As always everyone and their brother uses January 1st each year as their starting point to “turn over a new leaf”.  We are all going to start doing something we should be doing, stop doing something we shouldn’t be doing or probably a fair combination of both stopping some things and starting some other things.

Just to make sure I am not left out of the game I am going to make some resolutions of my own along with some for my game center.

Another year, another game.

My first one is to prioritize my time each day to accomplish a few goals, one of which is writing this blog daily.  After 7 years in this business there is one thing I have gained through experience and that is the knowledge of what works and what doesn’t work.  There is no reason I can’t share some of those experience to help others in this industry and other similar businesses.

My Individual Goals for 2011:

1. Increase my time spent spiritually, mentally and physically staying active.   This is probably similar to most people’s new year’s resolutions, but specifically I want to spend more time with daily devotions and prayer, daily time thinking creatively and outside-the-box and some kind of daily physical activity.

2. Focus on spending time with others.  The basis for me to start eBash back in 2004 was because I didn’t want kids playing by themselves in a dark room.  I want to make sure that I follow that same reasoning.  Playing Black Ops with 5 gamers from the store is WAY more fun that playing by myself.  I want to make sure my son Zander and all the other gamers I influence have this same mentality when it comes to gaming and life.  This makes some things easier to accomplish like my goal for daily physical activity.  Going with a group mountain biking is more fun than biking by myself!

I need to get a breeding pair of these beauties!

3. Increase my gaming time and also increase my time outside of gaming.  I found myself the last few months trying to squeeze in both outside activities and gaming around work.  It seems like the better we do at our gaming center the less I get to actually play games.  Doesn’t it seem sad that I have to force myself to play games and I own a video game center?  I would like to increase my Xbox gamerscore by 100k in 2011 and I am shooting for adding 10,000 points each month.  Outside of gaming I want to get back into fish like I was in college.  A complete overhaul of my 220 gallon tank at the office will happen right away this year.

My goals for eBash Terre Haute in 2011:

1. Upgrades, upgrades, upgrades.  That will be my theme throughout the year.  Shawn and I are going to start building and putting in new computers monthly as well as buying new generation Xbox systems and replacing our old white ones.  We plan on utilizing some of our long-time customers as admins throughout the center to help maintain systems and games also.

2. Try and get everyone to focus more on some kind of gaming goals.  The store seemed to buzz quite a bit more a few years ago when players were forming WoW guilds, battling in big console tournaments or participating in gamerscore challenges.  We are hoping to revive some of that purpose for all of the little groups at the store.

3. Reach out to the gaming community beyond our area.  In the past we have focused on just serving gamers that could visit our physical store.  Instead we are going to look at reaching out to gamers throughout the US online through online tournaments and ecommerce sales.

4. Make some money.  So many times those of us in this industry get caught up in how much we love our jobs and how much of a service we provide for our communities.  But there is nothing wrong with making some money along the way!  I want to provide a premium service and charge a premium price.  At $4 per hour many game centers in big cities think we are high priced, but in 7 years we have never heard complaints about our prices for the service we provide.

So as we kick of 2011 what are your goals?  I would be interested to hear some of the goals of other gamers and game center owners out there.  I have a few customers wanting to play some Black Ops so I am off to work on my #2 individual goal of the year!