Well this is really likely to be a TL;DR but I will split it into two parts and also give cliffs if you cannot be bothered to read the full update
Cliffs of the past few weeks are
1) I have spread myself way too thin!!
2) We are now a standard 2.4 kids family with an extra addition
3) I am a clothes bank for a couple of local schools which means we buy clothes for the Slovak shop at £1 per kilo and export or give the unusable stuff to charity
4) I am still walking the streets for my leaflet firm
5) Running 3 offices is not easy, especially when we are about to launch a really edgy promotion
6) Petra is giving something back to families that I am not sure I could ever do!!
7) Hypnotherapy for me
Seafront Venture
9) 10 years of property developing ahead.....
A couple of months ago I realised I was spreading myself really really thin and something had to give. That something was Blonde and having been around here for about 4 years I have seen many people come and go as I am sure those have with much longer memberships than my goodself, so for the first time since I started posting and reading I had to stop trying to read every post (I am fortunate that my job means I can browse whilst being on the phone and working at the same time) and for days even didnt read at all then would have a quick catch up beofre going back to my self induced exile.
Instead of browsing whilst working I was using the time to write down other ideas or things I needed to do for the businesses etc etc as there just is not the time in the day to do everything I would like plus with having a young family it's impossible to work late every evening so at least 3 evenings per week I leave on time with the rest of my week looking like this
5.15am - Get up and ither try to do some exercise or reply to emails (some mornings the snooze button wins)
6.30 - The kids are awake so thats me and them before we all go down to breakfast as a family at 7.45am
8.10 - Off to work
6.45 - latest am back home and it's bath time before story time and I put Maxwell to sleep before getting back downstairs about 7.45pm.
8pm - bit of dinner and some time with Petra or some joint work related stuff and bed between 11 and midnight
Rinse repeat
As you can see spending loadsa time browsing just does not fit with that as a general day.
2.4 Kids and a new additionPetra is 32 next week and has never needed a car but with going to various kids groups now and all the businesses requiring her to be mobile we had to invest in a motor, surprisingly she has never owned a car before so it was a pretty big deal for her and we wanted something to last a good 5 years or until we decided to change again plus with various members of her family coming here for the summer and other times of the year we needed a 7 seater to enable us all to go out for the day so we strapped ourselves up with a bit of finance bought a decent spec late 2012 S-max
Click to see full-size image. |
Here it is, nothing sexy really about it and it sometimes feels like a boat when you are in it but it will suit her well for now...
I on the other hand have never been a petrol head in the slightest and where we live parking is at a premium and I travel between 3 offices which are 5 miles apart so when this little beauty came available I decided I would try it out and changed from my sporty golf to a little mini which is like driving a rally car but gets around quicker than I did before and I love it except I look a bit ghey in it!!
SLOVAK SHOPAt the firm I work for we sponsor a few schools summer fetes and Christmas bazaars so I have a good relationship with the head teachers and fund raisers with the schools which reside in our fairly monied area so as we are always looking to purchase clothes for the shop as cheaply as we can asked them if they would like to be a clothes bank for me which they gladly accepted and sent letters out to the parents so last week I collected my first lot where we gift the school £1 per kilo of colthes which exceeds the standard 65p max in the area and means the school get to choose what they wish to spend the money on. We realise that we will get a load of clothes that are unsuitable for the shop so we then give to local charities over here on in Slovakia that we know will put them to good use and so far this is working well.
Petra still devotes about 3 hours per week to the sourcing of clothes from bott sales or free cycle, facebook etc so doesnt invest too much time and on average since opening the shop has cleared £1k profit per month which is great as a little sideline.
SWIFT LEAFLETSThis is my little baby and is so simple once you have droppers and an ability to sell to people/trades that should use the service as part of their brand awareness/marketing strategy in fact as scary as it is if I had a big enough kitty today to enable me to give up the estate agency work I 100% believe I could earn £45k plus with as little as 2 droppers and myself pounding the streets and the more people you get the less walking you would need to do personally and more management/new business developing but at the moment I am not in that position so some days off are based on the development of this business or some dropping myself as the firm I work for on the Agency side are my main contributor of leaflets/magazines and I just over sell to other firms as a bolt on. I am just about to go live with my website for this firm but wanted the infrastructure to be right before doing so even though we have been trading since April and have just come off the back of dropping of 6000 A4 magazines which as a one off drop the firm paid £720 for as it is a no brainer to outsource it rather than their staff lose time selling on the phones when we can do that and my dropper earnt £360 for 4 days work.
I dont even employ the droppers as they all come self employed and just invoice me for their work so the admin side is pretty straight forward, I am going to post in the lounge about GPS tracking but if anyone reads here first and knows a low cost GPS tracking kit that I can add to a badge or attach to the dropper so that my customers can see on a daily basis where the dropper is via an app or web browser please holla as that is a service I want to offer but have not looked into yet...
TBC