Happy New Year!
I have to confess that I made some mistakes in 2008. Some of my worst business sins over the past year included getting bogged down in over-analyzing projects instead of executing, and failing to listen to my mentors (and my wife) from time to time.
Fortunately, I’ve also some great transitions and strides. The most important decision my family made this past year, was to break our addiction to material possessions. That is not to say we don’t like material things. We just no longer mindlessly buy things we don’t really need, and more importantly, we no longer are emotionally attached to them. Many Americans are emotionally attached to useless material objects which ultimately can enslave them. This has been the most liberating and refreshing thing we have done in many years. This change has saved us a lot of money, and is part of the value set we are instilling in our children.
To make this happen, we have changed the way do many things, including making our own bread, clipping coupons, making a family budget, growing our own vegetables and making our own Christmas presents.
We tied all these change into our homeschooling curriculum for our children, and it has been a very educational, artistic and enlightening experience. We spent time together as a family, learned the value of money and had a great time.
On the business front, we made made strides in focusing on the core functions of our businesses and streamlined our operations for the rough economic times ahead.
Our goals for 2009 are to:
1. Survive the tough times ahead.
2. Sell our flooring company, Natural Wood Floors.
3. Ramp up Contrived Media, Ask A Floor Guy and RobMcNealy.com to the point where we can do them full time.
I have confessed my 2008 sins and laid out my New Year’s resolutions for 2009. What are your personal and small businees goals for 2009? In the comments section below, confess your 2008 sins and tell me your personal & business goals fro 2009.
Tags: 2008, 2009, business mistakes, goals for 2009, resolutions
Rob,
It takes courage to tell the world your resolutions, it takes even more to tell the world where you went wrong.
However, knowing one more way of how things don’t work, only puts you that much closer to knowing how things do work!
2008 Sins:
Too much unfocused and unproductive time wasted down the drain of time.
2009 Refocus:
Realizing the precious moments I have been given and treating each and every moment with the utmost attention! Focused force to drive my business to the next level and beyond!
Thanks for the post!
My small business ( websites ) had a huge year in 2008. I turned a lot of ideas and goals into realities. The downside, though, is that over expanding may have spread my focus too much.
I don’t plan to expand at all this year, my resolution is to cultivate and maintain all of my existing sites. All my focus will go to adding interesting, well prepared content!
Happy New Year!
I am applauding the work you did as a family. Those are all fabulous changes. May you each one be blessed in ways you cannot, at this moment, imagine for striving to be more rather than have more.
This is the year in which Esmaa the hermit gets kicked out of the tower and relearns social skills. I intend to complete both a non-fiction book and my fourth novel. Selah.
Hey Rob, this is a great piece of work. I’m analyzing my futures trading charts created in the last year for patterns to my trading behavior as always on Jan. 1st. Last year the rule I feared the most did materialize: The 2X4 rule…everything takes twice the money and four times the time. I accomplished alot in 2008 but also realize that I got done about 1/4 of what I had hoped to do in business. I don’t feel like my business goals were really flowing until November.
I drive a $5000 car and realize a $80,000 car won’t make me happier. This year I made all my own Christmas Cards and gifts. I found people liked them more than store bought stuff anyway. I’m planning on taking massive action and making myself more immune to distractions in business in 2009.
Happy New Year!
Keep on with the lack of dependency on material possessions! That’s cool. All it takes for me is a satisfying camping trip to realize all the things I have that I don’t need. It does nothing to get me to actually get rid of the stuff, but the sentiment is there!
Failures of ‘08:
Too much dreaming, not enough doing.
Overuse of StumbleUpon (If you don’t know what it is, don’t try it. You’ll lose hours of your life!)
Goals of ‘09:
Fix the failure of ‘08 by changing the Wouldn’t-it-be-cool-ifs and Someday-we-shoulds to I’m-going-to-dos.
Contribute more to the internets instead of just taking from them.
My husband got a huge paycut in July so we quickly shaved off the excess in our lives…when the financial market went way south, we’d already made tons of changes so it was less painful.
I’m moving forward doing more of the same in this new year…cutting out the “stuff” and focusing on what matters. It’s amazing how much we DON’T need!
Great post!