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Who is Lammo?
Posted by Lammo in 
7th January 2002.. My first day as a Full time affiliate. I’d been working part time on my affiliate business for just short of 18 months before handing in my notice at the Day Job from Hell, giving myself a few weeks off for Christmas, New Year and Good Behaviour, and starting afresh to concentrate full time on my affiliate business. Few thought it would last.. I reckoned a year would be a good stint before I had to start looking for another job.
Fast forward eight and half years…
2nd July 2010.. My last day as a Full time affiliate. No, I haven’t run out of money just yet and taken a job stacking shelves at Lidl. Ever since last August, my priorities changed somewhat dramatically, and I had no desire to become one of those “successful” people who has piles and piles of money but doesn’t know their kids because they were too busy working every hour of every day.
So, armed with a copy of the 4 hour work week, I started remodeling my affiliate business around two simple principles:
1. Outsource. Everything possible.
2. Automate. Wherever possible.
This means that where I was working 100 hour weeks a few years ago, I’ve been working average 40 hour weeks for the last year or so. My health is better than it’s been in years, the business is growing at a good rate, and I’ve been able to spend a great deal of time with Jack during the important first ten months. And now I’m taking that a step further…
5th July 2010.. My first day as a part time affiliate / part time Daddy Day Care – Er Indoors is returning to work next week, which means that we’d need to look at putting Jack into Nursery. We both decided that we didn’t see the point in both working full time so that we could pay someone else to spend time with our son, so we decided that we’d all go part time!
I’m now officially Daddy Day Care for two mornings a week (it’s gonna mean early mornings which is a shock to the affiliate system, but hey), and one full day. Jack’ll then go into Nursery for the two afternoons so I can work on my affiliate business, and Er Indoors will look after him for two days. Voila: I get to spend a whole day and two mornings of Daddy time, still run my business over two full days and two afternoons, and Er Indoors gets to engage in adult conversation again, whilst not abandoning Jack, who gets to socialise and play at Nursery a couple of times a week – everyone’s a winner!
How will this affect my affiliate business? Well, it may take me a little longer to reply to emails, and I’ll have to cut out the procrastination and idle surfing of forums, Twitter, Facebook etc, but as long as I can get 80% of what I achieve now (i.e the stuff that matters) done in 60% of the time, all should run smoothly. I’m not quite brave enough to take the “4 hours a week” stance of Tim Ferriss, but 25 to 30 hours is more than enough time to run and grow my little automated affiliate business, leaving the rest of my time free for the only job that really matters…
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Sounds like a great decision for you and your family! Kids are so wonderful when they’re little when you encourage them to walk and talk! But don’t worry it won’t be long before you’re wishing they would sit down and shut up!
Have tons of fun looking after your son full time!
I can recommend the very hungry caterpillar as my favourite book ever!
Good on ya mate. It’s a position I definitely envy and hope to be able to achieve myself one day – enjoy it!
You will enjoy it, I did the same. The biggest shock to the system was the reduction in hours available to affiliate marketing.
One tip I will give you is that you must NEVER multi task whilst looking after your son – you won’t do what you intended and it will take along time doing it. Best to focus on Jack and do the affiliate updates when he is asleep/playing etc…
Have a great time
Cheers guys – as you say I’ll probably be relishing some adult time once he’s a little older.. believe it or not though he is actually due to start school in just over 3 years (which seems very young to me!)
I know what you mean about trying to multi-task too – I’ve tried that on a few occasions already, and it just doesn’t work. Filtering emails on the iPhone is possible.. uploading content isn’t!
Excellent to see your still making progress, its definately something that many affiliates can relate to and want to do similar things with their working life balance!
Good plan, Family comes first and your health. I try to fit a full time job, part time affiliate job and being a Dad and it does takes its toll. My goal is to get rid of the full time work that I don’t enjoy covered by AM stuff, one day soon hopefully.
Enjoy those young years, they don’t last long
Congrats John, a great step that’ll benefit all of you I’m sure.
I’ve been going through a similar process myself recently and it’s very worthwhile. Hope you enjoy all that quality time with your boy!
I’ve been less than part-time for the past 8 months – looking after/worrying ’bout Dave (probably caused by the medicine he’s been prescribed and ‘fobbing’ off!!) – and the business has not suffered one ioata – probably ‘cos I’ve focussed on the stuff that needs doing and haven’t had much time to ‘tamper’ with it :
These next few years are going to be magical and I’m glad you’re going to be there for them
Sounds like a good plan to me. I’m months away from becoming a dad myself and we’re wondering the same things.
My day job is needed to pay our mortgage but I’d love to quit the “daily grind”. The Mrs loves working and is very keen to get back to work as soon as she can but unfortunately we couldn’t live off that one wage.
My own “hobby” affiliate enterprises have all been developed off the back of an hour or two here and there when I can find the time. So I know the importance of becoming efficient!
I have never really seen a link between hours worked and income though, income seems to be a function of reader interest over time and the search engine lottery!
Thanks everyone!
Elaine.. I’m hoping that’s how it’s gonna pan out for me too – all the important stuff will still get done, it’s just the faffing about and procrastination that needs to take a hit. Hope Dave’s recovery is still going well.. cna we tempt you guys down to Plymouth for the summer BBQ this year?
Jezza101.. Er Indoors thought the same, but then when it came down to it she didn’t really want to go back.. we had a few tears last night, and she’s only checked up on us three times so far!
I’m sure there is some sort of link between hours worked and income (I certainly saw a big increase during the first year of going full time), but it’s the hours spent doing the important stuff that makes the difference – all the other hours are just filler.
Nice one John, I’m sure you are making the right choice.
I’ve been doing Daddy Day Care for eight years now and love spending quality time with my 3 kids.
I’m probably a bad influence on them and they’ll never get a proper job after seeing how I work. But being self employed brings a lot of flexibility to my life – I don’t know how I’d cope with a boss.
I can’t delegate so still work more hours than I should but at least I can choose what hours they are.
All the best for the future.
Nick
“I’m probably a bad influence on them and they’ll never get a proper job after seeing how I work.”
lol, that sounds like a good mantra to me Nick! I certainly won’t be herding Jack down the “laden yourself with debt and work every hour of every day in a job you hate just to pay the bills” route that most people take
Great to see you making a success of the business but also putting into action to have a balance between work and home life. Many of us plan to do this but few manage to put it into action!
Great news John! That’s something I’d love to do in the future – at the moment my work/life balance is a bit too work biased. All I ask is you find enough time to keep running ECU
lol, don’t worry Paul, running ECU is still very much part of the “vital 80%” that I’m still doing