It never ceases to amaze me how little thought people give to the safety of the data on their computer. They’ll continue hoarding personal files and information on it with no thought given to data backups, anti-virus or firewall software. For months (or even years) they use their computer always assuming that viruses, spyware, hacks and hard drive crashes happen to other people – most of it is just hype to sell software and external hard drives right?

Wrong.

It’s always the same. The same people who assume “It can never happen to me” are the exact people who get caught with their drawers down. One recent example is of a friend I chatted with on MSN one night recently. A few minutes later her MSN sends me a link with a virus in it. Luckily enough my anti-virus software caught it. Sadly for her that virus had been sent to all her MSN contacts and everyone in her Outlook address book. She’d been using a free anti-virus package which simply hadn’t been protecting her PC properly – something is free for a reason; usually because it’s not very good.

She then said “I’d die if I lost all my college work on this laptop”. So I asked “So you’ve got all your files backed up right?”. Her reply? Go on guess what she replied? “No I don’t have them backed up”.

DOH!!

This is an intelligent young woman training to become a teacher. Her laptop was expensive and her school work is priceless (she could never have replaced it) yet she’ll use a free anti-virus tool and no backup system! Does that make sense to you? It certainly doesn’t to me.

She was lucky – the virus didn’t destroy any data so she won’t have to drop out of college. Luck was on her side this time and the fact that the following day she went and invested in Norton Antivirus on my recommendation. She also got herself signed up Mozy Online Backup and invested in a USB memory key to store her data on.

She had to spend some cash yes but now her lifes work is protected.

You’re either protecting your computer data or you’re not. Period.

It’s funny just how often time changes our perception of things. This only just popped into my head the other day when I was watching a “favorite” old movie that I’d bought from Amazon; a college frat comedy. This movie is at least 20 years old and I had fond memories of watching it and falling over laughing so as a minor treat to myself I decided to buy it online. Oh the movie is called KingFrat by the way.

After 30 minutes I turned the movie off. It was truly and utterly awful. The worst kind of crap you could imagine. I think I managed one small giggle in all that time. I was so disappointed. What happened to the movie I loved when I was younger?

Time has colored my memories of this movie. I made it funnier in my head than it ever was in real life. Seeing it again kinda woke me up to the reality that time does change us and how we see and feel about things. There are things which are timeless (in movie terms we can say Star Wars for example) and other things date in our lives very quickly.

We’re told that time is a great healer and a great destroyer. Both are equally true. In this case time neither healed nor destroyed for me – it simply showed me that what was once important and precious to us can change; sometimes a lot sooner than we think.

What has time changed in your life?

The goal of the vast majority of businesses is to generate revenue. Cash. Money. Income. Big business or small business – if you’re not generating money or revenue of some kind then you’re outta business.

For bigger businesses this isn’t something that’s focused on straight away. Indeed many businesses expect to simply break even for their first or second year if they’re lucky. After that they set out plans for generating actual profits.

For somebody who’s working from a home office running at a loss or simply breaking even isn’t enough. The business needs to be generating some profit above operating costs otherwise you’re operating in debt – which is just plain stupid. Oh I’ve done it. Operated in debt that is. Twice in my life – never, ever again. Seriously it’s a dumb thing to do.

What I want to focus on here though is profit not debt. Profit and something that hit me the other day. For those of you who don’t know I run a web development business which has very low overheads (which I love). This has been generating a healthy profit for a while and I’ve been enjoying the entire experience of being financially stable (and a bit more than that for the first time in many years if truth be told.

So all along I’ve been enjoying the profits from the business but I lost sight of something. I haven’t been reinvesting in my own business as much as I should be. The philosophy of “Hey it’s running ok as it is” is where I’d become shortsighted. I’ve realized that for investing about 15% of my income from the business each month back into the business I can potentially double my net profits. What would this mean to me? It would put me in a six figure income bracket within 12 months (if not less).

DOH!

It took investment of time and money (blood, sweat and tears also of course) to get the business up and running. I forgot to reinvest in the business now as much as I did then. Over the 14 days I’ve been reinvesting in the business and am already seeing the results of this. Oh and a client came back and bought three websites from me for several thousand so that was nice too

The point I’m making is this. You have to invest in your life, your relationships, your health and your business if you expect any return from them. It’s that simple.

Hope this sparks something in the grey matter of some of you reading this!

Now that 2008 has begun and we’re into the first week of it we need to look at how you can be more successful in the coming year. If you look back at 2007 pick out one or two things that you didn’t achieve and ask yourself why that happened?

The first thing that will come to mind you will see as a “reason”.

Here’s the problem – more often than not it’s an excuse. Usually based on fear. Fear of failure. For some it’s a fear of success. Either way it’s an excuse.

Don’t believe me?

Ok that’s cool but try this. Keep asking yourself why you didn’t achieve that goal. When you come up with your next “reason” then ask the question “Why?” again. Keep using the question “Why?” until you get to the real “reason” for you not reaching your goal. 99% of the time it’s because you made an excuse not to. It’s only when you truly question yourself that you’ll see that.

Example. I used to do Tae Kwan Do years and years ago. I was pretty good at it too. One night I got jumped by 3 guys and after 15 minutes of fighting they eventually took me down. It hurt my confidence A LOT. For years I wanted to get back into martial arts and regain that confidence I’d lost that night. I put it off for so many years that in the end I figured at 36 I’d simply be too old to go back training. I finally got over that excuse and went back training 2 months ago and have been loving every minute of it – bruised ribs and battered knee included.

My reason was that I was too old. Horse shit! There are guys there at leat 5 years older than me. My reason was an excuse. My excuse was based on fear of failure or not being able to keep up. In the end I wanted it badly enough to get over my excuses and took the risk of trying again. I’m glad I did. I’ve exorcised an old ghost by doing it.

Personally I have no time for reasons. Sure I come up with “reasons” for things I haven’t done. The honest truth is that 95% of those reasons are just excuses in disguise. “I’m tired”, “I have more important stuff to do”, “I’ll get that done tomorrow”. My reality is that I see these as excuses now and work to get past them immediately.

You’ll find a lot of people make these excuses for not having time or being tired while they’re:

1. Sitting at a bar feeling sorry for themselves!

2. Sitting in front of the TV feeling lazy!

3. Playing computer games because they’re bored!

How can you possibly argue that you don’t have time or resources while you’re sittin on your ass effectively doing nothing?

Is it okay to have downtime or offdays? Of course. You’re only human and we all have bad days when we simply can’t gather the mental or physical energy to work. Sometimes it might even be a week or so when that happens. It happens to me about twice a year. I snap the hell out of it as soon as I can though because I know that I’m working with a commodity that I can’t replace – time.

Be honest about your reasons. Most of them are excuses and you know it.

Actually if you found yourself getting angry or upset reading this then you’ve definitely been making a lot of excuses in your life. I have. You have. We all have. Stop doing it.

Well 2008 has arrived and another year begins. It’s meant to be a time for making resolutions and making the most of the year that is ahead of us.

Stop and ask yourself what achievements you have from 2007. Were these the ones you set out to achieve? If not then what stopped you from achieving your goals and dreams?

Today was my time for looking back on my year and what I’d achieved, or not for that matter. My personal fitness goals fell short but I did get back into martial arts (Jiu Jitsu to be specific – great for the body and soul) but my financial goals were nailed right on the head in the last 90 days of 2007. I’m very proud of that.

I had to stop patting myself on the back and remind myself of something – Why did I get into this business? What was my original dream? Sure it was financial success but it was also to help out those less fortunate than me. But more importantly to be able to assist members of my family when they needed help and could rely on me. I’m a middle child by the way and this is typical behaviour of a middle child

There’s a lot to be gotten from giving. I took in a stray dog during Christmas (I refuse to call it THE Holidays – what a pile of overly PC crap!) until I found his owner, I actively gave money to charities and homeless/poor people during the Christmas period also. The dog was safe and I got several great smiles from people I gave some cash to.

But why is this just a once a year thing? Why am I not actively giving all year round? I don’t need to donate thousands of dollars to be giving. Many charities only ask for a few dollars here and there – $5 a month etc. So for $50 a month I could potentially donate to 10 charities. For $100 I could donate to 20! $100 doesn’t buy much anymore. I truly believe I’ll receive more in positive energy from donating that $100 than just spending it on myself.

So I’m realigning some of my goals for 2008. Yes financial and personal success still figure at the top of the list. The bigger goal is to help others in as many ways as I can. Why? Because that’s why I setup this business in the first place. The money is simply the means to achieve the goal. The goal was always more important and I lost sight of that this year for a while.

Happy New Year 2008. I hope it makes all your dreams come true. If possible try to make somebody elses dream come true also – you’ll feel great for it.