Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

Away from computers - Yikes!
This will be the last you'll see a blog from me until next Thursday. I'm off tomorrow for my daughter, Becca's, graduation from Virginia Military Institute. We fly down tomorrow, spend four days with the many events that are part of graduation at that tradition-rich institution, and then drive Becca's car back to Minnesota.

(Note: Upon our return, I added thoughts I had while away and backdated them to the applicable dates of our trip.)

It should be quite an experience! Granted, I'm nervous being away from the business that long. I may be able to sneak an occasional peek at my e-mail and eBay to remain aware of any time-critical developments. But with so much of what I feel I need to do being on computer, I feel a little naked going without.

Most of my time will be spent with family but, as I always do on trips, I'll take some non-computer work along to work on during whatever down time I have. This will be a little different than usual, though.

Usually, I've taken stuff to study or notes for articles to write. Then I've come home and been so swamped with what I had left behind (and what additional work I had generated for myself by writing more articles that I needed to type onto the computer), that the work I did got pushed off to the side.

So this trip I make myself no promise to write x number of new articles or review x number of ebooks. I want this to be a trip in which I break that mold. I want this to be a trip in which I refresh myself instead of heightening my pace even more.

So the work I plan for my down moments is more vision-type work—reassessing where the business has gone so far and if it's truly going where I want it to go. I want to look at it and see if it's taking me in the direction that I've been realizing more and more that my heart wants to go.

I find that what really interests me in this business venture are the things inside people that affect whether customers buy or walk away, and whether business owners succeed or short-circuit themselves.

Admittedly, the only place I've really dealt with any of that is in the bonus tips I send out when someone signs up for my newsletter. But I need to follow that more; that's what drives me right now.

So what work I do on this trip will be to revisit my goals and make sure they—and the direction of my site—reflect the leading of my heart.

I with that, I bid you well until a week from now.
Jeff