Resolutions

Fresh starts. That's what the beginning of a new year promises. Whether it's our personal life or our business, we look ahead and set our goals for what we want to accomplish.

It occured to me that a resolution is the solving of a problem. So when I compiled my list of New Year's resolutions this year, I thought about the dilemmas in my life first, then made the solution my resolution. For me, that was a resolution revelation.

First I want to lose 10 more pounds. Ok, 20...Oh, all right, it's my blog and I can be honest--25. That sounds like a resolution, but it's really the problem. The resolution is to change my eating habits and what I eat.

I won't bore anyone reading this with the details of how I'll do that--well, just one detail. I'm going to have fewer cocktails in the evening. Not that I'm a W.C. Fields or anything, but a glass of wine or two or a little whiskey and diet coke with a squeeze of orange symbolizes the end of my day and I quite enjoy it. But parmesan flavored Cheezits go great with wine so then I snack and evening snacking is not conducive to loosing weight.

Neither are the calories in the alcohol.

Second, I want to write more. Writing is fulfilling to me. The solution seems easy--just write more. But the dilemma is that ideas for articles or blogs come to me when I'm in the middle of trying to solve a client's loan approval issue or other such inopportune times. Usually it's the issue that sparked the idea, but for me inspiration is like a tide that washes over me and if I don't ride the wave at the moment, it's gone. There I sit, bobbing in the surf.

So my resolution is to write a few lines of indignation (indignation not at the clients, but at the lenders, and sometimes other parties to the transaction) when the inspiration hits. Hopefully at the end of the day when I go back to finish writing the article, the words will stir the passions that led to the inspiration and I can pick up where I left off.

Third, I want to increase my home loan business. The caveat to this is that I need to reduce my marketing budget. I know the mantra is that you have to spend money to make money, but I just really need to simplify things. My solution is to increase my web presence as a person of value. Wow, that sounds like it came right out of a Mari Smith seminar.

I see the truth in it though.

I need to establish myself as an expert in the mortgage industry. Writing blogs and articles for consumers and industry professionals is a great way to do this, plus I'll be accomplishing my resolution to write more at the same time.

My solution to save marketing dollars is to get rid of my $600.00 a year website and build my own for a fraction of the price. I've found that building my own website isn't as overwhelming as I thought it would be.

Of course, it helps that I'm married to a guy who is very computer savvy. But even before I got to the point of hair pulling frustration and asked for his help, I learned quite a lot about servers and html, and microsoft publisher. It's still a work in progress.

Let me tell you though, I successfully built a webpage in a few hours but agonized for a day and a half trying to make a facebook business page. Seriously. I gave up on that for the moment.

My increased web presence will be minus the facebook business page until I have the sufferance to figure out how to add a widget.

So there it is, my first blog of 2010. I lift my glass to fresh starts...don't say it - it's juice.