Desty Online -- Online and Offline Businesses, Online Marketing » Why?

Murphy’s Law in Full Effect

Desty — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 16:36:58 +0000

I generally try to create a post or article each day. Yesterday and today are so busy and stressful that not only was I not able to create a post yesterday, but it will be atleast tonight before I have something serious.

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Live Your Life!

Desty — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 19:53:41 +0000

Here in western Kentucky, its a hot 93 degrees, sun is shinning, birds are singing, and not a cloud in the sky!

It is such a wonderful weekend, I’ve put my articles on the back burner and am enjoying the wonderful weather with my wife and two sons! Fear not! I have four articles on tap and will publish them tonight and tomorrow.

An Update on Project: I, Blogger

A Second Installment of Project: I, Blogger and how Google makes the rules about you can and can’t do online.

Another Desty’s Gold Star Blog Article reviews

Last, but not least, what happens when your business partner is burned out and wants to quit.

Time to go back outside and play some T-Ball!

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What Do You Say About the Death of Chris Benoit?

Desty — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 14:21:02 +0000

I hate to disappoint, but today’s posting has nothing to do with online businesses, business, or blogging. I tried to write about the price you have to pay to be successful, got it halfway finished, but I just couldn’t concentrate, maybe another day. Instead, it’s about family and the topsie turvy world of professional wrestling.

For those who don’t know, World Wrestling Entertainment wrestler Chris Benoit along with his wife Nancy and 7-year-old son Daniel were found dead in their Atlanta GA suburb home. Last night while channel surfing, my wife and I went past the USA network. I knew that WWE was on that channel at that time, but hadn’t any real desire to watch; I noticed, as we surfed by, that the stands behind the commentators were empty. Remembering when Owen Hart died, I instantly thought something was wrong and we went back. We stayed and watched until they repeated the story, that Benoit and family were dead. We watched the rest of the evening, trying to get more information and to make sense of the whole thing. Maybe it was CO2 poisoning, a car crash, something, anything. It wasn’t until this morning that I found out that it was a double murder - suicide.

No matter how much I liked to watch Benoit, how much I respected his ability to entertain in the ring, I’m still very pissed off. Pardon my French. How in the world could someone be so screwed up to kill his wife and young son? I’m married with children and there is no way I can even get even close to even possibly entertaining the thought of thinking about such an atrocity. Drug, mental illness, I don’t know, but the act is so alien that I’m totally stunned. Hopefully new details will shed light on the events and maybe clear things up.

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The Perils of Owning a Growing Business

Desty — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 13:04:48 +0000

This is the second day in a row where, while writing today’s post, the general idea for my article was also used on another blog. This time, Problogger.net posted 7 Reflections on Scaling a Blog to a Sustainable Business. Darren talks about a fellow blogger, Wendy at eMoms At Home, writing about her blog growing faster and bigger than she can keep up with, and Darren gives her some suggestions on how to deal with it.

I can relate. Just last night as I was finishing up the dishes my wife oh so gently asked when our next event was. In our offline business, we search out and attend various county fairs, arts and craft fairs, etc. The summer is our go time of the year where the bulk of our business income is generated. I had to admit that I hadn’t taken the time to keep ahead of the pack in booking new events because I had been so wrapped up in getting this blog up and running. She then asked how our books were doing. You see, while she actually runs the operations of the business, I keep the books and set things up. I dusted off the books and discovered that I hadn’t recorded anything since about mid May, which times right along side when I started blogging. She didn’t have to say another word at that point.

As a person and as a businessman, I have two traits, for good or bad, that help me do what I do. First, I can multi-task pretty well, in that I can be working on task number one, stop in mid-stream, switch to task number two, go back to task one, start task three, back to task two, etc. Its funny, but I can compartmentalize fairly well. Also, when I am focusing on a task, I can focus my efforts to a laser sharp point, so much so that almost everything else fades to nothing. Its great to not have to worry about distractions, problem is that I can get so focused that I forget to go back to task one or task two. You guessed it, I had been so focused on the blog, learning about blogging, and creating networks that i had forgotten to go back to my offline businesses!

I’ve determined that I’m going to have to put a clamp down on my blogging activities. For the readers out there, you won’t notice a thing. I, on the other hand, will be limiting my research, my interactions, and postings to a set amount of time everyday, instead of watching the RSS feeds to new posts, checking stats, etc all day long.

There’s a lesson in all of this. Some people can run several businesses as long as they have great systems built around those businesses. Some people can run several businesses without business systems. Those who use systems to help manage their businesses find those businesses growing faster and larger than those without systems. Also, the use of those systems allow the growth to continue without the owner / manager being overwhelmed; when a business grows faster than the current system can withstand, simply expand the system either thru the hiring of more employees, outside contract help, or create a partnership with an existing business and farm the extra work out on a sub-contactor basis.

Develop your business system before you need it. Your system should be in place, if no where else than on paper, before its needed.

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What’s With All This Beer???

Desty — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 17:41:00 +0000

Everywhere I go, well, almost everywhere I go, I see people asking for donations on blogs in the form of ‘if you liked his post, buy me a beer.’ Too many people have their priorities out of wack! Have you seen the price of fuel these days? Hello???

So if you read an article of mine and you were entertained or learned something, if you would, please consider buying me a gallon of gas for my daily commutte. I drive 62 miles, round trip, per day, 5 days per week. Gas is around $3 per gallon here and I have to fill up every 4 days.

If you liked this post, please buy me a gallon of gas.

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Rough Weekend

Desty — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 17:55:00 +0000

I’ve been trying to stay on focus with my blog. Then I figured that since the blog is about my thoughts, interests, and family, I’d include this.

My wife woke up Saturday morning to an extreme pain in her stomach. I’m not talking a tummy ache. No, we’re talking “doubled over in pain” type of pain. So we rush her to the emergency room at the local hospital. We both are counting on that its a kidney stone. You see, we’ve gone through this before. With our first son, Michael, roughly 8 to 9 months after he was born, she developed a kidney stone. For you guys out there, my wife says that a kidney stone hurts one hundred times more than having a baby. There you go, for those fathers you worry about missing out on the birth of their child, have a kidney stone.

Anyway, I spend the next two and a half hours in the emergency room waiting area with two screaming boys. I love them to death, but Michael can undo his stroller belt and tried to run out the hospital door. I held him in my lap the next hour. Matthew (our 8 month old) was screaming because he was sleepy; while holding on to Michael, I was able to rock Matthew to sleep.

They finally let us back to see her. She had some pain meds, but was still in her head, so it wasn’t bad. They found 2 kidney stones! The doctor had mentioned that she could go home and come back on Tuesday to have them removed, or she could be admitted and stay until Tuesday. She didn’t want to stay, and I didn’t want her to. The plan was changed to trying to pump enough iv fluids in to flush the stones out.

I take the boys home to eat and for a nap. At 3:45, she calls saying the doctor is going to take the stones out in 30 minutes and I needed to get there and sign consent forms because she’s not in the right state of mind due to stronger pain meds. I get the boys up, change them, rush to the hospital, then wait an hour before they come to get her to surgery. We wait about 2 more hours in the surgery waiting room for the doctor to come in. Every thing’s fine, she can go home tonight. Get her some pain meds, and let her rest.

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Where Does the Time Go?

Desty — Wed, 30 May 2007 17:17:00 +0000

Putting pen to paper, I should have tons of time, but it doesn’t feel that way. I get up at 04:45 to shower, take out the trash, and head to work. Start work at 06:30 and leave around 3pm. I make it home around 4pm and visit with the wife and kids till around 4:30 when I start supper; I like to cook and am the better cook in the house! Normally finish dinner around 5:30-6pm, that’s when we normally crash and relax after a hard day’s work for me and being run ragged by the kids for my wife. It’s during this time I grab the boys and we play or watch a video. I feel bad that I have to spend so much time away at work; it feels like I’m missing them grow up sometimes. Our oldest goes to bed around 8pm. Once he’s in bed, we start straightening the apartment up. By 9pm we’re watching TV or I’m on the computer reading news, financial information, blogs, or researching for my blogs. By 10pm I’m in a race to get the youngest fed and asleep, get everything ready for work tomorrow, and finally my head hits the pillow at 11pm.

As I’m drifting off to sleep, I’m thinking about all the things I didn’t get to even touch: our offline business and putting it online, expanding that business and book more events, work on an invention that’s been running around in my head, work on my two books I’ve been planning in my head, take the picture and edit it for my blog header, on and on and on…

It feels like the Robert Frost poem,
“But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.”

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About Me

Desty — Tue, 22 May 2007 22:40:00 +0000

Hello, my name is Shawn and I’m addicted to money. Sounds like an AA meeting…

Sad to say, I’m willing to bet that over 90% of all Americans are addicted to money. Its not like its our fault. I mean seriously, you just can’t live without money. Wanna sleep in a nice warm bed? Takes money. Wanna eat? Again, money. Don’t like to run around naked? Yes, alot of you had better have some money, cause I don’t wanna see yer winkle out in the breeze!

Let me tell you where I’m coming from. I work in the transportation industry as a dispatcher; translation, you see those big semi-trucks on the road? Well I tell them where to go and what to do. I make a decent living. I’ve been married for what will be 5 years on June 1st this year to the love of my life. Jennifer has followed across states to be with me, so I figure I’d either marry her or start looking at those stalking laws. We have 2 darling little boys, Michael and Matthew, who are the focus of all our efforts. Seriously, I can’t see my life without them.

Jennifer and I determined, even before Michael was born, that she would stay at home to raise our children while I supported the family. That’s how both our parents did things, so we were set to do the same. Our main reason was that we didn’t want strangers raising our kids. Jennifer had worked as a teen in a daycare, and saw first hand how upset parents got when you told them little Billy took their 1st step, or called the daycare worker momma.

We get by ok, not nearly as well as we’d like though. We’ve been renting an appartment for 4 years now and its getting old. Buy a house you say? Two things stand in our way, debt and downpayment for the home loan. Between student loans and medical bills, we owe enough to buy a house.

Jennifer has been working on the “standard” work from home oppertunities, Avon, selling candles, etc, with little success. I’ve been researching investments, cash management, real estate, and businesses. Doing paper trading, I’ve done well in stocks following the advice of Warren Buffett; its very frustrating though when you know that you don’t have the cash to follow through.

We started our 1st business last July, an offline distributorship. We go to various different fairs and community events and sell food products. I expanded into selling on eBay in August. We are currently running five different businesses beween on and offline.

Being somewhat behind the pack on blogging, I’ve got two goals with this blog. First, I’m going to post about our daily lives and how we’re working towards getting out of debt and expanding our businesses. Second, I’d like to follow the models out there where others have used their blogs to generate income.

Why try to make so much money you ask? Simple, my boys. We all want better for our children than we had. I also want to be able to spend as much time as I want with them as their growing up, instead of having to rush to a job where I’m making someone else rich.

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