My 2017 Balance Sheet

As is my tradition (and one worth considering), my balance sheet for 2017 follows.

Assets

How could I start anywhere other than right here, The Sales Blog? I had to buy the domain thesalesblog.com in 2007 because someone in Charlotte, North Carolina owned salesblog.com and was sitting on it. It turns out that that someone was Jeffrey Gitomer, who hadn’t yet done anything with it. I made the decision to blog daily on December 28th, 2009, making this 8 years publishing here daily, with the exception of 13 days in 2010 when visiting Tibet.

The total posts here now number 3,394 . . . plus this one.

In 2017, I decided to start a YouTube vlog called Every Day. My intention was to post there daily, and I ended up with 233 videos, having been discouraged by gear challenges (now mostly resolved) and bad internet on the road (made worse by shooting in 4K, which is wholly unnecessary). I am going to try again next year. All said, 5,000 people subscribed, which is good for the first year of a channel.

I published The Lost Art of Closing: Winning the 10 Commitments That Drive Sales on August 8, 2017 a mere 301 days after the publication of my first book, The Only Sales Guide You’ll Ever Need (October 11, 2016). The Lost Art made 800CEOREAD’s Long List of their best business books of 2017, one of five in sales and marketing (and the only book on sales).

Portfolio also offered me a contract for my third book, a book about competitive displacements, something that most of us spend our time trying to achieve by taking our dream clients from our competitors (whilst they are doing the same).

A few years ago, I bought the domain name outboundconference.com, set on the idea that my mastermind group would support running a conference of our own, one where truth would be told, lies and myths dispelled, and where people who wanted to improve their results would find the help they needed. Jeb Blount, Mike Weinberg, and Mark Hunter joined me in this project, a sales conference like no other sales conference you have ever attended. On April 13th, 2017, we filled all the seats in the conference center, and the reviews were amazing. This is now a thing, and we are doing it again on April 11th and 12th in 2018.

I worked very hard to slow my reading, drinking deeper and doing the work to incorporate what I read into actions. To do so, I read three of the books I read in 2017 twice and listened to the audiobook once. This is what I have found is necessary to capture the full value of a book. In 2018, I am going to alternate between reading books very quickly and very slowly, going fast to find work that is worth a deeper reading and then slowing down.

Celebrated my 22nd wedding anniversary and 25 years together (leaving a lot of family stuff out of here).

Deficits

I have not done as good of a job as I need to when it comes to my health. This is made worse by flying and staying in hotels, where disciplines are more difficult to keep—especially sleep quality. I’ve already started to address this, but it will be a focus in 2018.

I did not do as good a job marketing The Lost Art of Closing as I needed to. In part, the time between books was a factor. The book deserves more, as it is a methodology that is producing results for all who adopt it. I am going to call for a do-over here and relaunch it.

In a few cases, I let someone else change my state. This isn’t easy to do, and it was only visible to me. The rare nature of these events reminds me that there is always still work one needs to do on oneself.

I moved too slowly on a business opportunity because of conflicting needs within the business. You sometimes believe you know what you want only to be challenged when another opportunity presents itself. The trick is find a balance between the longer term and right now. This is a work in progress.

This is the last entry for 2017, and tomorrow begins a new year. Time to increase the assets and shore up the deficits once again, always onward, with vim and vigor, working to become the person that comes after this one. Happy New Year!