Do you question the business you are in?

[vangogh]

Joel try committing a small time each day to your business. Even 15 minutes will do. Just make sure you absolutely spend at least 15 minutes a day on it. In time you'll find yourself spending a little more than 15 minutes so up your daily commitment to a half hour.

Little by little the whole thing becomes habit.

[orion_joel]

Hmm, i probably already spend more then 15 minutes on something that i do associate with my business. The problem is that i do not usually get the feeling that i achieve anything. I spend time doing things, but really get to the end of the week and look back and may have spent 5 or 10 hours in the week and i just go i achieved nothing.

It just really makes me question why i spend the time. Maybe it all comes down to i do not have a plan that shows me achieving anything. I don't really know.

[vangogh]

Maybe it's more about better planning then. I've definitely had weeks where I know I put in the time, but didn't feel like I'd been productive at week's end.

What I started doing more this year is first set up the big goals for my business. For example goal number one was redesigning my site and moving it to it's new domain. At first I just started thinking through what would be involved until I had a decent plan for making the move.

Then each week I set myself one or more tasks within the overall goal and even scheduled in daily tasks to get done.

At the end of the week I could look back and see I had made progress in the overall goal. One week I created the design, the next week I developed the basic template, another week I ran through old blog posts fixing links and making minor changes, etc.

Little by little I kept making progress toward the goal. Some weeks were more productive than others, but still I could see I was moving closer and closer to the larger goal.

At some points I also looked over my progress and looked at what was left to do and readjusted where needed.

[the goat]

I question my main business (skate ramp construction) only because it is a really finicky market.

Lately I have been scaling it back and starting to make some money with affiliate stores (I have 8 so far) and freelance writing. I love every minute of building sites and writing, so hopefully "the money will follow".

[vangogh]

Do you question it because it's hard to make money with it or because you feel less passionate about the subject. I'm guessing the former. As long as you feel passionate about it, I think you'll find a way to make it work.

[orion_joel]

I can imagine that skate ramps would be a fairly small industry as well, unless there is something i have missed? I would assume that it would also include a lot of safety requirements and such as well, plus i would expect some fairly tough competition from the major brands.

[the goat]

Skate ramps in general are actually a huge market. Believe it or not in the 6-18 year old demographic skateboarding is the third most popular sport in the U.S. Unfortunately for me though the northeast is the least popular area for it.

Also the bulk of our business is high end custom residential halfpipe installations. As you can imagine when the economy lags, people tend to balk at spending 3k-10k for a skateboard ramp in the backyard.

So it is a combination of that and the fact that I have outgrown the sport. I used to enjoy riding every ramp we build, now it just hurts too much (and for too long) when I fall. I do enjoy the travel though.

Hopefully soon my other interests will pay the bills.

[vangogh]

I can understand the hurt. I was never much of a skateboarder, but I play enough sports to know the feeling.

Everything you say makes sense. I know skateboarding is big. I watched the X games a few weeks ago and I'm always amazed at some of the things I see.

Keep in mind that the economy is going to change at some point and people will be willing to pay $3k - $10k again. Maybe you hold onto the business till then, even if you focus on other things.