Hey folks it Challenge time again and for me that mean two things;

1: Create a music video for The Challenge

2: Go through the Challenge to keep up-to-date with all the cool marketing tactics.

For those of you who don't know, The Challenge is a module based training program, designed for busy people to work through at their own pace, which will show you step-by-step how you can make your first $1 online. All the training is 100% free and absolutely nothing is held back, plus there are no hidden catches whatsoever.

I've personally learned truck-loads from The Challenge over the years and if you're serious about starting a business online, I whole-heartedly recommend you check out The Challenge, as you will benefit greatly from the free training provided by the excellent Challenge team. I'm proud to be associated with the Challenge and hope that my small contribution helps to put a smile on your face, as that's exactly what this music video is intended for. A special thank you goes out to my supportive, talented family for all their help throughout, thank you Eva, Oscar and Katrina, love you all to bits.

Ed Dale's cool persuasion tactics forced me into making this years Challenge song, somewhat a little different, fun and enjoyable all the same.

All ego-supporting comments are most welcome.

Life Begins At 40, or so they used to say. I turned 40 the other day (8th Sept 2010) and a couple of people asked me what it's like now I've turned 40. It always makes me smile when people ask that on your birthday, as if you must feel so different from yesterday when you were 39 and about 364 days old

Apparently 50 is the new 40 anyway and some say 60 is the new 40. I'm not bothered either way as turning 40 isn't such a big deal – sure I'm going to celebrate turning 40 with a party next month, but that's just an excuse to socialize with so many friends I don't see that often. Turning 40 was no different to turning 30 or 39, it's just a number and I'm actually really enjoying it.

But turning 40 did make me take a close look at where I am right now in life and ask myself if I'm happy.

The answer is yes. Both kids are happy at school, Eva is in a new year growing up fast, she's 8 going on 18 and Oscar is loving his new venture at his new Grammar school. Katrina's at home helping me with articles and transcriptions of my guitar videos and now has a little extra time now to work on her books in hope of one day being published. So, yes I'm happy, because I realised that everything I do in life has one main goal – and that's to be happy. When my family are happy, I'm happy and regardless of workload, health and finances, we're happy and we cherish every minute we get to spend with each other – and to me, that is priceless.

So from this 40 year old fart, I encourage you to take a look around you and see if those who are important to you are happy. Times maybe a little tough right now for most of us and you may not be exactly where you want to be at the moment but, with the love and support of those you hold so dear, anything seems possible and business success and financial freedom (whilst both really nice) seem to pale in comparison to happiness.

Make sure you're striving for your goals for the right reasons and not just to please others, your happiness is extremely infectious, so make sure you get plenty of it and share it out the best you can. I hope to be saying exactly the same thing in another 40 years, so look out for my next post in 2050.

Other folks who celebrate the 8th of September.

Peter Sellers	Martin Freeman	Ann Diamond	Pink	Brook Burke

This beautifully delivered interview with Stephen Fry is one of the most enjoyable slices of footage I've ever had the good fortune to come across. Aside from being a life-long follower and admirer of Stephen Fry, I am continuously in awe by the way Stephen shares his views on human behaviour and the many mysteries life throws at us.

A huge thanks to Interviewer Peter Samuelson wonderfully captures Stephen's thoughts and philosophical outlook on technology, social networking, learning and how we interact with others. What is it that people like and dislike about people? Stephen explains all.

Stephen is always a pleasure to watch and listen to and I'm confident that many of my marketing and technology friends can take away a few valuable life lessons from the Genius that is Stephen Fry.

Take half an hour to relax in a comfortable chair and watch this video, I think you'll appreciate its content.

I'm fairly certain that I can safely say that cloning yourself is not an option, but there is a way that comes pretty darn close.

Outsourcing.
When I first outsourced a task back in 2007, a slight sense of fear was released as I gave away a small task from my business. If you're anything like me you know exactly what I mean. You can do everything right? and no one else could possibly do it as good as you can? Of course not, you're the boss and if you allow one tiny ounce of your business to be managed by someone else, you're ruined right? Wrong. Outsourcing is exactly what all the successful entrepreneurs have been doing for decades and it's exactly what you should be doing right now if you want to expand your business.

John Reese shoots from the hip and has never released anything that didn't do exactly what is said on the tin. I've been a client of Johns since the early "Reese Report" days and have always had excellent results using any of John's material. As soon as I saw John had a new video explaining how he gets so much done, I paid attention.

Sure he's got the fancy-pants videos, but that's because he's got Andy "Hollywood" Jenkins in the tool box and Andy sure can produce the visual stuff.

Check out John's videos here and you'll discover the eye-opening "$2 Per Hour" power formula and how the wildly successful Blue Man Group have been taking advantage of this little secret to pockets Millions of dollars every year.

Click the image below to see how cool this is.

More videos will be added over the next few days.

Following much extensive research, I took all the essential ingredients required to be able to play guitar and boiled them down into 30 high definition video guitar lessons.

You can join for free and check out the "Free Muso" guitar lessons to see if you like it. This is a great way to see if we're compatible. Do you like the way I teach and can you actually get something from it? I'm pretty confident I can have you playing within the first couple of minutes into the very first free lesson, so there's absolutely no risk on your part. Give it a go, I think you'll like it.

There is a monthly membership option an annual option and then there's the Crash Course which is called the "Course Muso" membership. This is the most intense and also the fastest learning course available.

Short and easy to digest was top of the list when I created this course, as I'm very aware of the limited time people have these days and the ability to consume short bursts of information is far easier than hour long videos that you'll most likely forget. Short and sweet visual media consumption is the order of the day and plenty of it across 30 days. Everything comes with a full 60 day money back guarantee, so you've got nothing to lose and everything to gain by giving it a try.

If you're looking for something new in 2010 and you really do want to learn to play guitar, then try Crash Course Muso because it will take you from a complete beginner to an accomplished guitarist in next to no time.

Click below to see what others are saying about the course.
http://crashcoursemuso.com/

Can you believe another year has breezed past and here we are again at the beginning of August 2009 and that means only one thing, it's Thirty Day Challenge time!

UPDATE! The Thirty Day Challenge is now know as "The Challenge".

This years Theme Song Music Video sees a collaboration of people from all over the globe and we are honoured to be graced with a brief appearance of the talents of Karen Kramer and her wacky creation of the Chip-Ed-Dale dancers, check out the video. So, to celebrate this, I have made a High definition version available for download. Now as many of you may know, the 30DC and all it stands for is Free and the training is absolutely amazing this year – best ever.

So why the paid download? Well, to keep in keeping with the 30DC's preferred charity, we want to give a little back and help those less fortunate than us, so all proceeds from the Video and Audio downloads will be donated to the Kiva charity and this is how you can help.

We're keeping it really simple – $2 for the HD Video and $1 for the MP3 Audio.

Simple click the "Buy Now" button and you can securely pay with your credit card via Paypal. It's been suggested that I include a "Donate" button for those who can afford it and would like do donate additional contributions to the Kiva charity. There's no download attached to the "Donate" button, it's simply that a donation. If you want the Video or Audio, please click the relevant "Buy Now" button for each, thanks.

Donations Only	30DC HD MP4 Video	30 DC MP3 Audio

As soon as you've paid for your item, click on "Return To Merchant" on the successful payment page and your download window will automatically popup and begin. I hope you enjoy watching the video as much as I did making it and if we can make a small difference in someone's life, then it's been well worth while, thank you.

Google Cash Detective 2 Hands Over The Keys To Profitable PPC Campaigns

Google Cash Detective 2 is one of the very few products I’ve bought recently that has actually made me money immediately after I started using it, that’s quite rare these days for any program. Now GCD2 creator Chris Carpenter says in his training to take it steady and learn the ropes gradually in order to master this new piece of software properly. Wise words indeed and so very true, you should take the time to learn how to use everything properly, but when you get a hold of an amazing piece of software that’s full of promises like Google Cash Detective, you just cannot help yourself from thrashing the balls off it for 6 hours solid like I did.

After the first hour of using GCD2, I was beginning to see what all the excitement was about and I had my first GCD2 Adwords campaign in place. Chris has this remarkable step by step process to find profitable campaigns and to see months of actual Google Adword’s history on who’s promoting hot affiliate products and with exactly what keywords. He has the secret to starting pay per click campaigns that start turning profits IMMEDIATELY.

The process is simple – research – keywords – affiliate products – adwords campaigns – conversion – sales – profits. Dare I say it, affiliate marketing has just been changed – again! The original Google Cash Method was great and now its here again, but on steroids. If you take the time to surf through my site, you’ll see that I rarely promote such products as I prefer to conduct my internet marketing "behind the scenes" so-to-speak, but this type of product only comes around once every few years, so seriously, take a look, you’ll thank me for it later.

Click the logo to watch a recent video were Chris Carpenter explains what GCD2 is and he also reveals some profitable affiliate campaigns, keywords and ad copy.

I’m not recommending that you consider getting Google Cash Detective, I’m telling you to go and get it now before it disappears and I have it on good authority that it won’t be around for long.

UPDATE:
If you’ve seen the videos and you’re just making your final decision, then you can get straight to the order page here – Order Google Cash Detecive

I’ve recently moved servers on some of my websites and this has prompted me into a well-overdue redesign on some of them. This has been great. On one hand it’s been a lot of work, but on the flip side, I always love a challenge and I’ve been wanting to turn some of my PSD (Photoshop Image Files) into usable HTML websites. So for the last few days I’ve knuckled down and with a lot of trial and error, I’ve managed to create something I’m very pleased with. Whilst I have a pretty good understanding of Photoshop CS3, Dreamweaver CS3, HTML, CSS and sliced images in tables etc, there’s always a new problem raising it’s ugly head – and in a kind of sadistic, twisted way, I kinda love that challenge.

Don’t get me wrong, I do surf around for help when I get stuck, but I love trying to accomplish everything from scratch. It’s not a stubborn thing, oh no, for me it’s the only way this stuff really sinks in.

I’ll get round to making a tutorial of how I did this so anyone can have a crack at it if this is something that interests you? So in answer to my own title – "PSD to HTML – How Hard Can It Be" – Pretty Bloody Hard Actually – but oh so rewarding. More to follow soon.

Getting Organised With Some Time Management

It’s hard to delegate the appropriate amount of time to each daily task when you work from home and you are your own boss. If you’re serious about working from home then you’re going to have to be tough on yourself just like your boss would be if you worked for someone else. With an ever-growing list of daily activities taking up our valuable profit-making time and the constant temptation to get side tracked into some online social event, some time management and realistic planning is most definitely in order. Do so and you will be streets ahead of the most of your competitors.

Whilst making a recent mind-map for this years new business project, I made a point of estimating the amount of time I thought each task is going to take in order to get a guide on how much time I can realistically allocate to each task. It’s important to be aware of what takes the most and least time and how much closer each task will move you toward your goals. If you are like me and like to (think you can) do everything yourself, then this may well be your downfall. I love being creative, so I love to learn and apply my skills, like many of you do I’m sure, but learning HTML, CSS, Java, Flash, Photoshop and Dreamweaver is a hugh amount of time and effort taken up just to put up a groovy looking website – and a new sparkly website is just one small part of setting up an online business. Perhaps my time is better spent designing the website and then outsourcing it to someone who does this every day! I know that outsourcing and leveraging the resources of others is going to be a financially smart move for me this year.

Take some time to list your daily activities like, how much time you take reading emails, posting on Twitter, watching videos on Youtube or chating with friends on Facebook etc. This part is important, ‘Be Honest With Yourself’ and write down exactly how much time you really do spend on these activities. You will be terrified at how much of your day is wasted on leisure stuff and the more time you waste -  then the more non-profit steps you take towards failure. Make sure to add in things like phone calls and making tea and coffee etc, even going to the toilet, I’m not saying you should go, but when it’s down on paper, then – and only then will you be able to see just how little time you actually spend trying to make money. It is scary and when you’re the boss you should be constantly peering over you own shoulder to make sure you’re working as hard as you should be. By simply reorganising your time by just a tiny amount, can give you so much more time to be productive.

Every person I’ve come across who runs a successful business either on or offline, is constantly evaluating their time to see if time spent could be improved. Consistently take small achievable steps towards your goals, stay focused and plan for success.