New Year Reset

Happy New Year! 2024 is done. 2025 has just begun.

It’s a great time to reset and set new goals for the year.

Some people like to start with income goals and then go back into the action steps needed to accomplish this.

This might work for some people, but it hasn’t always worked for me.

I feel that I have less control over my actual income and more control over the action steps I can take regularly to put myself in the best position to achieve my income goals.

Here are some goals I’m setting for myself this year.

1. The first big goal is to generate more organic traffic for my business. Traffic has been the engine of my business since I started this just over a year ago. I’m building an audience, generating leads, and acquiring new customers. Right now, I’m using organic free traffic from social media. In 2024, I’ve been using a forum-based platform called Quora. However, many of my affiliate marketing friends have been raving about TikTok. TikTok is a video-based platform with which I do not have much experience. The results they are getting are big enough that I aim to open a TikTok account and start creating videos. It’s a new skill set for me to learn, which is always good, and then I can document the results and see if I think it is a better platform for traffic generation.
2. I have a new lead magnet I will use. I redid the opt-in page, thank you, and bridge page after getting some help from a coach. I’m creating a lead magnet template I plan to share with those subscribed to my e-newsletter to use in their business.
3. I will be more consistent with my time posting on social media, the blog, and the e-newsletter. 2024 had some headwinds from a schedule standpoint, which I want to correct, and I have more established times during the week devoted to these tasks.

Accomplishing all of these goals can be challenging.

Years ago, I had a business coach who mentored me with another business I ran.

He taught a great concept called Hard-Easy.

Hard-Easy:

The concept is simple- when deciding what to do, do the hard things first.

Over time, they become more manageable. Some may become “easy”.

For example, learning a new skill set can be hard.

Finding time (time management) to do the tasks that allow me to achieve my goals can be hard.

Doing the tasks can be hard.

However, I find that the more I do them, they become easier.

Said another way, they aren’t as hard as before.

This leads me to another concept I learned from my business coach years ago- Pareto’s 80%/20% rule.

Pareto’s 80%/20% Rule:

The rule applies to many aspects of life.

From a business perspective, 80% of income comes from doing 20% of the tasks.

What 20% of tasks generate the most income?

Mostly traffic generation activities, to start. Another important task is offering lead magnets to build an audience to follow up. Following up, is the third. And last is offering products that can help people solve their problems.

I want to devote 80% of my time to these tasks.

Other activities are important but don’t necessarily produce the result of making more money—I want to devote 20% of my time to these tasks.

All said and done, I’ll admit that accomplishing all of these things is hard. Which then reverts to Hard-Easy.

This leads me to the last concept I liked that my business coach taught me many years ago.

He called it The 1 Degree Shift.

The 1 Degree Shift:

When facing challenges or trying new things, make a 1-degree (or 1%) change daily. Little change over a long period adds up to significant changes.

For example, say you are in England on a boat heading towards the US.

You set your boat on a course that will land you in New York City.

What happens if you change your course direction by 1 degree?

You could end up in Miami instead of New York City.

You see, a 1-degree change in course over a long period leads you to a different destination.

So, every day, try to improve yourself a little bit. Improve by as little as 1%. A small 1% change is doable.

For me, this means that every day, I want to have better time management, so I devote 80% of my time to money-making activities.

It means to stop getting distracted by something that is not part of my goals for that day or week (this happens to me often enough that I waste time on something I never planned on).

What if I fail one day or week during the year?

I revert to Hard-Easy and center myself back to making 1-degree shifts. And I remind myself of Pareto’s 80%/20% rule.

These three concepts help me stay centered and focused. I still get sidetracked by life, but I have always remembered these concepts and applied them as best I could.

They complement each other.

I share this with you as I spent many years with coaching and mentorship and learned a lot.

I hope this can help someone out there, maybe you, if you need some strategies to get 2025 off to a good start.

That is it for now. Let’s have a great year!