Although this year flew by I have to admit it’s been a good one. Lots of wins this year and progress made. I can honestly look back with great satisfaction on the
improvements I’ve made in many areas, particularly in lifestyle. I hope you can look back and say the same.
One exercise I’ve committed to doing every year is an annual audit where I write down the top 20 biggest accomplishments, top lessons learned, and the biggest areas or accomplishments I need to make next year. By the way, this is not the old, worn out New Year’s resolution crap that most people do. I actually spend some time thinking about this, write it down, and record it; if anything, it will provide future generations a sneak peek into my early years and provide me the basis of my own “How I Did It” book that I plan on writing in my twilight years. The way I look at it, if you life is worth living, it’s worth recording.
If you don’t journal your life already, I strongly recommend that you start today if for no other reason to force you to take stock in your life and the direction you are headed. On last report, the average life expectancy of the average American was 77.4 years. When you consider that the biggest part of your life is spent sleeping, eating, sitting in your car, and working, you end up having less than 9% of your time for pure fun and leisure. That’s only 6.9 years if you’re doing the math, and I’m sure that percentage is far smaller for the entrepreneur.
So the big question you have to ask yourself is, how much of your time are you willing to spend working like a dog, worrying, stressing, and dealing with people (particularly clients, vendors, or employees) who irritate you? The reason we all become business owners is to give ourselves more freedom, money, and choices. The problem is, many business owners never stop and measure whether or not they are actually making any real progress in these areas OR DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT if they aren’t.
One of the best books any entrepreneur can read is the E-Myth by Michael Gerber. I personally experienced a number of huge revelations from that book when I finally “got” the idea that your business should be Guaranteed Revenue How To Turn Occasional Buyers Into Monthly, Guaranteed Revenue With Support Agreements Happy Holidays! designed to fit your lifestyle, not your lifestyle changed to fit your business. Another big revelation that I finally “got” this year was the idea of recurring revenue. Finding products and services you can deliver to your clients on an on-going basis that are profitable and easy to scale.
If you’ve been paying attention over the last couple of months, you’ve noticed that I’m putting more emphasis on and providing more strategies and tools for structuring and selling support agreements. I know that less than 5% of the members aggressively sell any type of recurring revenue support agreements; however, many have made progress in this area.
