New Years Resolutions!

Warriors! It's 2012! Time to reflect and make some New Years Resolutions!

Like most people here I own an internet marketing biz.

A little about me:
Worked in corporate tech support most of this year.
Learned most of what I needed to know about internet marketing (design, development, SEO, local, citations, the works) at that business when they grabbed me to help with design and development contracts.
Left very amicably to finish up some courses for school and really bridged the gab in what I need to know to carry on marketing.

8 courses off from grabbing that University degree w/ no debt.
Starting a night school Marketing certificate at another university to help give me the credentials I need (they have a surprising amount of IM worked into their certificate - I suggest marketers take a look ay what's available).

I'm really thankful and happy for all the help I've had along the way, and all the people willing to give me help both online and off to help me get to where I am.

That being said. I'm not where I want to be.
Hopefully with some elbow grease and hard work next year I'll bridge that gap and get to the point where my business is self-sustaining and I don't need to be chomping my nails every month, chasing clients for quick payments when the bills come around.

So, to the resolutions!

1) It's time to sell! - I'm not selling enough. It's one of my strong-points and I'm not doing enough of it. I have a few ongoing contracts, but I get so bogged down in the talking to clients and developing that I forget, when I'm not bringing in new clients I'm not making any new income for that day.

2) Outsource! - That being said, I can't stop helping those clients who I currently have contracts with. So even if I'm the front facing administrator of the company, I can still have people working behind the scenes when I'm out there selling. I understand the technical details of what they need to do and can check their work, so there really isn't any reason I shouldn't be doing this (aside from the smaller margins that is ). It's all about scale.

3) Go Global. I have Skype. There's no reason I should be limiting myself to my local calling area. It's a little harder to close solely over the phone. A few "No's" and a little tweaking of my scripts shouldn't hamper me too much over the benefits though.

4) Be Accountable. Bad days happen. I may waste my time selling an entire day without making a sale. Saying "Oh, that's crappy" doesn't cut it though. I'm going to have to look at why products weren't selling and change my scripts, selling pattern accordingly.

5) Be the Boss. As the owner I need to remember that I own the business, not my customers. An early lesson I learned from my old mentor was the "**** you, pay me" strategy. When clients expect something for nothing, they're trying to screw you no matter how you look at it. Don't be the nice guy, because they won't respect you as a business. Have rates, make them liveable, and sell to them.

Also, I need to stop reading WF quite as much. :-P