February flew right by me. I don’t know if it was the missing day or just being in a constant state of busy but I’m exhausted.

February Goals and Actions

I was planning on having February be a strong marketing month for me. Unfortunately I overcommitted to both my marketing and my customers. Since my customers are the most important thing in my business, I had to drop a lot of my marketing.

1. Logo Designed –
   My logo is almost done. I have unlimited revisions on it so I’ve been tweaking it the past coupe of weeks. I’m expecting the final copy ready this next week.

   Completed: 66%

2. 100 new RSS subscriptions –
   Well, instead of stepping up my online marketing in February I let it slack. This caused my subscriber base to remain flat for the month. Around the 17th I decided to cut my losses and drop this goal. I would rather work to complete another goal than to spread my focus and get nothing done.

   Canceled

3. Meet 15 new people –
   I tried to push this amount to 15 people, but I should have left it at my regular 10 people. By the end of the month I was able to meet 9 new people and a few could turn into potential customers.

   Completed: 60%

4. Release a large Redmine plugin –
   Couldn’t find the time for this either. Between customer projects, keeping the business running, and getting Sproutwire launched; I just ran out of time. I did get enough time to create a smaller Redmine plugin but it’s not released yet.

   Canceled

March Goals

Over the past months, I’ve discovered that my goals have been too aggressive for me. Alone, each goal would be a good stretch but together they are too much to accomplish in a single month. My March goals are more realistic and focused on the areas I want to grow in.

1. Complete all my Level 1 marketing habits –
   Ilana and I spent some time last month and classified all the different ways I’ve been marketing. My Level 1 marketing habits are the actions that have given me the best return for my time. I’ll post more about the levels in a later post but for March I’ll be focusing on three actions:

   • Write a blog entry twice a week
   • Spend one hour a week improving my brand
   • Ask for a referral at the end of every project

2. Release a large Redmine plugin –
   I’ve decided to make another attempt at creating this plugin. It’s going to be difficult to schedule, but I’m starting to waste a lot of time without this plugin.

Some lessons I learned from this month:

• Use your goals to help you focus:
  You always have hundreds of things you want to do, but you will never get any of them done unless you can focus on the important ones. Setting goals should provide focus for you, not scatter it.

How was your February? Did you get everything accomplished that you wanted to?

Eric