February Check-in

Wew, another month flew by and let me tell you, I’m making some progress at building a sustainable part-time social media support business that would provide sufficient supplimentary income for my family (that’s my goal for this year).

Financially, January was very slow for me. Even though I was working on a couple of projects, they started fairly late into the month and weren’t going to be finished (and paid for) until mid-February. There was also a whole big time-crunch issue. Between all my other obligations, I started to doubt the possibility of building a part-time business.

Ok, so, fast-forward to the end of February. Some time at the beginning of the month I made a major improvement to my goal-setting process, thanks to Leo Babauta’s terrific The Power of Less book. The change was as simple as it was profound – I divided my big goal (the one in bold above, only with a $ attached) into 12 intermediate goals, each with its own $ amount.

This meant, that in February I had to make X dollars; in March – a bit more than in February; in April – a bit more than in March, etc. I specifically chose a very realistic, very achievable number for my February goal. Not only was I able to make that X amount, but, based on my Quickbooks report, I made triple the target amount! That makes me feel very positive and a lot less stressed-out. Lesson learned: small incremental goals work better than one big goal.

Now, let’s review some of my other goals for February:

1. Subscribing to 5 more interesting and relevant blogs – I ended up doing just the opposite – unsubscribing from a couple of the blogs I used to follow. I needed to declutter my Google Reader to get it ready for my new project (yes, another Elance project). I still follow quite a few blogs, but do it through one RSS feed from Alltop.

2. Commenting on blogs – here’s something I don’t understand about some blogs – if you don’t want comments, then why don’t you turn them off? It might sound astonishing, but some blogs take over a week to approve a comment. Which is still not bad compared to others who don’t approve at all because you express slight doubt about or disagree with the original post. Weird, isn’t it? Moving on…

3. Write 1 guest post – done; I guest blogged in a Lifestyle section on a local blog, North Hills Buzz.  

4. Develop a solution for my terrible time crunch – hmm, still working on it, but making some progress. Right now I’m trying a new approach and tweaking it as I move along. Don’t want to write about it until I get some more evidence that it works (or doesn’t). For now, I’d like to share this Lesson Learned: choosing projects that are basically the extension of my hobbies or interests was a great way of making the most out of the limited amount of time I have for both business and pleasure.

Feel free to brag about all the good stuff or share your concerns and problems right in the comments or by e-mailing me.

Who Throws Away Dry Bouquets, You or Your Client?

Valentine’s Day was one week ago. And by now even the most long-lasting V-day bouquets have wilted. I myself had to toss away some dry roses yesterday. Which got me thinking about customer service and taking care of your client.

I mean, does your work stop after the project is delivered? And when you do work on a project or a task for your client, do you think of the present… Continue reading

Part-Time Business Owners Need Not Apply

As I was looking for a networking group to join, I came across one that basically advised start-up and part-time business owners to look elsewhere. I can’t say I totally understand their motives, but hey, it’s their group. So I’ll just move on.

But it got me thinking – is it even possible to have a part-time business? Let’s say, to be a full-time stay-at-home mom during the day and a… Continue reading

January Check-in

With all that’s been going on in January, I am seriously questioning the idea of building a part-time business. Is it really possible? How should I adjust my goals and expectations? How should I schedule tasks and manage my time?

But first, I think I ought to report on my January progress:

Just to remind you (and myself), my business goal for the first 6 months of this year is to “Create… Continue reading | 1 Comment

How to Get 5000 Twitter Followers by Next Monday

The single best social networking advice that I’ve ever heard and that’s been corroborated by many was to concentrate on quality, not quantity.  Quality meaning, of course, if you keep producing quality content and interact with others in a personal and un-spammy way, you will end up with a high-value, if possibly kind of smallish, network.  

But what if you really REALLY need to have a lot of followers for some big announcement or… Continue reading

5 Time-Saving Twitter Tools For Busy Business Owners

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of Twitter-related work, helping out some very busy business owners to organize and manage their Twitter accounts. Which, ironically, left me with very little time or energy to keep up my own tweeting - a typical case of “shoemaker’s children”.

Dealing with a social network notorious for sucking up all the free (as well as not-so-free) time while in a terrible time-crunch made me appreciate some of the fantastic Twitter tools… Continue reading

Should I Automate Social Media

If you already have social networking profiles, including LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, etc. then you know that you need a lot of time to maintain all this virtual “real estate”. You also know that as a small business owner you are already pretty much maxed out. Fortunately, automation comes to the rescue!

But wait, aren’t you supposed to be 100% authentic and automation is the opposite of that? Wouldn’t automating some… Continue reading

Pros and Cons of Business Networking

One of my goals this year is to attend 4 real-world face-to-face networking events each month. Why bother with offline networking at all? After all, several virtual assistants I spoke with told me they do all their marketing and networking strictly online.

Face-to-face Networking Builds Trust

My personal experience with online-only networking is a mixed bag. I met all my past and present clients online. The problem is that some of my… Continue reading

New Year Resolutions, Not Again!

A few weeks ago I stumbled on a great little blog and immediately subscribed to it. There were two things I loved about it. One was the level of transparency and unpretensiousness @earningathome established from her very first post.

But what really got me hooked on subscribing and reading all the updates (and some of the archives) is the goal-setting and goal-tracking that are at the core of this blog… Continue reading

Are You Ready for the New Year?

I am one of those people that have to “get ready for the New Year” – writing down lessons learned in the past year and goals for the new one. It used to be very easy to do a few years back when I used the Fortune Cookie method. I simply wrote all my wishes on little slips of paper and put them under my pillow. The first thing in the morning… Continue reading

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