theAdmin.orgGrowing a simple software business

October brought my business some great events and some disappointments.

October Daily Actions

Marketing ideas are usually really simple but taking action on those ideas are extremely hard. Last month I said I was going to focus on closing the sales that I had pending. I closed some but I had a hard time working on the daily actions I set for myself. The three actions I was supposed to do were:

• Follow up with 1 proposal a day
• Get a “No” every day
• Have one new newsletter subscriber per week

By the end of the month, I found I never really did any of them. The excuse I have is that I was busy working on billable work. This is a really good excuse, but the lack of action will end up hurting me in coming months as my marketing has lulled next to nothing.

October Monthly Goal

On a better note, my October goal was to bring in $7,000 in revenue. This goal was to make me stretch and was basically double the amount of work I had confirmed.

Guess what? ….. I reached it

Near the end of the month about 66% of the goal was complete and I was pushing really hard to hit 100%. Then I had a project make some changes that resulted in a ton of work for me to do before the end of the month. This push let me finish my goal, in fact I even beat it by an extra 10%.

It is really surprising what you can do if you put your head to it.

November Goals and Actions

For November I decided to try something new with my goals and actions. Instead of having 10 marketing actions and one goal, I split my goals and actions into 3 sections, each with their own daily actions and rewards.

Business Section

I had a killer month last month, far exceeding my revenue goal. From the projects I currently have, I think I can have another killer month. I’ve also been wanting to add something to my website that I can give away to visitors, so I will be starting to work on that resource this month.

Goals

1. $7,000 in revenue
2. Planning completed on a free web resource
3. Finish all portfolio tasks

Marketing Section

Over the past few months, my marketing has slowed down a lot. My biggest problem is that I am not meeting enough new people. So my November Marketing goals are focusing on meeting new people.

Goals

1. Meet 5 new people
2. Get 5 new newsletter subscriptions

Personal Development Section

This section is a bit of an experiment. Since the business is part of my life, it should somehow improve the skills I have. Recently, due to long work hours and just an addiction to reading, I have stockpiled a huge amount of blog posts and books to read. I am already a fast reader, but if I could double my reading speed I would be able to start to catch up and pick up a lot of good information.

Goals

1. Speed read at 750 words per minute with 70% comprehension

Some lessons I learned from this month:

• Let your goals help push you to success: I was afraid to set such a high goal in October but I am now glad I did. If it was lower, I wouldn’t have driven myself as hard to reach it. Your goals should be far enough out of your grasp, that you need to strain to reach them.
• Track what you want to improve: The last two weeks of October, I started to track how much revenue I made every day. This let me see that I was making progress to my goal and helped motivate me to put in that extra hour of billable work each day.
• Reward yourself: As you accomplish major tasks, take the time to reward yourself. This can be as simple as an hour playing a game, or are large having a shopping spree at your favorite book store. Rewarding the little successes really make running your business fun.

Eric