Conspiracy?

If I didn't know better I would say the forces are conspiring against me. Unfortunately for the forces I have developed this annoying knack of seeing the bright side of things, but for NOW, indulge me as I tell you a little about the last week!

Monday was set aside for my tax return. I spent some of the weekend finding some of the paperwork that I need. I STILL haven't found all the receipts but I know they are in a brown envelope. Just need to find that envelope! ANYWAY, as I was checking that my adwords accounts were accurate I thought - Hey, let me dig out the paperwork I need to log on to the inland revenue website to submit my return.

an hour or two later and I have the user id but not the password. I use my "remember" trick but only find the tax forms themselves ( which is handy!) but not the password to the website. At this point I am struggling to see the positive side to say the least so I decide to give in and request a password reset. THIS tells me it will take 7 days to process. So I find out a week early what I will be doing on the 31st of January. I didn't want to request the password as I KNEW I had the paperwork in house as I never throw anything from the tax man away.

I have made progress so I leave it and go to bed.

TUESDAY

I found the old password for the inland revenue website. This is now invalid. In distress and because I have to get up at 5am in the morning to take the train to London for a 9am meeting, I go to bed.

WEDNESDAY

5am comes and goes. 6am I wake up and realise I only have about 45 minutes to get to the train station. I decide to drive there, and knowing that the car park costs money I bring £4.50 in change JUST in case.

I arrive and park in the car park at 6:37 to find that the parking fee is £2.70 for rail passengers. Cool. I park, and go to get a parking ticket for my car. £4.70.

ahem. I need to get a £2 REFUND from the train ticket booth to get my £2.70 parking. 20p short I have to go up to the trainstaion and ask for help from the man in the ticket booth.

"Ah, you can get your parking ticket here, no problem."

With my credit card £45 closer to it's overdraft limit I run-shuffle back to my car and as I close the door and turn back I hear the announcment:

"London Waterloo now departing platform 3 - ALL ABOARD"

So I arrived 20 minutes late for a customer meeting. Very nice train ride though.

In the evening I found some more tax papers, and established that my affiliate income was indeed accurate and that I appeared to have made a mint. God knows where that mint went, but it was worth over 10 per cent of my job salary.

But as Thursday ALSO had to start at 5am, I stopped early and relaxed, confident that Thursday could not cause me the same hassle. THIS time I was driving to Staines for a 9am meeting and THAT was easy from where I live.

THURSDAY
I got up on time. I got in the car on time. I got on the motorway on time. I got to Sunbury 50 minutes EARLY.

hangon.

wait a minute. I'm in Sunbury. what am I doing in Sunbury?
I should be in Staines!

But hey, Staines is only 25 minutes away.
except.

I didn't know where the offices were in Staines! I had read Staines but heard Sunbury all along!

I popped in on a receptionist and asked for directions. He was kind enough to write them down for me in detail.

And I got lost. Severely. I had 45 minutes to get there. It took me an HOUR and 45 minutes.

So I was an HOUR late for a day long meeting.

So how do you leave Staines in the afternoon? Same way you came. But what if you have NO IDEA which way you came?!?

Finished the meeting at 5:30. Staines is right next to the M25. It took me an hour and 15 minutes to find it though! I drove PAST the motorway and ALONG it twice! I followed the signs to the right airport and STILL got lost. At one point a sign welcomed me to Windsor!

So at 9pm I was home. I pondered a bit on life and taxes over a hot chocolate and went to bed.

FRIDAY
Work was excellent. I get a very warm thank you from a couple of my colleagues as I manage to crack things open for them in a couple of accounts. I have a really good meeting with my new manager. My pay cut is reversed and my bonus plan now has nothing but UPside to it. This looks set to be a GREAT year and I plan to tell all of my readers that.

Southern Electric has other plans.

after the 3rd "blimp" in our electricity supply in an hour I give up and post a short message to this board. I give up trying to fix my machine from looping and shut it down. I finish off the last few admin bits for my company and shut down my wife's computer.

I bring my calendar and my black notebook downstairs and write some bullet pints for my Friday progress. I come up with even more ideas for my money book. I write them down and decide to publish the book & the audio in the current format to at least move it from "Ain't done" to "Done"

at 10pm I step on the bathroom scales and weigh in at a staggering 117, 117.5 and 120 kg in the bathroom, landing and office respectively ( there is a gravity anomaly in my house - see http://newbiealert.blogspot.com for more details! )

I decide to let you know how much I weigh!

And that - in essence - was my week!

I still made money from google. I enjoyed my time at work this week, which is REAL progress & this morning the new password for the Inland Revenue website arrived!

All I need to do for the following week is:
Finish the tax return.
Book an MOT & get my new tax disk.
Work on the money product.
Set out my money making strategy for the year.

and that's it.

Cheers,
Jon

Off Sick

Priorities for last week:
1. annual plan.
2. Business goals.
3. Accountability. ( For those of us that are demanding more than a cookie cutter )
4. Money sales page & book.

Right.
the first one has been done & documented. It's a work in progress which I am testing out with a little tool I found which seems to do the trick. It will even let me document my progress! handy...

business goals have been defined at the wrong end but hey. I have defined a revenue goal for the year without knowing how to get there! We have also defined a rather lofty long term vision for the company in respect of revenues. We've also started systemising some of the processes and automating and simplifying those that can be simplified.

I didn't have much to do with my accountability team this week as I was away the week before and we haven't made time to bring me up to speed yet. But I have been checking out some of the things that need doing on the technology side of things.

Money sales page is one that I haven't worked on.

Next week I will work on it - and my tax return. And I think that will be my only two priorities. There are other things that need doing on business & other things but I'm still full of flu so forgive me for stopping early.

Las Vegas Progress

What do you get when you gather 15000 people from all over the world in one room for a week?

The flu.

I got it on Wednesday and was out for the count pretty much from then on in. Made the flight home interesting, but at least I was so out of it I didn't really care how long it took. It was the shortest 13 hours worth of travel I have ever been on.

Only it ment I didn't get to do much in way of writing up my annual plan for this year. Which is something that I am ever so slightly miffed about. Planning is everything.

So I will complete that document this week.

My job benefitted from this week in a dramatic way. I am the software point of contact for around 70 companies. There are at least 6 field sales guys that cover the same area and have the same software scope of responsibility as me. And I met them all.

And 3 of them have agreed to meet with me in January & two of them have agreed to have fortnightly "account" meetings where I basically have to tell them what I plan to do on the accounts for the next two weeks and they tell me where I should concentrate, and then they tell me what they NEED me to do in the following two weeks.

So it basically makes me accountable to them for achieveing specific targets within every two week period.

Sound familiar to anyone?

I also figured out that I have a choice now. I can choose to be positive about the job. It is most definitely the most productive choice to make and it is a choice that will make me far happier about the world around me.

I watched 4 films in total while travelling. So that's not three. That's a pretty weak excuse when the time would have been better spent writing up my plan for 2005.

But I have that to do, plus my money book, plus my accountability stuff plus our business. It needs ALOT of attention now in the next few weeks from me. Press Releases, product descriptions etc. So be advised - If I have your email address, I may just send you a link to review!

Priorities for this week:
1. annual plan.
2. Business goals.
3. Accountability. ( For those of us that are demanding more than a cookie cutter )
4. Money sales page & book.

Finally, here is a little trick I learnt from a book I read this week:

Are you facing a difficult situation this week? Say this to your self and be surprised at what leaps out at you!

"Remember! Help me Remember the solution to this problem!"

Cheers,
Jon

"Every Day In Every Way, I'm Getting Better And Better!"

Can you Hear The Friday Progress?

Listen!

I recorded the Friday progress to save myself some time today, then realised I'm excluding a vital segment in my fan base.

So,
Here it is again. It's not an accurate transcript I'm afraid!

LAst week I gave myself two things to achieve:


Finish the ebook & package it & find JV partners to work with.

Finish the website, publish it & create the content & plan the future content

And ( sorry Pearson! ) but the website and those bits got done. There is always more planning to do, but I've got time to do that on the plane!

The ebook. Wow, I do begin to detest this cool sucker but I am getting there slowly!
Thank you to those that have provided feedback on my feeble attempts on a sales page.

I have the pdf content ready. I have recorded 11 or 13 of the tips as well. I have set up a blog where I can publish the audio files. I haven't JV'ed with anyone, although I have a couple of people reviewing it for me.

If financial rewards are directly linked to the blood sweat, torment and stubborn effort that has gone into a product, this one will make me rich!!

But alas, this effort is not for the money. It is for the exercise in DOING it!
And it's been a long time in the making! March and these Friday Progress Reports will have happened for 12 months!

Anyway that wasn not even COVERED in the audio!

So I am going to las vegas. That means that next weeks Friday Progress will happen on Monday again.

It also means that there is NO internet business from me while I am away. I will spend some time on the flights doing exercises courtesy of mr Gary Vurnum - and NOT watch 3 films!

I will also attempt to get to the other conference that is winding up when we get there to see if I can establish any contact with anyone interested in our books.

But the main goal for the week is to get to vegas see vegas, learn to become a great sales man and get the H OUT of Vegas. ( and hope I get through O'hare ) in one piece.

That's it, and have fun! That is what I aim to do this week!