Anyone who starts a business knows the ultimate challenge: Focus and persistence. It is incredibly easy to fill your days with endless activities. But the trick is doing those activities that will create success for your business. Chad and I talk about this a great deal in our day-to-day, and I know the members of our SEO reseller team struggle with this also. In the end, all entrepreneurs face this demon.
So let's break down these secrets to small business success? First focus. As I mentioned, your day can easily be overcome with a million small tasks. It is very easy to forget exactly what needs to be done. 
But this daily process is critical. You need to develop a solid sense of how to prioritize those tasks that will immediately bring revenue from those that are rainy day ideas. We see a ton of SEO resellers who are really caught up on which email platform they should select. Or, perhaps, they are really thinking through which Internet gateway platform is best for processing credit cards. I tell these would-be SEO reseller dudes the same thing: Stop wasting time and do what will be quick and effective. End of story. The reality is that while you are spending time talking about these decisions, you could be selling. And believe me, your competition is. So focus boils down to doing those things that will make the cash register ring. And in the early days, that is the entire story...
The second theme today is persistence. We've been consulting with other successful sales organizations lately. We are doing this both to benchmark as well as to drum up ideas to pass onto our SEO reseller community. They all seem to say the same thing in this department. Successful business people simply don't give up. And I believe this. If you know you are going to succeed, you are not likely to stop until you have. And this persistence will win the day. This is true when building your SEO reseller business or when trying to close a specific search engine optimization deal. You just stay with it. It may take weeks, months, or even years - but if you are still around when the prospect decides to buy, it will put a huge smile on your face.
We had an SEO reseller contact us last week that we first starting talking to in August of last year. We've spoken to them every couple weeks since then, but only now did they sign a customer into our SEO reseller program. Persistence: Both on their part to land the deal and on ours to remain their first choice as the SEO provider. There is a lesson here.
In summary, as you face the ocean of tasks that threatens to drown your every day, do your best to sort out those tasks that offer the most immediate path to revenue. Learn how to apply this focus to every day and cut those activities out that drain large amounts of time but don't render any real value. This builds the runway you need for persistence, the second key to success. Stay your course and swing that hammer every single day. If you are good, you'll be around for a long time. And one day you will look up and be surprised as how much you've accomplished.