In the Chinese calendar, each year is marked as a year of a particular animal. Frequently, social leaders and governments will mark a year according to something important. "The Year of the Senior" was a recent one I recall, which highlighted the importance and issues of the aged. 

I never thought of it for myself until just a couple of years ago. I decided to make each year "The Year of [something]". It became my focus and passion for the year. Of course, it was always tied in to my business and my area of focus, but it served to remind me of the thing that was important for me that year.

So, what will 2010 be YOUR year for? Will it be your Year for Success? Will it be your Year of Finally Starting That Business? Will it be your Year for Cataclysmic Business Growth? Maybe it will be your Year for Getting Out of Debt, or perhaps it will be your Year of Paying Off Your Business Credit Card, or The Year of Recession Recovery.

Whatever you decide it to be, make it a big deal for you and revisit it regularly as your overarching vision for the year. You will find that it will guide you as you make business decisions and, when the going starts to get a little rough, it will re-inspire you to press on.

Hey, why not add a comment in this blog and tell us what this year will be for you!

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Want to make 2010 way better than 2009? There is one to-do that I recommend: Think back to all of your failed presentations (the ones that DIDN'T turn into sales) and write down the objections the customer gave that killed the sale. In fact, strive to make a list of your top 5 objections that kill sales. 

Then, spend the next week (between now and the first weekday in January) and come up with 2-3 ways to counter each objection. Maybe you need to build more value into your product. Or maybe you need to find a way to accommodate the customer's request to escalate the sales presentation to someone else. Maybe you do need to drop your price. Or, maybe you need to be presenting on a longer timeline so potential customers have a chance to build your purchase into their budget.

If you have 5 top objections and you created 3 ways to counter each one, you'll have 15 top priority to-do's that you need to put into effect right away. And when you do, you'll counter those objections like a pro and make more sales.

Of course, you will face other objections – no one is denying that. But this isn't a situation that you can create a magic bullet for. You just deal with the top ones and move on. In fact, it might be a good idea to schedule an "objection review" at the end of each quarter where you work to solve the top objection you faced in that quarter. Over time, your prospect's objections will become weaker and weaker as your sales skills and ability to handle their objections becomes stronger and stronger.

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Although my blogging style is frequently conceptual and (hopefully) practical, from time to time I like to report on business success stories from which business owners an draw out lessons to incorporate into their businesses. So when I read about Digg as a success story, I was eager to post it here.

During the big, bold, golden years of the internet – when the economy was in full bloom – tech start-ups adopted the "get big fast" model in which they'd ramp up production and audience share as quickly as possible (without regard to cash flow or profitability) with the hopes of being bought out by a larger player. It's not a bad model… if you get bought out, of course. But in 2009, the recession gave a shake to lots of businesses that were hoping for this to happen.

Digg was one of them. Digg is the hot social bookmarking site that allows users to find, promote, vote, and comment on news and links. Digg CEO Jay Adelson had about 70 employees and was looking to "get big fast" and reach 150 employees… until the recession hit. That's when he needed to revise his ideas of success.

You can read the full article at Money.CNN.com but here's the short story: Adelson realized that he can still do great things with fewer than 100 employees. In other words, "get big fast" is no longer in his business plan. Instead, Digg is focusing on sustainable success for the long haul.

That's smart for your business, too.

It can be tempting for entrepreneurs to see dollar signs from the promise of massive success and they may make unwise sacrifices to get big fast in the hopes of achieving that success. (How many among us haven't heard a colleague talk about their hopes of slapping an ebook online and retiring in 3 months?)

Good business growth over the long term requires wise, sustainable decisions now. But it doesn't always happen. That's because sustainable business growth can be hard work with entrepreneurs forced to learn about metrics and financial statements and bookkeeping – none of which seem very exciting when you have dreams of retiring on a Caribbean beach. We see this kind of unsustainable short-term thinking when business owners look for the cheapest option to build websites, marketing their company, and add content.

A view of sustainable, long-term profitability accepts that businesses are stronger when the owner takes small steps forward instead of trying to jump the line. It really is the difference between a spark that flashes for a moment and dies versus a long fuse that burns.

How does this change your day to day activity?

* Start by thinking about your marketing. Are you engaging your customers and building long term relationships or are you focused on an immediate sale?

* Consider your marketing. Does it add value to your business or is it a short-term-view keyword friendly (but reader unfriendly) article?

* Think about your follow-up. Are you thinking about the first sale to a customer or are you making the first sale and thinking about the tenth sale you could get from them down the road?

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Michael E. Gerber developed the E-Myth strategy for small business. There are a number of useful ideas and tools that he espouses in his E-Myth books but one of the ones that stuck the most with me is the simple phrase: Work on your business not in your business.

This simple phrase is packed with a lot of meaning, which we will talk about in this article. In this simple phrase, Gerber cleverly identifies the role that a business owner should take in his or her business.

When you work in your business, you are letting your business control you. In a way, it’s almost as if you’re an employee, simply doing what you’re told to do. Your schedule and your customers and your industry and your system of practices and procedures dictate what it is that you do each day.

When you work on your business, you are the master. You control your business. You set your schedule, you control your customers (in a good way), you work alongside (not as a result of) what your industry dictates, you create good practices and procedures. You are in command.

When you work in your business, you’re like a whitewater raft, pushed about according to the whims of other forces. When you work on your business, you’re like an engineering firm that redesigns and redevelops the river itself to flow where you want it to flow.

When you work in your business, it feels different. You’re busy and you don’t feel like you’re in control. It feels like chaos. When you work on your business, you know it. You do feel in control and it feels like controlled chaos. How do you really know whether you’re working in your business or on it? Gerber gave the perfect measuring tool: If you can step away from your business for a period of time (say, a day or a week) and your business continues to run, you’ve been working on your business. However, if your business struggles or folds, you’ve been working in your business.

So, what can you do about it?

One way to work on your business instead of in your business is to create systems. We’ve talked about that here recently.

Another way to work on your business instead of in your business is to hire (either employees or virtual staff) to do some of your work for you. Once you have systems in place, this will be extremely easy to do.

And a third way to work on your business instead of in your business is to focus on vision-casting and positioning. Create the big picture and position your company as a leader in the field. Let other people do the delivery work itself. Or, if your knowledge is invaluable to the delivery of your product or service (i.e., if you are a coach or consultant), employ others to do everything else but deliver your product or service. And, if your knowledge is invaluable to the success of the company, consider creating other products and services that you don’t have to be present to deliver (like information products or pre-recorded webinars).

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Henry Ford’s real innovation was not the car. There were lots of people who were experimenting with the concept of "horseless carriages" at the time and inventors were trying to create small fuel-powered engines (compared to the large coal-powered ones that ran locomotives).

Henry Ford’s real innovation was a system. It was the ability to make a car quickly. Previously, wagons and carriages were made by a "carriage works" company where a team of builders would custom-construct a carriage for the owner. It was only natural when cars came along that carriage works companies would continue that same work on the horseless version.

But Ford created a system in which a few people, doing the same jobs over and over could mass produce high quality, inexpensive cars. It worked and Ford became the father of the American automotive industry.

There are other companies who have been successful by creating systems: McDonald’s Restaurant has turned everything into a system. You cook the fries for so many seconds. You flip the burgers so many times. You put the mustard and ketchup and onions on in a very specific pattern. It’s no surprise that we see McDonald’s Restaurants everywhere.

Wal-Mart, too, is all about systems. As consumers we don’t see it as much because we shop their at our own leisurely pace but, behind the scenes, a complex system of ordering and stocking shelves has turned the company into a supply chain system superstar.

If you look at any successful firm, whether it’s a corporate model or a franchise, has focused on developing systems. Your business will succeed when you focus on systems, too. Systems help to automate the things you do. Now, when I say "automate" it doesn’t necessarily mean that everything is done automatically for you. However, it does mean that you don’t have to think consciously about what to do next. Having a list pinned to your wall that is the step-by-step marketing system you use to find new leads, you’ve automated it because all you need to do is refer to the list, and do the next thing on it. (Eventually you can use software or employees to do some of those steps for you, but for now simply having the list will make a huge difference).

So, how do you create systems?

First, identify the various processes and procedures you use in your business: Marketing, sales, order fulfillment, customer follow-up, new product development, and more. Each one of these is a potential system.

Second, figure out what works. List the steps.

Third, create measurable goals around each step. (For example, if you create a system for your work on Twitter, you might include "Follow 10 people" as one step in your system).

Fourth, implement your system and succeed by doing the same thing over and over and over and over (and over and over, etc.).

You might not aspire to be the next Ford or McDonald’s or Wal-Mart, but even successful small businesses use systems and you’ll save money and time and run a more efficient company when you use systems.

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Starting up a business can be a thrilling experience. There is nothing like the feeling of brainstorming ways to serve customers, dream up shockingly innovative products and services, and clever ways to deliver that offering to the marketplace. It’s no wonder that we’ve coined a word for the entrepreneurs who do this kind of thing over and over and over and over: "Serial entrepreneurs".

Your start-up might be something you operate from the dining room table in the evenings and on weekends when you’re not at your day-job or it might be a high-concept, high tech effort that has venture capitalists drooling all over themselves to get to you. Regardless of what it looks like, there is one truth about your business that you need to keep in mind:

You may THINK you have a business, but until your first sale is made, you do not.

As soon as you make that sale, you’re officially in business and you need to figure out whatever you did right to close deal #1 and repeat that process. But until that sale is made, you have a non-profit organization!

The problem is, lots of people have great ideas about business – innovative offerings or new ways of delivering a product. Great. But even if they set up all the infrastructure and legal documentation and advertising, they still have a non-profit. Only a skilled few can get that business idea (+ infrastructure and legal documentation and advertising) and turn it into a real business. And that is the reason why so many businesses fail in the first years.

Ask any seasoned business owner and they will tell you that "build it and they will come" is always the dream of every entrepreneur but it is rarely the reality. Instead, it’s more like "build it and then chase after them". Even advertising is not as effective as sales. Advertising just creates awareness and rarely brings people all the way to closing of the deal.

What business success really takes is good old fashioned sales: Generating leads, knocking on doors, cold calling, networking.

Case in point: A colleague of mine is a freelance writer. He says that every 3 to 6 months he’s asked by friends or family "can you show me how to make a living as a writer so I can do it too?". And of those people, very very few actually follow through. They’re always shocked to discover that it takes SALES to do the job.

Now, after having written all that, some of you will point to me that sites like Twitter do just fine without any revenue. That is an excellent question and almost deserving of its own post. However, I will link to this site – http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2008/01/twitters-busine.html – which helps to explain how many websites (especially web 2.0 and social media companies) start free but do eventually close the deal.

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