Category: Goals

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How I Work Best: Setting Goals and Making them Happen

I just read one of my very first blog posts I ever shared here. It’s private so only I can see it.

In it, I lament that I didn’t feel like a top performer, and then talk at length about my younger days and how I maybe did feel that way.

But the example was how I managed to end up ranked #1 in my high school class. Long story short, I had that goal, and I essentially took advantage of all the loopholes I could while doing the bare minimum to accomplish it.

In short, I got it done.

In that blog post, I think I maybe missed the point entirely.

I discussed how maybe I didn’t even deserve it and how it really wasn’t just brute intelligence or ability that allowed me to succeed.

Which is true… But largely irrelevant.

At the end of the day, I did it. I had a goal, and I did what was necessary to accomplish it.

I think to my more recent life. Sure, there’s nothing that makes me feel like I’m an elite performer at anything. There’s no specific talent or ability that I have that’s world-class.

But it wasn’t too long ago when I set out after a goal. I wanted to be able to travel the world. I wanted such complete freedom that I could totally set my own schedule and live abroad for half of the year while still running a successful business.

Ideally while still putting away for an early retirement and generally keeping my other goals and priorities in mind.

And you know what? I completely accomplished that goal within about a year.

It didn’t take any stroke of genius, unbelievable talent, or any other world-class ability to do.

What it did require was a great deal of self-sufficiency, problem solving, self-awareness, growth, determination, and goal-orientation.

Those are what I have.

Perhaps I even have those things to a quietly world-class extent.

Maybe not, but it’s possible!

At the end of the day, I’m making great progress and achieving my goals. I think the key from here is to really break things down into smaller, achievable goals that all build up to much larger goals.

I could start by saying that I’d like to do something I’ve never done yet: add 100 website hosting clients in 2023. I already know how to do it, I just have to work at that.

If I am constantly focusing on my goals and how I can achieve them, I honestly think I will.

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What Am I Missing Out on by Being Self-Taught?

I’m not sure how this never occurred to me before, but I just considered today the fact that in my business I’m almost completely self-taught and I may be missing out on quite a bit as a result.

I learned a lot from working at another web development company before starting mine. But almost none of it was actually about building websites, and the vast majority of what I’ve learned has come after that.

I want to clarify here that I’m not self-made. I’ve had tons of help along the way. From social support, to general guidance, to referral partners, and much more, I would not be where I am now without the support of others.

But just in terms of learning how to work with others and how to operate a business, almost everything I’ve learned, I’ve learned from just… Doing it. Trying things, making mistakes, and improving.

I think a far more common way to do it is to go work in corporate America, develop a large skillset, and only branch off and start your own business when you already know the majority of what you need to do.

Certainly you hit the ground running that way.

But then again, most people who do that don’t really start their company until their 40’s or 50’s, in my experience. I had an established company in my 20’s.

But it was a lot of hard work and it really didn’t pick up until many years into it.

So now I’m just wondering a few things:

  1. How much faster could I have gotten going if I had been taught?
  2. What am I missing out on now, given that I still don’t have anyone teaching me?
  3. What should I do about it?

For #1, it’s certainly hard to say. I think having some kind of guide definitely would have helped. I remember back in my Carlson days, there were programs where aspiring business owners could find a mentor who would help them.

I’m not sure why I scoffed at that back then, but I’m sure it would have been incredibly helpful. It may have saved me a painful few years of struggling to get going.

For #2: there’s probably quite a bit! I think I’m past the point of wanting to learn more about, for example, coding or website design. I have my team for that.

But for running a business: there is obviously a ton I don’t know. And at this point, experience is going to be a slow teacher.

I don’t make tons of big mistakes anymore. Things are established and going well.

But that’s not much incentive to change, and there isn’t a whole lot of room for improvement there, either.

So I’d say I’m almost certainly being held back quite a bit by not having anyone teaching me.

So then what should I do?

I think maybe I need to find a mentor of some kind. Not a business coach, but a mentor.

Somebody who’s been here and knows the way forward.

I talk to some of my friends who are doing great in the corporate world, but their experiences are generally not that applicable to my situation. I think it would be hugely beneficial to me to find someone who’s been in my shoes that can help guide me.

So… I should do that. Now I just need to look around and see what’s out there for mentoring opportunities. I will check that and report back.

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I Know How to Grow, I just Haven’t Done It

As I’m reading through old posts and considering my current position, I’m realizing that I probably know exactly how to grow my business and am just not doing it.

Case in point: working with one of my partner companies, they have a variety of websites they’d like us to host. Once they are over to us, we can begin billing for that hosting.

It’s up to me to make sure those sites get migrated. And I just haven’t been doing it.

This is the proverbial “low hanging fruit” and I just haven’t been pursuing it at all, despite the fact that I absolutely have.

Yes: it’s more exciting to talk to a new client and make a new sale. In this case, the sale is already done, and all that remains is the boring logistics of actually migrating the websites and setting up billing.

What this might be reflective of is the fact that I love the conceptual, the novel, and the big-picture. I don’t love details and implementation. But in this case, they are absolutely critical.

Reading through my posts, I also have countless ideas of how to expand my hosting operations. But I’ve barely implemented any of them.

Networking with owners of other website hosting companies would be a great start! So I think it’s time to finally get to that and other ideas.

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Update: A Totally New (But Familiar?) Place

Things have changed quite drastically since I last wrote.

A month and a half ago, we were very much in a slow period. I had no active projects and really not much going on.

And then, all at once, everything changed.

Several prospective clients finally pulled the trigger. Some major projects and opportunities started with two new business partners (one old, one new), leading to a huge amount of new work.

And lots of existing clients came at me with new tasks as well.

To handle all of this, I needed to take on some new contractors. I immediately posted some listings on Upwork.com and within about a week, hired three new developers in addition to the three I’ve been working with.

And I’ve been working with them for a few weeks now, and it’s actually going great. I’ve been assigning basically all work to a contractor now and having them handle things.

I feel like I’ve finally taken a step back and embraced the project manager role.

It’s weird because I sort of feel like I’ve been here before, yet it feels totally different. At the end of 2018 and very start of 2019, it felt like nothing could go wrong. We had been consistently and aggressively growing, we were booked for months out, I had a full time employee, and all was well.

And then it wasn’t.

I grossly underestimated the hours to complete a massive new project, which sucked all of my resources for what seemed like an eternity (and was literally like a year). It prevented me from finishing or starting other, paying projects and focusing on growing my business.

And then, likely as a direct result of that project, my employee resigned, followed shortly thereafter by one of my two contractors.

I was living abroad at the time and loving that experience while everything else sort of crashed down, as is well-documented in other posts. But from then on, I vowed to do things very differently.

And I have.

I’ve been growing my business in a more sustainable way that allows for me to live the life I want to live. But I’ve also focused more on the fundamentals of running the business and growing it properly.

Whereas at the end of 2018 it felt like I was venturing in to a mysterious new world without really having a sense of what’s happening, this time it feels like I’m sailing through familiar waters. The foundation of everything is much stronger and I’m armed with more experience and insight into where I want to go and how to get there.

I’m managing the existing projects effectively without feeling like I’m just putting out fires or jumping around all day. Back then I just felt like I was getting burnt out and constantly getting pulled one way or the other.

Now things are more relaxed and controlled, and even though we’re doing way more work than then and making more money, I feel like not nearly as much is required of me.

To be clear, I feel that my own personal output far exceeds what it was then. But it’s much more controlled and I’m doing the right things and as a result, I don’t need to spend as much time doing everything. And I’ve minimized the types of issues that require immediate and constant attention by simply doing things right and being proactive.

We’ll see what the future holds. Perhaps I learned nothing the first time I was in a similar situation. But I’m thinking things will be a lot better and that 2021 will be a banner year.

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What if Most Businesses Grow Because they Invest Money, Regardless of What In?

Today’s thoughts are a little difficult to explain, but I’ll do my best.

The background to this is that I’ve determined I could probably turn money into new clients fairly reliably by purchasing other businesses. It’s a bit costly, but it works.

Most other businesses also grow and also invest money in opportunities, though they don’t typically acquire other businesses.

But my thought is basically this: what if they are only growing because they invested money at all, regardless of where they put it?

Obviously there are free forms of marketing, though they usually take time and therefor have a real opportunity cost, so in my opinion it’s the same in the end.

So if monetary investment of any kind is what leads to growth, acknowledging that fact has some very profound ramifications.

It would essentially mean that if you want to grow, you need to have extra cash on hand in order to invest in worthwhile activities. Without that budget, you’ll struggle to grow.

I think you could also simplify all forms of marketing and just say that all marketing you can invest in has an expected rate of return and acquisition cost for new clients, and while your goal is of course to maximize return and minimize costs, ultimately you’re going to have to spend money regardless.

Furthermore, given your limited resources, why not do everything you can to find the investment options with the highest ROI, and then invest everything into that?

Why bother diversifying at all?

I think so many businesses have so much on their plate with trying to run a bunch of social media pages and accounts, email marketing, SEO, trade shows, branded merchandise, various advertising, and much more.

But at the end of the day, all of those cost something and all of them have differing ROIs. Nothing should really matter other than the ROI, so why would you bother diversifying to that extent?

I think you should find what works best, and then put everything into it.

And now that you’ve found what works, and you’ve acknowledged that all you’re doing at this point is turning cash into growth for your business, the question becomes: how can I free up as much cash as possible so I can grow as fast as possible?

That is, assuming growth is your goal. But this is capitalism, so growth should basically always be the goal. Anyone who is putting any effort into marketing but doesn’t seem to think they want to grow (or more commonly: doesn’t actually have the capacity or ability to handle growth), is confused and should reconsider his priorities.

Historically, I’ve spent almost nothing on marketing; I’ve only put in my time. Which worked for a while, but obviously has a limit. I only have so much time, but money could grow forever.

I feel like I can see a future where I’ve figured out where to put my marketing dollars, where I’m putting everything I make back in and keep the ball rolling. It seems predictable and safe.

But as long as I accept this model as accurate and worthwhile, my mindset needs to shift completely. Whereas in the past my thoughts were always on marginally improving things and… I actually don’t really know what I was trying to do. I guess just grow “naturally”, whatever that means?

But whereas that, my goal now should literally just be to make as much money as possible now, take advantage of my credit, and invest as much as I can into growth. And as I take on more clients and have more recurring revenue, use that cash to grow even faster.

Unfortunately, I’m at a point at this exact moment where I don’t have much cash, and I’m not making a huge amount more than what I need to survive. I do have credit available, and I did just buy a business that will give me extra funds on a yearly basis.

But I’ll need to really think about where my dollars are going now, and how I can leverage them to trigger growth long-term.

As a follow-up side note: I don’t mean to imply that marketing initiatives that take up my time or can’t immediately be utilized or scaled up by spending more money aren’t worthwhile. There’s still room for a cohesive marketing strategy, and content marketing, SEO, and possibly social media advertising may still all end up being pieces of what I’m doing.

But they are all investments, and they need to be treated as such and possibly given money to be allowed to achieve their full potential.

I also don’t know exactly which options are going to have the best ROI for me. That’s part of what I’ll be working on over the coming months.

But if I can buy clients at the rate of $144 each, then that’s the metric to compare against. If I can find a way to acquire clients for less than that, it sounds like a good place to start dumping money.

And as a final side-note: for a typical client, I will likely make more profit than $144/year. So if my acquisition cost is less than that, it means that they’ll be profitable after a single year. And then after that, those profits could be used to acquire 1 new client.

Which means that technically, I should be able to double in size each year if I do things right.

Of course there are taxes and some other expenses that seem fixed will inevitably grow with the business, but even so, I should be able to grow very rapidly if I do this right.

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Here’s the Plan

I always feel the need to plan things out, yet I almost never do it. I love thinking through all the top-level things that need to happen or that I want to try, but I don’t necessarily follow-through and make an actual plan.

That needs to change!

So right here and now, I’m making a plan.

I’m re-reading “The One Thing” and it has a format that I like. Obviously, the “focusing question” from that book is something along the lines of:

“What’s the one thing I can do right now that will make everything else easier or unnecessary?”

But further than that, he breaks it down by time frame, so what’s the one thing I can do in 5 years, 1 year, etc. By starting at the end and then breaking things down, you can get to actionable items right now that, over time, will lead to that goal.

So what do I want?

I want to make enough from my business that I can essentially do whatever I want and retire early, but also be able to work entirely remotely and spend very little time on the business.

How can I get there?

Well, let’s try and figure out what that means. I could pluck a number out of the air, but I want to say that it means somewhere around $500,000 in personal income for the year, while working 10 or fewer hours per week.

I like the idea of continuing to use hosting, updates, and WordPress maintenance as the main source of income, because they are all scalable.

If I continue focusing on WordPress, I think that for each client I could expect something like $150/year in profit on hosting, $75 for updates, and perhaps $150 for maintenance.

So that’s $375 in profit per site, per year. To get to $500,000 then, I would need 1,333 and 1/3 clients.

That’s a lot of clients! But honestly, that’s totally doable.

I’ve got maybe 275 hosting clients now. They aren’t all WordPress and they won’t all bring in $375, but I’m working up to that. To be safe, let’s say I need 1500 clients in 5 years.

With the 275 I have now, I still need 1,225 more, or 245 new ones per year. With attrition, that number is going to need to be closer to 300, most likely.

Now, my goal for this year was 100 new hosting clients, and I still intend to exceed that goal. Obviously that won’t cut it if it’s all I can do each year.

However, this first year is going to be the most important one, because it’s where I’m going to figure out how to rapidly get new clients. I’m going to experiment and try things and hopefully accomplish something that’s repeatable.

So without further ado, here is my priority for each time range.

The one thing I can do in 5 years:

Service 1,500 website hosting clients

The one thing I can do in 1 year:

Figure out a scalable, repeatable method of acquiring new clients and investing heavily into it, resulting in 100 new hosting clients.

The one thing I can do in 1 month:

Test a variety of different methods for acquiring new clients and see what works.

The one thing I can do in a week:

Put a plan together for what I’m going to test and put concrete timelines on everything.

The one thing I can do right now:

This!

 

There, I did it! I’ll need to review and plan over time to see how things are going, but I think this is a great start.

In “The One Thing”, he recommends spending literally 4 hours per day on advancing your “one thing”, and that definitely makes sense. I think to start I might start blocking off 2 hour chunks and really hitting it hard.

I think it’s really, really important that I actually do this. If I think back to how my time has been spent historically, only a tiny fraction of it has been spent on improving the business and implementing actual plans that I’ve had.

That really needs to change! And it will only happen by actually blocking off time. I’m making a note to figure out all of that tomorrow!

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I Should Always be Reinvesting Back Into the Company

I had an epiphany the other day and it’s that I really need to be utilizing all of the credit I have available to me and reinvesting large amounts of the money I make back into the growth of my company.

Maybe this seems like an obvious things for many people but for me, it was a total departure from how I’ve operated. Historically I’ve never paid for marketing and my costs have always been very low, so anything I made was basically just straight income for me.

But now that I’ve successfully purchased another hosting company and quickly grown my business that way, my mindset has completely changed. What if there was some magical way to continue spending my revenues on things that will get me new clients?

I say that tongue-in-cheek, but it really is so different from what I’ve done historically that it’s actually a novel idea.

I actually had the thought while reading the book Sapiens. The author is discussing Consumerism and Capitalism and describes how the wealthy capitalists reinvest all of their earnings back into growth, while the consumers, well… Consume. They spend what they make on stuff.

While he by no means glorifies capitalists, it still made me think about how I’m running my business and realize that I could really be doing things differently.

So now that I’ve decided to do that, the question is: where do I spend this money?

One of my top choices is to simply buy more business. You get a lot of clients at once, on-boarding is simpler, and it just works. There is little-to-no sales process which is great. Plus I get all that link juice which is super nice.

But I haven’t tested whether it is repeatable to just continue acquiring businesses. I’ll have to reach out to a bunch of owners and see if I can find any that are looking to sell.

And then there’s the other options of paid advertising. Ultimately, I have some idea of what it’s worth to me to have new clients. If spending on advertising costs less than what clients are worth, I should proceed full-steam ahead.

The main thing is that I need it to be repeatable and scalable. Unlike in-person networking (which I can only do so much of), the right paid ad could be completely scalable. Spend more: make more!

So over the coming months, I need to work really hard to test out different marketing methods, and figure out which once I can repeat over-and-over again. I’m thinking that if I can get new hosting clients for $100, it is absolutely worth it to do so.

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2020 Goal – 100 New Hosting Clients

It’s 2020 and it’s time for some serious goal-making. And you know what my goal is? To add 100 new hosting clients over the course of the year.

A couple interesting notes on this: it’s actually fewer hosting clients than I added in 2019. However, that was just because I purchased a hosting company with more than 100 clients, so it was kind of cheating.

But then again: it worked! If all it takes is purchasing hosting companies to add them on like this, I feel like I should absolutely do it. I think I need to reach out to a bunch of hosting company owners and just let them know that if they are interested in selling, I’m interested in buying.

I just did a quick Google maps search for “Website Hosting” in the Twin Cities area, and what I found was astonishing. I found one company that seemed legit that apparently just shut down and literally turned off all of their client’s sites. Others seem to be fairly outdated and I wouldn’t be surprised to find that they are in the same boat as Berry Bros was.

I think I’d be missing out on incredible opportunities if I didn’t reach out to every single one of these and see if there was any interest in selling. It just makes too much sense.

Alternatively, I’ve gone over many ideas for getting new clients, and I think that once things slow down a bit for me, it’s time to really ramp up those efforts. While the SEO and calls-to-action are things I should certainly work on optimizing, I think I should definitely start aggressively pursuing some paid-for marketing options.

I need to really sit down and think what a hosting client is worth to me. Are they worth one year’s expected revenue? Two? Three?

I should be willing to spend a good chunk of change on advertising that delivers results and brings new clients through the door.

Whatever it takes to get two new hosting clients every week, I think I should absolutely do. That should be my ultimate focus this year.

I want to continue posting here and monitoring my progress. Hopefully by this time in 2021, I’ll have well over 100 new hosting clients.

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Thinking About Goals – 100 New Hosting Clients?

It’s time to start thinking about goals for next year. My first thought was, “how about 100 new hosting clients?”

And it’s not a bad goal! Obviously, it doesn’t specify how I get them.

The interesting thing is that I’ll meet that goal this year. But it’s because I just purchased another hosting company and took on all their clients.

But does it really matter?

Sure, it’s been a ton of work, and I had to pay a decent amount of money for all of them. But are the acquisition costs really that different than they would be “in the wild?”

The ways I’m thinking about doing it next year involve driving all over the place and networking. All of those things take a lot of time and have opportunity costs associated with them.

It’s entirely possible that just buying these clients outright will be cheaper than any other form of taking them on.

It’s maybe still to early to get a proper sense of how everything went, but if this current acquisition goes well overall, my time may be best spent in the future trying to purchase other companies.

Sometimes the “easiest” way to do something is still the best way! It sort of feels like cheating but if it works, it works!

I think it’s just important to continue considering all options at this point and to try some new things out. I think a lot of options have merit, including going out and networking.

Unfortunately it just doesn’t seem like SEO is paying off, though it may still be too early to call. I need to review my posts about different tests and see if we can start converting visitors.

And in another post I’ll have to confirm official goals for 2019. I do like the idea of just adding new hosting clients, as I still believe that growing that part of the business is key.

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How to Stay Motivated without Pain and Struggle

When I first started my business, I had a free one-hour consultation with a business coach. He asked me what the minimum amount of money I need to make each month is in order for me to sustain my life, and I told him, “$500”.

I’ll never forget what he said next. He told me, “If you want to make more money in your business, you’re going to have to raise that number way up”.

His advice was literally that if I wanted to make more money, I would need to increase my daily expenditure so that it would be a struggle if I didn’t make enough to cover it.

They say that pain and struggle are incredibly powerful motivators. When your next meal depends on making more, you tend to do it.

I don’t know that I agree fully with what he told me, but I think people absolutely get complacent. When you’re making plenty to get by how you’re living, you don’t feel the need to make more.

I think that’s actually why it’s such good advice to automate your finances and investments. Even buying a house makes sense, because it forces you to build that equity. You don’t have a choice not to make enough to cover it.

Without those things, people just tend to inflate their lifestyle. Nobody accumulates cash. Either they find a way to make sure that extra money gets invested (which is rare), or they just spend more every month. Usually in the form of costlier housing or a car.

In my case, I tend to just travel more but I have the luxury of that as an option.

But I don’t want to struggle. And I want to continue improving my business and making more. So how do I proceed?

The one option, as mentioned, is to automated investments, and force myself to always be struggling to have enough for everything. But again, I still have that struggle.

I guess my question to myself is whether the struggle is actually necessary. Is the human nature of complacency too strong for me to overcome?

I tend to be an idealist, and I think, “absolutely not!” But what if it is? What’s the pragmatic approach here?

What if I set rigid goals for myself? Are goals, in general, the key? Because I could say something like, “I want to cap my yearly spending at X, and I want to grow my business by Y each year” and then stick to that.

But is it really doable when I am otherwise comfortable?

I think part of the answer lies in the fact that “motivation” is fleeting, and is more or less a myth. Struggle is only supposed to be temporary. If it goes on too long you get worn out, and the motivation fades.

The solution, I think, lies in habits and an attitude where you just do things and don’t wait around for motivation. Set goals, develop a rigid plan to achieve them, and then implement.

Even if you’re comfortable financially, that time-tested course of action should work.