them based on opinions of other people I trust. I’ve stopped taking advice from the Internet; there are just too many opinions out there. Instead, I ask the three of them any health questions I have. Surprisingly (to me), they all tend to have similar answers. I’m now doing acupuncture every week (which I also highly recommend — no, it doesn’t hurt, and yes, it freaked me out at the beginning too!)

I am feeling much better and am amazed at the difference in my energy levels in just a couple of months. The lesson I learned from this ordeal was to find doctors I trust and work with them to help find the right cures for my body, instead of trying to self-diagnose online. I couldn’t have made a better choice.

Look for another goals update in October. Thank you for reading!

Recommended Reading:

• 2009 Goals Update: Perfectionism is Your Worst Enemy. My April, 2009 goals update, as well as a harrowing story of how my perfectionism cost me thousands of dollars.
• 2008 Year in Review and 2009 Goals. My goals as posted in January, 2009. Did I meet my 2008 goals?
• You Are Worth More Than You Think: Overcoming The Key Reason Entrepreneurs Fail. One of my favorite posts; if you haven’t read it yet, it’s worth a look!

Last year, when I stated my goal of making $10,000/month online via writing and creating my own products, I felt it would be a goal that I could accomplish by the end of 2008. When 2009 rolled around, I again felt confident that I would hit the goal quickly. It’s April, I still haven’t hit it, and here’s why: I am being too much of a perfectionist.

Let’s roll back to 2008. I first had the goal of creating a pay site called HardworkingMillionaire.com. Then I decided I didn’t like that name, so I scrapped it and went back to Inspiring Innovators–a domain name I have owned for a while. My desire was to create a site where I could interview top entrepreneurs about their business, charge a small monthly fee, and have a few hundred or a few thousand members. I would do two interviews a month, publish them, have them transcribed, and people would pay something like $8-9/month for them.

I did some interviews and they turned out fantastically well. Doing the interviews was straightforward, and the monthly fee was a bargain for the content my members would be getting. With the help of Richard, my boyfriend, we built out a complete membership site at InspiringInnovators.com and sold a couple of interviews via the Warrior Forum. My interview with Tony Laidig, selling for $7 as a standalone product, sold over 120 copies!

Then I went to a women’s business networking event in San Francisco, and excitedly told them about my new business. Having just sold 120 single interviews, I felt this was a no-brainer. But none of the women seemed that excited about the project. I asked them what they wanted instead, and they said they wanted me to consult with them. That night, I ended up showing them a few Google tricks I know to rank #1, and the said they wanted me to teach them that.

My Business’s Fatal Mistake

This was where I made a fatal mistake. I ended up second-guessing my interview project, and instead tried to create a complex membership site where I would teach people how to dominate the Web. And then things spiraled from there. I hired a copywriter, Chris Haddad (who is amazing!), and worked with him. Chris said Inspiring Innovators didn’t sound like the right name for a membership site dedicated to teaching people online marketing tricks — and he was right! So I spent weeks coming up with a new name, and finally negotiated and acquired BeTheAuthority.com.

I absolutely love the name “Be The Authority”. However, this kind of site takes a significant time investment to launch! I’ve currently spent weeks working on the idea for the site, finally coming up with the following two products:

• Be The Social Media Authority, a 3-month course that teaches you how to use Twitter and Facebook for business and not just to connect with old friends.
• Be The Website Authority (working title), a 3-month course that teaches you how to rock Google and get #1 search results for relevant keywords for your business.

These are in high demand from business owners, and I have confidence I can sell them. But they also take some personal time, as part of the package is regular group webinars with me.

Hindsight is 20/20

In retrospect, I should have launched Inspiring Innovators last year and tweaked it along the way. I took my own advice and started talking to people to find out what they want, but I forgot the most critical part — I needed to launch something, and iterate it based on suggestions, not hold off on launching!

Perfectionism took a great, simple business idea and made it into a killer monster — a noose that hung around on my neck and tightened as I talked to more and more people and got more opinions. The more opinions I got, the more frustrated I became; a sure sign that I was going in the wrong direction.

The project has grown out of control. Currently, I am juggling several projects at once, instead of just creating a simple business and promoting it. Worse yet, none of those projects are getting done, and I’m watching more TV than I have in the past — another sure sign that I’m headed down the wrong path with my business.

Are You Heading Down the Wrong Path?

Here’s the scoop. You know you’re heading down the wrong path when…

• Your business doesn’t excite you. If you’d rather watch TV than work on your business, you’re in the wrong business.
• You seem to “work” for weeks at a time but don’t release a project. Something, anything, is better than nothing. Release! Ship! Get feedback…but only after you release your first iteration.
• Your business idea keeps growing, and growing… Your first iteration should be small and simple. Add features later.

I originally intended to launch Inspiring Innovators in January, 2008. It is patently ridiculous that I let this grow completely out of hand instead of getting something out there. If I have any consolation, it is that I know thousands will read this post, and hopefully it will stop a few of you from doing the same thing. Whatever you are working on — release it quickly, even if it doesn’t have everything you need. Your perfectionist instincts may cost you thousands of dollars.

My Commitment

To combat my perfectionist instinct, I WILL RELEASE INSPIRING INNOVATORS WITH ITS FIRST INTERVIEW BY THE END OF THE MONTH! That means I have two weeks (less, actually, as I will be traveling this month) to get it up and running with two interviews, a membership component, a payment system, etc. NO MORE EXCUSES!

Also, since I know there is a ton of interest in Be The Authority, I will release that quickly, too, with one 3-month system available for purchase by May 22. Why May 22? I’m speaking at UnSeminar6, and would love nothing more than to launch it there and honor Pat O’Bryan, as he took a chance on me and gave me my first Internet marketing speaking gig last year.

If there’s one thing I wish I could implant into your brain in big, flashing, red letters, it’s that perfectionism is your worst enemy when it comes to launching a business. Don’t do what I did; it will cost you more money than you will make by launching quickly and iterating.

I currently have completed interviews with marketing maven Ben Mack and blog whiz Steve Pavlina, so those will likely be my launch interviews. I’d appreciate any feedback you have on what you’d like to see on Be The Authority, or any person you would like me to interview for Inspiring Innovators.

See my previous posts about my goals.

I had four main goals:

1. 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!
2. 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.)
3. 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.
4. 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.

5. $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:

   1. 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.)

   2. 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.
   3. 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.

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:

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!

Manifesting A Trip To Tahiti

Tahiti, by Robbi BabaI recently picked up the book Money, and the Law of Attraction by Esther and Jerry Hicks. I can already hear some of you sighing… “Erica, surely you don’t believe in that stuff.”

Actually, you might be surprised to find out that I became a believer after consistently envisioning for several months that I would sell my business for $1 million, and then doing it. I’ll explain how I did it in another blog post.

In the meantime, since I’ve achieved that goal, and am working hard toward my $10,000/month in writing and blogging income by the end of 2008, I decided to envision something more fun. I noticed on the Abraham/Hicks website that they were taking a cruise to Tahiti next year. I was disappointed to find out, however, that the cruise was sold out and the wait list was closed.

I used a bit of intuition to figure out how to get on the wait list even though it was closed. Then, I figured I’d have a bit of fun. Every day, I close my eyes and imagine myself on a cruise to Tahiti. I also taped up a picture of Tahiti next to my monitor on my desk.

I will be taking a cruise to Tahiti. I won’t guarantee that it will be that cruise, but I figured I’d let the Law of Attraction do its thing. I’m not pushing to get on the cruise. I haven’t booked plane tickets, I haven’t surfed other cruise websites, and I’m not doing my typical research on the location. I’m simply envisioning being there every day, and what it will feel like, and how glorious it will be.

Having done this for a few days now, I’m starting to see small “echoes” of cruises showing up in my life. For those of you who are into the Law of Attraction, you should recognize this as the recognition that my thoughts are having an effect.

I’m sure at this point that some of you will think I’m absolutely nuts. But for me, this is an important experiment. I push hard to make the things I want happen. What if I don’t really need to push so hard? What if all I really need to do is truly become in alignment with those things and then act on my intuition when it is appropriate? This thought experiment may show me a much easier way of achieving my goals.

I’ll keep you posted. Either way, I’m having a blast doing this.

Income and Inspiring Innovators Status

Many of you have been asking how I’m doing regarding my goal of making $10,000/month online by the end of 2008. Progress has been a bit slower than I had hoped, but I’m still going for the goal. Last month, my income was $1199.21. I made $291.10 from this blog, $861.00 from sales of an interview I did, and $47.11 in recurring membership fees from the site I acquired in June. (Turns out his revenue of $800/month was mostly from one-time sales, not memberships, as I had thought.)

I recently completed several more interviews, including one with Steve Pavlina, where he shares how he created a blog with over $40,000/month in income and millions of visitors per month. As soon as I have the transcriptions of these interviews, I will be posting them here. The Steve Pavlina interview will be free; others will be part of Inspiring Innovators.

I plan to launch Inspiring Innovators next month. Initially, there will be a monthly fee of $18 for access to 2 interviews per month with successful entrepreneurs and a community forum for all members to share experiences and network. Later, there will be an additional premium membership, which will be a way for you to get consulting directly with me about how to grow your business.

Once I launch Inspiring Innovators, I’ll keep you in the loop about how the business is going and what interviews I have available. Like me, I have a feeling you will find many of these stories inspirational!

Other Great Blogs You May Like

I’ve been reading several fantastic blogs lately. Here’s a highlight:

• Jamie Harrop interviewed me, and then compiled my interview, along with interviews of 9 other interesting bloggers, into a free ebook. The ebook gives insight on how to grow your blog to thousands of subscribers. Thanks for thinking of me for this series, Jamie!
• Cath Lawson, whom I found out about when Jamie interviewed her, seems to be my long-lost twin. She also started a successful business and is now running a blog talking about her business experiences. If you enjoy my blog posts, you may like hers, too!
• Roy Leban is on a mission to build a web startup in 30 days. He’s blogging about the startup and his challenges and goals. For those of you who wonder what it’s like to build a web-facing startup company, Roy gives great insight.
• Derek Halpern made a 6-figure income from blogging in 2007. He ran several celebrity/pop culture blogs, and is now blogging about what it takes to be successful in business.
• Brian Armstrong wrote a book called “Breaking Free” on how to start your own business, and is also blogging about how to start a business.
• Christine OKelly recently came back from a long blogging hiatus to share more of her story. She took the plunge and started a business when she had 2 kids and no savings, and it hasn’t always been an easy road, but she blogs with a refreshing honesty.

What follows is a quick look at my journey through the past year, and then exactly what I plan to do to make my next $1 million.

The Rest of 2007

My boyfriend and I went on a 7-day cruise in November, 2007. I bought $12,000 in art at an auction on that cruise –realizing my goal of buying a Romero Britto limited-edition serigraph. In fact, I bought 6 Britto pieces, as well as several other beautiful paintings!

Here’s one of the pieces I bought. It’s my favorite of all the Brittos I own since it has a cat in it! It’s called Squeaki – Britto’s World.

In December, I became quite ill and delved into personal finance books and blogs while recovering. Encouraged by them, I tallied my spending for October, November, and December, and was shocked to see my large cash burn rate.

I became a budgeting convert and adopted a simple rule that has kept my spending well in check since then: for every thing that I buy, I have to get rid of one equal thing. That keeps my house from becoming cluttered. With that, and my boyfriend’s love of cooking, my monthly spending dropped by 40%. I’m still keeping track of every dollar I spend (it’s not as time-consuming as you think).

2007 Rolls Into 2008…

In early 2008, I got hooked on Internet marketing, and discovered a whole crowd of people who were making money online selling “info products” such as ebooks, membership websites, and videos. I went to two Internet marketing conferences and found a great group of people I’m happy to call my new friends.

I spent hours and hours reading every Internet marketing ebook and watching every video I could find online. I explained what I wanted to do to make $1 million a year online.

Then, I bought a small business — a membership website where the members pay $10/month for access to two interviews with successful entrepreneurs.

In the meantime, I set up a one-day personal finance conference called WealthCamp. The first WealthCamp was held in San Francisco and had 34 signups — not as many as I had hoped, but it was a group of people who really bonded. It was a lot of work to run a conference, and a huge learning curve, but everything worked out and the reviews that came back were great! I will definitely be running more conferences in the future.

That brings us to today. I haven’t posted my goals since June 6. It’s past due for me to explain what I’m gearing up to do.

What’s Next?

Instead of splitting out my profit center into Hardworking Millionaire and making Inspiring Innovators free and ad-driven, I’ve decided to make Inspiring Innovators a for-pay site and keep erica.biz as the free, ad-driven site.

Here’s the business plan:

Inspiring Innovators will be a site where I interview two successful entrepreneurs per month. We’ll have a 30-minute conversation about something that will help you improve your business, and talk about how that entrepreneur became successful. I’ll charge a monthly fee for access to the interviews: an audio download; a transcript; and a PDF that shows you how to implement the success story yourself.

This is a proven business model that is in use on several other sites. As part of my research into the viability of this business model, I paid for a subscription to those sites. As promised, they deliver the interviews…but there’s no community feel or connection. In addition to just posting interviews, then, Inspiring Innovators will have a members-only forum where deals happen, people post questions that I will then find entrepreneurs to answer, and entrepreneurs have a chance to connect with each other.

I’m going to be tapping into one of the biggest problems entrepreneurs have: finding people who understand what it takes to build a successful business. Through my interviews, forum, and community events, I’ll be helping entrepreneurs engage with each other, learn more quickly, and help them grow their business faster by utilizing contacts and connections.

I expect to charge $27/month for a basic membership where you get the two interviews every month and access to the Inspiring Innovators community.

Figuring Out A Price Point

You might be asking, “Why not free?” My goal is to build a cohesive community of entrepreneurs committed to helping each other build their businesses. Charging a monthly fee keeps the community full of serious entrepreneurs who want to move their business forward, and makes it easier to deal with spammers and the like. Plus, it allows me the flexibility to hire people to keep customer service top-notch.

Some of you may be asking the opposite question: “Why not charge more?” I wrote previously about going for the more lucrative contracts — e.g. trying to find a few people who will pay you $500/month instead of many who will pay you $10/month.

My goal is to have a pyramid that looks something like this:

Why not jump straight into the middle, which is clearly the most profitable price point? I thought about this for quite a while. After all, if my goal is to have the most profitable site, it clearly makes sense to price my product at the $297 level, since I’d need only 10% of the subscribers to make the same amount of money.

A Huge Shift: Maximum Profit Is Not My Goal

My biggest revelation in all of this was that I didn’t want to set the site up for maximum profit. Instead, I want to go up to entrepreneurs, ask them what their biggest problems are, and let them know that either I’ve already helped others solve those problems through an interview, or that I plan to help them solve their problems with a future interview.

It’s this camaraderie, this connection that I desire most in a new business — not maximum profit. If I can help 1000 entrepreneurs solve their problems, that’s more meaningful to me than helping 100 entrepreneurs and charging them 10x as much.

Having experienced that shift, I am now free to move forward with confidence and charge less for a basic membership than I was originally planning to. Of course, I fully expect that there will be plenty of upsell opportunities up to several thousand dollars a month for more personal help and guidance. But the basic product is affordable enough that I will be able to help thousands of entrepreneurs move their businesses forward — something I look forward to!

In the meantime, I will continue to blog at least once a week here on erica.biz. My goal is to keep all of the content here free forever — supported by a few ads, and more importantly, supported by those of you who will become Inspiring Innovators.

By the way, I plan to keep posting my goals and progress on this blog, so if you want to see whether I can really build another million-dollar business, and my successes and failures, just subscribe.

It’s been a fantastic year, and I look forward to the next year, where I grow another million-dollar business by inspiring you to do the same!

What’s the Problem?

A lot of personal finance blogs and books, including the otherwise excellent Your Money or Your Life, make a key assumption that is incorrect for entrepreneurs: that your job can be boiled down to a real hourly wage.

In fact, Your Money or Your Life devotes significant effort to helping you figure out what the real costs of your job are. In an example in the book, a person earning $11 per hour was actually earning $4 per hour when all costs – including commuting and “work clothes” — were factored in.

This works for salaried workers, but not for entrepreneurs. Why? As an entrepreneur, some hours of your work are amazingly productive. For instance, when I ran Simpli, I spent 3 hours over the course of one week focusing on getting my company to the first result in Google for certain web hosting-related search terms. Those 3 hours paid off, netting my business over $250,000 in annual revenue.

On the other hand, I spent many hours ordering office supplies, doing payroll, and answering easy support tickets — things that were a net negative on my time as CEO, because they could easily be outsourced for a low hourly rate.

What is my hourly wage as an entrepreneur, then? Somewhere between $10 and $83,333 ($250,000/3). How do we as entrepreneurs value our time so that we’re not stuck doing menial chores instead of advancing our businesses?

Solution: Set a “baseline” hourly rate for yourself, and outsource all work that falls below that hourly rate — either in your personal life or in business.

What Baseline Rate Should You Set?

Most people will probably pay you a fixed amount to do something at an hourly rate. For instance, my attorney father should be charging $300/hour for client work. Set your baseline hourly rate at half of what you believe you could get paid as a consultant. In other words, my father should not be doing any work that brings him less than $150/hour. That includes pro bono or “cheap favors” for friends.

For writers and those just starting out, I suggest setting a baseline rate of $40-50/hour. As entrepreneurs, we tend to wildly underestimate the amount of time we put into our businesses. If I gave you a formula like “Take the income you make per month and divide by the number of hours you work in a month,” you would easily forget all those hours you spent answering email, posting on forums, reading relevant books and blogs, and deleting spam. Don’t use a formula. Just set a baseline and adjust from there.

Are you are concerned you will alienate others by doing this? I suggest you tell them that for the next 30 days, you will not be doing any work that falls under this hourly rate. Do a 30-day trial and then adjust your rate as necessary after 30 days. After 30 days, you can consider taking on some work that is meaningful to you, but falls under this threshold.

Which Tasks Should You Outsource?

A key point of this method is that, since you are an entrepreneur, you must outsource in your personal life as well. Can cleaning your house, mowing your lawn, doing the laundry, making doctor’s appointments, answering email, answering phone calls, and dealing with insurance companies be outsourced? You betcha! Anything that is below your baseline hourly rate should be outsourced.

Right now, the typical parade of ego excuses should already be screaming in your head. “But doing my laundry/mowing my lawn gives me time to think.” “I just can’t afford to suddenly spend all that money on other people!” “I don’t know who I could hire.”

Let’s address these one at a time:

• “Doing menial labor gives me time to think.” What would you rather do: do laundry for the rest of your life, or get some time to think on [insert vacation here]? Remember, a vacation doesn’t have to involve lavish tropical getaways. Maybe driving out to a local park and sitting under a tree will also give you time to think.

  If you can’t think of anything else that will give you time to think, I suggest learning meditation. 15-20 minutes of meditation will give you plenty more time to think than doing menial labor — and your thoughts will not be cluttered by “oh, ****, I put the washer on the wrong setting again.” Give your mind time and space to come up with new ideas.

• “I just can’t afford to spend all that money…” Let’s be really clear on this. I am not suggesting you go out and hire a full-time assistant, a full-time nanny, and a personal chef today. Take it one step at a time.

  For instance, I recently decided to hire a personal assistant. She works about 8 hours a week for me at $16/hour. That costs me a little over $500/month, and in exchange, I’ve sold most of my clutter on craigslist, I never have to worry about laundry, she follows up with thank-you notes to people I appreciate, helps me shoot videos, and even does the dishes. I also hired a cleaning service at $70/cleaning, or $140/month.

  For just $640/month, I get almost 40 hours a month of additional time. If that is too much, I suggest a cleaning service once or twice a month as your first step. That should cost you $50-$100 and will immediately free up several hours of work. Once you start earning more money, you can raise your hourly baseline rate and begin to hire more people to help you.

• “I don’t know who to hire!” I found my assistant on craigslist. There are also many sites like eLance and Guru.com that will help you find people to outsource tasks to. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, make sure you have stated your request clearly. I wanted an assistant who could work 8 hours a week and come over twice a week. As soon as I got clear and visualized my request, as well as clearly explaining why it would help me, I found the right person. The clearer you are, the more likely you will be to find the right fit. If someone isn’t the right fit, fire them and move on. This is business — even when it’s a personal assistant or a housecleaning service!

The decision to set a baseline hourly rate, on your part, comes down to how much you value yourself. I believe that I can deliver much more value to the world by writing and interviewing successful people than I can by mowing the lawn and doing the dishes. Do you believe that you have a calling to help the world? Then you better get it in gear and utilize your true talents. By doing the same things you always have, you will miss new opportunities. Even going to the park instead of doing the laundry may result in a chance meeting or a new idea triggered by seeing something you wouldn’t have at home.

Try this for 30 days — and see how saying “No” to those who cheapen your time frees you up to live the life you dream of. Have the courage to say — if not to anyone else, to yourself — “I am worth more than this.” Some will value you enough that they will agree to pay you more instead of waiting out your 30-day trial. That is a win-win situation.

Are you ready to go on board with this idea for 30 days? Please leave your comments below, and I may interview you for a future followup post. In the followup, I will also explore how not following this advice may have already cost me over $1 million. Stay tuned, and don’t forget to subscribe to see the next post!

Recommended Reading:

• The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. “Learn to ask: If this is the only thing I accomplish today, will I be satisfied with my day?”
• How To Avoid One of the Most Common Mistakes Women Make When Starting a Business Women tend to think we have to “do it all”, and thus we build side businesses; while men hire out, outsource, and thus build empires.
• How Can You Have That Perfect Flow State More Often? My journey from being burned out and exhausted to finding a workable way to get to a flow state on a daily basis.
• Changing Your Perspective About Work: The 2-Hour Work Day If you only had 2 hours a day to get everything done that you needed to do, how quickly would you change your work life so that you could still meet all your goals?

I suspect you’re grinning by now. If not, you should be. I bet you’re thinking: “This is a revelation? Seriously?”

Well, yes. No matter how much we love what we do, we have those days where we really don’t want to be there. It’s a beautiful day outside, and we’re sitting here in front of the computer. What are we doing? Why are we letting our lives waste away at work?

I decided I don’t want to do that anymore.

I just don’t want a job — any job — that requires 8 hours a day of work. In the beginning, or at all. Ever! I want to live my life powerfully…and I want to be free to do what I want, when I want to do it.

So I made a mind-blowing decision…off the cuff. I said out loud to the world, “I wonder what would happen if I said I was only going to work 2 hours a day…and I still had all the same goals?”

Now that is an interesting puzzle. What if I don’t change my goals at all…I just change my perspective on what it takes to get there?

Changing Your Perspective

If you only had 2 hours a day to get everything done that you needed to do, how quickly would you change your work life so that you could still meet all your goals? In my case, my goals are still to launch Inspiring Innovators, drive traffic to it, promote it, write this blog, and write an ebook. Between all of those, I want to make $10,000/month in income by the end of this year.

But now I’m adding a new twist to it: I’m going to do all of this…and only work 2 hours a day.

My New Work Schedule

It’s actually going to be about 2.5 hours, all told. Here’s how I’m going to break it down:

• 15 minutes before I go to bed to create a to-do list for the next day. A refresher: My to-do list includes everything I plan to do for the day, either labeled “work” or “personal”, and an estimate on my behalf of how long it will take to do that item.
• 15 minutes before I start working to quickly check email and add a few more items to the to-do list. No Twitter, blogs, or anything else during this time.
• 2 hours, scheduled right now between 1-3PM (but free to change), to do actual work.

And that’s it. I have the rest of the day to exercise, read books, take up new hobbies, or go lounge around outside. Anything that comes in that night gets added to the next day’s to-do list before I go to bed.

Weekends are optional work days. I can choose to work my 2 hours (or not) as I see fit.

How would this sort of thinking change your life?

After you’ve read this, my challenge to you is to sit down and see what your work schedule would look like if you only worked 2 hours a day.

Here are a few instinctive ways I think my life will change:

• I’ll get almost as much done as I do now.
• I will feel much more sane.
• I’ll realize what my “time sinks” are and be able to outsource and/or eliminate them.
• I’ll discover what I really love to do, because those tasks won’t feel like work and won’t be an obligation. Then, I can make more time for those tasks.
• I will quickly realize who I need to hire to keep my business running smoothly, instead of just guessing.

Overcoming “I can’t”

A year ago I would have said it was impossible to only work 2 hours a day. I was full-time running my web hosting company, buried under piles of work I thought I had to do myself. But that wasn’t the real issue. Lack of time, much like lack of money, is never the underlying issue. It’s a symptom of a deeper problem.

What was that problem in my case? Actually, a lot of it boiled down to ego. I was filled with feelings of “I have to do this all myself” and “I can’t trust anyone else to do a good job”. Also, I wasn’t charging my customers the rates I needed to charge them to reliably sustain my business and hire new employees. Simpli, as a business, was perpetually cash-poor.

I have learned from all of these mistakes. My current businesses, while having all the great elements of “me” that will make them shine, will have employees from the start. A key distinction will be my ability to let go. And, in order to be able to fully let go and get my ego out of the way, I must restrain myself to only working 2 hours a day.

If you run a business, are you running it…or is your ego?

If you’re not hiring other people, or if you make excuses like “We don’t have enough money to…”, stop. Nothing is worth snuffing out the light inside yourself. Nothing is worth more than treating your body and mind well. No business is worth killing yourself over.

If you could only work 2 hours a day, what would you do? That’s your genius. Outsource everything else.

Let it go, and watch your business flourish. How will your life change? How will you change? I want to hear your comments…just leave them here. Of course, I will post an update here as well so you can see my progress toward this new goal.

By the way, this is based loosely on Tim Ferriss’s book “The 4-Hour Work Week.” However, I’ve added my own twists to it.

I missed that deadline, but for a good reason. I found a new mission — WealthCamp — a conference focusing on teaching personal finance and investing in a community-driven, interactive setting. I went full-tilt on WealthCamp until May 31, when we held the first WealthCamp in San Francisco. It went well, and I learned a tremendous amount — not only about setting up and running conferences, but about what you want to see in a personal finance conference.

Most of our attendees were in their late 20’s to mid 30’s, and many were in the middle of a transition from just “staying alive” and barely making ends meet to starting to feel more comfortable and make larger purchases. That’s a huge and quite interesting niche, and definitely wasn’t what I expected — but I was pleasantly surprised.

Overall, the feedback forms I got were overwhelmingly positive. During the next WealthCamp, we’ll be going more in-depth on financial tips and tricks and negotiation hacks. It’s clear that this sort of conference is needed in the community, and I plan to do many more of them.

The Power of Posting Goals

While I was putting the finishing touches on WealthCamp, something interesting and quite serendipitous happened.

Every few weeks, I check out the Established Sites for Sale marketplace over on Sitepoint Forums. This is where owners of websites post them for sale. I read it frequently to see what sites are out there and which ones are making money. Plus, since others can comment on the listings, you can quickly see what the prevailing opinion is on the site’s ability to make money.

Back in December, I wrote that I wanted to launch Inspiring Innovators to interview successful people. I said: “What I really wanted to do was hang around interesting people who have had great success and understand their thoughts, dreams, hopes, and fears. I wanted to express through interviews that these people aren’t all that different from the rest of us — so that we have the hope and courage we need to get there, too.”

In February, when I dove headfirst into Internet marketing, I found a website that did exactly that: interviewed successful entrepreneurs. The owner of the site had a slightly different vision than I had for Inspiring Innovators, though — he did in-depth interviews of successful Internet-based entrepreneurs twice a month and then charged $10/month as a subscription fee to view those interviews. “Genius!” I remember thinking at the time. “I had no idea people would pay for interviews…” Then, of course, I did WealthCamp and put the whole thing out of my mind.

A couple weeks ago, as I was surfing Sitepoint Forums, I noticed he had posted his website for sale for just 4 months’ net profit. As I read the description, my excitement grew — he had over 100 paying members to his site, and all customers, all the interviews, domain name, and content were included in the sale. Without hesitating, I clicked the “Buy” button. My mind still boggles that I dropped a few thousand dollars so “casually” — but what can I say? I knew without a shadow of a doubt that this was the Universe’s way of saying “It’s time for you to start Inspiring Innovators.”

The sale is closing this week, and I am excited to finally “launch” Inspiring Innovators. I will leave his business name alone and use the Inspiring Innovators domain name as an additional portal into the site. I have looked through his site and there is some great content there. I love the model and am darn excited to really get this project started.

What Can You Take From All This?

I want to emphasize to you the importance of not only setting goals, but writing them down and making them public. The Universe wants you to succeed. It wants to see you utilize all of your talents. And if you put your goals out there and make them loud and clear, that opportunity will show up. You just then have to not be afraid to take it. In my case, I could have been driven by thoughts of scarcity and “I can’t afford it” — but I knew this was an open door for me, and I took it without doubting myself.

Amazingly, the site owner read my blog after I purchased the site, found my 2008 Goals blog entry, and was truly excited to sell to someone who had the same idea as he did.

My goal, as stated in December 2007, is to make $10,000/month of blogging and other writing income by the end of 2008. Since it’s now June, this may be tough. But I want to point out another interesting synchronicity.

Figuring that I would be overwhelmed by a $10,000/month goal, I broke it down into monthly pieces at the beginning of this year. I then printed out what you see below and hung it on my monitor, where I stare at it several times a day:

I have only successfully hit my target once so far (in February) this year. However, the most interesting point is that after all advertising and hosting fees, the site I just bought makes…$800/month net profit.

Which is exactly what I had written down for June. Do you see how things can fall into place if you take steps toward action and don’t doubt yourself?

Your Four-Step Plan To Making Your Goals Happen

1. Set your goals clearly and concisely, and write them down publicly.
2. Put a reminder up about what you want to do someplace where you see it every day — like your bathroom mirror, or your computer monitor. Use numbers and specifics. Set a deadline.
3. Focus on those numbers. Believe they are possible — even if you’re not sure how you will achieve them.
4. Take action! When the door opens, grab on and enjoy the ride.

You’d be surprised what opportunities come your way when you signal to the world that you’re ready to take on a new challenge.

I will be releasing more details regarding Inspiring Innovators as I launch the site this month. Stay tuned to watch the next phase of my goals go into action!