The Right Timing

I never wear a watch because for me the exact time is NOW.

Most of my tasks need to be completed – NOW.

My software developers need my input – NOW!

My Clients need some personal attention – NOW.

The dog has to go out – NOW.

The dinner party YOU organized needs to be prepared – NOW.

What good is a watch when everything needs to be done NOW?

OK, enough ranting; Perhaps it would be helpful to know that a bit of project planning, prioritizing and sorting come in handy to coordinate tasks and dependencies and plan your day more time effectively but the truth is that if you can focus on what you do best and delegate or outsource everything else – the primary skill will always be project planning in order to coordinate your life with your objectives and be able to have some peace and quiet at night. This is why we sharpen our saws each year with additional training and also why we offer our Clients the opportunity to benefit from our newly acquired skills as soon as we return from these trainings… such as NOW!

Ready to address your objectives and shift gears into a more productive state of mind?  Just drop us a line and we’d be happy to share some of our new time saving tricks with you and your team.

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Compensation

This is always an area of discussion for my Clients. Rather than publish a list of current rates in several different countries and attempt to keep such a list up-to-date, I prefer to use a USD model which you can adapt to your particular situation and geography. The following are simply guidelines that we use in corporate restructuring projects. You may or may not agree with some of the line items but on the whole, the following has been helpful to many of us.

Title	Cash Range	Average	Bonus	% Equity	Equity Median
CEO Founder	100k-250k	200k	0-100k	5-20%	9.0%
CEO Non-Founder	180k-260k	225k	0-150k	3-7%	5.0%
President / COO Founder	100k-200k	175k	0-50k	3-8%	5.0%
President / COO Non-Founder	150k-230k	200k	0-75k	1-3%	1.5%
CFO Founder	100k-170k	150k	0-20k	1-5%	2.5%
CFO Non-Founder	100k-200k	160k	0-50k	0.5-1.5%	1.0%
CTO Founder	120k-200k	160k	0-30k	2-10%	4.0%
CTO Non-Founder	125k-200k	160k	0-50k	0.5-2%	1.0%
VP Engineering Founder	150k-185k	160k	0-30k	1.5-5%	2.5%
VP Engineering Non-Founder	150k-200k	175k	0-50k	0.7-1.5%	1.0%
VP Sales Founder	175k-200k	175k	0-60k	1.2-5%	3.5%
VP Sales Non-Founder	160k-200k	175k	20-150k	0.7-1.3%	1.0%
VP Business Dev Founder	150k-180k	170k	0-35k	1.5-5%	3.0%
VP Business Development Non-Founder	150k-190k	175k	0-70k	0.5-1.3%	0.75%
VP Marketing Founder	140k-180k	160k	0-30k	1.3-7%	3.0%
VP Marketing Non-Founder	160k-190k	175k	0-50k	0.5-1.2%	0.8%

Investment Evaluation Guidelines

I have been asked many times for a guideline when it comes to evaluating investments that we (or our Clients) make. People ask why we invested in Company X and not in Company Y, Why are we interested in industry A more than industry B etc.

Well, the simple truth is that we invest to win.

We tend to strip out a lot of soft factors and focus on results.
Did management deliver?
Can they do it again?
A lot of investment decision making is based on an understanding of industry trends, a trusted relationship with players that perform consistently above industry average and some form of defensible proprietary technology that is in demand because it solves a specific pain for a given market segment.

If a company has a specific target market segment in their crosshairs, we know that they have done their homework – when management states that they serve all industries, our alarm bells start ringing.

Following is my personal guideline for what really counts when considering investment in a startup or early stage company.

1) Market potential
2) The Team
3) Results
4) USP

Investment Process

• The success of investment in an early stage company depends on people and their ability to execute on a detailed business plan, therefore a lot of emphasis is placed on the team.
• The structure of the investment is vital and requires creative and often complex terms.
• Pricing is a key factor which needs to be carefully analyzed and negotiated.
• An interesting exit strategy is required in order to maximize a timely return.

Investment Selection

• Management Team: Experienced, in-depth knowledge of business, results oriented.
• Innovative Products/ Proprietory Technology: Highly differentiable, superior, specialized expertise, meets market needs.
• Business Plan/ Milestones: Well thought out business plan including milestones and contingency plans.
• Substantial Investment Position: Ability to obtain a substantial investment position, influence the selection of executive management and the strategic direction of the company.
• Valuation: Negotiate and obtain a fair pricing structure.

Initial Investment Valuation

• Underlying industry assumptions
• Realistic income statement over 3-5 years
• Competition
• Major criteria:
  • Technology value
  • Capital requirements
  • Market potential
  • Capital structure
  • Operational cash flow

Determination of NAV for privately held startup companies

• The original cost: An approximation of the fair market value at the time of the transaction.
• Write off: NAV calculation at cost, less any write-off deeemed necessary if subsequent performance fails to meet business plan forecast.
• Capital increase: NAV calculation in principle based on the capital increase price, less 10% to 29% discount if deemed necessary based on valuation factors.
• Write up: A write up is recognized when a significant event occurs such as increased profitability and achievement of milestones.

Is Math Cool?

My father used to tell me that hard work and knowledge were the keys to success and furthermore, one needed to deliver 100% if you wished to succeed in anything. I asked him if math was an important factor in the equation and he confirmed that without math we would not have progressed very far on the evolutionary scale. So, I did a little research and discovered that from a strictly mathematical viewpoint one can not only avoid hard work but also achieve more than 100% and my mathematical proof goes like this:

What is 100% comprised of? What does it mean to give MORE than 100%?
Ever wonder about those people who say they are giving more than 100%?
We’ve all been to those meetings where someone wants you to give over 100%.
How about achieving 103%?

Here’s a little mathematical formula that might help you answer these questions:

If: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z were represented as:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

Then:

H-A-R-D-W-O-R-K = 8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98%
and
K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E = 11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96%

But,

A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E = 1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100%
and,
B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T = 2+21+12+12+19+8+9+20 = 103%

Astonishing to me but obviously not to those ‘in the know’:

A-S-S-K-I-S-S-I-N-G = 1+19+19+11+9+19+19+9+14+7 = 118%

So, one can then conclude with mathematical certainty that: while Hard Work and Knowledge will
get you close, Attitude delivers the goods and both Bullshit and Ass Kissing will put you over the top!

Needless to say my father was not impressed and I got grounded for a week. If I remember correctly, my theorem put a smile on a few faces before the chalkboard got erased.

The Next Big Thing

I spent a good amount of time reviewing business opportunities in China both locally and from abroad in 2006/7. The overwhelming conclusion I drew was that there is enormous potential in almost every sector of the economy driven by both foreign demand and local consumption capacity. Some companies were not able to produce enough product to satisfy local and regional demand let alone national demand in China yet, as I stepped into the reality that is the China of today, I discovered that I needed to shed my preconceived ideas that China’s production capacity exists to serve foreign interests. Sure, international markets are of great importance to the Chinese manufacturing sector but, the number of companies I reviewed that produced product for export only were few and far between.

China is a gigantic market just getting ready to shift into a consumer oriented phase. So, what exactly was I doing in China? Well, I figured that if I could identify sectors with the strongest production growth this would give me some insight into a future global trend that helps to answer my number one question… what is going to be the next big thing? and… how can I come up with a best guess estimate before the world wakes up and smells the coffee?

So here is what I did. I reviewed the following industries and their largest manufacturing partners in China.
Lighting: including LEDs and Displays
Optics: lenses of all shapes and sizes including x-ray… yes, x-ray lenses!
Sensors: the kind that are able to sense 5 particles per million for security applications fighting potential terrorist threats
Actuators: MEMS, NEMS MOEMS and NOEMS… don’t even ask plus medical testing devices
Storage: mechanical HDDs are on their way out or are they? I had a 100 GB solid state drive in my hand
Semiconductors: What is the biggest obstacle to progress on Moore’s law these days… I found out!
Energy: Well, with the rising price of fossil fuels alternative is the only way and improving methods of harvesting energy were on the list of the coolest inventions I saw
Biotech or as it’s known today… life science – DNA manipulation seems to be all the rage but what caught my attention was the ability of some companies to grow skin and…

Ok, enough! if I haven’t bored you by now you are probably wondering what this article is all about.
Well, I thought that if I were able to analyze what is being produced today and get an idea of what is coming down the pipe to satisfy the needs of tomorrow then I could gain some valuable insight into who will manufacture the next big hit for tomorrow… for several different industries and kind of hedge my bet. I got lucky, I discovered something even more valuable.

In my research I analyzed all major players in the above industry sectors and put together something like a roadmap for each. Although the time lines vary as each company plans to move its invention from the R&D phase into production and no one is able to forecast consumer or business demand for 5 years from today, there were some very interesting correlations. One was size. Products will be getting smaller – fact. Another was that products will be influenced more by market need (pull) rather than an inventor’s desire to create a new market (push). Lastly, ROI is playing a greater role in how long a particular invention is allowed to cook in the R&D labs before it is forced out the door to an awaiting and already expectant consumer market.

How about a summary of my thoughts? OK, take the current products manufactured today, do research on where they are headed, look into the components that enhance or add value to each of these products and see if there are a few companies that produce the next generation of these components – then limit the study to less than 10 industries where these components are bound to have major impact.

Do you see where I am headed with this now? If I can identify companies that produce something really small on a micro or even nano scale that improves today’s products and will be integral in moving tomorrow’s products forward, I will have successfully identified a winner in not one but several industries.

In my most recent estimation, there are not a lot of these players out there but they do exist and I am hunting them down one by one. Did I mention that I am already in discussions with one?

Yes, I believe that I have identified the first of several of these core component providers. If you have read my article this far, then you may want to contact me to learn more because information this hot, can not yet be published in an open forum. Alas, the search continues and a new project is born to narrow down the hunt for the next big thing.

Creating an Executive Summary

Most guides to writing an executive summary miss the key point: The job of the executive summary is to sell, not to describe.

The executive summary is often your initial face to a potential investor, so it is critically important that you create the right first impression. Contrary to the advice in articles on the topic, you do not need to explain the entire business plan in 250 words. You need to convey its essence, and its energy.

You have about 30 seconds to grab an investor’s interest. You want to be clear and compelling.

Forget what everyone else has been telling you. Here are the key components
that should be part of your executive summary:

1. The Hook
Lead with the most compelling statement of why you have a really big idea. This sentence (or two) sets the tone for the rest of the executive summary. Usually, this is a concise statement of the unique solution you have developed to a big problem. It should be direct and specific, not abstract and conceptual. If you can drop some impressive names in the first paragraph you should – world-class
advisors, companies you are already working with, a brand name founding investor. Don’t expect an investor to discover that you have two Nobel laureates on your advisory board six paragraphs later. He or she may never read that far into your doc.

2. The Problem
You need to make it clear that there is a big, important problem (current or emerging) that you are going to solve, or opportunity you are going to exploit. In this context you are establishing your Value Proposition – there is enormous pain and opportunity out there, and you are going to increase revenues, reduce costs, increase speed, expand reach, eliminate inefficiency, increase effectiveness, whatever. Don’t confuse your statement of the problem with the size of the opportunity (see below).

3. The Solution
What specifically are you offering to whom? Software, hardware, service, combination? Use commonly used terms to state concretely what you have, or what you do, that solves the problem you’ve identified. Avoid acronyms and don’t try to use these precious few words to create and trademark a bunch of terms that won’t mean anything to most people. You might need to clarify where you fit in the value chain or distribution channels – who you work with in the ecosystem of your sector, and why they would be eager to work with you. If you have customers and revenues, make it clear. If not, tell the investor when you will.

4. The Opportunity
Spend a few more sentences providing the basic market segmentation, size, growth and dynamics – how many people or companies, how many dollars, how fast the growth, and what is driving the segment. You will be better off targeting a meaningful percentage of a smaller, well-defined, growing market than claiming a microscopic percentage of a huge, heterogeneous, mature market. Don’t claim you are addressing the $24 billion widget market, when you are really addressing the $85 million market for specialized arc-widgets used in the emerging nano-sprocket sector.

5. Your Competitive Advantage
No matter what you might think, you have competition. At a minimum, you compete with the current way of doing business. Most likely, there is a near competitor, or a direct competitor that is about to emerge (are you sufficiently paranoid yet??). So, understand what your real, sustainable competitive advantage is, and state it clearly. Do not try to convince investors that your key competitive asset is your ‘first mover advantage.’ Here is where you can articulate your unique benefits and advantages. Believe it or not, in most cases, you should be able to make this point in one or two sentences.

6. The Model
How specifically are you going to generate revenues, and from whom? Why is your model leverageable and scalable? Why will it be capital efficient? What are the critical metrics on which you will be evaluated – customers, licenses, units, revenues, margin? Whatever it is, what impressive levels will you reach within three to five years?

7. The Team
Why is your team uniquely qualified to win? Don’t tell us you have 48 combined years of expertise in widget development; tell us your CTO was the lead widget developer for Intel, and she was on the original IEEE standards committee for arc-widgets. Don’t just regurgitate a shortened form of each founder’s resume; explain why the background of each team member fits. If you can, state the names of brand name companies your team has worked for. Don’t drop a name if it’s an unknown name, and don’t drop a name if you aren’t happy to give the contact as a reference at a later date.

8. The Promise
When you are pitching to investors, your fundamental promise is that you are going to make them a boatload of money. The only way you can do that is if you can achieve a level of success that far exceeds the capital required to do that. Your Summary Financial Projections should clearly show that. But if they are not believable, then all of your work is for naught. You should show five years of revenues, expenses, losses/profits, cash and headcount. You should also show a key driver or two, such as number of customers and units shipped each year.

9. The Ask
This is the amount of funding you are asking for now. This should generally be the minimum amount of equity you need to reach the next major milestone. You can always take more if investors are willing to make more available, but it is hard to take less. If you expect to be raising another round of financing later, make that clear, and state the expected amount.

You should be able to do all this in six to eight paragraphs, possibly a few more if there is a particular point that needs emphasis. You should be able to make each point in just two or three simple, clear, specific sentences.

This means your executive summary should be about two pages, maybe three. Some people say it should be one page. They’re wrong. (The only reason investors ask for one page summaries is that they are usually so bad the investors just want the suffering to be over sooner.) Most investors find that there is not enough information in one page to understand and evaluate a company.

Please remember that the outline above should not be applied rigidly or religiously. There is no template that fits all companies, but make sure you touch in each key issue. You need to think through what points are most important in your particular case, what points are irrelevant, what points need emphasis, and what points require no elaboration.

Some other general points:

• Do not lead with broad, sweeping statements about the market opportunity. What matters is not market size, but rather compelling pain. Investors would rather invest in a company solving a desperate problem for a small growing market, than a company providing an incremental improvement for a large established market.
• Drop names, if they are real; don’t drop names if they are smoke. If you have a real partnership with a brand name company, don’t hide your lantern under a bushel basket. If you consulted for Oracle’s HR department one week, don’t say you worked for Oracle.
• Avoid ‘purple farts’ – phrases and adjectives that sound impressive but carry no substance. ‘Next generation’ and ‘dynamic’ probably don’t mean anything to your readers (unless you are talking about DRAM) and tend to be irritating. Everybody thinks their software is ‘intelligent’ and ‘easy-to-use,’ and everyone thinks their financial projections are ‘conservative.’ Explain your company the way you would to a friend at a cocktail party (after one drink, not five).
• State your value proposition and competitive advantage in positive terms, not negative terms. It is what you can do that is important, not what others cannot do. With the one or two most obvious competitors, however, you may need to be very explicit: ‘Unlike Oracle’s sprocket solution, our software can operate…’
• Use simple sentences, not multi-tiered compound sentences.
• Use analogies, as long as you are clarifying rather than hyping. You can say you are using the Google model for generating revenues, as long as you don’t say you expect to be the next Google.
• Don’t lie. You would think this goes without saying, but too many entrepreneurs cross over the line between passionate enthusiasm and fraudulent misrepresentation.

Go back and reread each sentence when you think you’re done: Is each sentence clear, concise and compelling?

Finally, one of the most important sentences you write will not even be in the executive summary – it is the sentence that introduces your company in the email that you or a friend uses to send the executive summary. Your summary might not even get read if this sentence is not well-crafted. Again, it should be specific and compelling. It should sell your company, not just describe it. Venture investors are predisposed to like entrepreneurs. Many were entrepreneurs in prior lives, and all enjoy the challenge and excitement of starting up companies. Most are on your side. So please help them get to know you better by telling your story clearly and concisely.

Radical Approach – Know thy Customer

One of my mentors told a Client (a manufacturer of drills) that

“People don‘t want your product.”

The president of this large manufacturing firm looked shocked but my mentor continued,

“Your Customers are not interested in drills with more bells and whistles.
They are in the business of making holes – and they want help with 2 things:

1) Making more holes in less time and
2) Making good quality holes

end of story.”

With these words of advice the manufacturer changed his entire marketing approach and for the following 5 years achieved sales records never seen in that industry before.

Think about it for a moment…
What do your Customers really want?
What specific benefit can you provide them with both today and in the future?
What are you waiting for?

Test Test & Track Track

If you are trying to start an online business but there isn’t really much money around to invest – read this article because I have gone through this cycle several times since launching my first online business in 1996. There’s so much you can learn about eBusiness before you have to spend money. And that should be great news for anyone trying to start up their e-business.

Hey, there are plenty of resources available to you when money is more important than your time. Oh, don’t worry – there will come a time in your eBiz career where your time will become more important than your money, but until it does, take advantage of the free-lunch education that’s available.

These are the salad days.. there’s plenty of free info out there.. sifting through it to find the diamonds among the other rocks is the time based challenge on your 18hr workday clock.

OK, so you want to make money online.

You know, I’m pretty fortunate. Over the past 12+ years that I’ve been running my online business, I’ve built a component to my business that allows me to get fast feedback. When I open a store, start a web site, create a new product or even write a newsletter, I can start to evaluate its effectiveness, sometimes in just a few minutes.

Having talked to thousands of other eCommerce store owners, webmasters, and Internet marketers, I can tell you that lack of feedback is why most folks fail.

Here’s the owner’s mindset of 90% of Internet business failures:

1) They are irrationally afraid of making a single mistake.

This might be the single biggest factor in a new Internet business false-start. Even though a new eBusiness owner has great information, a great eEducation, and desire to succeed, they are usually so afraid of committing an un-recoverable mistake that they don’t do anything.

Here’s a tip – there is no such thing as an un-recoverable mistake.

2) They execute their business plan backwards.

They spend time looking at technological solutions instead of market opportunities. I get more emails from people asking me what the best shopping cart solution, merchant account service, CMS or automatic search engine optimization tool is than any other correspondence.

Here’s my one and only answer for the new eBusiness owner:

Use services that require the LEAST amount of maintenance. Use the service that allows you to concentrate on selling your products. In other words, use the service that allows you to set up quickly, easily, and then forget about it.

These kinds of services are only a means to an end!

What counts is marketing your product.

3) If they can’t find the perfect product to sell, they don’t sell anything.

To that mindset, I have a few questions… If you’re new to eCommerce, how would you know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, what the perfect product is? More importantly, what sort of evidence do you have that a product isn’t going to sell?

Sure, there are 4 ways that you can research a product’s potential in the marketplace, but the only way to move out of the research phase and into the proof-of-concept phase is to actually try to sell the product online.

Bottom Line? You’ve got to try it before you know if it works.

4) If they don’t have instant success, they throw in the towel and declare their venture a failure.

Let’s put an end to this mindset, shall we?

Most of the time, your first effort at an eBusiness is going to be mediocre. That’s just a fact and it applies to everyone!

I mean, the first time you swung a golf club, tennis racquet or even the first time you rode a bike, did you do it like a pro?

Not likely.

How about your first day on the job? Did they train you first, or did they just put you in charge of a major project and say, “Do this perfectly or you’re fired”?

Probably not.

So, why would anyone think that they can “get a hole in one” their first time out?

A very few do, but most don’t. The ones that haul off and create a successful eBusiness their first time out do it because they bring with them all kinds of other business testing and feedback experience.

A friend of mine runs the marketing department of a very cool technology company. They’ve had a marketing campaign going for the last few months that costs their company about $100,000. That campaign has not broken even yet, but they’re declaring it a smashing success. In fact, they knew that it was going to lose money during its first 5 months. But because they’ve been actively seeking and tracking feedback, they know that it’ll pay off in the medium-term.

Here’s my point to all of this.

You need feedback and constant input from your business and your industry in order to determine how successful your business can be.

Here’s a few examples in practical terms:

1) Lack of sales does not indicate failure! – What if you don’t have any traffic? How can you tell if your site is converting visitors to sales or not?

2) Lack of conversion does not indicate a poor product choice! If you’re getting traffic and no sales, it’s a sales copy issue, a lack of credibility issue (does your web site look professional?) or a price issue.

3) Lack of traffic does not indicate a failure! Do you know how to get it? Have you educated yourself? Have you tested different traffic-generating methods?

And lastly, do you test?

You must test. You must track your test results. You need to test everything!

Different pictures

Different sales copy

Different on-page search engine optimization

Different off-page search engine optimization

Different price points

Different guarantees

Different web designs

Different headlines

And track it all.

If you get 100 visitors and one sale, and you do that consistently, change one thing about your web site and track the results of that change for a week.

Are your results better or worse? If they’re better, make a note of the change, and then change another! If the results are worse, change it back, make a note and then change another!

Feedback. You see – it’s all about what the marketplace tells you.

You can track visitors to sales, to page views, to abandoned shopping carts, to an email newsletter open rate, to everything!

And guess what? That’s the only way to know for sure what you’re doing is going to work.

Proof of concept is only valid when matched with empirical data.

Feedback – it tells you what’s working, and why.

So, test, test test and keep a log of what worked and what did not.

You also need to keep informed about the changing marketplace. And in most cases, you can do this without spending any money.

If you need some help along the way, drop us an email and we’ll do our best to set you back on track to making a living online.

Your Best Year Ever?

How to make 2008 your best year ever

Q: What Were Your Greatest Accomplishments In 2007?

Even if 2007 was the worst year of your life, odds are if you look close enough there’s something somewhere to be proud of.
If 2007 was a great year for you, then this question is even easier.
Here are a three business ones from my list this year:

Restructuring 2 firms, one Swiss and one international
Building 14 brand new websites and refreshing 10 existing ones
Selling $2m worth of products online
Raising 6 million EUR for one of my Clients

Now, if you were to see my notes you’d see several takeaways under each of these. You should do the same.
So, after you’ve identified each and every accomplishment, go back to each one. This time through identify what you learned or were reminded of by each of them.

Q: What Were Your Biggest Disappointments Of 2007?

Practically every company and individual resists analyzing their mistakes. That’s a shame because this is where the best learning comes from.
No matter how great everything in life is going – we all make mistakes. The trick here is to really analyze them, what preceded them, what could you have done differently, and how can you prevent them in the future.
Even though 2007 was the best year of my life so far – I still had my share of disappointments both personally and professionally.
I won’t bore you with the details but once you have your list – once again, identify the big takeaways.

Q: How Did You Limit Yourself Last Year and How Can You Stop?

Were there certain actions you took or didn’t take that came back to haunt you? If you’re even the least bit honest with yourself you’ll be able to build your list.
In order to make sure you don’t limit yourself again – you need to bring these self-defeating actions to the surface, shine light on them, and most importantly determine what you must do differently to make sure you don’t make the same mistakes all over again.
Here are just a few of mine…

Not reviewing my goals & priorities each day
I didn’t stick to a daily sleep & fitness schedule
I counted on people that were not able to deliver

Of course, just like you did with the earlier questions, identify the takeaways.
For example, one of the big takeaways for myself (even though I know better) is when I don’t review my goals daily I get sucked into what’s currently happening and easily get distracted from what’s most important. That caused me to miss the mark on a few goals I had set out for myself in 2007. I now know I won’t make the same mistake this year. What about you? In what ways did you limit yourself and what can you learn from it?

Q: What Did You Learn from the Last Three Questions?

This is where it all gets interesting. Remember the goal of this exercise is not simply to know yourself and your business better but to actually to use the information to make certain 2008 trumps 2007.
What are the big takeaways from answering the first 3 questions. What do you know about yourself or your business that you didn’t realize or weren’t thinking about?
Here’s are two random nuggets (from my complete list of 44) I got out of the exercise…
Helping entrepreneurs and their businesses grow consistently gives me my greatest feeling of accomplishment. Therefore I need to spend time daily on creating and improving tools and materials and not let the fast growth of my business pull me too far away from what I do best.

Generating income online is key to our business success and I need to reserve time each week to keep current on the best performing strategies so that I don’t get lured in to buying the tactic of the month.
You should shoot for as many distinctions as possible because it’s here that the rubber meets the road. It’s these distinctions that’ll practically guarantee that this year is the best year of your life.
Obviously, having this list isn’t going to do it all. You still need to take this new knowledge and then put it to good use. Fortunately, that’s what the last question is about…

Q: How Can You Use This Information to Make 2008 even better?

The idea here is to build in to your schedule, your interactions, your management style or whatever else you’ve surfaced in question 4 and build yourself a new better approach.
For example, I’ve already scheduled into my daily routine 2 hours a day of content creation, and 10 minutes every morning to review my goals.
Plus, I’ve already slotted on my calendar a weekly 20 minute appointment with myself to relax and then analyze whatever concerns I have.
Of course, I have a lot more – but you get the point. Besides, it’s not important what I am going to do to make 2008 great – it’s what you are going to do yourself to make 2008 great.
So, once again the questions are:

Q: What Were Your Greatest Accomplishments In 2007?

Q: What Were Your Biggest Disappointments Of 2007?

Q: How Did You Limit Yourself Last Year and How Can You Stop?

Q: What Did You Learn from the Last Three Questions?

Q: How Can I Use This Information to Make 2008 My Best Year?