2018 Goals Review: Focus

My 2018 theme was "focus". It was inspired by the book called "The ONE Thing" by Gary Keller. The book suggests you regularly ask: "What's the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it
everything else will be easier or unnecessary?"

So that's what I did, and as a result, I had two goals:

1. Launch Majordomo Nationwide
2. Learn Bass Guitar

That also meant there were a bunch of activities I decided not to do: no new properties, no big home improvement projects, no sports, no new commitments (and quite a few I dropped).

Don't worry, it wasn't all boring work. Jessi and I celebrated 10 years of marriage by running a marathon on the Great Wall, I read a bunch of great books, I beat Zelda: Breath of the Wild, I wore a tie every day in October, and we took the kids camping. In all, it was a good year.

OK. Let's talk about each goal.

#1 Launch Majordomo Nationwide

What a year! We launched our website at the Lane County Home & Garden Show in March. We also brought on two technical owners. We received feedback from homeowners, home service professionals, investors, and other successful business owners. We built out the scoring engine, plus a contacts directory tool for connecting with home service pros, and we revamped our wizard to make it more engaging. Plus we have more in the works.

We continue to shift and change as we get feedback. This year we focused a lot on customers and the product itself. It definitely felt like a scrappy startup where all of us put in odd hours and just made it work. In 2019, in addition to improving the customer experience, I feel the need to shift our focus to creating better business systems. My priories will likely change as we learn, but the current needs are more consistent development cycles and consistent user growth. I just finished "This Is Marketing" by Seth Godin (I'll write about it later), and it gave some great ideas on how to attract customers.

There are a couple product features, based on customer feedback, that we need to provide a truly valuable product, but we're close.

Overall, I'd say it was a good year for Majordomo. We learned a lot and have a product people can use. I'm really excited about next year.

#2 Learn Bass Guitar

I found a solid online class at www.talkingbass.net. The instructor, Mark, does an excellent job of breaking down each step in his videos and provides good exercises. I finished the "Beginner Bass Guitar Course" and am working on the "Bassic Fundamentals Course". How could you not like someone who has fun with his course titles?

Success was defined as playing with the worship team at my church this year.

Well... I didn't play with the band, but I'm really close. Instead of writing about it, I put together a video that shows my progress.


So, I'm not as far as I'd like to be, but I'm happy with my progress. I'm going to continue playing and will check the box of playing with the worship team next year.

Next Year

I'm looking forward to 2019. In a lot of ways, It'll be a continuation of this year.