Year In Review 2008
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This post is a means of looking back to finding answers, correcting mistakes, celebrating achievements and laying the foundation of whats to come in the future.
Before I begin, I want to lay out the fact: Rizq is truly from Allah-swt and the outcome of our efforts really isn’t totally a product of our doing, but the magnificence of Allah-swt allowing for the right circumstances at the right time for opportunities to make themselves available to us.
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With that said:
Top 3 ACHIEVEMENTS I’m most grateful for that happened in 2008 are:
- Getting AlMaghrib Institute as a client contract for Leechon, which has resulted in many fruits such as: IlmCast.com, GemReel.com and Superstar seminar trailers
- Setting up MessageMastery.com – an online learning system to teach people aspects of media, marketing, and communication (although its been a real bumpy and overwhelming ride – still is for me)
- Going from 700 RSS subscribers to 13,000+ RSS subscribers on Leechon.com – How this happened, I’m not entirely sure.
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Top 5 LESSONS I’ve found most valuable in the process of work in 2008 are:
- Contract or hire a bookkeeper! – As you grow in your business, the frequency and size of financial transactions will increase. If you’re not a number cruncher at heart, you’ll find the process of recording all those transactions into QuickBooks a grueling and painful process. Save yourself the agony and delegate this process to someone who’s more qualified than yourself.
- A slice of a watermelon is bigger than an entire grape. – When involving yourself in a project, think beyond yourself. Look for ways in which you or your business can benefit the client (whether that be your customers or target audience) and share in the fruits and rewards. — Instead of getting a bigger piece of the pie, make the pie bigger to involve more people so all can share.
- Know your worth and have an understanding of the market before diving in – Business is about exchanging value. Business can be conducted fairly and professionally only if you know what that value is. If you don’t know your own self worth then you cannot expect others to know either. If the value of your work is $10,000 in the market, then don’t do injustice to yourself by receiving only $1,000. You’re limiting yourself and in the end it is YOU who will suffer.
- Fail Forward - I’ve made many mistakes this year. Mistakes in areas of financial decisions, what projects or clients to take up, biting off more than one can chew, and the process developing content for Message Mastery. These mistakes have led to delays on delivery and overall performance. – Being a human being, mistakes are inevitable. Welcome and admit the mistakes. Don’t fear them. The important thing is we fail FORWARD and learn from our mistakes as they happen.
- Never let schooling get in the way of your education - It’s a quote my Mark Twain, and its so true. We all to go school to get an education. If you find a means of education superior to traditional schooling, then jump on that bandwagon. You obviously have to factor in stuff like being able to pay for life’s essentials. For me, running Leechon is my education, so much so that the principles and hands on experience of business education has been far greater than business school itself.
A bonus lesson:
- Clarity = Power : Whether you want to progress in business, home, religion, etc – having absolute clarity is essential. Gaining clarity is a process of having perspective and getting in control of what’s around you. You need to organize what’s around you and focus on what’s important (or vice versa) and throw out the rest. Having absolute clarity will lead you to what you want on the different levels of your life.
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Any and all good that has taken place in this past year is because Allah-swt allowed it to happen. The mistakes are because of my own shortcomings and for that I ask you to forgive me.
This company exists for the sake Allah and for the benefit of Ummat Muhammad-salAllahu alayhi wasallam. I pray that as we progress we keep our intentions pure and our actions clean.
My next post is going to lay out what’s to come in this new year inshaAllah.
NahyaN Says: 04.01.09 at 12:37 pm
mashaAllah Belal, may Allah bless you with bigger and better accomplishments throughout your life.
i especially liked the lesson about “Instead of getting a bigger piece of the pie, make the pie bigger to involve more people so all can share”
i completely agree with the education vs school thing, it’s really hard for some people to understand but the most valuable education comes from outside school.
jazakallahukhair
NahyaN
Heba Alshareef Says: 04.01.09 at 1:23 pm
MashAllah, brother! I’ve already congratulated you – and I know this post will serve as great inspiration for everyone who reads it.
But I think you forgot one key lesson: You did the work. You put in the hours. Probably more than 10,000 of ‘em. And in the work, Allah SWT puts the barakah.
And say: “Work: Soon will Allah observe your work, and His Messenger, and the Believers…” (Quran 9:105)
AlBaraa Says: 04.01.09 at 1:36 pm
Jazakallahu khairun for the kind words.
@ Heba,
I don’t think I’ve put a full 10,000 hrs yet, but inshaAllah I think I’m getting close to it.
Would you agree with me if I said that it goes without saying that when the opportunity is presented, you have to seize it and put in all the hard work you can to make it the best it can be within the time-frame you’ve been given?
Waasiq Says: 04.01.09 at 1:51 pm
Your subscribers are over nine thoussssaaaaaaaaannd!
MR Says: 04.01.09 at 2:24 pm
I don’t see your FeedBurner counter? You should embed it to get the actual number of subscribers. See MM and my blog for the counter at the top of our sites.
Egyptian Gumbo Says: 04.01.09 at 2:42 pm
MR, it’s on top of the tufaan logo on the right side of the screen
Heba Alshareef Says: 05.01.09 at 1:24 am
Certainly, I would agree with you. But I also think that trailblazers make their own opportunities. And what of those who would think, “I’m waiting for my ship to come in,” and then just keep waiting?
MR Says: 05.01.09 at 11:29 am
That’s not anything. That’s just text saying “13530 feed subscribers”. I honestly don’t believe that. If there were 13,530 subscribers, then each post would at minimum of 20+ comments. If you look at blogs with just 1,000+ subscribers the comments are always 10+ on average for each post.
I looked at the source code for this page and there is no javascript to count that connects to feedburner.com.
I’m not saying someone is lying, but I think the source of the RSS subscribers count may be wrong and the calculation is way off.
MR Says: 05.01.09 at 11:35 am
My proof is that MuslimMatters.org is ranked higher than Leechon.com when it only has 1,200 subscribers (see counter at the top of their blog) while Leechon claims 13,530 subscribers when their rank is below MuslimMatters.
Alexa Web rankings for leechon.com } Rank: 454,135
Alexa Web rankings for muslimmatters.org | Rank: 146,749
In fact if you look at my blog ranking here, you’ll see that I also have a rank ahead of leechon.com. I rank at 348,190. I only have under 500 rss subscribers.
AlBaraa Says: 05.01.09 at 11:40 am
I don’t think trailblazers make their own opportunities, rather they see opportunities where others see obstacles. The ability to identify amazing opportunity AND seize it is what sets them apart.
For those who are waiting for the ship to come in, and keep waiting – my response to them is that the world doesn’t revolve around them. Ships and trains are continuously moving according to their own schedule. What they need to do is seek out the vehicle who’s destination-path will get them closer to where they ultimately want to and jump onto it – even if its moving at 60 MPH.
The ship, train and car they jump onto probably wont be a one-stop deal. The path to any destination will require many course corrections along the way. The idea is to keep progressing in the general direction as fast as the opportunities around us that Allah-swt allows.
AlBaraa Says: 05.01.09 at 11:45 am
@MR –
Alexa Ranking and Feed subscriptions are two totally different thing.
Feed subscriptions are basically the amount of people and websites that have subscribed to this website’s RSS feed.
Alexa ranking as to do with how many incoming links from reputable websites the website in discussion has. Alexa ranking is directly related to search engine optimization and ranking — which is a reflection of the website’s traffic stats. RSS feeds has to do with syndication of content and is in fact a representation of people who DONT come to the website, but get the content delivered directly to them.
MR Says: 05.01.09 at 12:41 pm
@AlBaraa – I agree that RSS and Alexa are different, but if 13,000+ people subscribe to Leechon, less than 5% click through? If what you say is true then why aren’t people wanting to click through?
Just give feedburner a try. They are used by all the top bloggers and it’s extremely reliable. It gives you daily statistics. It also tells you what RSS syndicator they use (Google, Outlook, Firefox Live Bookmarks, etc.).
It’s better to get accurate statistics instead of superficial ones.
AlBaraa Says: 05.01.09 at 2:27 pm
@MR – Although we talked on the phone, for everyone elses benefit here I’ll answer the questions
– warning: following content is ‘geek-speak’
Why a low click through rate?
The focus of this website isn’t necessarily to get click troughs. This website’s focus is less on getting people to the website and more on getting the content of the website to the people (traffic vs syndication). In a way the content of this website is focused as an FYI type of setup. It’s there to inform and inspire. Not so much focus on engagement.
What are some factors that show less feed subscribers for Muslim Matters and MR?
It could be that the feedburner setup was after the website was already established. The way the syndication happens is: [website content] >> [host rss] >> [feedburner] >> [readers]
All those people who subscribed to the host rss before feedburner are prob not being tracked.
Also another factor that could come into play is that the amount of content that is being syndicated. Personally, I don’t like subscribing to sites where the full content isn’t FULLY syndicated. It’s just an annoyance having to click away from my RSS reader. This is the case w/ MR and Muslim Matters. There are MANY more like myself in this regard.
Possible cause for so many RSS subscribers
Most of my search engine results are due to the review I did on the Canon Camera (FS100) and the media conglomerates article that sister Shirien wrote early on. People see an article these, get interested and click subscribe. It’s a large pool of people who are interested in that sort of stuff.
Feedburner
My major issue with starting up w/ feedburner is not being able to track my existing subscribers considering they’re already subscribed to “leechon.com/feed” — feedburner does have an option called MyBrand Pro which I’m in the process of experimenting with.
If all goes well with the MyBrand Pro feedburner setup, I’ll lay out more of that here.
MR Says: 05.01.09 at 5:03 pm
@AlBaraa – I think you have to pay for MyBrand Pro.
AlBaraa Says: 05.01.09 at 5:04 pm
Back in the day yes — not since Google got ownership of Feedburner.
Bill Says: 14.03.09 at 10:14 pm
Blogs like this is waht we blog addicts are looking for, will visit often.