Friday, March 25, 2005

Good Friday Progress

============= Accomplishments:

Tonight Mathew, I Weigh 116kg

And further from that, I actually worked for an hour in the morning this week. As in from 6am to 7am ( ish).

I have also created a REAL content site which I am filling up with content as we speak. The honest, hard working way ( yeah i know! But there is a reason you see! )

I also met you with one of my JV partners for a short meeting at 9:30am on Saturday. 7 and a half hours later we decided we had covered everything we needed to cover and decided to go home for lunch....

====================== lessons:
As per usual, priorities change. Compared to what I set out to do, I didn't do many of them, but I made tremendous progress on a couple of things, namely my JV and my new product.
I am doing it in a very work intensive way. The reason for that, other than pure stubborness is that I am a firm believer that if you haven't walked up the mountain, you wouldn't have the foggiest idea how to best get down it! Walk the walk before you talk the talk.

To this day I don't feel experienced enough to deserve the kind of responsibilities my partners trust me with. I have definitely walked the walk for some time and I am beginning to develop a clearer idea of what my experience has taught me. Although you could argue that I have spent the last year successfully eliminating things that don't work! but that is progress too!

Though, I think it is high time I step it up a gear again. There are so many things that I know I should be doing, but I am not. There doesn't seem to be enough hours in the day.

====================== goal for next week:
Finish my Product, and then set out my marketing tasks for it for the next 4-6 weeks.
I must complete all the tasks I have been set to achieve for my business. It is becoming even more critical to get a decent CRM & PM tool to manage my tasks. Sort of. I already have a tool or two, but for some reason I can't get myself to use either of them properly
This weekend I will re-educate myself on the dangers of cutting corners on this. I have a system that seems to work in my JOB so i have every reason to implement something similar for my own business
My current JV tasks. Complete them by next Sunday ( 3rd of April )
That's ample!

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Not quite daily but I'll Try

I'll give it a shot to get back up there again.

So today I have added 7 articles to a content website I am working on. I'll stop around 50 I think, then submit it to a bunch of search engines, blog and ping - send out a couple of press releases, and then start to submit an article a night to article directories for the next month or so, if I can be bothered. It might be somthing I dedicate 15 minutes to a week eventually - but it is something that is well worth the effort though. The first article I did is already in the top spot of my chosen keyword...

In addition to that I spent time from 6:30 am to 7:45 am this morning working on my JV.
We're getting close to launch and the private part of the website is sorted with hosting now. Based on my real world background, I'm taking on a role or responsibility that I am happy that I am very comfortable with

So a productive day.

Friday, March 18, 2005

Bettina Can't Help It - But it's Launched.

============= Accomplishments:

This week I can't think of a single one. Tried to sort out the banking details with the worlds local bank, simply because they are the cheapest on cashing US cheques. And they were also the only ones to mention that if the cheques were frequent enough or large enough, it would be cheaper to get a US currency account. They still cost more than my personal bank, but hey, business banking is a great big scam anyway. But would they let me join their scam? no. It seemed that the person taking the appointment booking forgot to tell me that as a member of a partnership, all partners has to be present at the opening of the account. I would have loved there to be 100 plus partners!

What else did I do this week?

Well work is going great. It seems I am actually quite good at it.

The business has also launched it's latest book ( Bettina Can't Help It )

And a associated lingerie website:
http://www.bettina-lingerie.co.uk

Weight loss? hmmm, I doubt the cheese cake I've just eaten helsp much. This week I have noticed that I have begun to struggle with actually seeing the reading on the scales.

But I can confirm the scales stop on 117kg dead, after I put on my glasses.
Strange. 4-5 months ago I didn't even need them. Now it seems my eyesight is getting worse day by day.

====================== lessons:
I should have shares in banks.

I'm sure there are things that I can learn from this week. One of them being that I have yet to find an effective way to stop myself from being a complete and utter time waster.

====================== goal for next week:

have a relaxing Easter!

I am meeting up with one of my JV partners tomorrow to tie up some loose ends and then it's just a matter of getting on with it!

As for my business, well. ( he smiles to himself )

We added some promotionals and adverts in the back of the book.

One of which lists an email address to subscribe to our authors newsletter. Only she's not entirely up to scratch on the whole internet marketing thing so I was ment to have set it all up on the server side, like the autoreply and the gift page where the subscribers get their gift and some more information about the writer.
have I done so? nope! But it will happen tonight.

The rest of the week will be split 3 ways: ( 2 nights each )

A product of mine

JV

My business.

I might consider spending some money to get an accountability tool built as the two tools that are out there either concentrate on some stupid lofty goalsetting fluff or show me a calendar. Neither is exactly what I need. So when I have enough money, I will have it made for me... but that's a little longer term.

Friday, March 11, 2005

1 Year anniversay - accountable

The 52nd week!

One year ago, on the 12th of March 2004 to be presice, I posted my first accountability post on the UK net marketing forum.

You would have thought I had learnt something over the year about setting specific goals and having a decent system that tracks everything.

ha!

Three people I know have now started doing something similar in the last few weeks and as a result I have relaxed my "system" and this week leaves me with a feeling of non- acomplishment.

You know the feeling you get after a day full of interruptions, phone calls and all sorts of things happen that come between you and your PLAN... walking up a swirly waterslide with soapy water and water guns shooting at my face ever 11 seconds or so with a great big aligator pool at the bottom of the water slide... that sort of feeling.

I've had a week like that. Or I believe I have had a week like that.

So it's time to apply the only thing that can prove if I am right: logic.

And logically, I need to look at the achievements, my DUNNS of this week:

5000 books delivered. One article submitted, the press release released to a wire service - Only to get rejected. The risks I take dealing with US wire services. ;o)

Done some great progress at work. I can even prove it to my manager every Thursday.

We've sold lots of books this week, mainly down to my wife. I have also helped her prepare for the London Book Fair which is on this weekend.
I have built up a list of 10 topics for press releases. Although I need to rethink where to send them.

But I am also still wasting an awful lot of time browsing websites forums, writing emails and general tiredness.

Lesson? I want to get more energy, and the only way to do that is to exercise more. My son has been happy to help this week though -with crys of "Wunning!!" at 6am while running back and forth in the kitchen until Daddy looks reasonably responsive to stage two - "chase daddy wunning! "

Lesson 2?

Even if I don't DO as much as I think I need to, I seem to learn more these weeks. Like something that I know makes you thing I am far better than I am - a logical, written record.

If you take two minutes to write down a list of ALL the things you can think of that you have actually accomplished this week, the list will ALWAYS be longer than you think.

Try it...

My weight this week averages out at 118kg.

Next week?

I have Monday off as my wife is still in London and my son can't fend for himself while I am at work. So Monday and Sunday is all about babysitting him. MIght get an hour or two in the evenings for some work.

I will concentrate on testing the tools for our JV & working through some more of the tasks I have,

but in the main next week will be about creating awareness to the market that our book is out!!
Oh, and sort out how on earth I'll pay my high 3 digit tax bill :(

'till then, tara!

Friday, March 04, 2005

preparation is the breakfast of champions

that was the accolade I got this lunch time after finishing my sales presentation course. I'll come back to that later. I'm drunk already so please remind me...


=> Last week Priorities:
Top priority is the marketing torrent for my publishing business.
Second priority is the JV related work.
Third priority is the Internet business product creation for passive income creation.

First things first,
I have started to create the marketing "torrent" for our latest book. Anyone care to help me spread the loving word can drop me a line. We're doing well but we need to do better as we're suffering under the heels of a dominant market player.
I'm also updating the blog and I will be adding a directory with articles to the website so I can link directly back to it on the website from the blog.

JV related work. I had the pleasure of half a day off this afternoon, so I was around to all the local banks to find out their business banking charges. We need to open up a business bank account you see.
Rip off merchants. I'm tempted to open a bank just to avoid having to use any of them, but I think' I'll settle for buying their shares. 30 BILLION pounds profit they made this year. The top 5-6 banks that is.
Profit.
And people are stupid enough to continue to use them.

And I have yet to create any products that give me passive income.

I spent the weekend in Birmingham, and it was really excellent to get to meet up with my JV partners and with so many other clever people. I learnt a couple of things that I wanted to put into practice, but I never got around to it.
I am almost hoping that I'll get a separation package so I can get on with creating these products, but I am using lack of time as an excuse.

Evidence: this lunch time I got back from my week long sales traing course and went to town for two hours to check out the banks. I got home and had some essential play time with my son and then got some dinner going. Interestingly, I also learnt why coastal nations traditionally eat fish on Fridays.
Between now and then I have produced NOTHING.
not a single web page, an article or anything else.
I have sat in front of the computer for nearly 3 hours and I have achieved NOTHING. I have tested a few scripts, posted on some forums and generally done very little to progress myself towards my goals.
So it is time to have a serious look at what it is that I do with my time online and be more rutheless with it.

Simply because my business demands it.
My JV partners demand it. ( and deserve it )
And my financial position demands it.

On a positive side, my adsense has hit a mile stone this week.

The rest of this week? Goodness knows where it has gone.
I have a to do list longer than my arm that I need to finish before my Sunday night publishing company meeting and I also have loads to spend some time with the family.
But this week was actually REALLY good. I spent it out of the office and in a class room environment getting sales training. At the end of it today, I was given recognition for presenting the best sales presentation that had EVER been presented to that particular class. EVER!

Which was cool!

So now I am off to see if there was a second bottle of red wine in that gift bag.... should be as I've been drinking out of two glasses for the last 20 minutes...