by Jo | Aug 4, 2015 | BLOG |
I don’t tend to have many goals in my life, but one which has been on my list for many years now is to purchase a house. For the last 20 years or so I have lived in rented property in the UK and more recently France.
Well… as of today, Tuesday 4th August 2015, I am now the very proud owner of my own home… and this is what it looks like!
When I moved to France in 2011, I honestly thought it would be a long while before I managed to buy my own property, but with business going very well, the cheap house prices and the huge help from Hero at Immobilier Maison Rurales, it’s only taken me just shy of 4 years! It’s been hard work, my own bank turned me down twice for a mortgage as they see self employed people as high risk… and trying to build my business up from nothing has been an up hill struggle occasionally.
But now that my one and only big goal has been achieved, what next?
Well I’ve not really thought about it to be honest, I’ve had other things on my mind, like getting the Internet up and running in my new house so I can continue to work… and building a fence to keep the dog from escaping. But I think once I am nicely settled, I’ll be coming up with some new life goals and see what I can achieve in the next 4 years.
I do have some business news (hopefully) in October, about my impending name change and some new packages I will let loose on the world… so keep dropping by, and if you’d like more regular updates, then do sign up to my newsletter.
And while we’re talking about goals, what are your big life goals and have you achieved them yet?
by Jo | Jan 31, 2013 | BLOG |
The last day of January, how did 31 days pass so quickly? It seems like only yesterday that it was 1 January and everyone was talking about goals for 2013.
So, how is everyone getting on with their 2013 goals? I for one have made some progress, but not as much as I would have liked.
This month I have launched my Format your own eBook Template which so far has been selling well. It wasn’t something I had even added to my new products/services list for 2013, it was one of those ideas that spring into your head randomly, and I was very happy it did. I’ve given it an introductory price until my eCourse starts, which will hopefully be in the next couple of weeks.
Which leads me onto another of my goals, working on my business on Friday’s. I try not to do any client work on a Friday, although I have been answering emails if they need a quick response. I do need to communicate with my clients that Friday is a non-working day. So over the last few Friday’s of January I have mainly been working on the eCourse, which I have decided will be free. As well as the eCourse I have been doing things like invoicing, filing and admin for myself, rather than others. It’s nice to have one day per week to concentrate on my things, and not having to squeeze everything into an hour here and there during the week.
Learning new things has also been top of my agenda for some time now, so I have purchased a great eBook about formatting in html/css. I want to be able to design eBooks rather than just formatting them, so I am working my way through this for about an hour each day. Not only will it boost my skill level, it should hopefully put me in a different market where I can earn more for the work I am doing and give my author clients more choice about how they want their eBook to look – I have already learnt how to include audio and video into an eBook!
You may remember in my blog post at the beginning of January, Incredible Goal Setting for 2013 that I have been using Leonie Dawson’s great workbooks. Well I haven’t forgotten about them just yet, and have picked them up numerous times to check that I am headed in the right direction. Tomorrow, as it’s the 1 February I have set aside some time to go through them and write out my calendar for February. The written income goal each month is great, I hit January’s, and really hope that I’ll hit the increase I will be adding to February’s. Just by writing it down doesn’t work though, there are steps you have to take to make it happen…
January wasn’t an easy month, and I am sure for a lot of people January is a real struggle. What with Christmas, and then a 5 week month! With a trip to the vet last week (Hatchi was suspected of eating rat poison) and other expenses through the month, it’s not been easy, but I have made it and the rent will be paid tomorrow… I have a roof over my head for another month! 🙂
One of the things I didn’t manage in January was completing the blog challenge, I found it difficult to come up with blog posts for every day of the month, and also the time needed which took me away from earning that rent money! I have now set-up a new blogging schedule, which I WILL stick to… I will be posting to this blog on a Thursday, and on Monday’s I will be posting to my eBook formatting blog.
I hope the first month of 2013 has been kind to you, see you all in February.
by Jo | Jan 5, 2013 | #blogboost, BLOG |
Having recently moved to France at the beginning of 2012 I wasn’t really in a position to sit down and take stock of how my business performed in 2011, it was only 4 months old. That’s why looking back I feel as though I worked through 2012 in a bit of a haze, I had lots of ideas, but they were in my head and I very rarely wrote anything down. I had things I wanted to work on, I was jumping from one thing to another, not finishing things I had started. Obviously client work was my priority so my own business plans went down the drain.
Then…
Towards the end of 2012 I started to realise that I couldn’t spend another year doing what I had been doing. I needed to build my business rather than just letting it move along as it did in 2012, in a bit of a haze. So during those last few months of 2012 I made a conscious effort to start writing all my ideas and plans down. I even started allocating 1 hour per day to my business, as I mentioned in this blog post here, How You Can Get Those Projects Off The Ground and Finished.
A few months ago I attended a webinar with Alicia Rittenhouse via The Virtual Assistant Forums and she mentioned that she took 1 whole day a week to work on her business, not just new ideas, but things like invoicing and her own admin needs. I thought this was a great idea and decided that I would put this into practice in 2013. In fact I am writing this blog post on my new business day today!
As well as getting some great advice from Ali I also discovered Leonie Dawson back in November. I don’t normally ‘get‘ spiritual people, I’m not religious nor spiritual so to find Leonie and actually ‘get‘ some of what she says is brilliant for me. I quickly decided to purchase her 2013 Create Your Incredible Year Workbook and Planner for Life and Business, they are such great value (although very colourful so make sure you have lots of ink in your printer!). Leonie is a very creative person and she designed and created all the workbook and planner herself, it really is lovely.
Over the last few weeks I have been completing my workbooks and planners. To start with you have to take stock of the previous year, and then go on to make your new goals and dreams for this year. It’s a great way of getting everything down in writing, and the colours and drawings just make you want to go back to it time and again. Along with the workbooks there are calendars to go with each, a Life and Business version. I’ve already completed January (see image on the right) and now have a clear plan for what I need to achieve this month.
Last night I sat down to complete my Life workbook and calendar and actually found it more difficult to complete. One of the sections is 100 things you want to do in 2013 – I got to about 40, I think it just shows I need to get my life/work balance back!
I haven’t fully completed either workbook, as I want to go back to each week and reflect on what I have written, change or add new things to it when I can. Just opening up the calendar for January makes me feel motivated for the coming year.
As well as setting out my goals for the coming year, the workbooks have given me the inspiration for some more blog posts for the Ultimate Blog Challenge. I’ll be sharing some of my inspiration with you over the coming weeks.
Do let me know if you purchase the workbooks, or if you’ve used them before (this is the third year Leonie has produced them).
