Often it can be hard to balance school, work and friends as a student. Money is tight and so is time. Add trying to start a business to that list and it can be near to impossible. I am going to talk about 5 tips and tricks that will give you the edge you need to run a successful project.
1. Establish Key Indicators
When performance is measured, performance improves. You need to establish indicators that you can track and measure throughout your campaign. These will be different from project to project seeing as each is unique. Spend a good amount of time thinking of these indicators and make sure they are things that will lead to a pledge or increase your conversion rate. These will be the foundation of following steps. I recommend you establish 5 key indicators. If you have too many you will become unfocused and they will be counterproductive.
2. Master the Skill of Goal Setting
The last thing any college student wants to do is learn how to effectively set goals. Goals reflect our desires and vision of what we can accomplish. Through goals and plans, our desires are transformed into action. Carefully considered goals will give you clear direction and will help you fill your days with activities that will directly affect your project. You should set individual goals for each one of your 5 key indicators that you identified. This should be done both daily and weekly. I will elaborate on how to do this in steps 3 and 4.
3. Plan Daily
Once you have set goals you need to decide how you will achieve them. The only way you will accomplish this is if you learn how to plan. College life is spontaneous, having fun, relaxing and hanging out are all part of the experience. You can plan your days and still do all these things. You just need to plan them in. Structure out a time where you take 30 minutes each day to set daily goals and schedule in the items you need to do to accomplish those goals. I prefer to plan my next day at night before I go to bed, however you can plan your day in the morning right when you wake up too. Planning each day will be difficult but it is possible. To be quite honest if you can’t discipline yourself to accomplish this small task on a daily basis don’t expect to have the discipline necessary to run a corporation. The organization and discipline this practice builds is what will make you successful.
4. Hold a Weekly Planning Session
This will be the backbone of your planning. A good weekly planning session will be the difference between a profitable week and a stagnant week. Hold a weekly planning session on a day and at a time that is less productive for work. It will be up to you to determine this time, however be consistent. Strive to do it on the same day and time each week. Depending on the size of your project/team this should take anywhere from an hour to three hours. Do everything possible to not exceed three hours or it will become painfully unproductive. During this time you will evaluate the previous week and how you did on your goals. Identify what made you successful or what made you unsuccessful. You will then set new goals for the upcoming week and create detailed action plans on how to accomplish them. This includes setting up needed appointments through email or phone calls for next week or writing in reminders on specific days and times.
5. Evaluate Everything
Measure everything you are doing based on the key indicators that you set up specifically for your project. Take a deep look at the actions you are employing to accomplish your goals. If they are not affecting your key indicators consider trying something else. This will be a process and will evolve with your market. This constant evaluation will provide you with exponential growth.
Knowledge is useless without application. I will write two mare articles elaborating on these five points. Prepare yourself to apply these principles to your business or personal life by identifying a rough draft of 5 key indicators. In the next article I will talk more in depth about what makes a good key indicator and what you need to focus on to set effective goals for those indicators.
Ethan Sigmon is the CEO of Konfusion Clothing and the writer of the blog Webonomics. Connect with him on Twitter @Ethansig.
