Conflicting priorities: the bane of excellence or savior of "good enough"?

Since I lack the funding to just dive in and work my new business to the exclusion of everything else that brings in money, I find I have to slip my business efforts in when I can. As a result, the business is progressing slowly and, truth be told, the quality is not what it could be. I find myself settling for what I can get done in the time slot available rather than taking the time to get everything just right.

This may not be a bad thing. I am a bit of a perfectionist, and if I thought I had the time to get things perfect I may slip into paralysis by analysis and get even less done. The thought that there is one right solution tends to make me want to find it, even though there really is no way of knowing if I do.

I'm finding that I have a better chance of getting things right, however, if I take the time to create a plan. It's easier to know where I left off on something and where I was heading with it if I have something written down I can refer back to. Of course planning takes time, too, and the temptation is always there to skip planning and "actually get something done".

That's where discipline comes in. That's also where I have room for improvement. My goal for today is to take some time this afternoon before I knock off work for the week to plan where I'm going with my business (and everything else I've got going on) and break out some short-term objectives to pursue next week. That way when I come in on Monday morning I'll be able to pick up where I left off, knowing exactly where I'm headed.

When do you give up and hire a pro?

Yesterday my computer told me it was time to upgrade to Internet Explorer 8. I did. I hate it. And my web sites look all messed up now. So I finally made the break to Firefox, hoping it was just a IE8 thing. Nope. My sites are messed up there, too (and probably have been from the beginning).

So today I spent a few hours cleaning up me CSS to deal with the problems. Everything is ironed out now...mostly. There's still something funky going on with IE8.

If I had the money it would be tempting to let a pro handle this. I should be working more on my content right now instead of tweaking style sheets. On the other hand, hiring a pro would probably wipe out any profits I may make this year. I admit I have no idea how much a pro would even cost, but I suspect it's not cheap.

As they say, it takes money to make money. But I'm determined to succeed in spite of that obstacle.

The MetroMom puts on a great teleseminar

My recent foray into Twitter (http://twitter.com/thomstrat) has opened up a new source of information for me. But perhaps the best was a teleseminer I sneaked into over the weekend. The MetroMom, Kim DeYoung, runs a business supporting mothers running their own businesses from home. As part of this effort, she put together a teleseminer with 18 different experts in various aspects of running an online business. But, as her target audience is busy moms, she added a helpful twist.

The entire seminar was prerecorded and made available to participants at any time during the two days. Attendees could read the session descriptions and pick which sessions they wanted to attend at the time they could actually attend. Fantastic idea!

Though the seminar was promoted as "for women" I signed up anyway, as the majority of the topics were things I'm interested in with my current business plans. Fortunately it's easy to go "in drag" on the internet. Actually, it didn't matter. My Twitter avatar is very obviously male, and I tweeted about many of the sessions I attended. I got persona responses from DeYoung and several presenters, and no one said anything.

I was very impressed. This was a high-quality seminar--for free! DeYoung is a great interviewer, and her experts were...well, expert. There was a lot of good information given. Yet I could see how the seminar could have been so much less than it was if DeYoung hadn't worked hard to provide substance. As it was, the seminar reflected very well on all who presented, and even more so on DeYoung.

Great concept, great execution. I give it two thumbs up.