When it comes to online business, it’s all too easy to get caught up in details that don’t matter. I can’t afford to waste time doing unimportant tasks. That’s why I ask myself these questions at least once a day.
Is what I'm doing right now going to increase my bottom line?
I’ve spent hours tweaking colors on a new website. I’ve spent days trying to think of the tagline for a new brand. I’ve spent weeks clicking refresh on my Amazon sales stats. What effect did all this busy work have on my bottom line? ZERO… I was pretending to work and nothing meaningful was happening. Answer this first question and you’ll always be on your way to making more money.
Is what I'm doing right now going to get me more product reviews?
On Amazon there are generally two competitive advantages you can have on your product detail page (with some exceptions). The first is price, but nobody wants to race to the bottom. The second is product reviews. The more product reviews you have the better you look to customers and the harder it will be for a competitor to overtake your listing. Product reviews solidify your listing and they’ll take less time to manage.
Is what I'm doing right now going to reduce the work I have to do in my business?
I’m a busy person. I work 50-60 hours a week at the hospital and run a $1 Million eCommerce business on the side, so productivity is important to me. Saving myself time in the future is as good or better than saving myself time right now. Because systemizing and automating my business is the only true way to scale, I take every opportunity I can to put that automation in place.
Is there something I could do that would have a greater effect on any of the above?
There’s a lot of tasks that you could justify answering yes to the previous 3 questions, but not many will get by this last question. We often avoid the highest impact tasks because we’re afraid of what might happen or it seems hard to do. What this question is really asking is, “What is the biggest impact task to 1) Increase Revenue, 2) Increase Product Reviews, or 3) Automate the Business?”
