I clean my cars on a Sunday morning.

About once every two years.

I hate it, and to me it’s the perfect example of how to waste some of your precious time on Earth, because in the great scheme of things ladies and gents, we’re not here for very long. The blink of an eye in cosmic terms, and spending some of it hoovering crisps out of the child seats doesn’t sit too well with me.

But it was fun for two reasons. Firstly I wouldn’t have to drive the big one round wondering what that ‘funny smell’ was any longer, and secondly because my three year old daughter decided she wanted to help, which meant it would take twice as long but be a hundred times more enjoyable, albeit wetter when I’d showed her how the windscreen washer worked.

When it was done though, I felt sufficiently satisfied that I’d completed a task I’d put off for so long that I spent an hour at my laptop doing exactly the same.

I tackled boring and repetitive tasks that I don’t do half as much as I should like backing up blogs, files and going through files called ‘to read’ or ‘ideas’ on my laptop that I hardly ever look at.

The result was that I feel a little safer because I’ve backed up imortant data, but also because I’ve re-discovered ideas that I’d long forgotten and some of them are frighteningly good!

If I say so myself I do have some great business ideas, but like most people I forget to act on them, put them off and too often forget about them altogether.

Going back through my ideas book and files on the PC bring them back to the forefront of my mind and start the creative juices flowing.

Which brings me back to the reason I decided to wash the cars.

I have quite a few niche sites which do pretty well and some which bomb and aren’t worth the hosting they cost. That’s fine with me because as long as I make a decent profit in the long run I’m extremely happy.

One of my niche sites recently hit a huge gold vein and I woke up to a very nice surprise in my account. A bit of research, traffic tracking and the rest showed up something interesting – the traffic had come from an affiliate who had suddenly – without any warning or prompting decided to spring clean his site, optimise his adwords and remail his list.

The results were great for me and even better for him because he got 60% of every sale.

So going back and cleaning things up resulting in a few thousand dollars for both of us, for no other reason except remembering to do it.

So I’m now looking through all my sites, which is going to take some time, and clean them up a little to see what happens.

A bit of renovation on long forgotten sites can have similar results to launching a new product (almost). Go back and check out how your older sites are doing and if there’s anything you can do  to titivate them a bit. It’s well worth it.

But I’ll still leave the cars another 2 years.

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I met up with some old friends a few nights ago – they were playing a gig at a local music festival.

 I used to play in various bands with them, but on the whole hadn’t met up with them properly (ie beer was involved) for between 5 and 20 years.

Most of us are now fat, grey or bald – the more unfortunate ones are all three (not me I’m glad to say) but that was funny rather than traumatic, and we enjoyed comparing scars, medical problems, and general life mishaps.

The worst part of the entire evening (which wasthoroughly enjoyable and due to be repeated soon) was explaining what I do for a living.

I know I’ve blogged about this subject before but while with strangers it’s fun to be a bit flippant or sarcastic, with friends I wanted to explain how my business works clearly but without making it sound weird or ‘dodgy’. It wasn’t easy.

And I realised how liberating it is not to pigeonhole yourself. I wasn’t an ‘electrical engineer’ or ‘a photographer’, I was ‘Tony who has online businesses’ and that opened up a whole new conversation both with old friends and people I’d only just met.

But the weirdest thing of all was that out of ALL my old friends, we’re all self-employed. We all work for ourselves.

And when we got to chatting about old times it became pretty obvious that from the outset we’d decided that the important part of the work/life balance was the ‘LIFE’ part – and not the work.

And it seems to me that making the decision was the hard part. Deciding to be unemployable was probably one of the most important decisions I ever made, because once decided, I (in fact none of us) would settle for anything less.

I’m still thinking about all this, but I wanted to share my thoughts.

Maybe stop what you’re doing and make the decision that you’re going to be unemployable – you’re going to work for yourself. I think once that decision is made, your subconscious makes sure you end up on the right track.

…..but despite the best efforts of the deeper realms of my mind, I still can’t drink as much beer as I used to at 20.

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Most internet marketing experts suggest writing a blog in language that an 11 year old can understand just in case their readers (.ie. you lot) don’t have the mental capacity to understand what I’m on about.

Speaking as someone who just had to Google the word ‘persuade’ in order to spell it correctly, I’ll take my chances.

Drag your knuckles this way, and see what you think to this post:

‘Deferred Gratification’ is what sociologists call it.

I can’t remember from my University days which sociologist conducted the study, but it was about ‘deferred gratification’

His hypothesis was that it’s one of several indicators that help sociologists to determine what kind of background (I suppose I mean ‘class’) a person comes from.

Working class parents (used to be called lower class but we got really angry about it) alledgedly influence their children toward ‘instant gratification’ – they leave school without further education to get a job to have wages to spend NOW rather than remain poor for a few more years at university which would supposedly bring qualifications and a better paid job.

They put off the ‘later’ for gratification NOW.

Middle class parents it seems do the opposite. The persuade their chidren to endure a little more hardship in the present in order to reap the rewards in later life – deferred gratification.

You follow?

Basically sensible people put off rewards in the present for greater rewards in the future.

Well I want to know what idiot came up with this idea.

As someone who is genetically prevented from leaving half a bar of chocolate or half a bottle of wine ‘to enjoy tomorrow’ I’m declaring war on whatever government department has been pushing this down our throats for the last 100 years.

Take the retirement myth for example.

In the UK there was a pensions crisis a few years back.
People who had paid into company pension schemes for thirty years or more were robbed – ROBBED – of THEIR money by at best incompetants and at worst criminals who couldn’t manage to pee in a straight line let alone run a pension fund.

One week after this I heard a financial advisor on the nation news giving advice to new graduates that one of the main things they should do is to start a pension.

Absolute insanity.

So the way it goes in the West is that we work hard, get as good a job as possible, earn as much money as possible (work like a dog if the overtime is available), start a pension scheme if possible then after 45 years retire to ‘enjoy’ high blood pressure, prostate problems and the fact that you’re never EVER going to have an affair with an underwear model.

Eventually one of the above or depression caused by one of the above finishes us off and that’s it.

If you’re lucky you retire at 65 and get 15 years of being able to enjoy life before you end up hovering above your body and waiting for the tunnel of light to appear.

15 years isn’t that great when we live to an average of 80 years.

If this system wasn’t already here and someone tried to introduce it we’d laugh.

So I have a radical theory.

Enjoy yourself NOW!

There definitely IS a present because we’re all IN it.

But a future?

Who knows -I might explode or something this evening. War, famine pestilence, a car, a heart attack, a dodgy meat pie or even a strong bout of laughter (remember that?) could finish any one of us off in the next 5 seconds.

Then what you gonna do with your pension plan? If of course it hasn’t been devalued or stolen by the time you need it.

So why NOT enjoy yourself now?

A small internet business could cover 2 days wages for you.

If it does can you go part-time at work?

Yes your husband/wife will have a fit, but after realising that you could maybe go out more (or stay in 🙂  )together they’ll soon come round to your way of thinking.

If not could you get away with saying ‘no chance’ when you’re asked (and in many workplaces this means ‘forced’) to do some overtime this weekend?

It’s your LIFE we’re talking about now – does it matter if you piss your boss off a bit? He won’t be thinking about it when he gets home (which will probably be considerably earlier than you)

The key to it of course is to bring in a little more money and the internet is the best way to do that.

Would you rather have an extra $75 or work one day less a week? After tax you possibly only come out with $50 anyway.

I know we all have bills to pay and children to feed – I really do, but you’d be surprised how little you need to survive on.

Now I’m not talking living like a monk – if you want that new Wiiiiii console then buy it. But wouldn’t it be great if your business paid for it?

Just a few dollars from an online business can be such a huge boost to your ego and confidence too. I’ve seen it so many times – once people make their first $100 online, their first $1000 is so much eaiser because they KNOW they can do it.

And once you start earning online you never go back. How many people have you heard say

‘Yes the money was good, I was my own boss, had lots of free time because I only worked 3 days a week but I wanted to go back to the security of a full time job’

People will get angry if you talk to them about this – you might even be getting angry reading this yourself. It’s because of fear. When something is suggested that makes you question why you do something, and that there might be an alternative it’s easy to get scared and angry.

I do know – I’ve been there and I know that if you can free up a little, tiny bit of YOU time, and dedicate it to your online business your chances of success will go up 500%

Don’t wash the car or do the shopping, if you manage to reduce your workload by just one day consider not telling anyone because they’ll only want a piece of you to cut the lawn or walk the dog.

People think in terms of work days and non work days.

We should be thinking in terms of ‘life’

And if you don’t agree then that’s cool. You’ll be able to retire happily, with your pension fund (if it’s still there) and live out the rest of your life (however long that might be) relaxing.

Here’s a great quote from Billy Connelly who says something like:

‘They say we’re all living twenty years longer than we were a century ago. That’s all well and good but why does it have to go on the END of your life?

I want it NOW while I’m laughing and shagging like a rhino rather than when I’m semi conscious, peeing into my shoes and dribbling into my cornflakes’

Me too mate.

Me too.

I’m taking my children for a ride on a steam train next monday morning.

What are you doing?

I’m no cleverer than you. Not a single percent.

Please work on your business. If you need monthly motivation, techniques and guidance CLICK HERE to get the lot for around $7 a month. Warning: I WILL bug you to keep moving!

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