Rat Race Escape Artist

Escape the Rat Race - Affiliate Marketing Revisited

Do you remember a while back we looked at affiliate marketing as a way to get you started on making some passive income?

Just a little refresher: affiliate marketing is when you take someone else's product that they have created and promote it to readers of your blog or contacts list. When someone buys, you're paid a set percentage of the sale (and sometimes any subsequent sales to the same customer). You don't have to carry stock or chase customers for money - it all happens via the magic of the web!

A friend of mine has just recommended a great membership site to me, which shows you how to do well in affiliate marketing. In fact, if you sign up to be a member of the site, you instantly become an affiliate of that site and can start earning money straight away if someone on your list takes up any of the offers.

Check it out here: Handbook for Affiliates

Let me know how you get on!

How to Count Beans and Be Happy Now

So, how do we count our beans and still be happy now?

If we have our money going out to cover all household expenses, plus tithing, contingency, car fund, escape fund etc, when do we get to spend some 'fun money' on ourselves? Do we have to be miserable until we're waiting for it to all come together? I think it depends on what you know about yourself in terms of what really makes you happy.

I've thought about this a great deal over the past few weeks, and I've come to the conclusion that personally speaking, my happiness comes from just a few things: security, freedom, ability to go out with my friends, exercise and sport. And then there's love, which (and I know I'm very lucky here) costs me nothing (except of course for his birthday present, coming up in a few days!).

Which leads me to ask myself: do I need a constant supply of new clothes, shoes etc? Is is necessary to buy lots of books when I can borrow from the library or exchange them with friends?

The answer is no. At this point in my life, knowing that by putting money into my escape account etc, I only need to be able to pay to go out with my friends when I want, go mountainboarding, play the occasional game of badminton and go to the gym. Which takes a lot of pressure off the finances.

To make myself happy I feel secure knowing that my (eventual) freedom is accounted for. And that ticks off all the things that make me happy.

What makes you truly happy? Do you buy things to make you feel better about a job you hate? Do they make you feel that much better or would your money be better spent taking you towards something that really makes you happy?

Lesson Learned...Always Follow Up!

Has a little learning today and a wake up call that I really sometimes have to push just a little bit more in business.

I signed up a new Community Fundraiser to my network marketing business (the one where I help people save and make money on utilities) and was very pleased about this until there was a glitch with the bank details supplied (so that the organisation can be paid for signing people up).

The long and the short of it is, I emailed them to get the correct details, didn't hear back from them and felt a bit bad about then 'hassling' them by phone. Turns out they had emailed me back but their message had gone into the deep dark chasm that is my spam filter. They were wondering where I'd got to with my reply!

The lesson learned for me here is three-fold:

• Always follow up. Don't assume that someone has just disappeared if the email doesn't come back to you - you never know what happens to messages.
• What is the deal with thinking I'm hassling people if I'm trying to get much-needed information from them? I'm helping them to raise funds for their organisation so I should turn the thoughts of hassling them into thoughts of helping them.
• Check my spam box more regularly......ho hum.....

A Pound a Day Keeps the Scarcity Away...

I am a big fan of using the principles of The Law of Attraction (see The Secret book recommendation in my list). So when one of my Money Gym pals, ace website builder Marion Ryan, told us all about Give Away A Dollar A Day I just had to go out and start doing it....

The idea behind it is that in order to attract more money in to our lives, we have to feel comfortable giving it away. There are many millionaires who will say that one of the secrets of their success is that they are not afraid to give money to others (known as tithing, or charity giving) as they know that this money will always come back to them ten-fold.

Give Away a Dollar a Day is slightly different. You leave the money in places where people will find it at some point. So we don't know who's getting it. It's about imagining how a person will feel when they find it and it's about letting go of feeling scarcity around money. The attitude 'I have more than enough...' will make you feel good about money and not cause feelings of lack.

So far I've dropped various pounds around - in the pocket of a skirt in a clothes shop, on a little display picnic table in M&S, I left my pound in the trolley after shopping at Sainsbury's. The interesting thing about this is it makes us think about the act of giving away the money. With charity donations, a direct debit coming out of our account every month doesn't make us think nearly so much about what we're giving and doesn't give us the opportunity to feel so abundant...

The Bean Counting Continues....

I told you last time about the Money Gym programme I'm working through and how it's led me to set up some new bank accounts. Now I'm going to tell you what they're for....

So, we've got TAX, CAR, CONTINGENCY, TITHING and ESCAPE

This is all fairly self explanatory but what happens is, each month, I put a certain percentage of my money into each account so that when the time comes to use that money, it's all there, tidy, happy and waiting. I don't have to wonder where I'll find it.

TAX - I'm self employed so it's easier to run all my finances if I put a rough percentage of what I think I'll pay in tax on money earned.

CAR - most of my car expenses are accounted for monthly but not the MOT, insurance, it blowing up etc.

CONTINGENCY - if house boiler blows up, for example or anything else that I have to replace blows up or if one of my income streams blows up - I can use money in here for these types of eventualities.

TITHING - a common trend amongst wealthy people (model them if you want to be wealthy) is to give money away. If we're able to give away some of our money, we don't feel needy of it. When we don't feel needy of money we feel abundant. When we feel abundant we attract more money to us. So this account will take some of my income so that I can give it to someone that needs it more than me (will be a particular charity in my case).

ESCAPE - this is the one that may take a little longer to fill because the others need attention first but some money needs to go in here each month. The idea behind this one is that you put the money in until you have enough to make an investment. An example is: I want to join a FOREX (foreign exchange) trading club but the minimum entry is about 700 Euros. So, once there is the equivalent of 700 Euros in there, I'm going to move it to the FOREX club. The FOREX club creates passive income from my investment so this is eventually going to form part of the income that I don't have to go and earn, which will eventually cover my monthly expenses.

Now you might be wondering how on earth we find money to enjoy our current lives amongst all this squirrelling away. Come back soon and I'll tell you my thoughts on that....

Escape The Rat Race and Get Bean Counting!

I recently joined the Money Gym's Silver Elite programme. I've always been a Silver member, which allows me access to the gadzillions of pieces of information on the site as well as access to the invaluable googlegroups and forums. But when I got the opportunity to join Silver Elite I thought it was the right time to reinvigorate my plans - just because I got myself out of the rat race doesn't mean I should stop working on myself and I thought this programme would help get me to the next level.

One of the first things you have to do on the programme is take a good look at what they call 'Sarah Rourke Inc'. That means I had to face up to what I was spending and investing on a personal level. I've tried in the past to keep on top of this but I either start to go into denial or just don't find the time to keep up with the recording of information.

As the wise MG pointed out, most business people keep these records for their businesses quite happily (as do I) but don't do the same for their personal finance.

So, it was with boots of dread that I dragged myself to face one of my biggest hurdles - keeping control of my personal finance.

And, a couple of weeks later (there was some serious catching up to do), I have a lovely set of spreadsheets showing me where all my money comes from, what I have to spend it on (fixed outgoings) and what I choose to spend the rest on. The idea is to make sure that there is an ever-widening gap between what you bring in and what is left after the outgoings are covered.

The relief I feel is palpable. For the first time in ages I really feel that I'm in control of my money and I know exactly what's where and for what purpose. I thought I would feel restricted by this but I actually feel free - it's weird but give it a go and you'll see what I mean.

Why do we do this?

• Firstly, to show the Universe that we care about what happens to our money (woo woo, my friend Judith might say, but it really seems to work for her). If we do this, the big U will see to it that we get more of it
• To start to build little pots of income to cover life's eventualities
• To then build other little pots of income to cover the final escape - the time when our income producing assets and investments overtake our monthly expenditure - hooray!

So, after getting an overview of where I currently am, I have now set up 5 bank accounts called TAX, CAR, CONTINGENCY, TITHING and ESCAPE.

I'll tell you a bit more about those in the next post. Until then, happy bean counting!

Wedding Mania

Does anyone else suffer from time deficit syndrome during wedding season or is it just me?

Don't get me wrong, I love a good wedding but I feel like I've had to turn down every other weekend invitation of late, usually with the excuse of either having to attend a wedding or a hen-do.

However, not one to miss an opportunity, it's a great place to network (especially when you run a network marketing business like I do). I met some really lovely people at last week's wedding, one of whom would be great as a team member and another who is interested in saving money on her bills (she already runs her own events business).

I also met someone who is attending seven weddings this summer. Seven! Now that is a serious wedding habit....

Just a few more to go for me and then it's back to normal life when I'll be wondering what to do with myself at weekends!

Escaping The Rat Race - Is Your Business Hiding in Plain Sight?

In the early days of escaping the rat race, I remember my coach, Judith, asking me, "Where's the nearest money?", referring to the source of income that would help me stay out of my job whilst building up my cleaning business.

At the time, I truly thought it was in the audio business I was working on. Sadly, this wasn't to be and it didn't really work out for me.

Interestingly, the nearest money, or the easiest money (whichever way you want to look at it) turned out to be something that I've actually kept hold of right up until now (and will probably continue to keep hold of for a little while yet).

It was a few of the more enjoyable elements of my old day job i.e. helping people to stop smoking and training others to do so too. I already knew how to do it (pretty well, I might add), I already had a contact or two and the pay was good. All was left was a few tweaks to make, a few more contacts to add to my list and a few re-negotiations in terms of the pay and I had a steady little income stream right there in front of me.

So it was with great interest that I read a message on the Money Gym googlegroup the other day, from my coach Judith, talking about another of her clients, Danielle, who has the most amazing website, which sells some very usual and original artworks, all painted by her mother, a surrealist artist, in the thirties.

It seems that Danielle and Judith were exploring various business options, just like Judith and I had back in the day, and Danielle mentioned in passing the existence of this site. Judith, being the eagle eyed businesswoman that she is realised that Danielle had an amazing business, ready made, sitting right in front of her eyes and, although it might take a bit of work to get it properly publicised and working for her it would be a great starting point in getting Danielle up and running.

I love the art work on the site and thought I would share it - this shouldn't be sitting quietly on an unknown website - these pictures are shouting to be looked at. Take a look for yourself and tell me you don't wish you had such a talented mother with such a marketable body of work!

Do you have a business right in front of your eyes? What do you already have that is worth something to someone else? Ask a friend to do a talent/asset audit to see if you already have the ready made tools to get out there and sack your boss!

 

A Network Marketer's Story

Following on from the posts about network marketing, I thought I'd share with you an interview I carried out with a fellow network marketer, Clare Copping. Clare is a full-time mum and a part-time business woman earning a full-time salary. Phew!

There are a huge variety of products that are promoted via network marketing and Clare is part of the Forever Living network, which promotes aloe vera products. Have a little listen to see what she has to say about her business.

Help the Big Issue and Learn Something New

My friends over at The Money Gym are busy promoting what looks to be an excellent event. It's all about how you can seize the current opportunities available in the property market to really get going on escaping the 9 to 5 once and for all.

And for all those who like to hold the limiting belief that you have to have money to be in property, they'll even show you how some of the opportunities don't require much capital outlay.

So for the princely sum of £25 you get to learn something new, see the Money Gym in action, meet loads of like-minded people and help the homeless. This is a charity event, all proceeds of which will go to The Big Issue. Now you can't say fairer than that.

So, it's over to Judith to tell you more (or at least a copy of the email that popped into my inbox this morning).