I am always fascinated by the masses of people who are currently moving toward the web to earn an income. I run a number of diverse ’digital’ firms which as a group earn me much more cash than it was possible to ever realise by taking conventional employment. I still ‘work’ the same number of hours but I do not have go to an office any longer, which is an added bonus. So even though I am still working an eight hour day I have gained three more hours and I am making more money and all in all my quality of life has improved.

Minding a handful of firms is really stimulating, but I have had to explore and try methods of being more structured and refining my working practices. To look after my leads and prospects and the financial performance of my businesses, I use a group of state of the art on demand systems – you must have excellent small business management software to be efficient and let you focus getting and taking care of customers. I own a Quickbooks login and a NetSuite login. I can get to these services from from my home or when I am travelling and they enable me to oversee all of the customer and financial events as they happen.

From my NetSuite login I am able to track all of the transactions on my checkouts and monitor the impacts of my Google Adwords projects that drive visitors to my internet stores. I have got rid of Microsoft Office which substituted with a Google Account containing all of the tools I must have, with e-mail, word processing and spreadsheets. I can make use of these applications from just about any location.

I have revamped my skills, I have found a huge volume of free and amazing value for money content which I have diligently studied. One of the most significant lessons I have got to know is how to see and sub contract deadly tasks, to people who can do this quicker and cost effectively. I can precisely identify the moment at which I surpassed my income level to my realising of the profits of contracting out some of the projects consuming most of my time, to me increasing my earnings to above that of my income whilst in full time employment.

In Part 2, I go into detail about how I get things done.