The first is written by Christopher Jamison, Abbot of a Benedictine monastery. It covers the eight deadly thoughts (those that lead to the seven deadly sins), and teaches how to remain happy in a world that can be seen as difficult. The second is written by Robert Kiyosaki, a self-made American Millionaire about how to play the financial game and make your money work for you instead of working for money.

What’s the fascinating part?

Well, it’s the fact that both books have almost the same message in a lot of ways. In fact, several times, exactly the same advice was dished out by both books. They talk about greed, anger (at others and yourself), sadness at loss, all sorts. They both see mastery of ones emotions to be absolutely critical to success.

This backs up my theory further that God and money are the same thing – a fictional construct designed to make achievement, debt and credit easier to measure (albeit one has more influence in the external world, and the other in the internal). Indeed Robert Kiyosaki is at pains several times to explain that money doesn’t exist, it’s merely an idea shored up by people who think it does.

Both excellent reads, by the way. Though if you’re going to read either, I might recommend their prequels before you start…

What does that mean?

I was encouraged early on in the business to write up a personal survival budget. This is the amount of money required to keep the mortgage company, utility companies and HMRC at bay. It also includes enough money to feed yourself. You can optionally (and it’s encouraged) add a night out or three and an annual holiday fund. You end up with the amount of money you must earn pre-tax to survive. It doesn’t buy you a new car, or a lavish champagne dinner, but it does ensure you survive.

The magic number must be hit by subtracting your outgoings from your incomings. So your income may reach over your budget, but if the outgoings are high, you lose out. This happened for the first time in July 2009, when my income was £450 over my personal survival budget. However, in that month, the outgoings were a massive £1100, so I was well short on the net profit.

But, as I said… income minus outgoings this month have exceeded the budget, all being well. Time to celebrate with an extra large bowl of gruel!

A Phone, Yesterday

A few weeks ago I decided that it would be a mighty fine idea if I would be able to improve my sales and marketing technique. According to Rich Dad (fascinating book… buy it!) you should never work solely for money, you should work to gain skills. So I thought wouldn’t it be fun to get a job doing telesales? They’ll train me up and I’ll become the best phone salesperson in the world and then I’ll be able to flog my photography services with gay abandon.

So, two weeks ago I found a job on the jobcentre website (no experience necessary, full training given), applied for it, interviewed, trialled, and now I’m a part-time telesales executive at the end of my first week. Small company, don’t have to put hand up for wee etc.

What I have learnt:

1. How to pick up a phone and put it down again without putting a twist in the wire. When you make 80-odd calls per session it gets tangled very quickly if you do the left-right-pickup-switch thing or whatever it is that does put a twist in.
2. How to get past secretaries to the decision-maker.
3. How to chat to some lovely people and actually help them out.
4. How you can tell that many cold callers are desperately lacking in training. The ones who push you even though you’re not interested are not doing their job properly.
5. While most people aren’t interested in marketing calls, for some it is solving a huge problem for them and they’re very grateful you called.
6. Never to be put off picking the phone up because of your own assumptions (they won’t want me to call, they won’t be in, it’ll be a bad time).
7. I am entirely capable of saying things that make me cringe when I listen back on a tape.

That’s probably about it. It’s very educational indeed, and I have to say it’s the first training course I’ve ever been on with such good hands-on simulations and they even pay me to do it!

Me: Hello. I notice from my records that you have an invoice from me that is due for payment soon. [here comes the important bit... no pressure, no agression] I’m just phoning to check that you have received it.
Them: Um… er… oh yes… um here it is. [and here comes the important bit... we were not trying to weedle out of it] Oh yes! I can see from the records that it’s actually in today’s cheque run, wouldyoubelieveit? It will be with you tomorrow or the day after.
Me: Well, that is fantastic news! Thank-you very much.

I like business. It’s fun! I wonder how early I can get away with phoning them… I may go for 7 days in advance next time.

A: Let’s start a pyramid marketing scheme to make money.
B: Um… don’t you think that would damage our credibility?
A: Not at all… we just have to name it something like “Blackberry Elite Alliance”
B: Excellent. That sounds nothing like a pyramid scheme.
A: Great… I’ll get it all in motion. It’ll take £50,000 to get it to market.
B: Um… we can’t allocate that much funding. Can you save somewhere?
A: Sure… we’ll get the work-experience boy to make the logo.

Later…

B: Um… oh forget it.

I’ve been looking at the function to calculate repayments on a loan, given a principal sum, interest rate, and number of payments. It seems pretty straightforward, and can be used to calculate over any time period with any payment schedule required. But I studied maths at school and we learnt that due to compound interest, if the annual rate is X, then the monthly rate is X^(1/12) (where X is the decimal interest rate – where, for example, 12% interest becomes 1.12).

Every single site I’ve looked at describing the PMT function as it’s known says ‘divide the annual rate by 12 for the monthly rate’. And I mean every site… wikipedia, yahoo answers, ehow… the list goes on.

So… here’s what they’re suggesting…

£100 principal @ 12% annual interest. 12 months of interest gives:
£101.00, £102.01, £103.03, £104.06, £105.10, £106.15,
£107.21, £108.29, £109.37, £110.46, £111.57, £112.68

That’s an annual interest rate of 12.68%.

If we take the 12th root of 12%, that gives at monthly interest of 9.489%. Then 12 months of interest gives:
£100.95, £101.91, £102.87, £103.85, £104.84, £105.83,
£106.83, £107.85, £108.87, £109.90, £110.95, £112.00

Exactly 12% annual interest.

Can someone more financially literate than me explain why everyone states the former method?

nothing

A little while ago, a pal of mine suggested a £10 investment challenge. You start with £10 and have to invest as you see fit to make it grow as much as possible.

Well, tonight, the £zero investment challenge was born. You must start with zero pounds, you are not allowed to sell any assets you already own. We will assume you are allowed a computer, phone, email connection etc. and calls are free (lucky you!)

You must account for every single penny you make/lose, preferably in an excel (or openoffice calc) spreadsheet.

You are not allowed to use any tools that you already own (if you do someone’s ironing, you must use their iron).

No borrowing from yourself or others.

Any driving must be charged to yourself at 40p per mile.

You have six months to make zero pounds grow as large as you can. The deadline is noon on 6th January 2011. At that point only cash assets will count, you must liquidise everything before that date.

Who’s in?

Today I shot my first wedding where I didn’t already know the people getting married, although going along with popular wisdom, I’d had a couple of meetings with the bride and groom and so on the day we met as friends.

Was I nervous? You bet your ass I was! I am pleased with the results? Absolutely!

The sun was in and out of cloud the whole time. There was no real shade available (the usual trick in harsh sunlight), so it was a case of either waiting for the sun to go behind a cloud, or using some very gentle fill flash to lift the shadows.

The couple are absolutely lovely, and it helped that the registrar is someone I know well, and admire very much – and who, just a few weeks ago, did our wedding for us too, thanks Kath!

I went on a refresher course on Tuesday and carried quite a lot forward from it – a couple of posing ideas, some other composition and lighting ideas, but mostly the people skills… when you’re the photographer, you have to take on quite an important role – I managed to liase with the operations team beautifully and that means that people were herded into the right places at the right times. I was even standing at the door of Argos at five to ten this morning having realised that I needed to buy a watch quick! Thank goodness I had it… the ops team, dining team and everyone were relying on me to get my photos done at the right time.

The couple were delighted that I ’stole’ them to mock up the cake cutting. It gave them a 10-minute breather in the middle of the mayhem. And I even managed to run ahead of schedule so they had a good 20 minutes to mingle before we then had to do another set of shots.

All in all a great day… charming bridesmaids, lovely couple, great venue staff, lovely registrar… it never feels like work when I’m there. However, when I arrive home exhausted, I feel I’ve definitely earned my glass of cider!

Well when you look at the results and think that’s a total pile of bobbins, it’s not so great. Working for myself is good, but occasionally, I could do with a team around me to bounce off.

Humph. I’m going to have a sulk now.

New Website

Old Page vs. New Page.

If anyone would be so kind as to send me a screen grab of the new one, I’d be very grateful (I want to check how it looks on other machines without my choice of font installed). And if anyone knows alternative fonts to Century Gothic and Adobe Caslon Pro that I can put in the suggested font list, that would also be appreciated.

There will probably be more going in soon, but this is a good start so I can happily release the address on my leaflets of which I’m about to print a thousand.

What does that have to do with curry?

It means that I’ve earned my right to have curry-based noms for tea. I am now going to sign off and start cooking them!