One Project At A Time
As I wrote about yesterday, there are gaps in the market pretty much everywhere. This can be frustrating because when you see the gaps, you naturally want to act on them.
I have a list of projects that gets longer as time goes on, and I can’t complete the projects I’ve already got at the rate I find new avenues to follow.
Added to that, I get bored quite easily and like switching between projects, and you can soon get a mess of half-done problems everywhere.
Me, Yesterday.
This could be a really short article. The answer is: Only Do One Project At A Time.
I’ve learned three things this week from thinking about the above topic.
#1: Strategy and Planning Should Not Take Long, Especially If You’re Saving Them For The Future.
When I first left university, I was under the impression there was some “secret” to starting a business. I went on loads of courses by various companies, people and government programs.
They encourage you to write a massive business plan where you think about every single aspect of a business and pretty much do it before you do it.
There are strengths to this – it stops people from getting into millions of debt to start a cupcake business – but it’s pretty stupid overall.
The other day, I had a full day of writing for other people. During that day, I also had a great business idea.
Now, once upon a time, when I was going to those courses, I’d have thought, “This idea is great. I’d better plan it to death.”
This week though, I had other stuff to do.
So what I did was plan this new idea in about twenty minutes using a single A4 sheet. It went something like this:
- Needs a website. Use X theme. 5 pages.
- Concentrate on X in the sales letter… go to swipe file on Y company.
- Marketing: Long-tail keywords for different towns that need X. Long-tail for different companies that need X. Long-tail for different ages that need X.
- Costs: Website theme. 5 images. Buy product when needed.
- Profit per sale: £X.
That was it, aside from a two-line description of the product and where the gap in the market was.
The scary thing is, that’s a better business plan than the ones I used to take a month to write. It explains what the product is, who the customer is, and what I need to do to get it to them. It also tells me how much it’ll cost and how much it’ll make.
I can now come back to that bit of paper whenever I’ve cleared my backlog of other ideas, and it didn’t distract me outside of that ten minutes.
#2: If Your Future Projects Require A Whole New Skill-Set, Don’t Commit.
You would not believe the amount of things I’m qualified to do.
If I see an affordable qualification, I jump on it.
Sometimes, I see a gap in the market. It takes me on a days’ long tangent. A quick example would be “Starting a law site.”
In the past, I’d have gone and looked at how to get qualified in law in the quickest way. In most places, you need to do a Law degree, post-grad, then a couple of years working as you qualify.
Except, there are quicker ways in pretty much every country. I’d look that sort of thing up, and before you know it, I’m writing a business plan that’ll take me two years, cost thousands and have me end up in a different career. Then I’ll realise that I’ve just wasted a day or two on a ridiculous tangent.
Unless you have a particular calling, it’s best to stick with what you’re doing and work outwards as opposed to jumping into something new.
In the example, I could just start a law blog as an enthusiast everyman. It’d scratch the same itch.
#3 One Project At A Time
When you are a writer, it’s terribly easy to get more than one project going on simultaneously. There are so many uses for writers that you’ll never be out of work.
I couldn’t be the person to tell you “stick to one thing forever” because that’d be hollow, and it isn’t what I’d be comfortable doing.
But you do need to concentrate on one thing – at least until that thing is somewhat self-sustaining.
For instance, if you’re writing a landing page and tweaking that for a product, don’t jump to the next product until you’re happy to leave the first one to make income passively.
If you’re writing a novel, don’t start your second until the first one is at least written.
If you’re building websites, don’t start one niche website and then leave it half-baked while you start another one.