This is going somewhere, please stick with me.
So doing the working out loud thing is become more solid for me.
Posting what ‘one’s blog’ is making is a daring way of making it work and offering something for people to follow and hopefully collaberate and chip in with advice and comments too.
I am going to work on a deeper integration with my Mailchimp email tribe this is the place I have been working on the longest and where my longest, but not always my deepest relationships are.
It all starts with “Total Lock Down”
What is total lock down?
Saying no.
Spending like I have nothing.
That sounds a bit harsh Bernie, can you elaborate and how does that connect to blogging and emails?
Show me the money.
Just in case you did not realise being depressed for a few years and and then being a bit more than depressed totally screwed my financial situation.
Fear not. Luckily #Supercoolwife kept the show on the road and paid the mortgage, food and several friends and family were very generous and paid for us to go to Argentina and on another holiday.
But I thought you were a serial Entrepreneur Bernie?
At the peak of my depression my income dropped then leveled out to pretty much nothing. Then I fell behind on payments and then I was administered what Santander call ‘Valid Charges’ and these made me dive even deeper into depression as I felt even more fucked.
I was fucked. It was a vicious circle one month I paid, (I mean we paid) £300 in charges. It is worth noting that the most understanding companies in the dark days were Virgin Money and Vodafone.
A few others were nice, but Santander bank were complete <u&ts.
People often say ‘just change bank’ I did.
I took NatWest for a spin and they sucked. I also tried Barclays and they screwed up so much the gave me £500 compensation – so while I really do hate Santander I am staying with them as I know how shit they are – which is always a positive reason to stay in a 26 year old relationship.
I hate my bank so much I put more effort into using PayPal and Transferwise as much as I can just to avoid having anything to do with them.
The biggest kick in the teeth was…
The payment protection plans for credit cards were not valid because I was not signed off work by a Doctor. As I am my own employer I did not get signed off from work, I just stayed at home under the bed covers feeling sorry for myself. We had changed Doctor and they would not retrospectively ‘sign me off’ – but they did right a nice letter to the HMRC who wanted to fine me £8k in penalties – and then did not – phew!
The good stuff.
Now I have that off my chest here we gone the fun stuff. Stay with me.
With FreeAgent am able to understand how money flowed (or did not flow) through my business, I have been using FreeAgent for over five years now and I am in love, it is even more fun when you get to invoice people from it.
Money is one of the hardest things for me to get my head round, numbers in general are where my dyslexia kicks in the hardest. As I have ‘grown up’ I have made a huge effort to manage this area of my life and if #supercoolwife was not so amazing at keeping track I’d be dead by now, with an even larger debt.
We have looked at several tools for home money, I know, I know just use a spreadsheet or Google Doc – #supercoolwife has run a spreadsheet for years.
I, of course, knew there had to be an app and not only did I find an app – I found an app with a podcast too!
YNAB is a web and mobile app where you can track spending and income and outcome. The trick is to enter what you have just spend the minute you spend it and everything is reconciled across platforms so you know where you are.
I am happy we started this after I gave up sugar, bread, caffeine and committed to the bullet proof diet – I would have show spending at my local Sainsburys ‘lunch’ in that would have made me really want to kill myself.
So that brings me to here. Monday 18th May 2015.
My ‘dance card is full’ for the next six months and I have declared ‘maintenance mode’ and and an in-house ‘sprint’ – I am sticking with my big two projects I am working on this blog to get it to pay for itself and then to make money (as in make a profit) in the next six months.
One of my recent exercises was going through how I work and where I totally spunk time and where my best times are, I have been tracking my time and computer useage with Rescue Time since around 2010.
So like the horrific inconvenience of waking up at 05:30am and meditating and writing enables me to get a rock solid start to the day and loads of ideas and connections between projects emerge.
The reward is that I get to leave home with #babybernie and #supercoolwife and we can walk to the tube together – these are the magic moments.
Then I get to zoom to @90Mainyard or Rainmaker Loft and work in my ‘best times’ and then shoot back to pick #babybernie up and get to the park. Going to the park everyday is good for both of our souls and I am able to build a relationship that moves beyond ‘wake up’ ‘get dressed’ ‘we need to leave’ ‘brush you teeth’
Hanging out in the park with no agenda is amazing.
This was one of the most precious things when I was really down.
These days it is a gift.
I have never been comfortable with affiliate offers or joint ventures and flogging shit to my list. It feels creepy and I know it destroys trust and integrity.
I once emailed 300 people one by one to come a snake oil seminar thinking that I would make £1k no one came and I bet most people (quite rightly) thought I was a complete cu^t.
Am I really a successful blogger?
How you going to make money Mitchell?
Everyone always asks how I make money because I am successful blogger.
I think I am a successful blogger because I manage to hit publish on a regular basis now.
If you subscribe to RSS feeds you’ll see how few ‘top blogger people’ actually post on a regular basis.
I was shocked.
In fact I found it encouraging.
In terms of getting rich that is not happening, I am very stable now and more alert to where I waste time and haemorrhage money. Using YNAB and FreeAgent to track spending and tracking my time in Rescue time for over four years now has helped me close the gap between ‘Bernie fantasy world’ and ‘reality’
So I am going to work out how to track what this blog costs and how much it makes in the next six months.
In that Pat Flynn type way.
So many people ask anyway I am sure it will save me time and also I am sure it will help people, I probably would not have sent 300 emails to a shit course if I had known.
This blog is loaded with books I have read and apps I have used and events I LOVE and I am going to. it does not mean that every link you click will lead to a money thing and that is the only reason I have posted it.
I got Fancy Hands to copy all my books from my Audible to Amazon resellers into a I can quickly copy and paste them in.
Jon from Moondog added a link to this podcast page a few years ago and has since made £1500 of people finding and clicking the page.
The only thing I can’t add in here is my Uber link – I can’t even bring myself to add it in this post. I get a great kickback and we often use Uber when in other cities but it is not something I could wholeheartedly recommend as a company.
I am sure there is something else….. Stay tuned.
