As most of us have figured out, it takes multiple streams of income to thrive in the new economy. From my perspective as an introverted entrepreneur, this is a good thing and a bad thing. My greatest strength (and my greatest weakness at the same time) is the fact that I’m great at thinking up lots of new ideas. I’m great at multitasking and doing a lot of different things, making pretty good headway at all of them. However, I’m also great at starting 35 things and only finishing 11 of them.

You can probably see that this can be a good thing and a bad thing when it comes to building multiple streams of income. Managing multiple income-generating games at the same time requires a level of discipline and focus that I wasn’t born with. I’ve come back to the same conclusion that I usually come to, at this point: I’m not going to pull this off alone. It’s going to take a team effort.

There are potentially a lot of balls to juggle – and there’s also a strong potential that a lot of them will get dropped. So, I’ve decided that I need to keep track of it all. In my usual introverted fashion, I put together a super-complicated spreadsheet consisting of more potential types of action than I would ever actually take. I thought I would track every possible type of action on a day-to-day basis, and I created a system so ungodly awful that managing it would become a full-time job.

I’ve decided to dumb it down as far as humanly possible. I’m going to be tracking four things:

1. Sales conversations (at any stage of the selling process)

2. Number of sales made.

3. Number of dollars earned.

4. Total dollar amount of checks taken to the bank.

5. Bank account balance.

Then, there’s a next step. I’m inviting some friends to play along with me on this. I’ve made it so generic that it can apply to any business of any kind. My goal is simple – we’re all going to watch each other’s stats on a week to week basis. I think that should provide some motivation.