The Small Business Doer

Overview

February, man, this short month always throw me off! Those 2-3 days “lost” due to the 28 day month really is felt when you finish something on the 1st or 2nd of March that was something you wanted to do in February.

So, February was a more regular month than January. Busy with paid work, busy with unpaid work growing the business.

Sales were lower than budgeted. If you look at my budget vs. actual section, you’ll see that I believe I overshot my income for the entire year.

I’ll be intensifying my efforts to gain traction on this smallbusinessdoer.com site and have set new visitor and subscriber goals for the end of April 2011.

Action Plan Results from February

• I wrote 3 (not 4) blog posts:
  1. DIY Video
  2. Business Plan Update – January 2011
  3. How To Go Paperless Video
• Found 5 business related website to interact with
  1. Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing
  2. Danny Brown – The Human Side of Media and the Social Side of Marketing
  3. Adrian Swinscoe – Rare Business Growth and Marketing
  4. Make a Living Writing – Frank advice for writers
  5. One Life That Shines – Inciting Gutsy Entrepreneurs to Create Something Extraordinary
• Didn’t write a guest post
• And attended 3 networking meetings
  1. BC Professional Videographers Association
  2. Vancouver Business Marketing Entrepreneurs Meetup
  3. Make it Business Book Club

Business Growth Action Plan March 2011

For March I’m going to step it up beyond what I did in February.

1. Attend 3 networking meetings
2. Write 7 posts on Small Business Doer site
   • 1 post: business plan update post
   • 2 posts: DIY or GO PRO Video interviews
   • 4 posts: Relatively short tips / how-to posts. One a week.
3. Find 5 business related websites to interact with / comment on.
4. Write 2 guest posts on other sites.
5. Have new small business doer cards printed.
6. Resell my first product off this site.
7. 100/1000 goal for end of April 2011 – 100 subscribers, 1,000 visitors a month.
8. Create free small business start-up checklist / guide to be given away to new subscribers

The 100 subscribers will be a challenge, whereas I think that 1,000 visitors a month won’t be too much of a stretch.

I currently have 6 subscribers (2 by email, 4 by RSS). Subscribers are harder to get than visitors, but in some ways are worth more. Quality subscribers will pay more attention to what you have to say than visitors, and when I decide to sell something, it is a ready list to of people to contact. I don’t plan on contacting my subscriber list much beyond monthly updates of what went on the smallbusinessdoer.com site.

I intend to help boost subscriber numbers by creating a free small business checklist / guide. I haven’t even considered doing something like this before as I had very little visitors. I hope that by creating that free checklist / guide, this is something people will share with others and help bring attention to my site.

For visitors, I already had 237 in February. Note that this is not unique visitors, but total visitors (unique was 181). If someone came to my site more than once, it counts as another visit. So, I could easily inflate those numbers if I wanted, but there’s not point since this a number that is a goal for my business, not some number I’m sending to potential advertisers.

Pumping up my visitors number to 1,000 I hope doesn’t prove too hard. I intend to boost those numbers by posting more often, and writing some more guest posts. I’ve noticed as my site gains traction and prominence, I’m starting to receive more search engine visits.

This is my google analytics report for the month of February.

Web Analytics - February 2011

Projects I did done

• Filming for Shawn Lam Video – who happens to be my brother
• Videotaping lectures at UBC.
• Filming for Ballistic Arts
• Marketing work for Small Modern Living – another brother of mine
• Business plan updates for clients
• Bookkeeping

Profit & Loss Budget vs. Actual – January 2011

The biggest discrepancy, video production income. This one was much below anticipated. I sadly thing this is going to be the case for 2011 as I believe I overshot video production income for the entire year.

After that a few items of note are:

• Business License and Permit: $0 budget but officially registered Small Biz Doer Consulting as my name, so had to pay the $40.
• Insurance Expense: $0 budget, however, I registered for WCB, which is a worker’s insurance in case I am injured on the job. It was cheap at $38.71 for a year’s coverage.
• Interest Expense: $0 budget. This one’s always going to be higher than the budget as the interest I pay on my car loan is written off each month. Something I forgot to add to the budget.
• Car Insurance: I was able to go with private insurance, having over 10 years of good driving record, so this amount will clock in lower for 2011.
• Advertising and Promotion: Actual was $250 under budget. Hmmm… I can’t remember what the extra $$ in advertising for February was… I think business cards. I’ll get these in March.

Profit & Loss Budget vs. Actual - February 2011

Conclusion

I have received positive feedback on my videos, so am happy about that. Looking at my numbers, it is definitely helping to bring traffic to the site.

As I go forward, I’m getting more and more focused on what I’ll do. As mentioned in previous business plan posts, I’m moving away from consulting and moving more towards content marketing. When I look at my top skills and top passion, it is small business and video. It should then make sense for me to concentrate / specialize in those 2 areas. I will push more on gaining video production income by increasing my portfolio of work while at the same time trying to publish more video-based posts on this smallbusinessdoer.com site.

Updates

1. Check out the next update Business Plan Update March 2011
2. Check out the previous update Business Plan Update January 2011
3. Check out all the updates