Currently Reading

Last week I finally finished off the two books I have been reading for the past while. I finished Be My Guest which is Conrad Hilton's autobiography and the book I mentioned in a previous post Talent Is Overrated.

The other day I started reading Maverick by Ricardo Semler which is quite good so far.

Tracking and Decisions

Yesterday I was sharing my thoughts on tracking business success. For some reason tracking anything seems to be prerequesite to achieving high performance in an area. I think it is because it helps people to make accurate data driven decisions.

Better data equals better decisions.

Tracking Success

Around a year and a half ago I started to do online affiliate marketing. I worked hard at it but didn't see the results I was looking for with it. However, I copied some of the strategies of the people who were successful in this arena that I still use to this day. One of the strategies is to track daily progress with Excel spreadsheets. The people who made money in affiliate marketing would track everything every day to try to increase their performance by even a fraction of a percentage. If they can accumulate a fraction of a percentage this week and a fraction next week and so on, it can really add up. If I am not tracking my results closely I may not know whether my actions are producing slightly better or slightly worse results. The power of cumulative incremental profit can be enormous.

Today, I use spreadsheets in business to track my performance and hold myself accountable to certain results. If I track my data I can fish out patterns from the data which allows me to understand and run my business better. It gives me information that I can use to set attainable goals with. A side benefit of tracking information is to keep me motivated even if I am having a slow week. I can look at my points of success over the past six months and believe that I am capable of succeeding.