Make a Plan and Hit the Road

The most successful people I know that are making money online had some type plan that they followed to get to where they are today. I never use to as I just went through life plodding along not knowing where life was going to take me.  If you don’t have a plan, now is the time to start.

Planning for your business is no different than the planning I did for my family’s trip to Disneyland. Here’s how it works.

You have to know where you’re starting from. In this case we’d start from our house, but on other trips there might be a different starting point.

For a business your starting point is your current business situation. What’s your competitive situation? Your financial situation? Your staffing situation?

You also need to know where you’re going. In business, this would be your goal. What do you want to be different at the end of your trip? How will you know that you’ve succeeded?

So you’ve got your starting point and your goal. Now you need to figure out how you’re going to make the trip.

What resources will you need?

If I’m driving to Disneyland, I might want to rent a van to carry my family and all our gear. Maybe it would be a good idea to get a GPS system to make sure we don’t get lost. There are two other resources to think about: money and time.

What’s the trip going to cost?

On a real trip you’ll be thinking about gas, food, hotels, park admission and other expenses. For a new web site you should be thinking about the cost to register a domain name, designing a website, hosting the website, marketing, etc…

How long will it take to make the trip?

On a road trip you want to think about how often you’ll stop and what speed you’re going to drive and where you should spend the night. For a business journey, you want to lay out the milestones that will measure your progress and serve as review and decision points.

Here’s another question that I like to ask when I’m planning a trip: What would be fun to do? There may be attractions along the way that we want to stop at. There may be things we want to plan to do at our destination. I like making a list of those as we think of them.

If you’re planning for your business ask the question this way: “What would we do if money and time were not an issue?” You’ll be amazed at how many of the things on your list turn out be possible.

Most books and articles on planning make it seem like a straight-line, one-time-through process. But no trip I’ve ever taken was like that. Neither was any business plan.

The planning process always goes around and around until things jell. That just seems to be the way it is.

And when you do hit the road, a flat tire or road construction can change your plan. So can the sight of a place you want to stop but hadn’t planned for.

Business is like that, too. You can’t plan to cover all the surprises, good and bad. So plan to be flexible.

Planning really is the key to success whether you’re driving to Disneyland or making money online. And, since you already know how to plan a trip, you won’t need any more of those fancy planning books.

Don’t be a Victim of Perfectionism

When it comes to making money online, there is one thing that has slowed me down more than any other thing that I can think of. Not only has it slowed me down, but it has probably cost me tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars of unearned potential income over the past 11 years of my Internet business career. The “evil thing” I am referring to is PERFECTIONISM!

Here are the two biggest things that perfectionism can do to stop you from making more money online.

1) WASTE YOUR VALUABLE TIME

I am actually writing this post because I fell victim to this monster again over the last two days. What happened was I decided to create my first screen capture video to add to my last post which shows people how easy it is to create an Ultimate Footer Ad. I just purchased Camtasia last week, so there was a little bit of a learning curve, but I figured it out pretty fast.

Looking back, the very first video I created yesterday actually turned out pretty good. But the perfectionist in me would not let me use it. You may find this hard to believe, but I probably spent more than 8 hours yesterday working on that basic 3 minute “screen-capture” video and another 3 to 4 hours today. I just kept redoing it over and over again, as I wanted it PERFECT!

Then to top it off, I actually ended up using the video and audio from one of my first takes that I made. Is it perfect? Not even close, but it works fine for this site.

How much time should it have really taken me create the video? I am thinking maybe 2 or 3 hours, as there was little bit of a learning curve, but 12 hours… that was ridiculous! If I wasn’t such a perfectionist, I could have gotten 4 times as much work done yesterday.

The same thing happened when creating this blog. It should have been live weeks ago, but I just kept tweaking the layout, as I never thought is was perfect enough to go live, but I finally said, “screw it” and opened it up to the world.

2) STOPS YOU FROM EVER PULLING THE TRIGGER

What I am talking about here is being such a perfectionist that you never complete your project or open your website. I have done this many times over the years and it can be a killer. You create this awesome product or service that is extremely relevant at the time, but you never release it to the public because it is never perfect enough for you. Next thing you know time has passed and your product or service has missed its opportune window or other people have released similar products, so you just shelve the project.

Now I am not saying you shouldn’t want to put out a great product, you absolutely should. What I am saying is you shouldn’t be such a perfectionist that it stops you from actually finishing a project or opening your first website.

What you need to do is set yourself a timetable for completion and stick to it. Just get it out there and make tweaks after it is live. I guarantee you that almost every successful marketer out there is not 100% happy with their products when they first release them.

Please don’t let perfectionism keep you from following your dreams.