Herman School of Business
What's Your Final Tally?
There are only two weeks left in 2008. How are you doing on those goals for the year? My gym membership is a wonderful thing…for the owner of the gym! Maggie and I never show..even though each month we fork over our dough. OK, I blew that one for the year.
We were going to put an addition on the house this year…Maggie painted two rooms instead. Oops again.
I wanted to eliminate two vehicles from my aging fleet which started the year with seven cars and trucks…one truck and one car were sold…a winner here!
In January as I started losing way too much money in the stock market I stopped losing and went all to cash…big win here, by staying in I would have lost much more.
There were many trees that had to go on the property because some were losing limbs at an astonishing rate…I took care of many of them and a professional team took out two sixty footers that were crumbling before they fell on the house or worse…the Draft Palace.
My baseball team, the Cruisers, finished fourth for the second year in a row…but hope springs eternal for 2009!
But, what about the “Biggies.” What about book sales, speech bookings, and consulting clients? I started the year with a warehouse full of books because my radio campaign was in full bloom last January. Nothing was happening and when we checked the radio stations we were actually appearing on it turned out to be hundreds, but was short 150 from what the contract called for. It cost me about thirty grand and wasn’t worth fighting to recover because I would have spent time and a lot of money chasing the loss. My plan was to turn the books in storage that were supposed to sell…into marketing tools and I gave away 6,000 copies of HERMANISMS in places where the exposure would help the future. The money lost on the radio forced me to choose a new marketing ploy and the free books giveaway is working better than expected! Seth Godin was right, “Obscurity is the Enemy.”
Speaking engagements. This wasn’t on the radar screen when I wrote the books but it sure is front and center now. I ended the year with 25 speaking events and I not only found something I love doing…I have now set a goal of doubling the events to fifty next year. Seven are already confirmed!
Consulting business follows exposure and there were articles this year in SPIRIT MAGAZINE, INC MAGAZINE, and ENTREPRENEUR MAGAZINE, as well as segments from HERMANISMS appearing in NEWSREACH and on the largest Business Ezine, ETR.
Early in the year I promised to be honest about hitting my financial goals with the books, speeches and consulting…I missed by about fifteen percent. In the last quarter of this year I recognized that I would be short. Instead of crying about it I increased my marketing efforts and am on tract to raise my goal for next year…and hit it!
- Posted: 12 December 2008
- Comments: 0
- Category: Business success
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