A new direction for myself and this blog...

Writing this post is actually reasonably challenging because what I am writing about is a work in progress and I have not actually completed yet but instead of going completely dark on the blog I thought I would let you guys know what I have been up to.

So let's deal with first things first...

Why haven't I been writing blog posts?

Not writing blog posts for a blogger is the best way you can think of to kill a blog and I had this experience a few years ago when I was going through a tough patch and blogging and finance were not the foremost thing going on in my life.  Thankfully this time that is not the reason I stopped writing.

The fact is that I used my honeymoon to reassess what was important to me and what I wanted and needed to be spending my time on.  I love writing this blog and have loved writing it since my first post in 2011.  That hasn't changed at all. 

I stopped writing as many posts because I came to the realisation that it was taking time away from things I needed to be doing more.  At one point I was writing 1 - 2 posts per day on this blog.  Each posts would take at least 45 minutes to write and some which required more research took considerably longer.  I was happy to do it too but given that it was taking ~4 hours of my week it needed to be assessed alongside all the other things I could be doing with my time.

What I needed to do therefore was to work out exactly what I wanted to do with my life and importantly what the most productive thing I could be doing with my time.

What do I want to do with my life?

Why did investment loan interest rates just rise?

Recently I wrote about how this was the golden age for mortgages, how the current rate environment couldn't last and how you should think about refinancing your home loan to save you thousands of dollars.  I thought interest rates would increase at some point but I certainly didn't predict it would happen this fast.

If you're an Australian investor you may (or may not) have noticed that the interest rates on your mortgage jumped significantly last week.  That's because most of the major banks (led by ANZ and CBA) increased their investor loan variable interest rates by 0.27%.

Unlike most rate rises and falls this was not driven by a change in the Reserve Bank's cash rate nor was it driven by external costs of funding.  It was caused by the financial regulator (APRA) deciding to slow down the growth in lending to investors which have been driving a bubble in Australia.

Who does the rate change affect?

Niche Website Update - June 2015

This is a new series of posts that I'm going to be doing tracking how my niche websites are doing.  Up until this point I have just been referring to one website (Banker's Pitch) however when time permits and once Banker's Pitch has settled down I plan on creating several more niche websites.

I don't know whether this is a strategy that will work for me but I'm keen to find out!

Monthly performance for May 2015

This month was all about getting my website up to speed.  I also spent some time optimising the site to get better search results.  These efforts were not in vain as you can see from the traffic results below:

As you can see the number of sessions in May was more than double that in April.  Some of that was a bump I received from people on this blog but a lot of it had to do with the fact that I was starting to get ranked much better in Google for some of my keywords.

I'm still not getting any meaningful revenue from the blog however monetisation is not one of my top priorities at the moment...I'm still trying to generate traffic and get my blog name out there.

Below I have outlined a breakdown of some of the activities I have been undertaking to try and get the website up to date.

How is my Investment Banking Website going? May 2015 Update

Just over a year ago I launched Banker's Pitch, a website dedicated helping aspiring investment bankers get in, make the most of their time in Investment Banking and then get out to other careers. As an ex-banker myself I definitely thought I had knowledge that would be valuable to others out there.

However it wasn't purely altruistic.  I also wanted to generate an income from this site.  I had a plan - both in terms of content (the topics I would write on), marketing (how I would get the word about my site out there) and monetisation.  At a very basic level my plan looked something like the following:

1. Create awesome content
2. Let people know that the content exists
3. Reap the rewards for my hard work

Things didn't quite go to plan...

Ahh I'm such a planner but with my business ideas and projects things never really seem to go to plan.  I got my website up and running and created some kick-ass content but I choked on the marketing aspect of the project (and as a consequence the rewards definitely didn't flow my way).

Marketing does not come naturally to me.  Whilst I'm more than happy to let my network of friends and colleagues know what I am up to and promote my material that way, commenting on related blogs and building an online network is not something I'm really good at.  This is something I definitely I need to work on.

Because I wasn't out there promoting my material I was barely getting any visits at all to the site which in turn makes it pretty challenging to keep generating awesome content.

I was depressed at the lack of progress I was making...and then one day I just stopped writing...

 It wasn't a conscious decision I made to stop writing...it just kind of happened.  The last scheduled post I had went out and I couldn't get up the will to write any more.

But then recently I noticed something about Banker's Pitch

Banker's Pitch was honestly the last thing on

Get your business off the ground quicker by Outsourcing

A few years ago I came to the realisation that you can't do everything yourself when you are setting up your own small business.  You really should get help in areas that you are weak in so that you focus your time on the areas where you really add value.

In that post I mentioned that I was seeking help from a friend who had experience doing what I wanted to do.  The problem with using friends is that they are doing you a favour and so you're less likely to be go back for exactly what you want and also you can't push them to get the work done.

So what is the solution?  Easy...outsource some of the tasks that are incredibly time consuming for you but that others have expertise in.

Outsourcing doesn't have to be complicated or expensive...

The biggest block that most people against outsourcing is it's cost.  Most of us like to test our ideas out before really committing some capital to it.  But outsourcing doesn't have to be expensive.  In fact it is incredibly cheap for some things!

The problem is that most of us don't know

1. What to use it for
2. What we should be paying for different tasks

What should you outsource?

The first thing you need to think about is what you should outsource.  If you are setting up a fairly simple business or website (like I was with Banker's Pitch) you want to outsource all those things which you find time

Small Business Progress Update: August 2014

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have tried for several years to set up my own small business.  It has been far more challenging than I first imagined but then two months ago I finally got my new business up and running.  It is an Investment Banking blog (I've linked to it here) and my approach with this blog will be much more commercial (over time) than the current blog you are on which is much more personal in nature.

When I first mentioned that my new blog was running I mentioned that I would do periodic reports on how it was performing so here goes...

The first month was not what I had hoped for...

I had a plan for the blog which involved building up the readership in a slow and steady fashion and although it has had spurts of readers...it has been much slower and not as steady as I would have liked.  Here are some stats from the first full month of operation (July 2014):

• 40 users looked at the blog in 125 separate sessions
• There were 730 different page views
• The bounce rate (the # of people that go to a page and leave after that page) was 44% (which is not bad actually)
• The newsletter I set up has 7 subscribers

The problem is that I

My new business is (almost) up and running!

This is a very exciting post for me because I have been talking about setting up a business for a very very long time.  In fact I decided to share the process with the readers of this blog by tracking it with my 'Real Time Small Business Experiment'...and the results were definitely mixed.

Actually it was just over 2 years ago when I first wrote about my plans to start a business.  I have gotten close several times but reality and life often got in the way of what I hoped would be successful businesses.

Focusing on my strengths and where I added value was the best decision I made

It may sound strange but when I first started looking at business opportunities I was doing it all wrong.  I was looking at gaps in the market and what businesses would work instead of what I was good at and where I had experiences.

This resulted in me going down a whole lot of rabbit holes and looking at businesses where other people could obviously do it better than me.  It was a frustrating journey as great ideas eventually turned out to be non starters due to my own lack of experience and expertise.  However once I decided to focus on my strengths the whole process became a lot easier.  I (almost instinctively) knew where I could add value and where I was weak and this helped me structure my new business much more clearly.

The end result was a new blog that I'm very proud of

What ever happened to that small business idea? February 2014 Update

The downside of my real time small business experiment (which I started 2 years ago) is that all my regular readers have been clearly able to see how futile my efforts have been to start a business.

Since I first raised the idea  I have gone through a series of ideas and put the work into several projects however unfortunately none of them have come to fruition.  Some never really got past the ideas stage, others I was developing something which I thought was a good idea and the market was missing only to find out that it was incredibly difficult to actually do and finally - one idea I put a great deal of time and effort into actually came to market (in much the form as I would have done it) before I had even gotten started (and the natural big company to introduce it was the one that did introduce it).

Although it's frustrating that none of my ideas have worked out...I'm not giving up

I was originally going to write that it would be easy to give up this goal of mine - but it simply isn't. I find myself putting aside my goal of starting my own business for a few months at a time but the drive always comes back with

Advice from an entrepreneur: You have more hours in the day than you think

About a year ago I was in full swing setting up my business - and I got very close to launching...but then life got in the way.  My day job got very busy, I got a girlfriend and I was trying to get back into shape after the years of weight gain during investment banking.  This meant that my plans to start a business fell by the wayside.  I thought that if I had more time, or if I was confident enough to quit my job and do the business full time then I could make a proper go of it.

Recently though I was chatting to a close friend of mine who has a day job (he also used to be an investment banker but left for industry) and who had started a business which going very well.  He was also about to launch his second business and run the two side by side and eventually the plan was to quit his day job when the two businesses were throwing off enough cash.

It struck me that perhaps I was making excuses and that it was in fact possible

I grilled him for a while on how he was managing to do run a business, work a day job, keep fit and still have a life...and what he said to me was quite simple: You have more hours in the day than you think!

Now I'm one of those people who hates the simple clichés and feel good mantras that a lot of self help gurus spout...though I couldn't deny that my friend was doing exactly what I wanted to be doing so I decided to dig into it a bit deeper.

Our lives were not exactly the same and although there were some differences in the time we were able to spend building a business, it was not as significant as I first thought

• His new job requires similar hours to my new job (~11 hours a day)
• He also is trying to lose weight after years of investment banking weight gain so goes to the gym everyday
• He doesn't have a girlfriend
• He moved to a new city and so has less friend related time commitments

Of those, the only real difference was the girlfriend and the time spent with fiends.  When I thought about it though...I only meet my girlfriend once during the week, and I spend time with her and friends over the weekend.  It struck me therefore, that perhaps he may be onto something...

...so I drilled down a little further

When I got him to go into the specifics of how much time he spent on everything I realised that I actually have close to the same amount of free time as him...I just don't use it as well

• He finishes work at 6.30 and then goes to the gym until 8 (approx the same as me)
• From 8 until 11 or 12 he gets 3 - 4 hours work done on his business per night
• He sleeps 6 - 7 hours which is more than enough

This is broadly the same pattern of life that I have although the more I thought about it, the more I realised how much I waste those

A video to rekindle your interest in starting your own business

This will just be a quick post from me today to share with you one of the most inspirational speeches on entrepreneurship that I have ever heard.  I confess that I had not heard of the speaker (Wycliffe Grousbeck, CEO and co-owner of the Boston Celtic) before but rather just stumbled across this video while browsing on YouTube.

Before I share my views on the video and what I took from it I recommend that you watch it.  Note that it is quite long however you can listen to it while doing other tasks (i.e. it does not require you to actually watch the screen).

There were a couple of things which really resonated with me from his talk including:

1. Everyone knows the risks around setting up your own business but most do not think about the risks inherent in employment
2. Pressure from family and friends to take the traditional path often causes us to forgo or forget our dreams
3. The ability to be an entrepreneur is limited by age.  Beyond about 35 we have too many other responsibilities and have lost the ability to fail

There were so many other valuable insights from

Starting a business: Don't bite off more than you can chew

Regular readers of this blog will know that for the last few months I have been trying to set up an online business.  My original timetable has been blown completely out of the water as I came up against several challenges including

• Not having certain skills and not realising soon enough that I would need to get them in
• Over-estimating how much time I had to commit to the project

I have previous done a post on not having the skills and getting them in (see the link above) and this post will be on the second point which relates to committing to a project and then not having the capability and time to follow it through.

I imagine that most people who read this blog are either working in a professional context or are full time students who are interested in finance.  Either way, the chances are that you are at work or college a significant portion of the day, another portion of the day you dedicate to family and friends and the last part (if you have gone down the same path as me) you reserve for starting a business.

It is important early on in the process to evaluate how much time you can commit to the business.  In my case I thought I had done this.  I didn't not realise one crucial mistake I made:

I made the decision to start the business and evaluated how much time this would take when I was not busy

It is an easy mistake to make.  This is typically when our creative juices are flowing.  We evaluate the time we can allocate to the business based on the time we have when we are making the decision to start a business.

As an college or university student will tell you - it is easy to start a business in your spare time...EXCEPT around exams when you are so busy with study and passing subjects that you have been cramming for that you barely have time to think about your business. 

The same is true for working professionals as well.  There are always times of the year where you are busier than others.  Personally I found that the busy time in my current job is during report season (when companies report their results and I need to update my models and attend a crazy amount of meetings).  In fact it gets so busy that you may have noticed that I am down to one post a day on this blog (from two a day).

When you evaluate how much time you can spend on your new business, think about how much time it will require and whether you will be able to sustain this during the busy periods of your life.

The business I have planned can probably survive me not being present 2-3 months in a year but it also means that I should have extended the start up time for my business by this 2-3 months!  I am still going to pursue the idea and see how it pans out but I am now more realistic about timing and what I can and cannot do.

Have you started a business and had the same problems that I am currently having?  How did you manage it? 

How to choose a business name

Once you have gone through the business planning process and thought through the pros and cons of starting a business, and then this business and have a good idea of what your product is and who you are targeting - the next step is to choose your business name.

This may sound rather easy but as I found out when setting up my own small business, you spend an awful lot of time trying to decide what it should be called.  The fact is that although you can change it later down the track, as soon as you start operating you start building up goodwill in that business name and your customers will know you by that name from the start.  The name therefore is rather important. 

Here are some tips about what I think a business name should have:

1. Simple:  You want your customers to remember what your business name is and more importantly you want them to remember it when they are recommending you to their friends.  The shorter it is the more people will remember it
2. Easy to spell:  In the Internet age people are always going to Google your business name.  Make sure they are spelling it correctly the first time around.  You do not want to choose a name that is spelt in a weird or quirky way because the fact is that most people are going to type your business name into Google the way it sounds
3. Inventing a word is more hassle than it's worth:  People think they need a new and innovative business name (something that is catchy like Google - which is not actually a word - it is derived from the word Googol).  You don't.  There are many businesses out there that use a combination of real words that become synonymous with the company (e.g. Facebook)
4. It should have to do with your business in some way:  This is not compulsory however if people can get a general idea from your business name what the business does then you are one step closer to getting them in the door and buying your product and service.  Paypal is a great example of this.
5. Beware attaching your name to the business:  I know a lot of great businesses have done this but imagine the situation where you are selling your business - the buyer of the business then has the right to do whatever they want with that business (which still has your name on the door)

How to brainstorm business names

Now that you have the basic requirements in your mind it comes down to choosing your business name.  I suggest doing the following:

A Monster Load of bad publicity for Publicity Monster

As you would have seen from my collectible coin scam and questionable art investment with a guaranteed return post is that I actually quite enjoy busting what I think are questionable or downright dodgy business practices.  When I was reading the newspaper last week I came across a journalist who looked like he had done the same thing.  While I get 3000 - 4000 page views a month on this site (as at August 2012) this journalist wrote for Fairfax Media, one of the biggest publishing houses in Australia and the expose was therefore that much bigger.

The company that was being called out for it's business practices was Publicity Monster, an Australian company which offers search engine optimisation (SEO) services to businesses in Australia.  I will say up front that I have never had any dealings with this company - everything I write here I have sourced from information posted on the Internet by other providers and I will be linking to those sites.  I do not know whether this company is a bad operator but I would recommend reading the independent reviews of them on the Internet before doing business with them.

I first came across this company when I was reading this article ).  This article claims that Publicity Monster

• Does not deliver on the promises they make
• Threatens customers who complain with legal action
• [Edit]: For the removal of doubt I mean that the article suggests that they threaten, with legal action, customers who complain online
• Does not honour its money back guarantee
• [Edit]: I have since been informed that they do honour the money back guarantee but that the opportunity to apply for such the refund only exists within a very narrow timeframe (90 - 100 days)
• Harasses customers demanding payment
• Threatened to sue Fairfax Media for printing the article about them

Now I honestly thought that this had to be an exaggeration - a journalist who was trying to make a name for himself by doing a hatchet job on a company...no company could be THAT bad.  But then I made it to the Whirlpool forum where LOTS of customers had voiced their dissatisfaction with Publicity Monster - see the link here. It really is worth reading those posts to see the stuff that the people on that forum have dug up on this company (which includes using pictures of missing persons to give false reviews - note once again that these are again claims made by Whirlpool posters - but they provide plenty of evidence to back up many of their claims)

For a company that is all about publicity - Publicity Monster seems to be getting an awful lot of bad publicity.  Actually I found it a little bit suspect that traditional 'ratings sites' such as True Local had either reviews with half a star or ones with five stars.  I've never seen a discrepancy like that unless someone is playing games with the ratings site.

Lessons for those (like me) who are looking to start an only business

Setting up a business: Get the help you need

This post is one in a series which is following my progress in setting up a small business.  In my last post I outlined how much longer it was taking me to actually set up my business compared to what I had originally expected.  Two weeks down the track and this has not changed at all. 

One of the mistakes I have made until this point is to try and do it all myself.  I have extremely limited skills in web development and programming and as outlined in my last post this was taking me much longer than expected.  Worse the website was not looking at all professional or to the standard that I would expect.  I realise with the benefit of hindsight that it really would have been better to ask for help much earlier.

One of my good friends is a web developer by profession however I, like I assume many others who try their hand at business, do not want to impose on their friends an family. For the same reason I did not want impose on my friend.  I did ask him for some advice though and when we met up he told me that what I wanted was actually fairly basic and could probably be done with a few hours of solid work if you knew what you were doing (keep in mind that I have been building this thing for a month and it looked terrible).  He offered his help and I realised that I would be mad not to accept it.

The website is still in progress however I admit that I am much more relaxed now that I know that I have someone who knows what they are doing to compliment my skills.  I also realise now that I probably should have done this even if I had to pay for it.

What I will take from this experience into the future

In most areas of my business I believe that I am capable:

• I am quite an organised person and actually like doing the administration side of the business
• The product I am developing is what I do every day and I believe I have a real comparative advantage in doing it

However I will most definitely seek help in those areas where I have limited capabilities and where I

Setting up a business takes much longer than you originally expect

For the last few months I have been posting on my efforts to start a small business from the idea generation phase through the starting it and hopefully seeing it become a viable business.

In my last post on this topic I mentioned that I had two business ideas in mind and that one was quite practical from a small business point of view and I hoped to have a preliminary website up and running within a few weeks from that post.

As it turns out I have discovered that setting up a small business takes a lot more effort and is much harder than you originally expect when you have the idea.  This was for several reasons which include

1. When you have no experience in website design doing it yourself feels like a mammoth task
• I know hiring someone else to do it for me would be the easy solution however I would like to prove there is demand for my product before spending large amounts of money on it
• It is easy to set up a website that looks like it was built at home but learning enough html / css to make it look decent takes time and effort
2. There are things  you need to do which you do not even consider at the start
• One such example is a logo for your website
• For anyone looking to make their own logo I suggest Paint.net.  It is a great, free tool with lots of free instructional material
• Also I do not recommend using those free logo maker websites.  They do not look great and often they wont give it to you for free unless you register with them
3. The time taken to get your product perfect will always be longer than you expect
• If there is one thing I learned from my investment banking days is that perfection in the product your provide is the best reason for people to come back to you
• Unfortunately perfection or as close as you can get to it takes time
• I could have had my website going more than a week ago if I was willing to compromise on the standard of my product however I want to build a good reputation so am willing to put the time and effort into it

I will do an expanded post on this at a later point but I have discovered through this process that it really is possible to develop an online presence on a shoestring.  I am more than willing to invest more money into the project but I want to make sure there is a market from what I'm providing before I do so. 

I will keep updating this thread and hopefully soon I will be able to announce the launch of my small business (my new target is to launch by mid August - my original target was first week in July)

Real Time Small Business Experiment: A tale of two businesses

My apologies for all my readers about the time that it is taking between updates on my plans to start a small business.  As I mentioned in previous posts this will be a real time series and so unfortunately this blog can only get updated when I have news to tell.

In my last post I was focussing on the businesses characteristics that I wanted but had not yet come up with any concrete business ideas.  Some time has passed and I have put a fair amount of effort into brainstorming ideas and I have found that generally my business ideas fall into two categories

• To easy, everyone can do it and thus there is never going to be much profit in it
• To hard, it would make a lot of money if successful but the likelihood of success is much lower

I have had several ideas in both categories which I have been mulling over.  It was actually a few videos on youtube of all places which focussed my attention.  Standford Business School does some great Q&A panels on entreprenuership from their MBA course and one of the panelists said something that particularly appealed to me.  To paraphrase what they said they made the point that it is a benefit to be the best in a particular type of area.  You do not need to be the best when you start out but if you already have a working knowledge in the general area this always helps.

This definetely focussed my attention and I have managed to narrow my business ideas down to one from each category. 

• In the 'hard' category it is a proposal which will require people with different skills to my own so I am currently looking for a team to work on that with
• In the 'easy' category I have been pulling together materials for an online store that I wish to start.  I have mentioned it in several posts before and I hope to be able to post more on this soon

I'm not 100% sure that doing both at once (at the same time as having a full time job) is the best idea but I've never been a person that needs a great deal of sleep (or investment banking reduced the amount of sleep my body actually needs) so I have been managing this phase of it pretty well. 

The next update will probably cover some of the issues and concerns I've had while trying to set up the online store as well as some of the great solutions that I've found to common problems.

Brainstorming Business Ideas - Focus on the business characteristics you want

Last week I posted that it was my goal within the next 12 months to start a small business that would generate me a nice side income (my goal is $1,000 a month profit with a minimal time commitment as I do really enjoy my job and I am not looking to replace it)

The first step in starting this business was brainstorming ideas.  I took a piece of paper and started writing down things that came to my mind.  From my piece of paper some of the ideas included:

• Import good hot sauces from overseas to my local market which does not really have a good supply of them (scratched this because as I was investigating this further I found a website that does exactly that to my country and the prices are excellent)
• An investment newsletter but then realised there is so much excellent free information on the Internet that it was never going to get the type of success / effort ratio I was looking for

I found that there was no real thread to these business ideas.  They were all things I wanted but they were either hard to make money, the market was already saturated or they would take too much of my time.  I then came to the realisation that I needed to outline what sort of business I wanted.  I then took a step back and started to write down the characteristics of the business that I wanted.  These were the things that I listed down

• A business that not every person out in the world could easily replicate (this does not mean it has to be complex but there has to be some sort of value add that I personally bring)
• Low turnover / high profit margin type business (The problem with low margin businesses is that there is always going to be a cheaper point of production / supply and with the Internet there is little value add being the 'local supplier'
• Preferably some sort of repeat feature - I like the idea of getting a customer once, doing a great job / providing a great product for them and then they need to buy it again.  This 'lock in' type arrangement is best demonstrated by Apple (even though I don't like their products their business model is outstanding)

While I realise that every business strives for these characteristics I thought that if I started off on this path then if my business proposal covered them that I was already off to a pretty good start.  I have yet to come up with an idea that I wish to pursue though I feel a lot more focused about my search now.

If you have any other business characteristics that you think a good business should have please comment below.  I'm not an expert in this area at all.  I will be adding a list of resources for people looking to start a business in one of my posts next week.

The Real-Time Small Business Experiment: Introduction

This is the Introduction to a series which will follow in real time my attempts to make money in the world of 'small business'. Because this is a real time series I suspect the posts will be less frequent than my other series (such as my real estate investment series) as I will be updating my progress as I go through the experiences.

I am probably trying to start a business for different reasons to most. Some people are trying to replace their job with a business or are trying to earn significantly more money than they could from their job. I think I am one of the lucky people that (currently anyway) truly loves their job. I am not looking to replace it - I am looking to see if I can create another income stream (in addition to paid work, passive income from my stock / real estate / cash investments).

I was particularly motivated by the book The Adventure Capitalist by Connor Woodman (I have linked to it below) when he sells all his possessions and goes on an around the world trip seeing if he can double his money in a year by buying and selling goods around the world. It is a simple concept and one I want to see if I can replicate for myself.

The broad goals from this exercise are:

• Generate $1,000 per month, pre-tax additional income from a business


• Work no more than 5 - 10 hours per week on the business


• Achieve the above within 1 - 2 years