I know I should be working ... I should be sitting here at the keyboard pounding out today's column or writing some text for our latest client's website. There's a couple of reports I should be churning out as well but instead of all that hard work I seem to be spending a lot of time today looking out the office window.

There's not a whole lot to look at when you look out our downtown office window. There's a car park and I can look into the back of one of the businesses that share our complex ... there's nothing very inspiring in that view ... and yet it's the perfect view when you want to think.

There aren't many distractions in that view ... especially on a rainy day like today ... and I certainly am in the mood to think. That's not the same mood that I sometimes get into where I really don't feel like working ... in fact I've achieved quite a bit this morning ... but now I'd like to spend some time thinking.

I want to think about what my partner and I need to do with a mainstream e-commerce website we want to take to a whole new level. At some times of the year it sells really well while at others it just sits and spins its wheels.

Traffic levels stay about the same but sales just don't happen so what do we need to do to boost sales in those quiet periods? What do we have to do to make it visible beyond the search engines? What other forms of marketing will work for that particular website?

At the same time we want to make that site part of a network of e-commerce sites so what other things are we going to sell? Do we need to look at big ticket low volume items or high volume low ticket items and what are we going to do about supply ... warranty ... shipping ... etc.

I must say that thinking before actually doing anything is a little foreign to me. I'm a person who likes to get things done ... right NOW ... and in the past I would jump in and do things without much planning ... why bother about details?

I know how to build websites that work ... I know how to get a good ranking for a website ... I know how this whole deal works because I've been doing it for years. But do I really know how it works? I might have been doing it for years and almost be able to build a website in my sleep ... but things are changing.

What once worked might now not work as well as it once did. And if I'm serious about growing these online businesses I've got to understand that there's more to building a business than just building a bunch of websites ... and that holds true regardless of whether I'm selling widgets or hardcore porn.

I guess I thought that details would always take care of themselves ... and maybe they do when times are good. Perhaps when times are good you don't have to be up to speed on all aspects of your business and you can spend some time discovering how to meet the changes that occurred while you were looking the other way.

But in these tough times there are lots of empty shops, empty houses and dead websites around to remind us that you really do need to plan if you want to survive. If you want to succeed with a new business you have to hit the ground running and be ready to meet the challenges of doing business that exist right now.

There's very little time to catch up ... you have to be up to speed right now ... because you need to be generating a good income within a very short time.

So you too need to spend some time thinking and planning ... you too need to spend some time looking out the window and just letting your mind run over the challenges that face you. And you need to be doing that regardless of whether you're thinking of starting a new business or quite happy with the way your current business is going.

In just about any business you're really only a heartbeat away from disaster or the chance to grow your business beyond your wildest dreams so you need to be thinking ... you need to be planning ... you need to know what you have to do next week ... next month ... in the next five seconds to keep your business rolling along no matter what's going on around you.

So don't be afraid to spend time thinking and planning, rather than working every waking second, because your survival depends on it.

02/20/2012 - Tales from the Street

01/23/2012 - Getting Inside Their Heads

01/17/2012 - Planning to Survive

01/09/2012 - Headlines and Creeping Jobs

01/02/2012 - What Are You Planning for 2012?

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