My Birthday emails to my customers

My birthday yesterday and I sent emails to customers to boost sales over a 3 day period. Here are posts on the PTSA Ning site that document it:

My Blog on PTSA Ning run by Dax Moy

Try to make things happen

I sent an email to my wife with a plan in it. I hear you know, "What's he doing emailing his wife? Why not just talk to her?" - well, it was 1:30 am and I couldn't sleep so I got a few things off my mind and the email helped. Here's the plan:

The situation I want to be in as quickly as possible is this:

I want to have as many internet related revenue streams as possible

• selling products i.e. buyxsocks.com
• making web sites
• selling information products that I have the skills to create. Don't laugh, I do have skills. I can create kicking and stretching information products, i.e. programmes for people to follow.
• selling a Kids related martial arts teaching aid, this one could be big - we just need to put some work on it together. I want you to get excited about helping with this.

I want to leave working at Dakins
before I end up destroying everything around me through frustration. See, I have no room to make change but I do have a plan. I tried to leave 2 years ago but Dad convinced me in to staying and all that has happened is that I have grown to hate it more. I am being suffocated, stunted, strangled and prevented from growing or even earning any more money by doing what I am doing there. I do have a plan though and the plan is: I have already suggested that Dakins employ someone with experience to do my job at work. They'll do all the book keeping and keep up to date with statutory requirements and be much better at it that I am - this is approved it just needs to happen. I will then move over to more IT person and sort out the computers and stuff. But my plan here is to work as JANIK IT and invoice Dakins and then setup remote access to the PC's at work to fix any little "How To's" etc and I can do this from sitting at home. This I think will give more money, simply because I can charge pretty much high fees for this work. Basically if I don't change my working situation I will be in the worst situation in my working life that I can imagine, and I can't let that happen to me - there is too much that I want my Children to do with their lives.

Tae Kwon-Do and related classes
I want to have successful TKD classes for multiple reasons. Firstly, because I know I can make extra money and good money at that. Secondly, because I know I am a good teacher and explain things well and get results which will mean that people will come to me, I have no doubt that my classes will be full. Thirdly, I know I will be good at it and I really want to do something good for the community and for individuals. I want to see a healthier & happier population and I can make a difference. I know TKD and related activities is sometimes a sore point but I find that it really allows me to stay active and helps me keep striving to achieve. I think everyone should have some sort of activity that they feel this way about whether it's sport, music, painting, cars, drama, etc, etc, etc

All the above is geared towards giving me time at home with my lovely family. I want to be the Dad that Edie and Ethan talk about all the time, I want them to look up to me and see me as an inspiration to do something different with their lives. I feel by trying to do something different with my working life that they might learn and take it a step forward and get excited about things and do something excellent with theirs. If you wanted to work more, say with the NHS or private, I would hope that my working plans above would give me the time to look after the children.

You and I have been best friends since the day we met and that must remain forever. I know that if we cleared our minds and worked together on making the above happen we would have much more time available and we would have a tidier house and we would be HAPPIER.

Come on Darling let's get excited about it all and make things happen.

I love you more and more everyday.

I'll post again tomorrow once she has read it and I'll post the outcome.

Having Fun

James.

www.buyXsocks.com

Outsourcing

Yes, a popular term recently which basically means "Paying someone else to do your stuff", essentially that's what it is and you get what you pay for, generally.

I tried outsourcing and using a virtual assistant during the early part of this year. It was not a good experience and I felt as though I was wasting my £40 a week. Some good stuff happened but more bad stuff happened. Things just weren't done to a good enough standard.

However, I recently paid more money and outsourced some web design work and that was an excellent experiece. But much more expensive.

I will write a more detailed article about outsourcing soon but suffice to say that The Book has motivated me to try a VA again (or actually a team of VA's) - so let's see what happens.

James.

Todays Deadline

Yesterday I set an impossible goal of 25 mins for data entry of 30 invoices, which involves counting the 30 invoices, stamping them, typing them in to SAGE, marking them as 'DONT PAY' on SAGE and then distributing them to the right people.

I was interrupted twice which probably wasted 3 minutes and I even initiated a converstation myself buy checked myself so that I stayed on track. However, I had entered all invoices but not distributed them in the time limit. However, I was all done by 30 mins.

Ferris talks about 'batching' - perhaps I should do all the invoice entry on one day week and dedicate more time to it. However this might have more implications within the business. I might seek advice from more experienced peopled. Are there any here?

Target Met Again

Met todays 30 min target of data entry of 30 invoices - going well. Tomorrow (Friday) I shall reduce this to 25 mins and really get stuck in to see what happens.

Setting Impossible Targets

About 1/4 of the way through Tim talks about setting impossible targets, I forget exactly why but anyway the important thing for this post is that I just set an impossible target and I met it. WOOHOOO.

At 11:47 I said to myself that by 12:15 I will have enter 30 invoices in SAGE and distributed them to the person resonsible for authorisation. By 12:11 I had done the data entry and the next 3 minutes was spent on distribution.

I am now BEAMING. One daily goal met in 50% of the time usually taken.

Key Points: no distractions, not answering phone, not checking email, not listening to office converstation

Step 2: Don't just read the book

After reading a few chapters it appears that there is work I must do while reading the book. I'll start working on the exercises that I need to follow and will post the questions, my answers and thoughts here.

BTW, the book is highly entertaining and addresses the single most important question I have posed to my parents since I was about 14. "Why do people work all day long, don't they have better things to do?". The author puts it a better way by describing that somehow The World has 'agreed to work' between the hours of 9am and 5pm each day. Why? Who's to say that everyone needs 8 hours every day to do their work? Will that 8 hours be filled with 'work' for the sake of filling 8 hours?

THE BOOK SPEAKS TO ME!!!!!!

Step 1: Get The Book

Lot's of other's had told me to read the book but I doubted them, I doubted the book, I doubted the guy who wrote the book. I actually doubted everything but then for £8 investment I thought, "It's got to be worth a read at least."

So I did but the book and so far it has been worth a read and really quite entertaining.