(Image: a blue origami box on a wooden surface holds numbered plastic bags containing new jewelry inventory, surrounded by bowls of beads and a set of pliers.)

Last night around 11pm I successfully reached my goal of adding a minimum of $1000 of new merchandise to the website, for the fourth week in a row! I wasn't sure I was going to make it last week, since it was the first week of having Miles home for the summer AND the week of Concord's big street festival AND the week that my adult B'nei Mitzvah class had our Torah service (which is a story unto itself, and one I'll write about soon), but everything just sort of fell together.

Having a solid goal of a specific dollar amount of merchandise (rather than a nebulous "do an update" or "make X number of pieces of jewelry") is working really well for me, especially in conjunction with adding things to the store one at a time as I make them. I have an app that tracks my running total, so I can easily see how much I need to get done by the end of the week. Some weeks have been more of a challenge than others (Earring Club subscriptions are mostly clustered around the 1st of the month and the 15th, and I never know when time-sensitive commissions will come in) but I haven't really felt pressured by it at any point, just a sense of "okay, I need to really focus today to get everything done."

My next goal is to get to the $1k mark by Friday afternoon every week, so I can actually not work over Shabbat. That's been a long-term goal of mine that I very rarely manage to accomplish, but I think it might be within reach now that I've streamlined so many parts of the business. 

On a more long-term outlook, my focus is on growing the business; I'm not particularly good at marketing, but I'm working on it!  I'm working towards being able to secure a mortgage based on my income alone, so I can have sole ownership of the house, and I'm fairly confident I'll be able to do that within the next year or so. 

Right now, though, I have two five-year-olds bouncing off the walls of the aforementioned house, so we're going to go accomplish another goal that I haven't been able to reach: cleaning out the car. There are still snowpants and winter coats in the back seat. *sigh* I've promised to pay them each a quarter if they help me. Child labor is awesome, y'all.

What goals are you working on right now?