DavidCarey.co.uk

So on my mission to improve myself and start doing some of the things I’ve wanted to do for ages I decided to buy an acoustic guitar. To be honest I wanted a piano, but I’d never have enough room for a piano when I move out of my parents place so I settled for a guitar. It cost me £85, its second hand but in excellent condition and after following the advice of “buy cheap, buy twice” I decided to stump up the cash and get a good second hand guitar as opposed to a rubbish new one for the same money.

I’ll be honest with you, I thought it’d be a lot easier than it is. But it isn’t. My fingers feel far too fat to get on the strings within the frets and I’m finding it ridiculously difficult to make chord changes fast enough, despite only knowing three chords! I’m usin jamorama training programme to learn and it does seem pretty comprehensive. It’s basically an eBook with a bunch of videos and other applications to help you learn. I went for this package after reading a bunch of different reviews on other training programmes and discovered that for the money it’s definately the best system to go for.

I’m trying to fit in at least 30 minutes practice in the morning, which has fitted in with my new morning routine, and at least 30 minutes in the evening. The saying practice makes perfect best come true, because this is bloody difficult. I mean I’ll be honest, I never expected to be playing like a pro after a day but I’d expect a little better than how I’m doing at the moment.

A few of my friends play the guitar, mostly the electric though as they are into heavy metal and hard rock. I don’t really like that style of music though, I much prefer the cool and sombre tones of a nice acoustic therefore influencing my decision to go down the acoustic path despite it being a harder instrument to play. Some of them have been giving me a few pointers as I go along though, which has helped my playing a little bit but its a completely different style of playing to be honest.

I’ve kind of accepted now that I’ve got a long way to go, but as long as it stays fun I don’t mind. Fingers crossed (maybe not, they hurt) in a couple of weeks I’ll be able to say that I can play a few well known tunes relatively well, but right now I can’t see it myself. I decided not to use a teacher, the jamorama package seems good enough for now, and it’s a lot cheaper than stumping up £20 an hour for lessons.

So it’s 6:35AM now and I’ve been up since 5:30. I found it suprisingly easy to actually get out of bed early this morning, perhaps that’ll all change tomorrow though when I do it again. So I got up, got dressed in some running gear and called Hayley who didn’t believe I’d actually get up and go for a run at this time (she was working the night shift until 6:30 so was awake when I called).

I left the house and went for my run which was suprisingly quick paced, despite not having been for a run in over 6 months I managed to complete about a mile and a half in around 15 minutes, which is a far cry from the 8 minutes I used to manage it in when I was in the army. Still, it felt good to actually do some exercise for a change, I’ve spent most of the weekend looking down at my gut in strict disappointment and now I’m actually feeling pretty pleased with myself.

I haven’t been for a shower yet, I don’t want to wake the rest of the family up so I’ll wait until I’ve finished this post to have that. I’m going to try and stick with a strict morning routine for every Mon-Fri working day so that I actually have some productiveness to my mornings as opposed to the usual fighting with my alarm clock.

So here’s the routine:
0530 - Wake up.
0535 - Go for a run / do press up circuit (alternate days).
0600 - Check Facebook / blogs etc.
0630 - Write a blog post.
0700 - Take a shower.
0715 - Promote blog post.
0730 - Practice guitar.
0800 - Have breakfast and get dressed.
0830 - Leave for work.

Now if I try and stick with this routine it should work, and as you can see I will get a lot more done in my mornings that I’d have normally not been able to do until after work by which time I’m normally shattered anyway.

I guess I’m just sick and tired of wasting my mornings, and despite waking up nearly 3 hours earlier than I normally would I actually feel more awake now than usual in the mornings. This is probably due to my run and the endorphins it releases etc, but I won’t delve into that too deep as it is all a bit beyond me. For breakfast I’m going to have some Fruit & Fibre which was the healthiest thing I could see in Tesco, it didn’t mention on the packaging anything about it containing one of your five portions of fruit and veg a day but I’m going to assume it does. Just to make me feel better, that stuff tastes terrible and I won’t eat it without a proper reason!

Perhaps you should try starting a new morning routine. Even if it’s only getting up half an hour earlier than normal to do some reading or something, no doubt you will feel better throughout the day having done so and it really isn’t that difficult to do. A simple change such as this could make a dramatic impact on your lifestyle.

Well, I am. But only by title. You see, on the way to Bradford earlier we were discussing a colleague of ours who is the self-proclaimed “best salesman in the company”, if only his sales figures showed this as true! The thing is, he’s an obvious salesman. When he turns up to see you about something it’s obvious from the start that he is there to sell something and earn himself some commission, he simply isn’t interested in what the client wants. My colleague is constantly talking about “closing the deal” and “keep asking questions” but to me it’s all rubbish. He’s spent too much time reading books and trying to be the perfect salesman, but the perfect salesman is usually seen as an obvious threat to the client you’re trying to sell to.

This is where I differ. I don’t look like a salesman. I shave once a week, on a Sunday, and for the rest of the week I have a stubbley beard which I think looks pretty cool. Quite often my directors come with the usual joke of “forgot the razor again?”, which I laugh off, simply because I perform well. I’m not saying this is all down to my beard, and I don’t look untidy at all. I look professional, despite rarely wearing a tie. I wear a shirt and trousers, and I always look professional. By not always being clean shaving and not looking overly formal with a tie people aren’t immedietely put off by my appearance as being as obvious salesman, and it means there’s no barriers to break down from the beginning.

If I’m going to meet someone with the intention of selling them something I know they will have their guard up from the beginning. However, the less I look like a salesman the lower their guard will be from the start. I never look untidy and I always look professional, but I don’t have the telltale look of a salesman and I don’t talk like one.

People don’t buy the product, they buy the person selling it. People need to like you. So come down to their level, be honest and be friendly. Don’t talk to them in technical terms, the phrase “bullshit baffles brains” may work sometimes but with the average Joe it just won’t wash. Try to avoid coming across as a salesman and I guarentee you will see orders increasing dramatically.

Every book on business I’ve read has told me that only in extreme circumstances should you use factoring in your business. And yet, the company I work for does this.

For those who don’t know factoring is a system the bank offers in which you give them the invoices you send out to your clients/customers and they give a percentage of the money straight away. Then, its their duty to chase the debt and recover it. On paper it looks like an excellent service, you don’t have to worry about chasing debts and you get instant cash flow into the business.

I guess being in a trade industry like ourselves factoring does make some sense. Simply because our payment terms are 30 days from invoice date, and with the turmoil in the building industry at the moment a lot of our clients are taking far longer than this thus stopping us from getting the money. Therefore, it makes sense for us to factor right? Wrong.

The factoring company effectively have you pinned against a wall if they aren’t able to get the money from the invoices you gave them. Also, your clients have to deal with a “third party” which to them can seem like a collections agency, which can be quite offputting.

Also, the factoring costs can be quite high, especially if you don’t have a very good credit rating with the banks to begin with. Quite often, simply getting a bank loan for short term cash flow problems can be a far more cost effective way of doing things.

Although relatively new to the world of factoring, from our company viewpoint I have seen nothing but problems with the service. Initially, it all seems excellent. But as time goes on there are obvious flaws with factoring that simply cannot be ignored.

Ok, so I’ve read all over the place that becoming an “early riser” will improve your performance in all aspects of work and life. Whether or not these claims are true I don’t know yet, but I figured I may as well give getting up early every day a go.

I usually get up at around 8:20 on workdays, so I’ve decided to try and change my routine to 6AM starts every weekday. I was thinking about going for 5AM starts, but I think thats a lil ambitious for now!

I wanted to start my new early riser lifestyle on Monday, however, that didn’t happen. I set my alarm for 6AM with good intentions and went to bed. As soon as the alarm went off on Monday I just thought “naaaah” and turned it off. Simple as that. It just wasn’t happening. And the same happened Tuesday as well, I just couldn’t bring myself to get up.

This morning was slightly better, I still turned the alarm off at 6AM and changed it to 7AM, thinking the extra hour would make all the difference. So it goes off at 7AM and for the next 30 minutes I’m hitting the snooze button, giving me 5 minutes extra everytime. It was pretty pointless really because I was just lying there, pretty much paralysed. Then when the 730 alarm went off I decided just to throw myself up and out of bed, and it worked.

It was really quite simple in the end, I just had to throw myself up and out of the bed, but for some reason until 730 I just couldn’t do it. I literally felt stuck and paralysed in my bed and just couldn’t seem to move. I guess this is going to be a pretty hard habit to break, but I reckon it’ll be worth it in the end.

So tonight I’m again going to set my alarm for 6AM, but when it goes off I’m just going to throw myself out of bed. No more pressing the snooze button, no more lying in. I’m just going to do it.

Wish me luck!

So I was texting new Hayley in the pub yesterday evening (always a bad idea to text whilst drunk… why do I never learn?) and anyways I randomly decided to ask what’s happening with “us”. This could’ve easily set myself up for a fall, but instead she basically told me she really likes me. Which is pretty good, because I do really like her as well.

But do I want another relationship right now? She even asked me that in the text and said she didn’t mind as long as I was honest. That was the problem with my last relationship, i found it difficult to tell old Hayleigh the truth about what I was thinking and feeling most of the time. I decided the conversation was best left until we were with each other to have it in person, and so for some reason me and the 3 guys I went to the pub with ended up walking to Hayley’s friend’s house where she was with two of her friends. I didn’t mind this, it suited me quite well actually because it was in fact on the way home for me.

When we were at her friends we never really got a chance to speak, so we finished off our conversation in text today. We’ve decided that as we’re kinda seeing a lot of each other recently we are essentially seeing each other, and Hayley said we can change our Facebook relationship status to reflect this. Oooh, how official.

I haven’t changed mine yet, I’ll wait to see if she does.

“I’ve tried texting you, I’ve tried calling you, I’ve tried writing you a letter and I’ve tried emailing you and you just keep shutting me out. Take this text as me now shutting you out!”.

That’s the message I received this evening from Hayleigh. I didn’t text or call her like I said I would earlier, but in my defence I was watching the new Batman movie at the cinema with Hayley (different Hayley, new and improved Hayley) so I couldn’t really text back anyway.

Ah well, I guess that’s solved my dilemna for me. I feel a bit better now knowing that she’s kinda angry at me, hopefully it’ll help her move on quicker. As for myself, I moved on about 2 weeks ago.

She made me feel like a prisoner in my own home. She literally had me under seige. I couldn’t escape, I had nowhere to go. She was clever.

So what happened? Well, it was about 11AM and my phone started ringing. Now for some reason every now and again my phone doesn’t go through to voicemail after X amount of rings, and as luck would have it this was one of them times. It was Hayleigh. I didn’t want to talk to her, after all I had nothing to say. But she wouldn’t stop calling, I ignored the phone and put it on silent but she wouldn’t stop. So she sends a text:

“Please call me ASAP”.

I replied: “Why, whats up?”. I mean lets face it, I may not have wanted to talk but if there was something seriously wrong I didn’t want the fact that I’d ignored her on my consciounce. Anyways, she calls again. And I answer. And this is what she says:

“I’m outside your house in my car, I know you’re in because I can see yours. Either come out and talk to me now or I’ll come in and talk to you”.

Terrific. So what do I do? Well, I get on MSN and ask my friend Marc for advice. Now, the thing with Marc is he hadn’t had a girlfriend in like 5 years, so perhaps he wasn’t the right one to talk to, and needless to say his advice was pretty fruitless.

So I get some clothes on, walk outside and sit in the car with her. She begins to talk about how she wants me back and how we can work things through etc… But I don’t want any of that. And yet, my biggest problem is telling her, or any woman, face to face the truth because I’m a coward and I don’t want to hurt them.

So I basically told her I had a lot to think about and I’d drop her a text or give her a call later on today. I probably will, but it’ll only be to tell her I want us both to move on, seperately.