A journey from Internet marketing stasis to business mastery and financial freedom (I hope)

… They’re a bit tough to start off with, but as you chew on them for a while, they soften up and begin to stick. Then after some time, they get a bit old and manky and you have to throw them in the bin!

And so it is with my business plans.

I’ve tried so many things, I don’t know whether I’m currently on Plan E, H or Q. So I’m going to start from scratch and outline my new Business Plans A, B and C.

Plan A
Here’s where I continue what I’m doing with my software business. Now I don’t know whether it’s the current economic climate, increasing competition or other factors but sales are not what they should be and I wonder about the future of this business. I think it has great potential but it’s a struggle and requires huge effort for relatively poor reward.

Plan B
This is where I finally decide once and for all to get into the Information Publishing business properly instead of just dabbling and thinking about it. A low-cost entry opportunity has come up and I want to really go for it. I’ll tell you exactly what it is in a moment but when I do, please hold back from yelling out “sucker!” at your screen. Think it by all means, just try not to let it out loud .

Plan C
Now Plan C is really an extension of Plan B and here’s where I get really serious about the whole thing. I don’t want to reveal exactly what this is right now but it involves a day of training and ongoing mentoring to help me started and make it all happen. Yeah, I’ll be surprised if I learn anything truly new on the day but I really think the mentoring will give me that extra kick to make sure I get on with what needs to be done. It’s expensive though. Only time will tell if it’s worth it.

So, what’s “Plan B” all about?

Well, it’s about a little trip to Brighton at the end of the month to Andrew Reynold’s latest 3-day Entrepreneur’s Bootcamp (hey, I heard you – I said keep it to yourself).

So Andrew’s at it again, doing what he does best; organising big marketing events and pulling in top speakers from all over the globe.

Now I’ve been to enough of these things to know what to expect. It’s going to be a pitch-fest. No doubt about that!

Sure, there will be some nuggets of great information given out by the speakers, but no single, coherent plan to follow. And all of the speakers are there for one reason only – to sell their products, courses or mentoring programmes. Why else would they do it?

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that. They’re in business to make money and I certainly wouldn’t expect them to appear purely out of the kindness of their hearts. I just want to point out that whatever people think the event is about, it might not be quite what they expect.

So why am I going?

Two reasons:

(1) It’s for charity. The meagre £149 entrance fee is going straight to The Make A Wish Foundation which is a fantastic charity. I’m sure AR will make plenty of money from the JV deals he’s surely made with the speakers, plus the DVD sales later on, but he should be applauded for putting up all the initial event costs and raising so much money for such worthy causes. And I want to support that.

(2) This time, he’s thrown in some resale licenses for physical products (CDs/DVDs). Now apart from not being in “make money” markets, we have no idea what these are and how many there are.

And I’m not stupid (well, not very stupid anyway). I know there’ll be about 3000 other punters, all being given the same licenses. But if there’s a reasonable number of different product licenses (say 5) and only 10% of punters (at best) do anything with them, the numbers start to look a bit better.

I figure that if Andrew truly believes that decent money can be made with these product licenses then there’s every reason to believe that I should be able to make money with them, so long as I take immediate action.

So that’s the plan. Go to the event, pick up the licenses, try to figure out what the markets are and how to best approach them, pick my 2 favourites, make contacts to get the ball rolling and maybe look for supporting back-end products too.

Let’s see if I can really make this work the way we’ve been ‘promised’ it can.

Then again, there’s always Plan C…

Most of what I do on a daily basis involves sitting and working in front of my computer. And when I’m not working on my computer or otherwise distracted by home life, I tend to spend a lot of time sitting, thinking about my business. I rarely take time out to think of “nothing at all”.

I’m not exactly unfit and I have been trying to increase my level of exercise over the last year or so. I get onto the trampoline at least once a week (even in winter) and I bought a door bar a few months ago to do pull-ups. I really love the trampoline, especially since I taught myself to to front somersaults (it took me about 15 months) because that’s really fun and addictive. It’s also a cool trick to show off with!

The thing is, my exercise has all been a bit ad-hoc and irregular. I’ve tended to fall out of bed and get straight to work. Sometimes I didn’t even have breakfast first.

Now my wife has been telling me for years to do regular exercise to take my mind off things, remove stress and become more productive while I work (oh yeah, and get physically stronger and fitter too). When I was working for someone else (5 years ago, now – yikes!), I was at least getting two half-hour cycles in every day.

Last year I made a real effort to start a morning routine on the exercise bike. I could have got out on my real bike but decided that was just too much hassle and I’d be less motivated to do that, especially without a specific place to get to. Cycling round the block just doesn’t do it for me, especially in the middle of winter!

So the exercise bike routine worked well for a time. I think I lasted about a week and a half. Then I started missing days and, soon after, got bored with the whole idea. And that was that!

So, what’s new?

Let me say straight off that I’m not an Eben Pagan affiliate and I’m not about to promote his Guru MasterMind program that’s currently in launch (actually, it may even be closed now). Not because I don’t think it’s good (I expect it will be great) but because that’s not what I’m about here.

However, if you haven’t yet seen Eben’s pre-launch videos, you really must take a look because he gives out a lot of excellent info. He’s also a master speaker and you can learn a lot just by watching his delivery and how he’s put the videos together. That’s on top of the actual content. Since the videos are to promote the program, they may not be up forever.

Anyway, in his “Becoming A Productive Modern Guru” video, Eben talks, among other things, about his morning routine and how it sets him up for the day. The things that struck me about his routine is that they cover a few different activities (not just exercise) and the exercise itself is more of a gentle workout to get the heart rate going and not the kind of “go for it” exercise I tried doing before that makes you hot and sweaty.

He’s successful and he knows what he’s talking about so that was enough of a push for me to try again.

Eben suggests a 1-hour morning routine but I’m trying to start a little easier with a 40-minute routine that goes something like this:

1. Drink a large glass of water
2. Back stretching exercises (I suffer from back problems) – 10 minutes
3. Pull-ups on the door bar – 1 minute (maybe not even that long, I can only manage about 10 at the moment!)
4. Exercise bike – 6 minutes (2.5 Km)
5. More back exercises – 5 minutes
6. Meditation – 5-10 minutes
7. Breakfast – 15 minutes

Okay, so I’ve only been doing it for 6 days so far but I do feel a lot better for it and start my work with a clearer head. Since it’s sliced up into short activities, I think I’ll be able to stick at this routine a lot longer than the last attempt, and I really need to hit that magic 21-day target so that it becomes a habit.

Watch the Eban Pagan video if you can but do try to find a good morning routine that works for you.

I’ll let you know how I get on with mine!

The title reminds me of some nursery rhymes I was reading to my kids the other day, where the words rhyme in spelling but not when actually spoken. I ended up trying them out in different crazy accents until I found one that worked!

So a year’s gone by since my last post and I could easily give up on this blog altogether because I really don’t have the time for it, but I’ve had a burst of renewed enthusiasm so here I am.

I’ve spent the last year focussing on my main software business which has done well. Of course, it could always be better and I’m about to put a lot more effort into marketing the business (mostly online). However, I’ve noticed a significant levelling off or even a downturn in business over the past few months. I haven’t worked out yet whether it’s due to the current state of the global enonomy or other factors. What I do know is that I’m concerned about being reliant on this one income stream and want to try a little side project.

If you’ve read any of my earlier posts, you’ll see that, a year or so ago, I was planning a niche info project (something I was calling my “Mercury Project”), but that still hasn’t really got started because I’ve been so busy with the software business.

The trouble with Mercury is that there’s no existing info products out in the marketplace to sell as an affiliate to get started. There are plenty of associated sites selling related hard goods so I know the market is potentially quite strong. But, as an info product marketer, it would mean creating my own product.

That’s fine because it’s what I really want to do but the niche is a bit like “how to build a summer house” and the way I want to create my product is to actually build that “summer house” and then show step-by-step how it’s done.

Except that my “summer house” (the actual Mercury Project) is going to take me years to build and I can’t wait that long!

Well, I have a new plan brewing and with my new early morning “get ready for the day” fitness routine, I’m getting fairly excited about the prospect.

I’ll write more about it soon (I promise)…