Focus on Goals

This week focused on more decisions that need to be made when starting an online business.  First, where to obtain merchandise to sell, and second, what involvement to take in the merchant process.  To help make these decisions, we learned how to use different criteria to rate our options, and how to use those ratings to determine the best decision for our business.

The most important lesson I learned this week was the need to focus on long-term goals.  While choosing criteria and assigning ratings to them, it is easy to lose track of what the ratings should be based on.  More than once, I had to go back and change my assessments once I remembered to take into consideration the goals of the people who are starting this business.  Without focusing on this, decisions will be made that will not be the correct ones to achieve what I want to achieve.

For instance, during the study of affiliate marketing and drop shipping methods of business, it would have been easy to choose affiliate marketing as the correct option.  However, it was stated that the goals of the group starting the business was to gain experience about running a business.  The affiliate marketing could be seen as more manageable, because there is no customer service to handle.  It would be easy to have chosen this as the correct direction to go.  When considering the goals of the group, however, it is clearly not going to get them the experience they are looking for.  Drop shipping is the correct choice for this group, because it will better accomplish their long-term goals as a business.

This will be an important lesson for me in the future.  As I make decisions about my own business, or other aspects of my life, I need to remember to take a step back and look at my goals with a larger perspective.  That way, I won’t make the mistake of choosing something that will send me in the wrong direction.