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My Monthly Report – October 2018

Nov 5, 2018

Welcome back to another monthly report. October was a great month because I have finally completed on the sale of an investment that for complicated reasons has taken about two years and a lot of work to sell.

I definitely find it difficult to be optimistic and focus on the future if I have problems or worries weighing on me and this investment was a classic case of that. I have regained quite a few hours a week of headspace and am just happier and more optimistic. So yeah, great month! Despite everything else being a bit meh.

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Hours Worked

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Productivity

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Profitability

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Optimism

  • Hours Worked: I spent quite a bit of time celebrating and planning my future in October, and purposely took a step back from other work.
  • Productivity: But the time I did spend was very productive.
  • Profitability: Revenue was generally down across the board, but the completion of the sale of one big investment more than made up for it.
  • Optimism: My head is clear. My eyes are bright and I am really excited for life and work.

This will be a short one. But let’s take a look

Pipehouse Gin

Pipehouse Gin is ticking along but once again ran into some stock issues and at one point we were down to just 5 bottles left! So October was largely spent producing enough gin to get ourselves ready for Christmas. I am not sure we will have enough but we’ve done all we can!

In the last month’s report, I talked about my vision for the future of Pipehouse Gin. Well I am still trying to work that out and spent quite a bit of time in October discussing what it is we really want out of the business. And is something I discuss in detail with Emma, my wife, in episode 4 of the lazy entrepreneur podcast. We’re still to work it out but expect an update next month!

There is a lot of potential for the brand, but is there enough to ‘go all in’. Drop everything else and focus all my time on it. And is that even something I want to do?

We also spent a bit of time building out a shop for our website and linking it up with our warehouse partner. Before we were just referring people to Amazon, but now you can buy a bottle on our website. We also built an interactive map so that people can see what bars are currently stocking us. Now every time someone starts stocking us we add them to the map.

Relevant Posts:

Table Tennis Brands

I run two table tennis brands. Palio (aimed at beginner/developing players) and Eastfield (a more high-end/professional brand). Sales were pretty meh. A little bit down on Palio and a bit up on Eastfield.

But October was really a preparation month. We are frantically producing more stock hoping to have enough for Christmas. Which is normally huge for us.

We have also finally finished our designs for the new range of Palio bats, and are now waiting on the final prototypes. I am very excited for those and anticipate they’ll be ready for purchase around March. (Yes these things take a long time).

Relevant Posts:

Blog

In October I managed to write my target of three posts:

In terms of traffic and revenue. Traffic was slightly up but revenue was very down, making just £3,022. The lowest it has made in over two years.

Why? Well a part was that one of my biggest earners (Jungle Scout) seem to have changed the way they record sales and are waiting a few weeks before confirming them. 

But most of it is just the slow decline of this blog continuing. It is almost a year now since I made the decision to stop promoting it, and since then it has trended down and down. It is a shame really because I think this site still has a lot of potential. And I am partly hoping my new podcast will help.

Relevant Posts:

The Lazy Entrepreneur Podcast

The podcast! I have been talking about it for months now and I know a lot of you are a bit disappointed with how it has been going. I only published one episode in October. But I have actually done more than that. There are another two episodes recorded and ready for release.

And I have finally worked out a format and timeline that works for me. I am going to record two episodes every Tuesday with the help of my wife Emma. Each episode will be on one subject and will mostly feature me talking about it with some input, prodding and questioning from Emma. We have done a bit of experimenting so far and it seems to make things much better.

With one or two missed and one of two terrible/deleted episodes that should lead to 4 or 5 episodes a month. So expect a lot in November!

Where I am still struggling is with post-production. I don’t know what I am doing and am not spending much time on it. If anyone is able to help me out with it perhaps we can do some sort of trade and I can help you out. If you’re interested email me at hello@sampriestley.com with subject ‘podcast help’.

Investing

The sale of one investment meant that in October I received a rather large sum of money into my bank account. So spent quite a lot of time thinking about how exactly to invest it. I ended up writing a whole post on it:

My Updated Investment Strategy – Investing In The Light Of Brexit

Conclusion

And that’s it for this month! It has been short, but hopefully next month I will have a lot more to discuss.  

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