Improvement is always possible and should be sought out at every possible opportunity (tweet this)
Are you ever concerned that the action you are taking at any given time is perhaps not best for your business or side endeavor in terms of its ongoing development?
If you do then congratulations: that awareness is an extremely valuable asset. If you don’t then you’re either nailing it and have nothing to worry about, or there is room for improvement that you are completely ignorant of. I have a feeling that most people fall into the second category. After all, there is always room for improvement.
In this post I want to explore that principle and explain the simple system I have used to drive consistent growth in my business over the past eighteen months so that you can do the same.
The Momentum of Success
When it comes to running my business I will forgive myself for many transgressions.
I won’t beat myself up if I lie in on a Monday morning (which is precisely what happened today) or take some time off in the afternoon to get some cricket coaching (that’s today again). Quite frankly, I didn’t work so hard to quit my job and build a successful online business so that I could be a shitty boss to myself!
However, there is one thing I do not forgive myself for: straying off track from taking action in areas that will have the biggest impact on my business. Why? Because ensuring that you take small (or big) steps towards growing your business on a consistent basis is in my opinion the key to consistent growth.
The trouble is that it is all too easy to wander off track — especially if you have experienced some success and just feel like patting yourself on the back more than anything else. However, success should breed success. That moment where you achieve something remarkable is the prime time for you to build upon what you have achieved.
Consistent Application = Results
I have learned over the past few months that conscious application in the most fertile areas of your business can create big results. That understanding is the reason for the growth of my freelance writing rate, affiliate income and information product sales. It is the reason why my net income has grown 67% in the past six months.
There are no miracles at work. In my experience, a successful online business is primarily built from two things:
- Persistence
- Leverage
Those two principles have got me to where I am today. Bullish persistence enabled me to find opportunities that I then leveraged.
You can observe this in just about everything that I do. In October 2011 I discovered that there was potential in freelance writing. My first client only paid $20 per hour but I recognized that if I developed my skills and reputation I could probably command a higher rate. Fast forward 18 months and my effective hourly rate is around $100 per hour. I persisted until I found an opportunity and have since leveraged it as much as possible.
The same goes for affiliate marketing. I worked hard for a very long time and made very little from this blog in terms of affiliate marketing — it is only in the last few months that I have began to make more than a few bucks. My persistence is paying off and my improved understanding of how effective and honest affiliate marketing should be done is enabling me to better leverage the potential that this blog has.
Finally, consider my information product. I am constantly seeking out ways of better leveraging the money-making potential that my freelance writing guide has. I have tested different price points. I am currently designing a new sales page that I will soon be testing. And just last week I managed to get a link to the sales page from Lifehacker. All attempts to better leverage my product.
How to Apply My Process Practically
Fortunately, the foundation that underpins my process is extremely simple and can be implemented within a few a minutes.
If you’re anything like me then you’ll have some sort of task-based system that helps you to keep track of what you are doing — it could be anything from a mental list in your head to a notepad and pen or an application on your computer or smartphone. Whatever your system is, I want you to add an extremely important list to it: Priorities.
Your Priorities list should include every outcome that has a positive impact on your business’ growth. I’m not talking about tasks or actions that you should take, nor am I talking about specific quantitative goals — just simple outcomes.
Here are some examples from my list to give you a better idea of what I mean:
- Increase traffic to LWB
- Increase LWB affiliate income
- Optimize and split test information product sales page
Each item on your list should devolve into a Next Action. For instance, “Increase traffic to LWB” could result in me creating a task such as, “Get a post syndicated on Lifehacker” (which is what I did last week).
You should list as many of these outcomes as you can imagine. Don’t worry about them overlapping or being too similar — that’s not an issue. Just worry about creating a comprehensive list of all outcomes that have a positive impact on your business’ growth.
Once you have completed this list the next step is to ensure that you have at least one active Next Action in place for each of the outcomes. To put it another way, you should always be working on every aspect of your business’ growth.
The process is no more complicated than that: create a list of outcomes with associated Next Actions for achieving those outcomes. The outcomes are deliberately open ended and should never be deleted until you feel that you have achieved all that you can in that area.
Business Growth Defined
Applying this thinking to my business had a huge impact.
I went from hoping that I was moving in the right direction to knowing that I was giving my business the best possible chance of growing into something bigger. My Priorities list and its associated Next Actions are evidential proof that I am applying myself in terms of building my business.
I recommend that you refer back to your Priorities list once per week to ensure that everything is on track. I also recommend that you tag your associated Next Actions in some way so that they stand out from what may be a sea of items that are less important in terms of growing your business. That way, you can always make an easy decision to apply yourself to growth every working day.
Whenever possible I try to make sure that the first thing I do on any given day is complete a Next Action that helps me to get closer towards one of the outcomes on my Priorities list. No matter what I do for the rest of the day, I will know that I did something to grow my business.
What do you think of my system? Do you plan to implement it? Do you have any suggestions, comments or criticisms to add? Let me know in the comments section!