In the rose tinted world of social media it is less common to fess up to failure. Deep breath, here goes.
Scratching an itch a few years ago led me to selling software online. For too long I considered it a hobby business that I played with occasionally on the side. That changed in July 2016.
I had just grossed $1,000 in a month, which felt like a major milestone. For the first time I wondered whether it could actually become a ‘proper’ business. I set myself the objective of grossing $100,000 in 2017, and made a plan to achieve.
$100,000 felt like an audacious and scary goal. It was enormous compared with current sales, large enough to worth investing effort into, yet possibly achievable.
With 2017 now over the actual revenue is now confirmed as $27,281.23 which is barely a quarter of the target.
Is massive growth a failure?
Great question. So I aimed for the Moon and ended up falling well short, but still within the Stars.
I could say “it’s not so bad because..”, or “all things considered…”, but my gut tells me that this is failure, so it is.
What went wrong?
Stop. Stop.
Wrong question.
Post mortums are great at understanding problems and entirely backward looking. I need forward looking solutions.
What have I learned?
- Numeric targets are crucial – without setting my $100k goal I would have continued to drift and would not be reviewing now.
- Leading indicators are more important than lagging ones – to make a difference you need to manage and measure those things that make a difference.
- Feed it and it will grow (starve it and it will wither) – there is no such thing as passive income.
- Leadership is a passion not a task – hiring the right people is insufficient. You need to be there for them.
- I knew all this already! – a slap in the face is so much more powerful than knowledge.
What am I going to do now?
- Focus on true marketing not only SEO metrics
- Be consistent
- Set a deadline
Right, enough thinking, time for action…
Photocredit: Chris Potter of ccPixs.com