Do One Thing

There is a piece of paper on my cork board right in my eye line where I work.  It says “Do One Thing”.

This is a personal note to myself to keep on target and stop veering off with every new idea that pops into my mind.

I Like The Shiny & New

My problem is I love that feeling of new investigation, building something brand new and chasing the shiny object.  It happens to me at least once per week and my sign pulls me back from the brink.

The idea of building a repeatable, scalable business at WPDude.com sounds great, but in effects it’s a lot of hard work.

My mind plays tricks with me and tells me there is money to be made in the latest technique or gadget.  That I should follow that and change course from my one thing.

What Is My One Thing

My one thing is providing WordPress technical support to small business that do not have an in-house technical team.

We do small technical projects that are beyond the skills or time demands of the site owner.

It’s simple, not particularly glamorous, but there are huge demands for these skills and it is my job to package the technical savvy of my team into an easily consumable product.

At the time of writing we have been involved in 4239 projects, that’s a lot of work inside of my one thing. It works, people need it. I need to focus on that one thing and make it as accessible to my clients as possible.

My sign on the wall tells me I need to do that one thing until I can make an exit.

One Thing Two Packages

Our one thing comes in two packages:

• One off small projects– we will take on fixed priced small projects to provide technical support to fix a single issue (I’m looking at making this a single price to make it ever simpler).
• On Going Maintenance – we will provide ongoing WordPress technical support for a monthly fee.

I would love to provide a single type of packaging, but you, as the client has told me you want the choice of how you get your WordPress technical support so I’m okay with that.

One Team To Do One Thing

I’m building a team to provide that do one thing in the most cost efficient manner possible.

I’m looking to make providing WordPress technical support to my clients more like a household trade you would call in,  people are happy hiring a plumber to fix their leak, I want to make hiring technical support for your crashed website a similar experience.

Mistakes I’ve Made Not Doing My One Thing.

When I veer away from my one thing, I always lose focus, and as a result WPDude is impacted.

I’m not good at juggling many balls so my focus will go to the shiny new object, marketing and sales at ibraininc.com go down as a result.  I wrote about this in Have We Reached Peak Podcast.

Here are some of the side projects I have tried and ultimately closed down:

• WordPress Owners Club – this was my membership site to teach people how to use WordPress, remember everyone was telling us to sell productised coaching.
• WebPolyglot – I was building a service business to only focus on web site owners who need multi language websites, remember we were told to go deep niche (I’ve merged this back into my one thing).
• WPPing – I thought a software as a service that would alert you when your website was down or running slowly was a winner, a recurring Software as a service is the next shiny thing I was told.
• Custom theme and plugin development – we offered these but they are not really required by my core audience of small businesses, we had minor wins but not enough to keep the lights on.
• App Development – I’m still keen to pursue building an agency to develop apps, but that will be after exit.
• Dozens of purchased then lapsed domain names – every new idea starts with a $15 purchase then lapse of a domain name, in my to sunset domain list are wpguard.co, wpping.com, theknowledge.co, bright ideas with no implementation.

When Can I Move Onto The Next Thing?

I can move onto the next thing once I have made an exit from this one thing, what do I mean by an exit?

An exit to me is when I automate, systematise and reduce my input to WPDude, so I don’t need to be there on a day to day basis to deliver our one thing service.

This will take some time, so my exit it not coming soon, so I’m still focusing on this one thing.

How I Scratch My “Need For The New” Itch

I’ve got a lifelong desire to learn new things, so I’m putting my energies into learning how to run a business . The shiny new things I’m focusing on:

• Building a team.
• Creating processes and systems to replace myself.
• Learning to be a business owner not a freelancer.
• Spending more time marketing and growing my brand.

All these things are brand new to be and are definitely feeding my desire for new, but are inside my do one thing.

Wrap Up – Do One Thing

Do you have the same tendencies as me to chase after the new shiny thing?

If you are not careful is there a chance you will never fulfill your business potenti …. look a squirrell!!!