Adii Pienaar

I had a meeting with friends - Iaan & Christine - this afternoon about where they're going with some of their projects in 2011 and found myself repeating some advice to them that I've been implementing myself recently.

Here's the problem we all have: we have more ideas (varying from being pretty shit to above average to maybe the one or two that are really great) than we have time. This means that we constantly get excited about cool stuff we'd like to do, but due to a bunch on constraints (time & budget normally being the biggest culprits) we never get around to pursuing those ideas and executing on most of them.

As an example of how long things sometimes take; it took us about 10 months (from having the initial idea) to get Express.app out there. Almost 1000 sales down-the-line though, it doesn't seem to have affected the project at all. So I guess the delay & ultimate timeline was okay.

I won't bore you with all the details of how many other projects have taken months to complete, because I hope you get the point by now: it's incredibly hard (most of the time) to get all your ideas out the door.

The amazing thing is that we still managed to grow WooThemes by almost 50% year-on-year, without executing on all our ideas. So how did we do it?

Priorities & Low-hanging Fruit

So with time & budget constraints being hugely influential here, I've instead focused on prioritizing the resources that are available to me / us and then trying to executing on some of those ideas. This on it's own should however not be new to you, but combined with a strategy of going after the lowest hanging fruit, you've got a winner.

What this means, is that you need to aim to execute on the ideas that will take up the least amount of resources with relatively the biggest, potential pay-off (in terms of your global strategy).

For me, at the moment this means that I'm doing much more blogging on the WooThemes blog than I do here.

Blogging on WooThemes = marketing = increased traffic = increased sales (for example).

This is especially true with the new WooLessons series that I've launched there, where I blog about the (business) lessons that we've learned from our experience in running WooThemes. That content is just as applicable here, yet the lower hanging fruit is to blog that on WooThemes.

You need to consider this strategy, especially if you find that you have more ideas than time. Heck, a good idea is a time a dozen; it is however the execution that separates the good from the great ideas.

Pick the easier stuff, get them out the door, attempt to get paid for that (in some way) and move onto the next idea. Once you've build up a nice base where you are earning passive income from these things, you'll find yourself having more time to devote to the fruit that does not hang that low.

So I got the opportunity to go to Vegas in December 2010 and I was so excited about seeing this (supposedly) mystical place. Yet this photo (from our very first day there) is probably my best memory from the almost 5 days we spent there...

I can't bad mouth Vegas at all, but I can say I'm no gambler. :) Instead I'm an entrepreneur and I find it difficult just throwing money at a dealer in the hope that my luck changes.

I thoroughly enjoyed the nightlife and the shows though. Got to see Lion King (with the family, bleh), Jeff Dunham (massive ROFL) and also Peepshow featuring Holly Maddison (treated Jeanne to VIP tickets, as she absolutely loves Holly).

The food wasn't bad either.

I hope the fact that it has taken me 12 days into January to write this post, is not a sign of things to come. :) Especially not if you consider the difficult & busy 3 months I had at the end of 2010.

2011 for me, is all about taking what I learnt last year and building on that, with the special emphasis on further evolving my own ideas, thoughts and actions. Last year was the first year that I actually managed to set myself some proper goals, which were properly measurable and I managed to achieve more than 50% of them. I didn't want to write the typical goals post, as most of my goals are deeply personal, but instead I wanted to give you an idea of where I see myself heading if my goals pan out.

Social Business

Last year, I managed to help establish The Rockstar Foundation and we also ran the hugely successful & popular, One Percent Project. Both of these projects sets the tone for my biggest goal this year: I want to change the world.

Nope, I don't want to be Ghandi, but I've been incredibly blessed and I want to contribute to change in the world. Poverty & education are two of the things that I'd like to contribute to and I hope that my skills & network as an entrepreneur can help me with those goals. I also plan to use Radiiate as my professional vehicle for working on these projects.

Content

Each & every year, I endeavour to blog more. This year I'll strive to make that task a tad easier by setting myself the goal of producing more unique content. My book - Designing Emotion - will land in May this year (my first book as a published author) and I plan to release a 2nd edition of Rockstar Business as well.

In addition to this, I'm also spearheading a new project at WooThemes, which will see us (primarily me) blogging about all of the lessons we have learnt from WooThemes. We hope that this too will turn into something a little bigger than just a collection of blog posts, but more on that when the time is right... :)

The Rest?

The rest of my 2011 will be spent not traveling firstly. I'm pretty keen to get my head down, spend my time growing WooThemes and getting Radiiate to sustainability. And on that note, I also have quite a few ideas for little side projects during the course of the year.

Last year I started exercising and I completed 2 half marathons. In 2011, I hope to continue that trend and become even healthier, fitter and faster than I am today. This philosophy also ties in well with my other (personal) goals which will result in me switching off more and spending quality time away from work, simply living life.

What are your goals for 2011?

The first in a new series of posts that will aim to share the lessons we have learned from running and building WooThemes in the last 3 years.

The Radiiate team recently did some awesome work on SocialGo's V2 website. Check it out here.