It’s time for measuring our 2008 goals against our accomplishments to prepare our plans for 2009. and what do we want to get done next year.
Measuring 2008 Goals
A couple of key things we got done this year:
- Refine Business Dashboard
- Develop speaker page with audio for our website
- Expanded our network of consultant to off-load support activities
- Developed “Engineering Your Sales Process” workshop
- Added 3 new partners: Athol Foden, Steve Moore, and Pete Tormey
- Added third Bootstrappers Breakfast in Milpitas at the Omega Restaurant
- Grew mailing list by 64%
- Completed our second workbook “Getting More Customers”
Some areas where we fell short:
- Develop Startup Stages Idea – we make a good start for this, but fell short of where we want to take this. Stay tuned for more.
- “First Office” series. This will move to 2009 Goals.
- Looking back over our business dashboard. We have a couple things we need to improve
- Followup after a talk or other event
- Quote more work
- Give more talks
Here’s Jerry Kaplan’s “Five Biggest Mistakes That Entrepreneurs Make” at Stanford’s Entrepreneurial Thought Leader Speaker Series. It an interesting talk with good points about our goals. Summary:
- Unclear goals.
- Trying to prove that you’re smart (ego gratification) vs. building a team and building a company.
- Too much focus on control instead of creating value.
- Hiring a friend vs. best person for the job: hiring folks you like vs. folks you need.
- Lack of succession plan (hanging on too long): you have to let go of your children once they are grown, you have to let go of your startup when it’s grown beyond your capabilities.