How Thai Food Changed My Business Direction
Written by George Manty · January 3, 2007
A few weeks ago, I had Lunch with Austin C. Davis of Trust My Mechanic at a Thai food restaraunt in town.
Austin lives a lifestyle that many of us would like to live. He works 3-4 hours a day/5 days a week on his website business and spends the rest of his time with his family, and at his church. He vacations a lot and lives a very comfortable life.
He doesn’t spend all day blogging, and/or reading blogs. He is not tied down to a regular work schedule. He can take a week off and continue to make money. His visitors don’t expect him to be adding content on a daily basis (although he often does).
His web business pretty much fits most of the first goals I ever had for a web business:
1. Work 20 hours a week
2. Make more than enough money to live off
3. Spend time with my family
4. Don’t work 60 hour weeks
5. Help those in need
The last few months I have been thinking that something needs to change in my business. Jill and I had really good success with the Winter Olympics blog, but Jill had to put in a lot of hours to write about the Olympics. While it was fun for a short period of time, it was very time consuming. I don’t think blogging is the ideal way for ME to earn MOST of my income.
Don’t get me wrong, I will still be blogging and Jill will still be blogging. However, I am going to be focusing on activities that I know from past experience (and from Austin’s advice) will bring me the most amount of money with the least amount of work.
What does that mean for this blog?
Since, I really enjoy writing on this blog, you won’t see much of a change on this blog.
As for what other projects I am going to work on besides blogging…
I have several things in mind, but the first thing I will be working on is a project with Austin, that could bring in some good money. Even if it doesn’t, I have learned some very valuable lessons from Austin that will affect my business direction in 2007.
Now, I am off to Florida, be back on the 15th. See you when I get back…
Might not be the right place but came to notify a serious thing.
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In terms of diversifying your revenue and allowing you to scale back your hours, you might want to look into the prospect of more passive income streams. As you are already developing a name for yourself online in the affiliate arena, you could leverage that into some subscription basis model…either a newsletter or private forum might work.
Good luck with whatever direction you ultimately end up taking.
Cygnus,
Those are both things I have considered. I am not yet ready to go that direction, I am going to work with Austin first, because he is already doing what I want to do. Afterwards, we will shall see…
Hmmm… I just stumbled across your site and it seems that Austin is a really smart guy if he makes that much with that little work. 🙂
He does seem really bright. I think there are other factors, many of which he mentions in the interview I did with him:
http://www.canimakebigmoneyonline.com/index.php/20061205-my-interview-with-an-internet-marketing-expert/
I think the mentorship thing was huge! I am starting to think it is THE BEST thing you can do to reach your goals faster.
– George