We’re closing in on quarter one and it’s time to take a look over the past three months to evaluate our performance. Given I’m self-employed I have to look back at the weeks past and see where I made money, where I lost money, and get an overall perception where I am with my companies and where they are heading. As I finish my tax preparations to officially close out 2011 I have a pretty good judge of where my companies are heading. You should as well.
As Internet Marketers we can quickly leverage our businesses around the “New Year” rush. Since Ruck and I can only cover so much ground, we stick to health, wealth, and relationships. Each one of those can be promoted heavily over first quarter. This year’s top New Years resolutions (USA.gov):
Drink Less Alcohol
Eat Healthy Food
Get a Better Education
Get a Better Job
Get Fit
Lose Weight
Manage Debt
Manage Stress
Quit Smoking
Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle
Save Money
Take a Trip
Volunteer to Help Others
Need I say more? Since these rarely change, this tells us everything we need to know to plan out our marketing plans, weeks, if not months in advance. As we head into the second quarter, we can consider upcoming graduations, spring break trips, important holidays, etc. Reviewing the books, we can go back through and see which areas returned us the highest ROI and scale accordingly.
It’s 2012 and the Internet is still VERY young. While it may seem to some of the most lucrative opportunities have passed, this is FAR from the truth. With the massive growth in social media and mobile Internet consumption, we’ve only scratched the top of the surface of what’s in-store for the future. I’ve been working online since the late 90s and 2012 is already looking right on track to be one of my top years ever.
Recently I’ve taken an interest to the television show Restaurant Impossible. I find it amusing how they feel that they can come into an establishment and “magically” turn it around by having a drill sergeant host bully around the struggling owners. Folks the cold hard truth is you can blame it on whoever you want to, but the only reason a business FAILS is because of ownership. If you’re a business owner and it’s failing – that’s on you. Offline OR Online. You are the only person that can change you. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying “you can bring the horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” That’s so true in many different ways. The economy, competition, new restrictions, etc. are all just excuses. Suck it up and move FORWARD.
Reflecting back on the last decade, it’s rewarding to see how many challenges I’ve been faced with and am always able to overcome. Remember the dot-com crash in the early 2000s? I damn well do. I was nearly taken out of business and COULD HAVE EASILY HAVE QUIT just like many of my competitors did. If I would have done that it is very likely i would not be sitting right here with you. Rather than saying I CANNOT GO ON, I said HOW CAN I ADAPT. I lost HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of dollars in advertising revenue and my brother and I were forced to dip into our personal accounts just to keep the business going. “I’m sorry sir we’ve filed Bankruptcy and cannot honor your advertising contract” is NOT going to be the phrase that puts me out of business. I’m a better businessman than that. I do not doubt myself and my ability as an Entrepreneur.
A couple of months ago Ruck and I started Internet Marketing Grind. Bootstrapped from the bottom up, doing most of the tedious start-up tasks ourselves, we now have a team of seven, are reaching over 3,000 unique visitors a day on our blog, and coach and train thousands of Internet Marketers from all over the world. We also operate two separate, Internet Companies that focus heavily on online performance monetization. What makes us different? We wont quit. To many, our hours may seem insane. To us, it’s all we know. The power of hard-work and leveraging the ability to be able to adapt, develop, and progress.
In the last year I’ve moved TWO different times to TWO different states. No room to hesitate or make excuses, you have to always remember to move forward. I’m not different than the average Joe, but I won’t let the “small worries” bother me. 2012 is still a fresh year. It’s your year to take control, stop the excuses, and move forward to sustaining your successful career. Remember, if I would have quit in the 2000s, I would have missed out on a NUMBER of different Internet start-ups as well as IMGrind.com.
Ryan Gray is the founder and CEO of NameHero, one of the fastest growing independent web hosts in the United States. Ryan has been working online since 1998 and has over two-decades experience in Internet Entrepreneurship.
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