Setting your Goals for 2010 as an Entrepreneur

Setting objectives as an entrepreneur is a very important skill. Last year, I set a few goals for myself for 2009:

• Expand my eBay business
• Create a blog dedicated to entrepreneur stories for teenagers (teenbizstarter)
• Reach below 100,000 in Alexa Ranking.

End result:

• I slowed down my eBay business, eventually putting it on hold.
• I did not create the blog dedicated to teen entrepreneur stories because I didn’t have the bandwidth
• I converted my website to a blog that now has a 95,000 Alexa, hundreds of comments, and a strong community.

So how did I fair?
Surprisingly, I only achieved one out of the three of the goals that I had set up. Don’t misunderstand: I don’t feel badly about it. On the contrary, I learned a very important lesson from all of this. Life changes. It’s important for an entrepreneur to set up goals, but in a dynamic world such as ours, we always have to be open to opportunity and change. I saw that with the recession, I was not going to do well on eBay. I also realized that I wouldn’t have time to work on more than one blog at a time because they’re more time consuming than I thought; instead of spending a little time in a lot of different places, I concentrated my efforts on one blog, mine, www.ben-lang.com. Lesson learned? A smart entrepreneur sets goals but at the same time stays flexible so that when new opportunities arise, he or she can snatch them.

Happy New Year!