This post is one of those exercises where I want to be clearer about what we need to achieve a very big goal. The other day I did a similar mental exercise but on the level of running marathons.
I had been able to find all the times I ran in the last marathons from 10 years ago and beyond. I thought they were already lost forever so I was happy to be able to rescue them.
What I didn’t remember. Nine out of eleven times I had run a time of 3 hours. Three minutes up and down more or less. The funny thing is this. I have always trained with the same plan from a book I bought after running my first marathon. It was a plan to go under three hours.
I say funny because this question crossed my mind
Why have I never been able to go significantly under three hours? And although the answer is now obvious I hadn’t realized it until that thought. Subconsciously I thought that by putting in the same effort I would be able to improve the result. Serious mistake, of course.
So you know what? I’m making the same mistake at the business level. To start with, I’m not being ambitious enough. You have to raise your goals a lot, but of course, you also have to keep in mind this: increase your efforts.
1 Invest in product (more and better)
2 Invest more time
3 Invest in processes
4 Invest in technology
5 Invest in marketing
6 Invest in talent
7 Invest in structure
Invest in product (more and better)
This point is the easiest because it’s also the one we enjoy telegram database users list the most. And what makes you have a good time is easier to carry out (obviously). It also has a danger and it’s this. Getting lost in things that aren’t essential. In the end this variable depends on another one that is above it: money. You have to invest it in the best possible way in the most profitable products. In the end it’s like always. It’s much more fun to launch new products compared to growing existing ones. The big risk I see at this point is the following: diluting efforts. If you only increase the variable number of products you will not significantly increase income. In the end, these will simply be diluted among more products without seeing a significant increase in turnover.
Investing more time
Another scarce factor is this. With more products you jack never looked at people as titles need more time to be able to dedicate the necessary time to each one of them. This means that you either put in extra hours or hire more people. Each of the two options means a higher cost that in the worst case eats up the additional benefit and in the end you are in the same situation. More products and more time is therefore not a guarantee of success in growing our e-commerce business.
Investing in processes
If you always do the same thing you will never have different results. I think I have already expanded on this in detail at the beginning of this entry and we can agree on this point. One taiwan data of the things that has allowed us to make a leap at the company level is to use Jira and Confluence. We always take a small step back because at the individual level it is not documenting things. At a team level, it is always an advantage, so we have to maintain the discipline to continue doing it. At a process level, we have to continue working on routines that improve the way we do things. Here we improvise too much and rely on our experience. If we continue this way, we will be limited because we depend on the skills and knowledge of a few people. Converting individual work routines into processes takes time, but it is time well spent thinking in the medium and long term.
Investing in technology
Processes work better if they are accompanied by technology. The example of Jira and Confluence shows this. We have also taken the first steps to include Hubspot in our processes. It is a first step, but I am not that far behind here. Taking that into account, it works better than expected, but there are some nuances that we can improve.
In 2025, I am looking to implement new technology to sell more and sell faster. To have true scalability that does not require more people and/or time in a relevant way. Right now I am between JTL and Plenty to automate processes, but above all to have access to more marketplaces in a semi-automated way. It will be an investment of 20,000 euros but it will be worth it.