Small Sacrifice, Huge Gains

I was talking to my wife this afternoon (who supports this website 100%) about the great reactions the Christmas day post and my free tutorial have been getting. While I was rambling in self importance I actually came up with some relevant points.

New websites such as this one (2 months old today) need to work twice as hard as David Risley who is an established celebrity profile in this market place and as such his website reap the rewards. I am sure David would be the first to say that you have to work hard when you start out. I work as hard as I can without compromising too much on my family life.

• Time

When I work on this site I’ll admit I put in a lot of hours, but that’s the reason why I am flying up the ranks so quickly. You don’t have to do all your site content, promotion, emails etc in one 10 hour hit, break it up, especially if you are holding down a 9-5 job as well. When you get up in the morning before you go to work; have a shower then get dressed, put some coffee on and start making your breakfast, while you are waiting for your coffee to brew, switch your laptop or desktop on, grab your coffee or breakfast and eat, drink and do a little bit on your site, even if it’s just approve all the comments from the night before.

I could go on and on breaking your day down in order to save your time etc, but you get my point. By combining tasks and doing things a little faster you make more time to work on your site.

Additionally, I would really like to add, spend as much time as you possible can working on creating (good) content, making contacts and generally building your empire.

• Luxury

I write most of my content in coffee shops so that incorporates one of the luxuries in my life, but I do sacrifice most of the other little pleasures in order to build my site in the strongest possible way. Night’s out, new releases at the cinema, weekend breaks, snowboarding all on hold until I have achieved my goals.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying have no life and ditch everything. What I am saying is, by sacrificing some of my lifestyle I now have time to work on the site. I haven’t sacrificed any time with my child or my wife, for me they are everything, but lose the things you wouldn’t do if you couldn’t afford it.

If you think about your life right now, what you did today or in the past week, what could you have done without in order to build your empire?

• TV

Do you watch the latest movie, the latest episode of Flash Forward or the news religiously? How much work could you get done in 30 minutes or 2 hours? Does it really matter if you watch TV? If you use it as together time with your partner then use the time to work on your site with your laptop. I’ll leave the relationship politics to you, but it really does need to be done, sacrifice the little things to make the most of your dream.

• Sleep

I’m not including sleep to start talking about how you need to start living on caffeine never getting a full nights sleep, but if you go to bed 30 minutes later and get up 30 minutes earlier, another small sacrifice becomes a huge gain on your site. Your website is your business and you need to treat it as such. It may not be taking or making any money, but by treating it like a professional company, you are going to enjoy success a lot quicker and for longer if you work as hard as you can.

I said earlier I work as hard as I can without compromising too much on my family life, hopefully the above illustrates how you can stay committed to your family, but by working so hard you are sacrificing an hour here and there to ultimately enjoy even more time when it all starts to pay off.

This is how I approach this website, it also helps that I’m obsessed with the site and it’s readers.

photo credit: alpiniste

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Tagged as: huge gains, small sacrifice