With Christmas and the New Year just around the corner, we are approaching that time of year when many people start thinking about their New Year Resolutions. Personally, I gave up on making such resolutions a long time ago. However, it is a time to take stock of all aspects of our lives. It’s a time to look back at what has happened in the past and look forward to planning for the next year, or further ahead than that. They say that we should never live in the past but we should learn from it.
The first month of the year, January, is named after the Roman god, Janus, who is depicted with two faces, one facing forwards and one backwards. The beginning of a New Year is the perfect opportunity to look at, not just our personal lives, but at our business lives too. Perhaps, in that case, we should make internet business New Year resolutions. The problem is that people are notoriously bad at keeping their resolutions. A different approach might be called for in that case. Rather than looking ahead at a full year (plus) we should set ourselves shorter term targets which will be easier to achieve and easier to focus upon.
School and college students are often encouraged to work in “bite-sized” pieces as the human mind prefers to take in information that way. When I was at school, I used to go on field trips and walking holidays organised by staff at the school. When it came to trekking up steep hills, a technique very popular with one particular teacher was “bee-lining”. This involves setting yourself relatively short distance targets. Rather than simply looking at the top of the hill, the summit of which never seems to get any closer, you set much closer targets and head straight for them: “I’m going to get to that stile” – “That rocky outcrop is next” – “When I get to that copse of trees I’ll have a breather” – etc. It’s a variation on the bite-sized pieces concept. With the completion of each target comes a sense of achievement which motivates you to keep going. By approaching the climb this way the summit is reached much less painfully than if you go for the one distant target.
We should be perpetually aiming to improve the way we run our businesses online just as we should be trying to improve the way we run our lives. A few years ago, whilst working in my other line of work, music, I was rehearsing for a concert in a church in Brighton. I had a bit of time to kill so had a walk around the church. In my exploration I discovered a church magazine. One of the pages in that publication had a selection of amusing stories and anecdotes. At the foot of the page was a little homily which said this: “Lead your life so well that you would not be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the village gossip”. Wonderful!
Perhaps we should run our businesses with that in mind. We should do our very best to stay ‘on message’, focus on doing things the right way and setting ourselves realistic targets to achieve. When running an internet business, the process is straight-forward but must be well planned. We must apply ourselves diligently to get the best out of every opportunity and fully realise our potential. We should, at all times, conduct ourselves in a reputable way, especially when dealing with our customers and with those on our List. Perhaps we should think of that homily and lead our business lives in such a way that we would not be ashamed to sell the family parrot to either our colleagues or to our customers.