Sean didn’t accomplish a damn thing towards meeting his goal this week!

Feel free to berate him…

[What is this all about?]

Sean didn’t accomplish a damn thing towards meeting his goal this week!

Feel free to berate him…

[What is this all about?]

Not that it is part of the goal other than this weeks distraction from it, but finalizing the pre-vacation to-do list and beginning to collect what we need was front and center last week. 10+ days wandering east to Iowa for a few, back through South Dakota & Nebraska, and quite a while wandering in the mountain country of Colorado before returning home will make for plenty of time to decompress. Just me traveling would involve a duffel bag containing few changes of clothes, a fully loaded iPod, a camera, my wallet, and maybe a book or two. But traveling with the wife and son? All of a sudden the back of the Jeep’ll be loaded down, I imagine…

But I did manage to get a few more things done this week despite that distraction:

• Finished up all my pre-blast work on the remainder of the 80 landing pages from last week, and started loading the keyword info into my handy dandy PPC campaign builder. I’ll finish that up sometime in the next day or two, and have everything chugging along before we leave on vacation this weekend.
• Set up a quick split test on an idea or three for my landing page templates.
• Spent a good chunk of my late night free time researching content for a couple Nanocontext sites. It definitely helps that I’m personally interested in the niches, so I find myself delving pretty deep into the topics. Should be a fun pair of sites to put together!
• Class. What can I say? It’s not a terrible class per se, but it definitely focuses too hard on the ol’ brick n’ mortar world than the direction I’m interested in working towards. Focusing right now on lots of complications that simply don’t matter, or often even exist, in a virtual world business. So I have a hard time putting in a ton of effort. A trait every entrepreneur needs is the ability to decide what needs your attention and what can do without it, and a big part of this week’s assignments found me in the latter camp…

As I’ll be who know where, next week will likely see this update MIA. Have a great one everyone!

[What is this all about?]

Took it a little easier than normal last week, spending quite a lot of my free time celebrating our independence by joining my son in blowing some things up and setting other things ablaze. The 4th definitely brings out the inner child in me! Nevertheless, I did manage to get some work done:

• Started doing what I do with the reports my outsourcer returned to me, and managed to set up 45 landing pages. The other 35 will be done this week, and then I will work to blast away at ‘em.
• Working ahead on my online class before we take off for vacation in a couple weeks. I still will probably have to do a little work on the road, but hoping I’ll be able to finish it up while riding through a bit of emptiness. If it takes much more than that, it just ain’t getting done, I’m on vacation. I’m at that point in life that what kind of grade I get in class really matters all that much anyway…
• Did some work building out a couple long neglected domains. I’ve been playing around with a trial of Market Samurai and the Nanocontext concept, and realized I have a couple domains with some pretty substantial Adsense potential.

Oh, and for a great bit of thought on independence, check out the inimitable Johnny B. Truant’s latest post! Hell, check out all of Johnny’s stuff — makes for some inspirational if irreverent reads. My favorite type…

[What is this all about?]

Another Monday arrives, which means another accounting of my time has come due. So, what have I managed to accomplish this week?

• Didn’t get done with ‘em by Wednesday as planned, but managed to get another 65 landing page blasts alive n’ kicking. Got distracted by a shiny metal thing — a lesson to not open your email when you have other things needing your attention — and so didn’t get them all finalized until Saturday.
• My outsourcer finally finished the eighty sales reports I expected, oh, four weeks ago. Lesson to take from this one: set a deadline. No big deal, really, as I have a ton on my plate anyway, but was beginning to worry the task would never get done. That said, the final product is always great from her, so going forward I’ll just make sure to have a tighter schedule in place. Plan to go through the reports over the next few days, and see what kind of progress I can make this week.
• Continue to plug away on my online class. The focus over the next few weeks appears to be writing up a business plan based around an actual idea we intend to implement. Decent idea, but far too in depth for how I work. Lots of focus on selling to business idea to investors or justifying to potential profit to lenders for my online endeavors. On of the main points of these mini businesses I am building is that they don’t require a heavy investment in capital. In my mind, if it take years or even months to see a positive return on the investment, my time is better spent exploring other ideas in my list.
• Set up the horseshoe set I received for Father’s Day, and spent a hot afternoon trying my luck. Let’s just say more practice is definitely in order…

Enjoy the 4th everyone, and try not to blow off too many fingers!

Ack, forgot about this, and this one got automagically let go with the ‘Feel Free to Berate Me’ message. But in reality, hey, I did get a few things done this week:

• A whole crapload of research on additional landing page topics. Spent a good chunk of this evening doing more work on them, but none are totally complete yet. Nevertheless, another 65 will by done by Wednesday!
• The online Entrepreneurship class I’m taking is eating up a chunk of time every night. Probably more than I need to spend on it. My experiences over these last couple years makes a lot of this early material almost laughable in its naivety, but I still sink too much time answering things the way I’m sure the professor want us to. The tendency of mine to perfect things before sending ‘em out sometimes drives me nuts! I mean really, what the hell, whatever grade I get in this class won’t change my life one iota…
• Continue working on my initial nanotext blog. Fun topic to me, so it doesn’t really feel much like work!

See, not a total waste…

[What is this all about?]

Ah, another early summer week, and continuing to progress towards my goal:

• My landing page build ‘n blast binge goes forward. Another fifteen are alive, and another forty or so are at least somewhere in the process of getting to that point. Because of these efforts, I believe the substantial slowdown I have seen during this time of the year in the past appears to have stalled. While I may not be gaining a bunch of ground compared to, say, January, holding pretty much steady during this time is a success as far as I’m concerned. Once things begin to ramp up again later this year, I should be in phenomenal shape…

• In years past, I have done a little to keep my mind sharp by taking a formal class or two. It’s been a couple years since the last one. Decided to pull the trigger on another one when the regional community college’s quarterly mailing arrived in the mail and signed up for an online class. Last week was the first week in my Intro to Entrepreneurship class. Seems a little odd to be taking an intro class in it as I’ve been running this entrepreneurial enterprise profitable for a couple years now (and at least marginally for a few years more). A few new insights will make it well worth the effort! Plus, not caring about the grade you get makes a class a helluva lot more interesting as well as fun. Wish I would have realized that the first time around, might have gotten a ton more from my college experience!
• More work tweaking my flavor of a nanocontext system when time permitted. Meaning not a ton, but I did work in a few interesting twists at least!

Oh, and don’t forget: your quarterly estimates are due in the mail, um, today… :/ While it sucks to write big checks to anyone — especially the gov’t — one also should remember that doing so just means you are doing well!

[What is this all about?]

Well, business wise, did my bit — another 20 landing pages created, advertising campaigns set up, blasts put out there live to the world, blah blah blah. So did make an entirely appropriate level of progress on that front. But it certainly wasn’t the big news of the week.

That particular seat was taken by my chance to welcome another soul to the world. My son and I decided, at almost the last minute, to accompany my wife on her trip down to KC for my sis’ baby shower. Thought it’d be good to go down, check out her & her hubby’s new place. And, of course, poke a little fun at her very pregnant state as I wouldn’t see her gigantic self (not really sis, if you happen to stumble on this… ) before her due date late this month.

Instead, sis decided to skip the baby shower altogether and just go ahead and have the baby the day after we arrive! Just a little early, but the new mommy & baby are doing just fine. Best of all, everyone arrived home yesterday.

And things like this, really, are the true kick in the ass.

Money. Work. Business. No doubt, all necessary things.

But having the opportunity to be there to greet a new life shortly after it make its grand appearance in this world puts those things in their right place, a few spots back.

Welcome to the world little Lea!

Again, my weekly KITA arrives a day late, but I was more interested in spending a little quality time outdoors with the family on an almost perfect warm & sunny spring afternoon versus throwing up a post on Memorial Day. I don’t know what it was like in your neck of the woods, but here in Nebraska, just about the entire weekend just begged for outdoor activities, and I was more than willing to oblige. The sorely-needing-a-mow yard once again reveals the fact that, indeed, our place is not an abandoned chunk of ground. The freshly tilled and planted garden has me dreaming of fresh fruits & veggies in the not too distant future. And the various heads on spikes lining the compound attests to the fact that a variety of animals sacrificed themselves to the culinary gods this weekend.

OK, maybe exaggerating just a little with the last one… That said, the physical world wasn’t the only place seeing some attention this week:

• Another 20 landing page blasts went from brainstorm to fully live. My little kaizen chart shows me finally catching up with — and passing — where I want to be towards my goal so far. Must say that I am pleased with how May ended.
• My outsourcer is well on her way to doing her thing with my second batch of reports, and expect to see the final results sometime this week. Which means another 80 landing pages will be hot on the heels of those twenty finished last week. Even during the summer online buying slowdown, I’m pleased with my recent additions. No reason to scale back my efforts now, that’s for sure!
• Still working through the nanocontext report, and working out codifying my own flavor of a system to implement it. I really love a well thought out system…

On to this week…

[What is this all about?]

Hmmm, somehow missed updating this post Monday, and no auto-posted harassment went out. Wonder what box I forgot to check? Ah well, shouldn’t have been harassed anyway, as I still managed to get a few things done again last week. Other than, well, this post…

• Lined up a big ol’ batch of reports for my outsourcer’s to deal with for her second project. Nothing too time intensive or anything, but I like to make it simple as possible for them to get to my work. Just means I get it back as quick, and as correct, as possible!
• Picking through a massive bonus report for Nanobloggers. It focuses around using an old monetization method you likely have heard of before, but in a much more thought out manner. Already have a site that is aching for this methodology, and am working on using it on that site as you read this. I’ll let ya’ know how it goes!
• Doing a fair bit of tweaking on my landing page campaigns thrown up over the last few weeks. Quite a few are seeing very little activity so far. Though really, all it takes is but a handful of clicks a day to make a truly successful landing page as long as it converts well. I also have a group of high activity campaigns in there, which always keeps me on my toes early on — a little exciting because they could be big winners, a little worrying because they may just be cash burners. Nevertheless, in the black with the latest group, so looking like it was definitely time/money well spent!