Moving ahead in search of greater results and real tangible grand outcomes.
I wrote in one of the latest blog posts that I’m making some changes and that I’m very committed to making these changes. Not only is it something I really want to do, but it’s also something that is highly necessary and long overdue. In the follow up blog post I wrote that I had added the word “Achiever” to my ego-website title. After several years of not performing to my abilities and honestly not working to my abilities, I have realized that I need to make a lot more happen and “DO” a lot more. In fact, I need to implement massive actions and I’m pushing this hard as I enter 2015.
One of the ways of achieving more, is to actually focus more on fewer items.
This is nothing new and many self help books and books on how to achieve success will hit upon this. However, I suffer from the entrepreneurial bug – the shiny new object curse – in such a way that I have a great challenge in limiting myself to just a few things – let alone just one thing. Repeat visitors to my ego website might thus have seen that during 2014 I had listed some 12 new start ups that I was implementing all at the same time. Even as I wrote about these I also strongly underlined that this is not the best course of action, but rather that one should choose just one such start up and really give it a serious go.
Well, I can state that I probably ended up actually commencing 6 of them. One (SR) fell off the plan before it really got started. The reason for that was that the person who had the idea for the venture ended up – sorry to say – screwing a buddy and me and we dropped the venture. Thankfully this was before any money was put into the venture, but still it was a shame. The idea behind the project was great and entailed many opportunities and possibilities. But I wouldn’t advise anybody to do business with people of little integrity and people who aren’t trustworthy. Yes, you will invariably come across some such people and often find out too late in the game, but that is all part of doing business. If you are too scared all the time, you’ll probably never get anything started.
Now in terms of further focus now that I was left with 5 commenced projects, I’m happy to say that one of them (GAPL) actually doesn’t entail any work nor any noteworthy time expenditure. The reason being that this venture really just constituted forming a corporation that would act as a family corporation that will be the ultimate owner of some of the other activities. In other words, once established it itself does not entail much work other than the yearly tax return and associated tasks.
A third of the new ventures (RW), I implemented, but quickly found that it wasn’t going to go very far without a lot of actions and daily tedious tasks that at this point in time I feel would be wasteful compared to where else I could invest my time. Also I was expecting more to come out of “a partner abroad” than what I saw, so again, in conclusion I decided to “park” this activity till further notice.
This means at time of this writing, outside my existing entities and ventures, I have 4 new start up activities that I’m very sincerely committed to. With the start ups that I’m committed to from 2014, it means that I have 6 main project areas in terms of business for 2015.
It’s still a bit much, but one of them (UH) will be a long work in progress with some work entailed once in a while, but probably not a lot just yet. Two of them (TGSA & TAM) will entail a lot of work, but I estimate that each will have about a month’s worth of serious commitment in order to reach a result from which to become “live” and from which point it will require less, but steady nurturing and activity.
Now 3 of the ventures will require a lot of actions – massive actions and on a continued basis. My intentions are to build teams to help handle all of these activities as things progress. In the beginning most activities will be handled just by me, but as soon as I get some traction, I will need team members to join the ventures and that will be hugely helpful and will then on its own continue even more traction.
The good thing is I can actually handle a lot more personal work, since as mentioned I didn’t perform very greatly in this area in recent years. In other words, I have amble capacity here and I certainly have vast experience and knowledge that is needed for these ventures. So I’m confident I will see some real progress very fast.
The Enterprises Under Way as it was stated up till recently
One of the ventures that will continue to need some real effort is that of Pivot Point Enterprises. At the end of 2013, a partner and I established this company with the specific aim of building a unique business platform on which businesses can manage, store and document everything they do in their businesses. We have succeeded at that and have built something rather spectacular in the platform that we call Doc&Do. People who have had the chance to get a real demonstration of the platform are very enthused and blown away by its power and usability, but we still have huge way to go in order to build a critical mass of users. In other words we have our work cut out for us on this one. If you are reading this, I invite you to go and test it out. You can sign up for a free account. If you wish, you can also reach out to me and have a demonstration set up for you (limited availability).
In 2015 and as soon as possible, I’m also excited to announce that I will aim at bringing the activities of Freetrailer to the US. Freetrailer is already hugely successful in Denmark and Sweden and has a few more countries opening up in Europe in 2015 if everything goes according to plan. The US seems to hold huge possibilities for our business model and in truth I’m just awaiting some important pieces to the puzzle before I officially will reach out to the potential partner companies here in the US.
But much more on that and on the other activities that I will focus on during 2015.
For now, I’m just pleased to bring down the areas of focus. Yes, I still have existing areas of focus and obligations and I will tend to them with equal fervor and strength, but these are exiting times and I invite you along for the ride and suggest that you might sign up for more future updates.
Again in closing, my suggestions to others would be to focus on the one venture that entices you the most and go for that full out. Then once it’s up and running well, you can possibly have a go at another and additional venture. Going for several big ventures at the same time is not my recommended course of action. However, I have found my way of achieving some success doing so via my previous experience from back in the day when I purchased my first personal business, while employed as the CEO of another large and very busy business. Back then I had to remote control my newly acquired personal business and was only “allowed” to work on that in my free time, evening and weekends and yet grew its profit line by 32% in my first 14 months of ownership. But more on that some other time…
Meanwhile, I would love to hear from you and invite you to comment below with your stories.
What are your areas of focus for your 2015?
What will you be working on?
What are your goals?
