Seth said:

Without a list, you can see how making intelligent decisions is impossible, so we resort to confusing activity with productivity.

Back to your office: do you have a list? Have you figured out which metric you’re trying to improve? Can you measure the impact of the choices you make all day?

Chuck said:

Small businesses that use processes create a winning environment that puts them in a different class then their competition.  And they are more likely to survive and be profitable.

I’m mostly posting this for myself so that I can come back to these articles and treat them as homework. But if you do this, would you blog about it and post a link below?

• Design – 1.4 hours
• Website Development – 11.6 hours (includes both site and blog setup/coding)
• Writing Content – 14.3 hours (writing, editing, having my wife edit, etc.)
• Hosting – .6 hours (setting up hosting account, email, etc.)
• Email Newsletter Announcement – 5 hours
• Social Media – .5 hours

Why did I spend so much time on my newsletter?

While I enjoy writing, I do struggle with it at times. I start writing something only to erase it, then start with something else. I’ll finish it, read through it and decide it doesn’t send the message I want to get across. So I start over. Then I have my wife edit it and offer suggestions. After a few test sends and with an increased heart rate I push the “Send” button as it goes out to my contacts…hoping for the best.

Room for Improvement

There are a number of things I can improve upon:

1. I write my website content in Coda so that I can see it on the website. Being visual, it really helps me develop the copy (at least I think it does). As you can imagine, writing it in Coda and constantly going to my FTP client to refresh and upload the file adds lots of time. It’s a bad habit and one I really need to correct. My goal is to write the content in something like Evernote and then add it to the site once it has been fully edited. I imagine I’d spend 20% less going this route.
2. When I started designing this site I had a few ideas. Most of which came from Jason’s mockup of Basecamp, Freshbooks, Mail Chimp, 37 Signals, and a few other websites. Why did I “borrow” from these fine websites? Because I look up to them and because I borrowed Seth Godin’s philosophy that there is no reason to try and come up with something entirely new – he basically says, “don’t start from scratch.” If I had started from scratch, I would have spent far more hours designing something and it wouldn’t have added any value.
3. I didn’t do much “marketing” before hand. I’m more of “gotta have all my ducks in a row” kinda guy. Plus I’m better off focusing on one task than figuring out how to generate some interest and do it effectively. Throughout this process I wished I had a partner to help with things like this.

Why? Because I have the tendency to write for others rather than for myself (it’s an attitude of “I have the knowledge” vs “It’s OK not to know everything”). When Seth talked about how tactics drown out strategy my first reaction was to start a new post and expound on his point with my two and a half cents. But then it hit me, “what do I know about strategy that you already don’t?” I’m no expert.

And if I’m no expert, then why should I try to write as though I am the expert? Good point. So I’m trying something new – I’m going to use this blog as originally planned, a platform for discovery.

If you’d like to join me, I’d be honored. If you’d like to leave a comment, I’d be encouraged. Thanks for reading.