It’s from the film Facing the Giants. And while admittedly it smells a tiny bit corny, I find it incredibly motivating and invariably get chills down my spine when I watch it.

That aside, I do have much respect for the Strangest Secret recording by Earl Nightingale. Its based on the idea that you become what you think about. Now, you can take that simple idea in many ways. For example, you might think it relates to positive thinking, affirmations and all that stuff. I prefer to think of it in terms of this anonymous quote:

“Watch your thoughts, for they become words. Choose your words, for they become actions. Understand your actions, for they become habits. Study your habits, for they will become your character. Develop your character, for it becomes your destiny.”

Heres the Strangest Secret:

In particular determine:

• Are people buying this type of product online right now?
• How many are buying (what is the size of the market)?
• What are their online habits? And how are you going to get your offer in front of them?

In most cases, supply (in this context, the sourcing and fulfillment of products/services to meet a market need) can be managed much more easily than demand. Generating demand for a product where little or none currently exists can be difficult and expensive.

Where possible I recommend market testing to better understand demand before investing significant amounts into an online store business.

For example, we have built prototype stores for clients to use to test their market. These are quicker and cheaper to get up and running – and can often be used as platform for a “production” quality site if the market shows promise.

There are other ways to test markets such as acting as an affiliate for other people’s products in order to test traffic volumes and conversion rates.

Photo: socketsite.com

There are a total of 12 apartments in the building, each occupying an entire floor. Prices are $6M plus – and God knows how much for the penthouse on the top. Fortunately, admiring the building from Alta Plaza is free.

Many are obvious but they are also often ignored or discounted when you fall in love with a new idea and emotion overrules objective thinking.

1 – Everything starts with a business case and a (time bound) monetization plan

Ask yourself:
- How will this activity make money?
- What are the unmet needs in the market, and am I able to fill those needs?
- How much time/money do I need to put into this, and will it pay back more that the input cost?

Listen to your responses – are you trying to convince yourself?

2 – You have to DO THINGS to make money

You do not make money by thinking about doing things.

3 – NONE of your failures have killed you

But a lack of action will lead to a slow death.

4 – You need to be either passionate about the industry/topic or the business model

Either is fine but it has to be at least one of the two.

5 – Sell things that people are KEEN TO BUY ONLINE

Nothing else will sell, of course.

6 – Don’t rely on other people

Or if you have to – make sure you have an exit/disengagement plan and are building transferable assets at all times.

7 – Build a network and a community first and foremost

You’ll need them later on – and they’ll be happy to help.

A good PM must be knowledgeable about her industry; must have strong skills in management and leadership; and must be an expert in the “hard skills” of project management.

But, as a firm believer in the 80-20 rule I think a PM can make some pretty solid progress in her career if she possess – and continues to work on – the follow traits.

A great communicator

We hear this all the time – a good project manager must be a great communicator. Good at speaking, a great listener, a strong writer, possess emotional intelligence and so on.

And in my experience this is true – and is arguably the most important trait of a successful project manager.

Politically savvy

Like it or not, politics exist everywhere and at all levels – from the ranks of the project team right up to senior management.
A project manager who actively observes the politics around her will be much more able to understand and interpret situations and people’s motives than a PM who choose to stay oblivious to company politics.

A positive attitude

A wise person once told me there are two types of people – people that generate energy and people that absorb it. Now, there’s no doubt about it – a PM must be an energy generator.

The PM is the person responsible for creating excitement in the team when a new project kicks off. Likewise, it’s the PM who must maintain momentum through the third and fourth quarters – both within the team and also when engaging with stakeholders.

This is a tricky one to fake. I really think that only those people with a genuinely positive attitude – or at least can manufacture a positive environment for others – can be successful project managers.

Process oriented with acute attention to detail

It would be remiss of me to list a bunch of good PM traits without acknowledging the importance of process – or discipline – or attention to detail. After all, a politically savvy person with good communication skills and a positive attitude is probably more suited to being an entrepreneur, or a talk show host, or a politician…

The fact is that for a project to run smoothly with a successful outcome the project manager must have a strong orientation toward designing, documenting and enforcing appropriate processes – and adhere to proper project management processes themselves.

So, these are my 4 traits of a successful project manager. I could list more such as some level of domain knowledge – but I think these are the most important.

And this has sometimes resulted in me giving up on a venture or campaign long before it has had a chance to succeed.

I first started hearing about the importance of mindset for Internet business owners from the Internet Business Mastery podcast. And it’s from those guys and others that I have developed what I call my three pillars of a success mindset.

I could talk about each of the pillars in great detail (and maybe I will in future posts) but for now I will give a brief overview of each.

1. Small wins make for big results

Regardless of how well you research and plan an online business or Internet marketing campaign it can be difficult to stay confident and optimistic about where the project is heading. This is particularly true in the early stages when results are typically much slower than you would like.

I have found that chunking the grand plan down and focusing hard on incremental goals can really help to maintain and build momentum.

I’ll give an example. Lets say I have a built a new website with a plan to generate passive income through affiliate sales on the site. Since affiliate sales will only be possible once I have a steady stream of visitors to the website my initial goals will be based on driving a specific number of unique visitors to the site per day.

I’d start with a realistic and achievable goal of 50 visitors per day within 4 weeks of the site going live. Once that goal has been achieved I will continue to raise the bar and refocus my traffic generation efforts, or create a goal around a different factor such as conversion rate.

The bottom line is that it is much easier to stay focused and motivated to achieve small incremental goals than it is to work towards a big goal way off in the distance.

2. Always be building assets

Unfortunately for me this incredibly important pillar came to my attention only relatively recently. Everything you do in your Internet marketing campaign should be geared towards build assets for your business.

My definition of an asset is something that you have some degree of ownership over that adds value to your business. In the online world assets include:

• Properties – Domain names, website infrastructure.
• Content – web pages, articles, blog posts, audio, video.
• Communities – forums, social media groups, social networks.
• Customer touch points – traffic, email opt-ins, RSS subscribers.

Assets are as important for your online business as they are in the offline world. As your asset inventory grows, so will your business.

3. Persevere

Lastly and most importantly comes perseverance. I will not dwell on this pillar since you’ve probably heard it a thousand times before.

Suffice it to say that perseverance an essential ingredient of a successful online business or Internet marketing campaign. The one certainty is that there will be obstacles and setbacks in any project. And perseverance is typically the difference between those who give up when faced with those obstacles and those that find a way to overcome them and keep moving forwards.

Although I enjoy these projects for the variety they provide, the time constraints of being a part time project manager can be a real challenge.

One thing is for sure, being a part time PM certainly helps you to focus on the important aspects of project management.

Using the 80-20 rule, I’ve found there are 3 activities, above all others, that provide the most leverage for an “80-20 project manager” – a project manager who must judiciously use their strictly limited time during the execution phase of a web project.

1. Facilitate communication

We all know the importance of communication – both within the project team and externally with customers, management and other stakeholders. Open, honest and effective communication is the lifeblood of small and large projects alike.

After all, all projects are conversations.

An 80-20 project manager will get good value from implementing processes and tools that keep communication channels wide open – and swiftly addressing instances of communication breakdown.

2. Track progress

Try as I might, I’m yet to achieve project utopia where all participants consistently and accurately record their own progress – whether it be recording time spent or updating task status. This is despite trialing numerous collaborative tools that promise to make this process easier.

Although tracking project progress provides least leverage for an 80-20 project manager, it is arguably the most important task. Not of itself of course, but when accurate tracking is used to spot variation against the project plan and steps are taken to get the project back on track.

3. Remove blocks

Here’s the biggy.

If I had to choose one activity to spend the majority of my time on as an 80-20 project manager it would be this. I’d choose to actively hunt for opportunities to serve the project team by helping to remove blocks.

I’ve seen so much time wasted by project team members who hit a technical problem, a project dependency issue or some other block and are simply unable to efficiently break through it. Here’s where a savvy 80-20 project manager will step in to assist – both by helping to remove the block and, if necessary, working with the team member to identify other tasks they can focus on until the block is removed.

So, there you have it – my top 3 activities for the 80-20 project manager. Have I missed any?

And the usefulness of wikis can only increase with products such as Zoho Projects and PB Works providing additional features and closer integration with other PM tools.

So, here are my top 5 uses of wikis for project management:

1. Process definition

Great companies have processes that are continually and organically refining and improving. Wikis make an ideal platform for this information as they are highly scalable, easily reviewed and edited – and their page interlinking capabilities are ideal for easy navigation through process definitions.

I have seen them work particularly well for smaller enterprises that are yet to formally document their processes. In these cases the entire team – in a very pragmatic and rapid way – can contribute to documenting their current work practices. And in doing so, it often helps people to spot opportunities to reduce waste and remove friction points from their own jobs.

Which, of course, will feed back into the process definition in a continuous improvement cycle.

2. Knowledge management

For me, the most obvious use of wikis for project management is perhaps the most powerful.

Wikis were designed for knowledge management – and they do it very well. If a culture of sharing can be fostered within the project team then it can be amazing to see how quickly a knowledge base can grow – and how valuable that resource will become for the entire team.

3. Requirements repository

The collaborative nature of wikis together with built in version control features makes them great for requirements definition, review and revision.

But more than that, I have found that wikis  (or any other online repository) tend to make requirements more accessible and more able to sustain attention throughout the project lifecycle. Certainly more so than a monolithic Word document that’s left to gather dust somewhere on the project hard drive shortly after it has been written.

4. Collaborative review

Most of us would agree that tools that facilitate better communication and collaboration provide enormous value to project teams.

Wikis work very well for collaborative review – particularly in virtual team environments. The benefits can be amplified if the project team is prepared to conduct “live” revisions during a review session. This can reduce errors and save time compared to the more traditional use of issue lists that must be used to update the spec or design document retrospectively.

5. Risk management

I have found that for most projects a simple, practical approach to risk management yields the best return on investment. Such an approach might comprise of risk brainstorming sessions with the project team, simple risk/contingency lists and regular review and re-prioritization. Wikis provide a good lightweight, accessible container for such lists.

These are my top 5 uses of wikis for project management – but there are certainly lots more that I haven’t mentioned. In future posts I plan to evaluate some of the wiki tools that are on the market.