Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

Paying Attention to the Short-Term, Too
You've heard it many times. "Forget the short term. Focus on your long term plans." It's important advice, but it can also be misleading.

Granted, if you ignore your long-term goals, you'll never get where you want to go. But if you put all your energy into working toward the distant future, you'll never get started toward it.

I'm very much guilty of this. I can't look at my business goals without seeing all the elements of what they could grow into in their full-fledged form.

The problem is, though, is that it's never possible to go right to that full-fledged form. It takes time to build there.

So I've often fallen into a pattern of putting all my energy into building for the future. I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago in my post about building castles instead of bridges.

One of the problems with that approach, though, is that it becomes very easy to neglect the present. That sometimes puts me into a cash-flow bind. I work determinedly toward long-term profits and suddenly find that my current cash flow is sluggish.

So, for the past couple of weeks, I've forced myself to spend time on quick cash-generating ideas as well as long-term goals. The results have been outstanding!

Not only did I have a sudden burst of income to finish up one of my best July's ever, but I did it without compromising future goals. I identified ways I could fit some of the short-term cash generation into my long term goals and build immediate assets as well as long-term ones.

The result of it all has been more peace of mind (no unexpected cash-flow problems) and, actually, additional progress toward my long-term goals. I encourage you to look at the way you've pursued your goals. Are you focusing too much on either long-term thinking or short-term thinking?

Look for ways to balance them both and make them work together. I've found a balanced approach to be far more effective.
Jeff

Labels: marketing