TheRatRaceLab.Com

I know I have promised one of these posts for some time now but I have been so distracted begging you guys to fill in my web hosting survey I completely lost sight of my intended posting schedule. This post is the first of the “Lessons of ‘09″ series of posts where I look back, re-cap and evaluate the lessons learnt from the last year and share them with you.

So, lesson one; this is business.

Even if you are spending 2-4 hours on building this extra revenue for yourself at home of a weekend in and around your family’s busy and demanding schedule, this is still a business. Even if you are still partying hard,  playing catch up on course work and assignment work at the last minute at University or College, you have to remember what you are actually doing is building a business. Even if you don’t think you are and even if you are not seeing any income from it yet, understand, you’re building a business.

One of the reasons why 2009 was not the roaring success for me I had hoped it would be, was because I was playing at this. I really lacked the focus to commit to things and follow through on them. I set myself no schedule, I set myself no goals, timelines, I had irregular sleeping patterns and had no self-discipline. This year I am up at 6.30 am sharp every weekday morning, and the first thing I do is get down to some work. I take out an hour break for lunch and an hour-and-a-half break in the afternoon to do a 6 mile run and have a shower.

Every day I write down a list of tasks that MUST be completed by the time my working day is up (and my working day often runs to 8,9 or 10 at night). I make sure these things are done and completed. I spend the last bit of my work time writing down tomorrow’s tasks and then I spend 30 minutes to an hour reading some fiction to help my mind wind down before bed.

Do you need to do any of the above? Absolutely not, but the above gives you an idea of the structure of my day. I am not saying you need to do that, but here is what I do recommend, especially for the part-timers out there who have to fit this kind of stuff in and around a full-time job.

Work in 2 hour chunks and make sure to have a task-list written before the start of that two hours so you know the tasks that need to be completed in that 2 hour chunk of time. Make sure you do this regularly, ideally five times a week, or once a day, but if not, then at regular intervals, like every 2nd or 3rd day etc. By the end of the first week, you’ll be impressed with how much you got done, and how far you have come along. Please make sure your 2 hour work slots include no facebook, youtubing, or forum browsing. Work means work, and don’t fool yourself into thinking that any of the three activities just mentioned falls into the definition of working online.

There are other reasons to treat your projects like a business as well. I won’t go into them all in detail here but I’ll cover some of the reasons briefly.

1. Look to build something you can be proud of and that you could sell on at a later date. Or at least build an asset that you can hand down to future generations of your family to help them make some money after you have passed on. Think about the long-term gain and not just the short-term profit.

2. Be professional in your dealings with other business partners and most importantly your customers. Business is all about relationships, so take the time to build some good ones!

3. Motivate, empower and inspire staff to work hard for you and give them structure, guidelines and training so eventually they can grow your business for you without your involvement. This is hand’s off income! It is no good just paying some one, you have to work with and on your staff members as well to get the best out of them.

For some one who hasn’t built a ridiculously successful six-figure business, where do I get the balls to come out with something like this? It’s really quite simple, I got a first-hand look at how not to run a business in 2009 and I’ll be trying to correct the mistakes of my former employer in my own business in 2010. I have gone full-time self-employed this year, and I intend to apply what I learnt about bad business last year to my business by turning it into something positive and hopefully avoiding some pitfalls.

You see, my former employer didn’t build a business, he built a product, sold it by the bucket load, made a fortune, but then forget to build the other infrastructure around that product to create a business. That employer has since had to let-go of over two-thirds of it’s employees so as to survive on any level. By using the resources and infrastructure the company had to build a firm foundation and a business, a lot of these difficulties could have been avoided. They weren’t though.

Anyway, I’ll chat more about that in my next post. Thanks for reading, and once again here is that web hosting survey (4 questions) that I would love for you all to fill out: Web Hosting

In my next post I am going to share with you a few of my projects that I am working on at the moment. Maybe it will give you some ideas about what you might like to do with your business this year. Maybe it won’t. Either way, talk to you soon.