You may have noticed that The Life Design Project has been in Update/Maintenance mode for the last few days, today I unveil why. As you can see all around you, I went into a rather consuming design mode, especially for the last 24 hours! It’s faster, clearer, has more pictures, the fonts are all new, and I put my ugly mug on the home page!
I hope you’ll find it easier to interact with me, and the information easier to read, absorb and act on! Let me know what you think in the comments, and check out the new Inspiration “Feed” page … a constantly updated feed of images directly from my progress, that are meant to encourage, inspire and make you think.
A refresh was long overdue, stick around, we’re still breaking down how to build an online business, and life’s tricks and shortcuts along the way to enabling more life freedom. www.itarsenal.com and various other “satellite” businesses are current business creations.
April Action Report (better late than never)
April was an incredibly busy, profitable, and experiential.
I’m still in awe of what getting super targeted does to newsletter growth, sales, and focus. My ideas are focused, my communication is targeted, and it did a lot for sales. Just pick one thing and get obsessed about it on a timeline, just try it. It changes what you bookmark, what forums you go to, people you pay attention to, ect. With a specific offering, you have a specific sale.
The thing to be worried about is time suck, getting bogged down will draw focus from packaging your service better, and creating/re-using content for products. If you don’t work on your business and instead get stuck in your business, you’ll stay mediocre. Especially if your some or all service based. Anyone can make $500 online a month, not everyone can make $5000. In receiving feedback and interest in validating my specific service and product, I’m continuing to think from a systems stand point, how can I affiliate a service, or capture content to re-use, or ways to free time to develop upcoming ideas for a catalog of products and few honed services. This is the main “conflict” and continues to be something to wrestle with when your hit with the happy problem of growth.
So What? Networking booms, experience booms, your “wanted” but make sure you’re stepping back and putting that intellect into something that scales, or building a system that lets you grow, be more efficient, or a “campaign” that will surge a sale later. I love working with clients, but when I’m not with them, I’m thinking how to provide more value with less of my time. Some ideas include implementing an online scheduler for booking time, templating offers, having closed members only membership offers, utilizing a virtual assistant, focusing solely on digital products for a while. I’m a giver it’s in my personality so I am speaking to myself when I list these things and stress to avoid time suck so I can improve and offer more value.
- I haven’t seen much use in business cards these days, but had some cool ones made so I can force myself to go to some live events with them in hand. Hopefully the encouragement to actually book a business venue to go to. I’m such a homebody. Each card is similar in size to a stick of gum, has my mug on it (apparently that’s popular, it gives you a human feel) and a different tech support-ish slogan the back. moo.com, they were awesome.
Notes
- Very little business product creation, but a lot of content capture, and manual offers of my backup product, build me one service, and trainer product at IT Arsenal.
- I’ve been referred almost 10 clients this month, huge, big thanks!
- Dabled with retainer agreements, and I think I might template an agreement for one.
- Considering a private forum membership for tech and web support
- I got involved with some really cool coaches and projects, one with Cath Duncan I’m excited about.
- I generally found myself more excited to be doing what I do, and eagerly looking for ways to handle client load, and offer new services and product in June.
- As turnkey as I’d like to be, I love answering questions. JustAnswer.com continues to be a favorite, and I found another tech support remote service called www.supportspace.com…always at odds
- So little blog posts and interaction, I’d like to pick this up, instead I did too much e-mail and in person work, although I captured a lot of it for re-use.
Metrics
- 4,000 hits to the business site (IT Arsenal)
- 46 rss subscribers, 3 this month
- 1 blog post
- 11 new e-mail list subscribers. 32 including the ones I manually added with permission
- 4 trainers sold
- 4 build me ones
- 2 retainer packages
- 40 answered JustAnswer questions
- 15 RAQs (recent asked questions) posted to website
- $300 in affiliate sales (what’s in the sidebar, amazon, and hosting)
- $2863 earned online
People that Helped and Why They are Awesome
- Laurie Foley – mastery of her craft (branding), referrals!
- Cath Duncan – referrals, sweetness, feedback
- Noah Kagan – direct communication
- David Walsh (and Derek, although I’ve yet to meet him, my fault) – systems brain, enlightened
- Norcross – development skills
- Stephen March – client, keeping an open mind, and thanking me
- Sid Savara – re-tweeting my stuff, staying connected
- Jared O’Toole – sharing, letting me help with under30ceo
- Greg Rollett – encouragement, hustle, believing in me
- David Damron – creative personal video marketing
- Srini – conversation
- Ashley and Sean – potential partners
- links to these guys coming soon, use google for now.
Recent Tools/Resources and Uses
- slidedeck
- wordpress plugin “fluency admin”
- join.me – web based screen sharing
- bookfresh (not to be confused with freshbooks)
- interviews by mixergy
- appsumo.com
- moo.com
- links to these coming soon, use google for now.
Business Goals April
- FAIL 11/20 newsletter signups (really should have made more effort on this)
- FAIL $2863.00/$5000 (5k might be a high number to hit without raising prices)
- COMPLETE 3 Trainers sold
- COMPLETE 4 Build Me Ones sold
- COMPLETE Business Cards ordered.
- UPDATE 7 books to read this year -> [ ] booked solid, [current ] 52 rules of thumb, [X] art of non conformity, [ ] running lean, [ ] the lean startup, [ ] start over finish rich, [ ] the netwriting masters course
- COMPLETE Write backlog of posts for IT Arsenal. A few not great posts, but their coming along.
- FAIL. (100 is too many!) – Answer 100 tech questions for free. This is hard to track, so I created the RAQ, and I’m working on it.
- FAIL – Schedule a big convention to go to for 2011
- PARTIAL. Conversations started. – Connect with 3 bloggers and provide tons of value to their audience
May Business Goals
- 15 newsletter signups
- implement online scheduler
- website updates based on feedback from first big change and focus on a single service/product
- partner with 1 blogger and provide myself as their (and their audiences) tech resource in some arranged agreement
- create brainstorm for new tech support related service and product (possibly membership, or understanding e-mail lists)
- finish 52 rules of thumb book
- $1000 in online income, and much more time spent on creation and interaction this month
- at least 3 digital product sales
- schedule to go to a big convention after august
- do at least one consulting call with a more experienced entrepreneur
- check in with board of directors (people i’ve asked to keep me accountable)
- answer 40 questions for free and record them somewhere