Right campers.  After two years of doing two jobs at once; one to pay the bills and another establishing  my website www.myitchydog.co.uk to build it up as a going concern, I am finally in a position to give up job A and work solely on job B (it even pays me a few quid to keep the mortgage man happy.)  Which also means I am free to blog again, you lucky, lucky readers.

So there I was, the moment I’d been dreaming about – just the one full time job, last Monday sitting at my desk raring to go.  And all I could do was procrastinate and distract myself by chatting to Dave the cat.  That, and the washing. Water the plants. Run a brush through the cat’s fur. Catch up on I’m A Celebrity (love Fatima Whitbread, did you see the whole nose wash debacle? TV gold!) Facebook. Twitter. Make a bacon sandwich (it was delish by the way) but no actual money making graft.

After a day of this, I was starting to freak out just a wee bit.  Had I done the right thing? Did I have the motivation and the commitment to make this work? Was I just a lazy git looking for a few months’ skive on the sofa?

Then I realised that I just didn’t know where to start.  I’ve been banking ideas for nigh on two years which I’d promised would be implemented the minute I could sit down and work through them properly.  Essentially my head was full up.  It was like I’d chucked every idea in the cupboard under the stairs for the past two years and on day one I’d just opened the door and the lot had come tumbling out and engulfed me.  I was trapped under the weight of marketing ideas, SEO plans, blog headlines and I couldn’t raise my arms under the weight of it all to start typing!

So I got in the car, drove to Staples and bought the mother of all whiteboards, coloured pens and an eraser.  I felt like a five year old with a debit card. Felt tip pens!  It was almost too big to fit in the car.  I got home, stuck it on the floor in the office…..and made lunch, watched last night’s Coronation Street…..and then I got started.

I’d had a couple of meetings with Gareth Sear from www.sussexwebmarketing.co.uk over the previous couple of months and he’d really helped me work out a plan, between us we clarified what my business really is, what my customer looks like, plus agreed my targets and goals for the year.

I had it all in my notebook.  So I transferred the lot onto the mammoth whiteboard.  It took about twenty minutes then I realised most of it was in the wrong place so I scrubbed it out and started again.

What I was left with is a plan for the year writ large in blue, red, green and black.  In the bottom corner is my weekly plan.  I promise to write two new blog posts, rewrite or write from scratch two new articles for my site or the blog www.myitchydogsblog.com and SEO (fancy talk for ‘making Google love me more’) two product pages.  I will post them on Facebook and Tweet them simultaneously.  I will blog for Jasmine and MoneyMagpie.  I will guest blog elsewhere and write a monthly newsletter.  Surrounding the weekly plan is every idea I’ve had, blocked into sections: SEO, marketing, blogging, article titles to be encompassed in said new weekly regime.

Then I went off for a nice cup of tea and a digestive.  Followed by the best night’s sleep I’d had in ages.