Merry post-Christmas and a pre Happy New Year to all of you out there.
This last year had its share of ups and downs with a lot of people experiencing more downs than ups. Hopefully you weren’t one of them.
While it does seem like some things are improving, next year is bringing a lot of uncertainty with the new taxes, more health-care fallout and more. I think it’s humorous (in a sad way) that when stats show improvement, there are a bunch of politicians leaping for the cameras to explain how it is all because of their ideas. One thing that I see in companies I work with is that any improvements are because businesses are making progress despite the politicians, not because of them.
And that brings me to the thought of the day
Business may get better or it may get worse. I don’t know what will happen…no one does…although we can speculate forever. If business gets worse we will have 3 options: roll over and die, do nothing, march on regardless of circumstances. I, for one, plan to march on.
“You may never know what results come of your action, but if you do nothing there will be no result.”
– Ghandi“Show me a guy whos afraid to look bad, and I’ll show you a guy you can beat every time. “
-Lou Brock“Adversity cause some men to break; others to break records. “
-William A. Ward“You have no control over what the other guy does. You only have control over what you do. “
-A J Kitt“The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that
whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand. “
-Vince Lombardi“If you don’t run the race for fear of losing then you automatically lost the race without trying. You might as well run.”
– author unknown
I have designed websites that were highly successful and brought to my clients a ton of business. I have also designed some great websites that didn’t bring a ton of business. The only difference between the two is who used their websites and who lived by the quote “If I build it they will come”.
The clients who went out and made things happen were very successful. The clients who let the website sit there in space, expecting that it would bring in money without putting in any effort, were sometimes disappointed. (This generally applied to websites that were brand new and thus had no marketing or SEO applied to them, not that I made a bad website). Another common trait is that people who did nothing with their website or business had a tendency to blame others for their failure, but that’s a whole other article.
Are you sitting back and waiting for the economy to make up its mind or are you making plans to forge your own destiny? Make 2014 the year where you took charge of things and in 2015 you won’t be wishing that you had.
What does that look like? Maybe it’s designing a new website, cleaning up the current one or adding ecommerce. Maybe it’s engaging in social media or email marketing. Maybe it’s hiring and training new employees, adding/removing products, getting a new accounting system, print advertising, etc.. Of course it’s always a good idea to take a look at your search engine optimization or even run some A/B tests to see if anything can be improved. The possibilities are endless.
I pray that 2014 is a blessed year for you.