The Business Success Goals article was updated April 2014.
Read a blog post titled If You’re Reading This Blog Post… You Could Get $100,000 Worth of Coaching and Products From Me.
Basically you answer three questions to win some business coaching and products from Rich Schefren, the blog contest ended years ago. Inspired me to write a post as it hit home to a problem I’ve been having for going on two decades that’s held me back in reaching my full business potential!
What is Stopping Your Business Success?
The blog contest asked these three questions, which have the potential to shed light on what’s holding you back from business success:
1. Do you know what your single greatest constraint is right now? If so, what is it?
2. How many constraints away are you from having the business and the life of your dreams?
3. What are the three greatest benefits you’ll enjoy once those constraints are removed?
Feel free to answers these questions and post them as a comment below.
Or maybe you have better questions?
Personal Business Goals
In September 2008 I gave the following answers:
1. Do you know what your single greatest constraint is right now? If so, what is it?
My biggest constraint is a physical disability, while at University in my early twenties (studying genetics with an aim to being a research scientist) my lower back got so bad I couldn’t complete my three year BSc degree. After dropping out of Uni I couldn’t work due to back pain whilst sitting/standing (had to claim government benefits on medical grounds).
I eventually got online (couldn’t afford it until there was free Internet access in the UK) and knowing nothing about building websites managed to build an adult store with over 1,000 products using a very poorly thought out piece of ecommerce software (ShopFactory: was almost anti-SEO in design).
Through SEO means (spent a LOT of time learning search engine optimization techniques) I got the site to 8,000 unique visitors a day and sold £80,000 worth of stock in a year (£25K profit for me from zero profits for the first 6 months trading).
The business was run from home with the help of my wife, so everything was stored/packed in the living room (worst part was returns!!).
We considered opening bricks and mortar retail stores and possibly warehouses, but wasn’t a realistic possibility due to my back pain. What I was doing (all the work at home) was about all I could do.
I’d used black hat SEO techniques on the site and got it banned in Google, eventually resulting in putting the site in moth balls (currently makes pennies a day). Site went from 8K visitors a day to under 1K!
Fortunately I’d already seen the error I’d made (using black hat SEO techniques not a good idea long term) and had started an SEO business.
I didn’t enjoy selling adult products, so when I realized I was not only very good at search engine optimization I enjoyed the challenge it didn’t take much to go from performing SEO tasks on my own site to offering SEO services for a fee.
I got plenty of SEO clients lots of people knew I was good at SEO research (perfect business for me with my research background) and still run that successful SEO business today (majority of my clients stay very long term).
Again due to my back problems I can’t expand my SEO business much, have to keep it relatively small so limited clients etc… (I’ve turned many potential clients away).
I also try my hand at affiliate marketing (I love the idea of residual income, especially on auto pilot) and do OK, currently my sites are receiving about 15K to 17K visitors a day, was moving over 25K visitors a day due to one of my sites, (was getting 10K visitors a day) but Google penalized it last month, (now 2K visitors) I think (99% sure) for selling text links via one of the popular text link selling sites (trying to get it re included, removed the 2 links I’d sold, d’oh!).
I was closing on making $100 a day from AdSense, but the loss of 10K visitors a day has pulled that back to below $50. Starting to do better with Clickbank, had a few $100+ days this week, but it’s all small fry compared to what is possible.
Last month I made around $3,500 in affiliate type revenue, looks like I’ll make around $4,000 to $4,500 this month despite AdSense income almost halving!
I should be able to do much better with my skills set and resources (have over 100 domains).
2. How many constraints away are you from having the business and the life of your dreams?
One, my back problem, all other issues are minor in comparison. I’ll be getting an operation on my back within the next 12 months. Finally got so bad the doc’s would operate on my spine: having two disks in my lower back fused and metal pins either side!
After which I hope I can finally sit/stand and even walk in a more normal way. Currently I never sit in a chair, right now I’m lay down in a custom built bed typing with the keyboard leaning on my knees. I can’t stand in queues, wait in waiting rooms etc… I have to keep moving to limit the pain. Stand me still and I rock from side to side to avoid back pain, kind of rules out face to face meetings with potential business clients.
My 12 year old son is a very good artist. He’s going to design some Christmas cards and maybe other types of greetings cards and we’ll try to sell them to supermarkets etc… In an ideal world I’d travel to meet the buyers and sell the products face to face, as it is it’s going to have to be via the phone/email/snail mail which isn’t as effective.
3. What are the three greatest benefits you’ll enjoy once those constraints are removed?
Assuming the operation is a complete success I’ll finally be able to really live my life in every way.
From a business perspective all the opportunities I see will finally be open to me, I’ve lost count the number of times I’ve seen a closed retail store in a good location and thought of the possibilities, but I physically can not currently manage anything like this: would love to setup a retail store and when running well pass it on to others to run with me in the background.
Currently have to limit myself to online business only, I use my car so little the battery goes flat, weeds and green moss grows on it!
Don’t get me wrong I make a good living online, we bought a house almost three years ago in need of some renovation work and I paid £36K deposit and still had plenty of cash left over in the bank for renovating.
What I want to do in the future is possibly create info products, I know a lot about SEO so that would be he most obvious niche to create in.
I’ve also made WordPress SEO/AdSense themes which I can say without a doubt are the very best SEO’d WordPress themes available today. Would like to do something more with those.
How to Reach Your Business Goals
It’s April 2014, so five and half years have passed: how time flies.
I had an operation on my back, but though successful in the sense of my spine is now fused and in that area stable (so two discs are stable) it hasn’t made a positive impact on pain. Used to be my lower back caused pain when sitting/standing, but not impossible to find comfortable positions lay down.
Now it’s much worse, lower back is about the same as before the operation (still hurts to sit/stand still), but my coccyx (tail bone) feels like it’s been whacked with a rubber hammer: bruised and very tender! Can not sit without a ring, can’t lay on my back for long periods of time, laying down on my back hurts my coccyx which sucks as that’s the position I used to work in.
My shoulders feel tense all the time, when stretching my arms my shoulders grind and pop, feels like the muscles/tendons have shortened!
As you can imagine this is causing limitations in being able to work, yet I’m again working long hours (back to working over 12 hours some days). Find myself moving around a lot while working.
Since the back operation I’ve changed my attitude to life. Before the operation I had a ‘waiting for it to get better attitude’: “when my back gets better I’ll….”, now I’ve accepted it’s highly unlikely to get better in the short term, so getting on with life and business because “Life is too short to be anything but happy”.
Obviously there’s a lot of things I can’t do, but rather than worry about limitations I’m focusing much more on what I CAN do and that’s a lot of stuff that can make money.
Since the operation I’ve lost 4 stone in weight (perfect weight now: BMI below 20), walk 5 miles a day and do light weight training, I even have a one pack developing which is really inspiring to do more exercise.
I’ve cut back significantly on pain medication and just accept I’m going to be in pain, before the operation took 360mgs di-hydrocodeine a day, after the operation I was in a LOT more pain and went as high as 200mgs morphine a day (equivalent to over 2,000 mgs di-hydrocodeine). Today I’m on 60mgs of di-hydrocodeine, now I have to cut the tablets in half because you can’t get 30mg time released di-hydrocodeine :-)
David Law
Website - SEO Gold
SEO Services Business
You are an inspiration! After I write this comment, I have to go to work and drive loader. After I set up my website (currently 50 to 100 visitors per day and 100 to 400 page views per day.) with my newly purchased WordPress Theme from you, I hope to get my adsense revenue over $1 per day and up to $100 per month. :-)
That is my first attainable goal. I am pretty good at SEO (would be better if I had more time) and am thinking that maybe you could farm out some of the work you are turning away to me. :-)
You could retain a percentage of the income and supervise what I do until I prove myself.
SEO Services Business
SEO Consulting Business
Glad you like the WordPress theme and good luck with your business plans. If you concentrate on quality/unique content and do OK with backlinks you should reach your goals long term.
Now that I’ve had my back operation I should be able to take on more SEO clients, but thanks for the offer on the SEO consulting business idea.
David Law
Future Business Plans
David, Glad to hear you’re on the mend. Good luck with your future business plans! Christiane