I am always stunned by the masses of men and women who are currently taking advantage of the world wide web to earn an income. I have a group of different ’digital’ businesses which in total earn me a better return than I was able to ever realise working for someone else. I still ‘work’ the same number of hours but I do not have get up early and travel any longer, so I am free of what was at least a total of three hours commuting. Financially I am better off and my quality of life has improved beyond my wildest dreams.

Minding a group of businesses is really stimulating, but I have had to figure out ways of being more effective and working smarter. To look after my clients and the financial elements of my businesses, I use a selection of tools – you should buy good small business management software to be effective and let you focus getting and look after customers. I have a Quickbooks login and a NetSuite login. I can operate these on demand services from any location and they make it really simple for me to observe all of the customer and financial activities as they happen.

With my NetSuite login I am able to track all of the action on my e-commerce systems and oversee the outcomes of the Google Adwords campaigns that send customers to my sales pages. I have finally said goodbye to Microsoft Office which substituted with a Google Account that comes with all of the tools I must have, like electronic mail, word processing and spreadsheets. I can operate these services from from my iPhone.

In terms of improving myself and broadening my skill set, I have discovered a huge volume of free and cheap tutorials which I have eagerly studied. One of the most key lessons I have learned is how to identify and farm out tedious work, to businesses who can do this quicker and cost effectively. I can accurately relate the time at which I surpassed my income level to my uncovering of the advantages of sub contracting some of the work draining most of my time, to me increasing my cashflow to beyond that of my income whilst in permanent employment.

In Part 2, I cover the detail about how I get things done.