Then I order a review copy of the book from the printer and ensure everything there is all right.  Meanwhile I will get to work on the ebook version of the book.  I technically have ‘prototype epub’ file at the moment, but it might be not be compatible with the ebook distributor I want to use.  So that might be another weekend of hard work redoing the formatting to make it all work. Then after that I’ve got to start to work on the executing the marketing plan.

So all in all, things are moving along nicely and I hopeful I will meet my publication date of Feb 28, 2011.  I’m also hoping to offer all of you, my readers, a special promotional offer on the book later this month.  So stay tuned and I will release details later this month.

Have a great weekend,

Tim

Impressive, but how does that help you?  Well in this short book, a mere 134 pages, Gary outlines how to utilize your natural talent and passion in order to grow just about any business or even a blog.  So regardless of what you are doing selling an actual product or just blogging about what you love he provides a clear cut method to get the most of your social media networks.  Including a few tips that I found myself taking notes on since while I like social media I suck at using it (just look at my twitter feed if you don’t believe me).

While some of the advice in the book might strike anyone who has been around the internet as obvious, for example, that social media has dwarfed some other traditional media methods to reach people.  He is still honest about running a business is a lot of work.  My favorite quote in the book is:

Many are probably just sick of the killer hours and inflexible schedules and demanding bosses often found in the corporate world and think entrepreneurship will somehow be less taxing.  I hate to disappoint, but if you’re looking for an easier time here, you’re barking up the wrong tree.

So should you read the book?  Well to be honest it really isn’t for everyone, especially if your business has little to no internet exposure. Yet if you do have a Twitter and Facebook account it might be worth reading to get a few ideas on how to use both of them more effectively.

PS: I want to thank Frank Wiginton for bringing this book to my attention a while back with one of his comments.

The genesis of the business came about after our first son was born 10 week premature.  While that in itself was a scary event we both had concerns about his development and wanted one of us to be home with him.  Since my wife was by far the most qualified out of the two of us (she has a degree in sociology focusing on children and family studies) it made sense for her to stay home.  Just one little problem: we couldn’t afford for her to stay at home and earn nothing at the time.

So my wife came up with the idea of running a daycare to earn some money, not lots of money.  So while she isn’t making money hand over fist or anything, we have enjoyed numerous other benefits from the business:

• Our own kids aren’t in care.  Which was the primary goal of the business and now just something that as a family we feel is important and not to mention is a huge cost savings to the house of about $800/month on an after tax basis.
• My wife can be picky about clients.  Since she offers a high demand service she can pick people that she will like to work for, which makes her life way less stressful in the long run.
• Our kids genuinely enjoy the other kids.  Since my wife is picky about clients, our boys end up with kids the actually like playing with and they tend to form strong friendships.  The highest compliment my wife receives is when the parents show up the child is whining “But I don’t want to go home.”
• Grant money.  My wife may not make a killing on daycare fees, but she is well supported by grants from the provincial government since she is licensed (over $3000 in 2010).  So as such she is continuing to build a better and better experience for the kids and she continues to attend training to get better at her job.  As such her program more recently is starting to edge into looking more like a pre-K program than just generic child care.
• My wife doesn’t have to work full time.  This is partly a function of client demands, but often my wife does seek to keep a few days a month with just our own kids.  Since she tries to have this line up with my Friday’s off we can often book appointments and do errands on Friday and leave our ‘real’ weekend free to do more fun things.

In the end the business is perfect for our family.  Yes, my wife could likely be making more money elsewhere, but in this case that isn’t the primary goal.  So don’t feel bad if your small business isn’t a gold mine, there are other goals that you should keep in mind that might just end up being what you need.  So do you run a small business that has other goals than money?  Or if not, what goals would you setup if you started a business beyond money?

Despite any ideas to the contrary the publishing business is just a bureaucratic as any other.  In one particular case I have to fill out a form to get access to an electronic database to fill out more forms.  Funny, eh? On the business end of things all this paper work also means that I’m going to be seeing a lot of money leaving the bank account over the next few weeks as there seems to be fees for just about anything.  For example, do you have any idea how expensive it can be to get the reprint rights for just one data table? Yikes! Yet for a change of pace it is nice to be filling out paper work instead of just banging my head again my manuscript.

I recall reading once a piece of advice on writing that said “Books aren’t completed, they are set free.”  Which nicely summarizes my difficulties with the book.  I keep worrying about what to include and what to exclude as at one point earlier in the process I had about 30 draft chapters which was excessive so I cut back to 20 and merge some of the contents and dropped the rest.  I could have easy kept refining the book for another week or two, but decided it was time to set it free and get the editing done.

Yet despite all of these things I still like this little business of mine.  It’s a pain in the ass some days, but I still manage to find parts of it that I like even on the bad days.

So if you have ever had a small business what did you like best about it and what did you hate the most?  For me I’ve noticed I like the writing, but hate doing the accounting stuff.

I will speculate that writing on living better on less is easier.  There is a large body of tips, tricks, books and theory developed on living frugally.  Meanwhile many people just don’t have any experience of their own to speak of on earning more money.  After all the concept of working even more strikes people as silly since when you are looking at early retirement you typically have some dislike of your current job.

Yet for a good lot of people earning more offers three potential benefits that are often overlooked:

1. You can expand your skill set and learn something new and interesting to you while earning money.
2. You expand your income base so you will be at less of a risk from a job loss.
3. You might actually do so well at earning more you can be ‘free’ of the job you dislike earlier than you predicted.

So earning more can be a good ground to test out income producing hobbies or even earn extra money to take some extra trips, dinners out or buy some electronics (what ever turns your crank).  The point of the matter is earning more can offer you several different benefits that could out weigh you initial reluctance to ‘working’ more.

Now this is where earning more divides itself into two main camps of thought: 1) you can just pick up a second job with flexible hours or 2) you can start a small business.  The first method is by far the more common when you speak of earning more.  Most people don’t go looking to start a small business since they fear the amount of work involved and putting their own money at risk.  Yet what is over looked in that fear is the potential to earn significantly more after all the tax system is designed for business and investors.  After all where else can you take money you have earn, pay no tax on it and turn it around and expand your business and the government is ok with that.

Yet small business is really a very flexible thing that can encompass most activities that you can do to earn money and many of them can be done with minimal investment of your own money.  Often people just fall into a small business idea because it is something they like to do and they happen to be good at it.  Also I run into a misconception that people have to expand a business, which strictly speaking isn’t true.  You can choose to say no to new customers and clients and keep your business small if you want.

I know in my own experience so far with this blog is I’ve fell into some things I was never really planning on doing when I started writing it.  I never really planned to self publish a book.  That idea developed when I realized that I was never really going to find the book I wanted on early retirement.  I was going to have to write it myself and I came to realize that it would likely have limited appeal to a traditional publishing company.  I certainly didn’t plan to get into freelance writing at this point in my life, but when the opportunity came up I decided to take it.  Yet both in the end I hope will result in earning more in the long run.

So what is your reason for not trying to earn more?  Or if you do earn more could you please share what you do?

Self publishing comes in basically two major forms: hire a company to be your publisher or become your own publishing company.  Neither way is wrong, it’s basically a matter of how much control do you want and how much profit are you willing to give up.

The first method of hiring a company to be your publisher is the most simple.  You can create an account at a company like Lulu.com which will then outright just print your book if it is just for you. Or depending on what you are willing to pay they will contract out editing work, cover design and even assign it an ISBN from their inventory to make it a ‘real book’.  If you want to sell the book at a physical store you are going to need an ISBN. Lulu can even do order fulfillment and shipping for you for your customers.  It all depends on what you are willing to pay for the service upfront and how much of your profit margin you are willing to give up.  Also it is important to note they will be the publisher, not you.

The second method of creating your own publishing company is much more involved but gives you complete control of the end product and costs, but its a lot more work. You will need to get a company name, register to get your own ISBN number, submit the data to get your CIP information, hire your own editor and contract out cover design.  Then get printer quotes and still decide on your distribution model.  Which can be either let the printer handle it for a fee or have them ship a few hundred books to your house and you can ship out each order.  The advantage in the second model is you are the publisher so you get to keep more of the money from each sale which makes your break even point a lot easier to achieve.  It’s also useful if you plan to publish more than one title since you can fix your mistakes from the first time.

Now complicating the mix is you can also have your book in an ebook edition.  Which basically consists of getting the file  in the correct format and selling it electronically.  That isn’t even an easy process since you need to decide how much security your want on the file and who you want to distribute it through.

Yet regardless of which method you choose or even if you use a regular publisher, the majority of the marketing work is going to be done by you the author.  You have a product and you are expected to sell it.  This is where I think most authors get uncomfortable.  We write things, we often don’t consider that some marketing is going to be required to sell it.  Since unless your a top tier author at a major publishing firm you are going to have to do the majority of the work.

So my advice more than anything else when you are considering self publishing is: can I sell my book?  If you can’t, don’t bother you will just lose money at it.  If you can, get writing and start pulling books from the library to learn more about publishing to choose the right model for you.

Michelle’s story is a good example of what not to do.  She started freelance writing with no plan, no contacts and no savings.  With a lot of mistakes she has eventually made it work, yet to spare us the same pain she offers lots of practical advice on what do do when you want a life outside of the standard cubical job.  Given that I’m running a side business now and just got a more flexible work arrangement I’ve found lots of useful tips to help make things run smoother like batch your admin tasks (filing and inputting expenses) weekly to avoid having them build up. Or updating your resume frequently if you do a lot of writing work.

Yet perhaps the most useful section I found in the book was: how do you figure out what you love to do?  Here she offers some advise on feeling out new career options without leaving your job.  Her suggestions include doing information interviews with people in the field, take classes on the field, do some research with books or even volunteer in it.  Explore you options to find out what going to actually make you excited about work.

Michelle also provides some solid advice to anyone on writing or any self employment: there will be crappy days.  Like it or not it happens in all jobs, so suck it up and keep moving forward.  Just because you are the boss doesn’t mean you get to slack off all the time, so set up some regular working time and get it done.

So if you find this one at your library and you are thinking about shifting jobs, going part-time or even looking at a side business you will want to give this book a read.  You will very likely laugh out loud a few times and learn a thing or two while reading it.

As such we tend to not think with in terms of all the hats we have to wear when you run a blog including:

• Editor: Guess what folks, editors at major newspapers don’t spend their time fixing a lot of other peoples crappy writing.  They fix the obvious, cut the any word that isn’t required and send it back for a re-write if certain parts don’t make sense or it wasn’t what you were looking for.  The writer is SUPPOSE to fix it and then send it back.  Unfortunately, I suspect many bloggers are way too nice about rejecting crappy guest posts and end up doing too much re-writing themselves.  That isn’t your job as an editor so stop doing it and hit the reply button instead.
• Marketer: You can have the greatest blog in the world and no traffic.  You have to get out there and strike up some interest in your blog.  Submit to carnivals, comment on other blogs, do guest posts for other blogs and be helpful to others in forums.  All of those can help to drive traffic to your blog without paying a cent in ads.
• Sales: Want some income on your blog?  Then don’t just stop with Adsense you need to consider affiliate programs, paid link ads and perhaps launching your own product like an ebook/book, software or something else that people will buy.  Income from a blog to be useful has to come from many sources.
• IT: I recently had my hosting company’s tech support try to tell me that they weren’t hosting my blog and that some other company was doing it.  Needless to say I freaked out and then dug into it.  Guess what? They were wrong and I had to figure that out what the hell was up.  Like it or not you need to know a few basic items on how websites work and then have a phone number or two of friends you can call in when you get in over your head.  You are the Help Desk like it or not.
• Accountant: Do you need a GST/PST/HST vendor account?  Can you write off your hosting costs if you don’t keep a separate account for your blog income?  When did you get your last Adsense cheque?  If you don’t know the answers to those questions, then you need to find out.
• Writer: Then last, but not least, all bloggers are writers.  We often start off doing just that role and forget we need to expand out into the other ones.  Great blogs at their heart have good writers, but what makes a blog really great is how well you wear those other hats.

Now if you aren’t good at a particular role it’s ok to get help.  Pick other people’s brains or even hire out sections of work.  I know my weak points are IT and marketer.  I’ve have to beg for help once and while from others with IT and I know I don’t do enough marketing work.  I’m just starting to get better at the editor role with Robert and Dave doing regular guest posts.

So if you blog, what hats do you need to get better at wearing? If you don’t blog, which of these hats do you wear in your job? Any tips for the novices out there?

What happened to suddenly get back to this? Well  it stuck me that if I was planning on writing/publishing work when I leave my day job, why wait to start building up the business?  I’m “semi-retired” from the day job anyway with my recent drop to 80% time, perhaps my long term goal shouldn’t be just a set amount of investment income per year, but rather the combination of investment and business income that exceeds my spending per year.  How this would work? I don’t know yet, but I’m rolling the idea around my head.

The end result is a new focus for my energies on building my business up via several different avenues:

1. Build a better blog
2. Self publish a book
3. Freelance writing

All of which will take some time and effort, but it will be worth it to grow my little business into something.  I’m not convinced I’ll make much money at the venue, but I think breaking even is a reasonable goal for the first year.  I’ll keep you all posted with its development with the odd update post on how I’m doing and the pitfall I find myself in.

For example, if you earned $80,000 a year and did an extra half an hour of work a day over a year(~ 122.5 hours)  to get that top rank.  A one percent raise would be an extra $800, while two percent would be $1600.  That works out to $6.53 to $13.06/hour of extra work.  Granted that doesn’t take into consideration any improvement in pension benefits, but even if you assume a very generous 20% bonus that still works out to $7.83 to $15.67/hour well below $40/hour the person is making on their base salary.

So overall there isn’t much motivation to go the extra mile at my day job.  What this did inspire me to think about was where then would you put your extra mile to get the most bang for the time put in?  This then lead me to wonder a bit more about my long term goal to do more writing when I pull leave my day job around my 45th birthday.  Why should I wait to work on building that business up?  Doing it now would likely pay better than the extra effort at my day job and now that I’m working 80% time I have the time to consider doing something like that.

Perhaps the solution to leaving your day job isn’t just having enough investment income that you don’t need to work, but rather having enough income from other sources that you don’t need the day job.  If you like working on something else that provides a stable income why shouldn’t you consider it as part of your plan going forward?  Granted in my case, income from freelance writing and/or self publishing isn’t all that regular but if you build up a business to the point where you are getting fairly regular income over the course of two years you might be able to count on a portion of it.

That way over the long haul you are basically working yourself towards a full blown semi-retired situation where yes you are working, but on something you love.  The rest of your income then would come from investments.  Of course there are risks to a plan like this, but frankly so is expecting you to keep your current job for income.  Overall I feel having income from investments and self employment could very well be less risky than full employment with a company over the long run.

So would you try to work yourself into a semi-retired scenario or are you too attached to the idea of full blown early retirement?  Myself, I’m not really sure, but I’m now thinking about it.