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I Sing Because. . .

There are some things I really miss about going to church. I miss the music, both listening and getting to sing in choir. And there are some special people I really miss.

A couple of those special people are Carl and Eveyln Tate. During a very dark time, they were good friends to me. In fact, Eveyln was praying for me even before she knew me. . . she just knew that a neighbor needed prayer. Then once I started attending the same church and got to know them, what a blessing! Their kind words lifted me up more times than I can count.

Everyone needs the blessing of some friends like them.

So I was thrilled to see this video that combines two very special things... the music I love and a special friend that I love.


Carl Tate - "I Sing Because..."



Amen, Brother Carl, amen.

Random Thoughts About Another Week, Another Saturday

The days speed by, the weeks speed by, the months speed by, the years speed by.

Whatever happened to way back when I was a kid, and thinking it was taking such a VERY long time to get to 16, because after all, when I got to be 16 I could do everything? I could get contacts, I could date, I could drive, I could.... well, you get the idea.

Well, I don't want to be 16 again. In fact, if I was in a time machine, I'd probably go back to about 30 or so. I think that's a good age. You've got more a grip on who you are and what you want out of life. A little life experience and maturity under your belt.

But then, 30 isn't a magic number either. I'm still rediscovering who I am, and what I want, and it doesn't stay the same from one day to the next. Okay, the basics do, but there are always changes. You can't be living and not changing. If you never changed, well, that would be a sad state of affairs.

Even more on time passing so quickly. . .

I was wearing an old tee shirt this week that said,

"My grandchildren are as cute as buttons."

These days, I only have one grandchild I could say that about. The others have gotten past the "cute as buttons" stage and are gorgeous young ladies and handsome young men. Again, how did that happen so fast? And even our little Ellie who can still be classified as cute... well, she started kindergarten this year.

Time keeps on slippin' away.

I'm reminded of that every time I look at my spreadsheets and where I should be business wise. Time keeps relentlessly speeding up and I don't get things done I wanted to.

For instance, I spent a large part of the last week learning some new software. I hereby confess I positively HATE learning new software. But once I've figured it out, it's like, "Wow! This is really cool!"

This time was no different. It took a long time to set-up everything and figure out how to work it, but now it will be a big time saver and a great asset to the business.

But all that being said, it put me behind for the moment, and I didn't get work done on a lot of stuff I wanted to finish up this week.

Still taking time to learn. . .

The SEO webinars that lasted from 7:30pm until 1:30am DID finish up this past week however. But there is a follow-up course in October on a related subject. And I still have a different course on Tuesday nights, but thankfully it doesn't last as long. On the other hand, neither does it deliver so much information! But shorter seminars allow you to digest and implement stuff a little quicker. Too much information and the brain kind of short-circuits, and I wonder what to do first!

As for the rest of the clan. . .

Jesse isn't having the time of his life at the moment, considering he has a cold. Also, he's been pretty busy at work, and his plan for taking Fridays off hasn't been happening because of that.

To add insult to injury, a guy he did a bunch of work for just went out of business. He owed Jess a bunch of money, but no way to collect it, so Jess and all this guy's other creditors are just up the creek without a paddle, too bad, so sad.

Jonathan is working over time this week, and only had one day off. His usual days off are Thursday and Saturday, but he's got to work today to help cover for people being out.

And now it's time to close. . .

Well, I need to get back to work. Hope those of you reading this have a good time this week!

Saturday morning on the farm. . .

Or maybe, "Everything you wanted to know about what I'm doing but were afraid to ask." And if you aren't interested if what I'm doing, well, now would be a good time to stop reading.

At the moment I'm doing my usual Saturday thing of work a while (more physical work... as in, cleaning house), then take a break and sit down for a while and do some stuff on the computer. For this break I decided to update my woefully neglected personal blog here.

Most of the time posting here gets passed over for posting on working blogs. With two outsourcers working for me and Jesse on the brink of retiring, I need to boost my income considerably, which Jess so kindly reminds me of from time to time. (NO pressure.... nooooooooooooo.......) But I've got to be able to stop pouring all profit back into the business and have some for living expenses.

I guess this week is fairly representative of how things go ... I do the usual farm chores and fixing lunches and cooking... occasionally get some laundry and cleaning in there. And I still attend webinars. There will ALWAYS be more to learn. Working as an online entrepreneur is like anything else in that the rules are always changing, and the stuff that worked yesterday doesn't always do so well today. Only maybe in the world of instant communication it happens a little faster! (Okay, a LOT faster.)

So this week I had a webinar on Tuesday night I needed to attend. (We have rearranged our schedule for mastermind group calls that we were previously doing on Tuesday nights, but yes, I'm still in a mastermind group.)

Wednesday night I had two webinars. One didn't last long, and I left it before the Q&A session at the end was over so I could go to the next to the last call of another series I've been attending on SEO (search engine optimization). The guy doing these webinars seriously over delivers on information. It's not fluff, it's solid content, and we have consistently been on these sessions for 5-6 hours. This last one lasted from 7:30pm to 1:30am.

But it's important to keep learning more things to help my work. Sometimes it's a new way of doing things to help get things done better or faster or both. Sometimes it's finding out something I've been doing is ALL WRONG, and I need to change. That's a little disheartening when that happens, but it just means it's time to fix things, dust myself off and move on.

Of course, in-between the regular farm and household work and webinars, and making sure my outsourcers have stuff to work on, it's critical for me to be actually DOING , and working on stuff online that will generate income.

I have 3 main business models I'm using, and rotate working on the sites associated with these methods. I won't try to explain them fully; if it's not your thing you'd be totally bored pretty fast. But as an example of what I do, in the past couple of months I have built 11 new blogs and seriously overhauled several old ones. Most of the new blogs are part of a batch I'm working on that feed into a larger authority site. So far I've done about 100 posts for those sites. Fortunately, there will come a point when I feel they are built up sufficiently, and can slow down on those.

But there will always be more to do once those are done. To increase income, I have to keep building, plus do an occasional brush-up of those already done.

Being an online entrepreneur is NOT the get-rich-quick thing some gurus talk about. It takes time to learn how to do it, and time to build a business. The guys who say you can get rich quick online are the only ones getting rich quick off the money you spend buying their products. Now, there are legitimate products out there, and some are a big help. And there are also a lot of tools you need to streamline the work you're doing, or to just plain out-right be able to get it done.

But it takes a while to become savvy enough to know what's good and what's not, and from the talk on forums it's clear that most people spend a lot more than they wanted to before they figure it out.

At any rate, the bottom line is I'm still working on building my business. The coffers aren't filling as quickly as I'd hoped, but I'm starting to see some results. Right now I'm really PUSHING to have a lot done in the next couple of months, particularly that new batch of websites, so they'll be firmly entrenched in the search engines before Christmas shopping season which for my purposes I'm counting as starting around the first of November.

And there you have it. This may seem like a lengthy post, but it just scratches the surface of what I'm doing. So if you don't hear from me, it's not that I'm lazy, I'm just going crazy(ier) trying to get things done!