Monday, March 20, 2006

The mission is never impossible on eBay


One of my favourite TV shows as a kid was "Mission Impossible " ... The team each week were given a task at the start of the show followed by the classic line "this tape will self destruct in five seconds,good luck " and then they would go off and achieve the impossible ...its amazing they never failed ..

In my business life ( which was my life for 21 years) it was always drummed into me "know where you are going Rob" . "What is it that you want the business to achieve ?"

One of the best ways of summarising your intended destination is in a mission statement ... I remember one example of this which was short and sweet but very telling.... Fuji Flms successful mission statement that simply read " Kill Kodak" ...it certainly had all the folks who worked at Fuji focused .

Gary over at " The Auction Rebel" has written an excellent piece on defining your own personal mission statement for eBay ...read it for yourself ..click here

After having read his article I made an attempt to articulate my own " Mission NOT impossible statement".... and it simply reads as follows ....

" To become self-financing to meet the needs of my Family" .... now being a trainee Pastor all that I do is tied up with scripture ...read about that here .

Anyway ... If you are serious about making some sort of income from eBay you need to be serious about defining your mission ...so with that in mind why don't you share your own personal eBay mission statement with the world in the comments below . ..Go on grab a cup of coffee and think about defining your mission ...

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

eBay Mission Statement

I will contribute to my family's financial worth, and to my own self worth, by recognizing the importance of customers, by offering and selling products in an honest and open way, and by creating a productive and fun environment for doing business.

Peachy Things, LLC
Linda

Rob. said...

Much better than mine Linda ..as expected :-)

Rob

markmcc said...

Man Linda,

I'm just steeling yours. Time is money in business and I know I winner when I see one!

Mark

PS: Great post by the way Rob, this is a good line of thought to stay on for you. This kind of writing speaks to me and I'm sure many others.

Rob. said...

Thanks my Friend ..keep pushing those coffee makers

Anonymous said...

Oh gosh..thank you. Now you have me blushing. But, I have to admit to something. Up until last Aug. I was a Director at a big company, and was part of a team that developed our mission statement. So I had some training in doing this.

I watched an interesting PBS program yesterday (or at least part of it). Basketball madness is on American TV right now, and since my husband is a basketball fanatic, and I long ago learned the art of compromise, he got to watch his game, and I got to watch my program during half-time :-) Anyway...I trangress.

The program was about making money, and the guy defined the difference between wealth and rich. Very important difference. Wealth relates to "time." Rich relates to how much money you have at any given time. It's better to be wealthy than to be rich...for instance, you might have a few thousand in a savings account, and that could conceivably get you through a year or so if necessary...that's rich. But, if you're wealthy (like Bill Gates), you're set for life - your funds grow exponetially (if you've invested properly), so there's no predefined time limit when your "riches" will run out.

The bottom line here is to focus on "wealth," not "riches." And, my own personal philosphy is that you focus on making money, you'll miss the boat entirely...you have to focus on the things that will make you money - and those things are as I stated in my mission statement - good product, honesty, customer, fun...

Does my rambling make any sense?

Linda

Rob. said...

Linda ...you always make sense ..and it would make even more sense if you started a blog :-)

Rob