The photo on the right is the first thing I see in the morning. It’e the view directly above my side of the bed. This morning when I heard the kids wake I up I grabbed my iphone and took this picture. Read on to find out why…
I keep getting asked about what I do on a ‘typical’ day. Well to tell the truth there is no typical day. I sort of make them up as I go along. I have a diary and certain things need doing by a certain time, but I’m not a good example of a dedicated marketer.
I do my Homer Simpson noise (Doh!) when I read about marketers who make a big deal of escaping the 9-5 then put in more hours than they ever did as employees. I’m not trying to tell you there’s no work involved when you’re a pro marketer, there IS.
But for me the whole point of having this sort of freedom isn’t to waste it – it’s to enjoy it while it happens. ‘But Tony why don’t you work your arse off and make $5million dollars this year, then relax? Well two reasons really, until my children start going to school full time I want to spend the time with them that I’ll never ever have again.
And secondly – to me the evidence all points towards internet marketers earning 5 million in a year and then continuing to work just as hard. It’s not for me I’m afraid. I could drop dead tomorrow while uncorking a bottle of wine, so I like to get my fun in while I can, not at some distant point in the future.
So with that in mind, I thought I’d tell you about my day.
First thing in the morning – 6.30am and it’s my turn to get up with the kids. We might not have a daily schedule but they certainly do -get up, bounce around and then off to various school and pre-school groups. So today they wake me at 6.30am and I herd them downstairs, without even enough time to nip into my office and check my emails.
It’s a glorious sunny day and warm already so we decide to eat breakfast outside. 
(Plenty of pulling funny faces for the camera) but these hazy, warm mornings are great. Especially as we now have a trampoline in the garden and the kids can eat then go bounce around for half an hour while I drink a pint of coffee and wait for them to throw up their Rice Krispies.
My wife joins us at 8am and after a morning chat I sneak off for a shower leaving her to clear away the breakfast things and dress the kids. Sexual equality my arse – if Germaine Greer came to my house she’d soon be making us all a cup of tea, bless ‘er. She’d go home thinking Feminism was a body spray.
(Ladies – before you email me complaining I will point out that although I wear the trousers in our house, I’m usually told what colour to buy and when I can put ’em on. In reality I’m the least sexist person you’re ever likely to meet.)
I take 10 minutes to check my email and stuff, in my workroom. I put a WSO on the Warrior Forum last night, purely as a list builder (although there is a back end to pay for the cost of posting). As it happens the one I ran 2 nights ago brought in a little less than $1,000 (that was a PLR offer) and the one last night has brought in 65 new subscribers and almost $100 in revenue. (Screenshot below) I keep saying that a WSO is the most under-rated, most targeted ad you can possibly place in my particular niche, and if you haven’t yet tried it you should. Just keep away from the whinging Nellies who call it home.
I open a new list in Aweber for each new WSO or squeeze page that I do. The reason for this is that I then stack up a series of three or four follow up messages and gently sell related products over the next few days while the new subscriber is still ‘warm’. It’s a bit like doing a minlaunch but it’s all automated.
Likewise I do a quick check on payments that have come into the Paypal and Clickbank accounts overnight. I’m always yattering on about ‘getting more payment buttons out there!’ but this is the reason why. Subscription payments, orders, and various other chunks of money have been dropping into the accounts over night and continue to do so. All these are the cumulative effect of continuously putting websites up, month after month.
The kids have been packed off to their various activites by now and my wife returns and starts work in the workshop / studio she made when she stole the dining room. Actually being able to work at home together is one of the things we decided we wanted to do years back, and it’s still good to be able to stop for a coffee and 10 minutes chat whenever we feel like it.
I follow up on a few things I need to do. I chat to a business partner, Tony Newton on Skype txt. We’ve got a few projects on the go and a few more in the pipeline so it’s pretty much a status report. He works from home like me. In fact last week we met up for lunch and a brainstorm and moved our projects forwards more than could ever be possible over the telephone and or Skype. So the long, relaxing meal was totally essential (that was for my accountant). After we came away from the country pub with bulging notebooks Tony tells me the exhaust fell of his car on the way home. Shouldn’t have crammed down that extra onion ring mate!
In my email I also find one from a member of the mastermind group I’m part of, about a launch we intend to support in August. Seems like a long time away perhaps? Actually by planning this one well in advance we hope to make a killing financially. We shall see. Also I find that a little planning in advance usually removes the horrible feeling of knowing you’ve got a sh*tload of work to do and only 36 hours to do it in!
Having cleared the ticket desk, my support person (hello J!) emails me asking if I’ll pick up something for her from the village shop, that she can’t get where she lives, and drop it off when we have our monthly meeting on Saturday. Who works for who eh?? It’s no trouble of course – she’s saved me from several disasters in the past, and is now used to the way I work, which is unusual to say the least.
Another email from another techy who’s jumped on board to help with the change over to another affiliate system. He’s completed the request I emailed him last night and everything is now a step closer. Good stuff.
I realise it’s far too nice to stay in the house so I grab my netbook and head into the garden, and plonk myself down at the picnic bench, taking a quick snap with my iphone to show you.
Within minutes I realise it’s too bright to see the screen (which I usually can) and go for a bounce on the trampoline instead. Once I manage to push the prolapsed vertabrae back into it’s rightful place and the nausea passes, I sit back down on the bench, but this time with a pen and my ‘ideas’ book, to see if anything flows.
After jotting down a few ideas and generally chilling out for half an hour I decide to go back upstairs to my main computer to write up this blog post.
Upstairs I find something that I was going to mention in a blog last week but forgot so I go back into the garden and bug my missus to take a picture of me holding a certificate that Clickbank sent to me last week.
It’s to celebrate my status as ‘One of Clickbank’s top vendors” . I’ve been part of various Clickbank things over the years but I don’t remember getting a certificate before. Over time I decided the years the best apsect of being a ‘top vendor’ is that they give you a dedicated number to phone with your own account manager at the end of a phone line. The first time they told me about this I phoned it, not expecting it to be an actual person. but bugger me it was! I don’t know who was more surprised – me or him.
We ended up chatting about the weather in our respective countries. On a slightly less positive note, a few years back I wouldn’t have had a hope in Hell of getting into the top vendor ‘club’ (which I’m told is the top 1% of all sellers) because BIG gurus were making BIG sales through Clickbank.
These days, although my sales are in the six figure bracket, it seems that they’ve lowered the bar quite a bit, and now it’s easier to become a top vendor. To paraphrase Groucho Marx (I think) It’s not as much fun being in an exclusive club, when they’ll have someone like me in it!
I also thought this photo would show the truth about what a total scruffy sod I am while I’m working. So yes, I do work in jeans, t shirts and whatever else I decide to fling on in the morning. That said, as I’ve said before, I’ve worn £1,000 suits and still make them look like someone’s thrown a homeless person at me. What can you do eh?
A little more ‘pottering’ and a bit of time at my PC somehow brings the day to 4pm, which is the time I’m writing this. It doesn’t seem like I’ve got a lot done, but I’ve left instructions for people I work with, been brought up to speed with various projects and consulted with partners about the next steps. It has been a lazy-ish day, but I’ve been truthful about it, and I’ve got some ideas in my book along with a to do list for tomorrow.
Much of being an internet marketer is about thinking, not sitting at your computer endlessly doing the rounds of Facebook, your Paypal account, your email and the Warrior Forum. That is NOT work, it’s fannying about on a computer. There’s a big difference.
I’ve also sent some stats downstairs to the other computer (I don’t even currently have a printer in my room!) so that later I can read some stats to do with sales, conversions, opt-in’s, unsubscribe rates etc and make any changes in my biz based on those. I do this regularly, although certainly not once a day as some of my more anal colleagues do.
Would I be able to judge my actions more precisely if I did check my stats once a day? Absolutely, but it would bore the tits off me and I’d have missed the trampoline part of the day. Which is more important? Ahhh – now that’s YOUR decision, for YOUR business.
This evening, judging by the weather my wife and I wil be eating outside once the kids have gone to bed. A few nights ago we were out until 10pm as dusk came, chatting, drinking wine, watching the sunset, and watching the bats swoop over our heads. As I said in a chat with Martin Avis when I was telling him about it the other day…..
‘They’re supposed to have radar or sonar or something but you should have heard the bloody clang when one of them came into the house and flew into the radiator’
The day I’ve just described has been real. It’s the closest I can get to a ‘typical’ day. Some days I work harder, some not at all. ALL of them I enjoy. Sometimes I enjoy working through the night when everyone else is alseep and the house is quiet and still.
Whatever your own personal view on my lifestyle, and how you’d do it very differently or in the same sort of way, the message you’ll get from me is the same. Start setting up a few simple systems now. Start building a few blocks. I live a blessed life for all sorts of reasons, but it didn’t appear in a flash of smoke and involve a magic wand.
But if you start building your business right now, in a few weeks you’ll be able to see how far you’ve come, and in a few more weeks, well your life could seriously start to change.
Here’s my deal. If you want to check out the systems I’ve put in place, the business I’ve built and how you can do exactly the same, then why not check out my Kickstart Course. It comes with email support and a full satisfaction guarantee, which means plenty of time to check out the first couple of lessons. The if you like it, stick with me and we’ll build a business together. If not, just leave. It’s as simple as that.
So what will tomorrow bring?
It depends on the weather, my inbox, my mood, the kids, my diary…………
Comments welcome as always 🙂
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