Where are you now… and where do you want to be? What do you want to achieve in the next year? What are your goals for 2009?

Write them down somewhere specific where you’ll see them everyday. I know it might sound silly, but it works because it gets you thinking about how you’re going to achieve them and what it’s going to take to make it work.

Besides, goal setting is something that’s used by top performers all over the place. Top athletes create them. Million dollar CEO’s create them. And soccer moms create them too because they work and help to get more done and ultimately make you more successful.

Here’s the 3 steps to setting goals:

1. Define your goals.
2. Set mini subgoals.
3. Create an action plan on how you’re going to achieve them.

Always set performance type goals that are measurable and realistic to achieve. Don’t make them too easy, but you also don’t want them to be nearly impossible to achieve.

If you’re new to goal setting, you can use the SMART mnemonic to get help get you started. SMART stands for:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

Because internet marketing is still a relatively new technology that’s constantly changing, I don’t like to plan too long term. In this business, you can’t. But you can set goals for what you want to accomplish in the next month. In the next 3 months, 6 months or even 12 months.

You might want to quit your job.

You might want to create your own product.

You might want to earn some extra income for a vacation.

You might want to become a recognized expert in your niche.

You might want to form a mastermind group.

You might want to find a JV partner for a new project

What do you want to do in 2009?

Here are a few of my goals for the New Year:

• To do $100,000 or more in online sales in February.
• To outsource more, work smarter and be able to take an extra day off each week by the end of the year.
• To add a minimum of an extra 25,000 opt-in subscribers to my list this year.
• To rewrite and republish my Street Smart Internet Marketing book as a hardcover (textbook style).
• To set up my business in such a way that I can spend 75% of my time working on the things that I enjoy doing most.

Goals are important, but what’s more important is how you’re going to achieve them. What’s it going to take to make them happen? What do you need to do to achieve them? Write that down as well and then work on setting it in motion.

Goal setting just doesn’t need to be limited to your business life, but can be done for your personal life as well. Maybe you want to pay off your mortgage or get married to a special someone or spend more time with your kids. How are you going to make that happen this year?

If you’re not a believer yet, goal setting and achieving is also an incredible motivational tool and in this business when many people are working from home, often by themselves, it’ll help keep you motivated, focused and on track. People who are laser focused and stay on track are often much more successful than those that aren’t.

So what are your goals for 2009?

Feel free to share some of them below- maybe you’ll inspire someone else and help to change their life.

Here’s the gist of it: Work on your business, not in it. That’s it.

Here’s an example:

Let’s say that you’re a painter by profession. If you’re working in your business, that means you’re going out everyday and painting whatever it is that you paint and when you return home, you’re working on things like book keeping and equipment cleaning That hardly leaves any time for marketing, hiring, firing, training and in general, getting more business to earn more profits.

But, if you’re a painter and working on your business, that means that you’re taking some of the time you could spend painting, to work on drumming up new business or increasing the profit margin from the business you’re already receiving, thereby, increasing your overall profits.

Then, once you have full-time round the clock business, you hire and train someone to paint for you and work on getting more business. Rinse and repeat.

Though I can’t remember the exact study, at a seminar some time ago, the speaker quoted a study that found if you take just 2-3 hours a week, and work on your business, not in it, your sales will effectively double. From my experience, that’s 100% reality.

Even though we’ve been talking about painting, the same holds true to internet marketing.

If you spend all your time on tasks like bookkeeping, customer service, article and content writing, web design, copyrighting and so on, how much time is left for marketing and selling?

Not enough!

That’s why the rich will always get richer.

The concept is so simple. They can afford to hire people to do things for them that most people would need to do for themselves.

Think about it. If you had a full time housekeeper, nanny, cook, gardener, driver, pilot, personal assistant etc. how much more could you get done in a day? A lot!

In your online business, you need to outsource, outsource, outsource. You can’t do everything yourself!

I don’t write my own copy, do my own web design, programming, accounting, paperwork, article writing, search engine submission, article submission, editing or anything else that I can sufficiently outsource to someone else.

When it comes to my business, there are only 3 things I do each day; they are:

1. Managing my outsourcing- 1 hr

2. Responding to emails and coaching clients- 2 hrs

3. Marketing, improving on and growing my business, products and services- 2+ hrs

Now, not everyone will want to outsource everything right away. If you’re just starting out, you’ll want to do most of it yourself, but as you and your business grow, you’ll want to start outsourcing some of the everyday tasks that keep your business going.

The more you outsource, the more that you can accomplish and the more successful you’ll be.

Figure out what your time’s worth, and hire someone to do everything that’s not worth your time, or who can do it better than you.

But is the money really in the list? Everyone’s going to have their own opinions on opt-in email lists, but check this out:

An average internet marketer with an averagely responsive list should be able to earn somewhere around $1 per opt-in subscriber

People like John Reese, Mike Filsaime, Russell Brunson, Armand Morin, Derek Gehl and anyone else pulling in multiples of 7 figures a year online owe a big portion of it to an email list.

It might not always be their own email list that’s earning them money, but you can be sure that a good (meaning high) percentage of their income arrives from sales to their list or another’s.

Look at all the major product launches that are always fluttering about.

The sales pages aren’t getting the kind of traffic that takes servers offline from seo, article marketing, blog posting, PPC, banner ads or any other kind of traffic generation technique.

The bulk, sometimes all of the visitors to these sites get there through an email they received because they’re on an email list somewhere.

Sure, you can work on seo, viral marketing and other traffic generation methods, but why bother when you can spend 10 minutes, write an email and generate thousands, 10’s of thousands or 100’s of thousands of visitors in the next 24 hours.

The point is, if you’re trying to, planning to, wanting to, or are involved in internet marketing, or making money in any form on the internet, you absolutely need to have an email list.

If you’re just starting out, before you purchase an ebook, put up a website, invest in PPC, create a product or put effort into anything, put it into a list.

Not working on growing a list the day before I started in IM was one of the biggest mistakes I’ve made online. I went almost a whole year before I really put in any kind of serious effort into growing an email list – BIG MISTAKE.

If I had just signed up an extra 10 people per day in that time, I would be making an extra $3,650 per month and a staggering $43,800 a year, without much more than a smidge of extra effort. It doesn’t take any more time to write an email to 1,000 vs. 100 people, or 100,000 vs. 1,000 people, so why not do it?

If you haven’t started putting in double effort into building, growing, nurturing and spreading love to your very opt-in email list, think seriously about it.

Next time you sit down at your computer to surf the WWW, look for good deals on eBay or shoot the shit in a forum or through an instant messenger, take that time and put it into something that will actually help you secure your financial future.

PS: While we’re talking about lists, why not opt-in to my new newsletter on the right sidebar and get

PPS: With the summer having been in full swing, it’s been more than a while since I’ve posted anything to this blog. Anyone who leaves a comment for this post will be entered into a draw to win a signed copy of my book, Street Smart Internet Marketing, absolutely free – just let me know where to send it.

If there are 10, comments, you’ll have a 1 in 10 chance of winning. Random drawing will be held on Oct. 26 and the winner will be announced here.