She actually does sing.... it's just not promoted that much. And Idris Elba will be playing Nelson Mandela

Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category

How I Traveled to South Africa for Free

By Arthur Cundy

Back in July, I had the wonderful opportunity of traveling to South Africa. It’s a beautiful country and I recommend you go there if you get the chance.

The beginning of the year I had all these plans to travel to different states. Florida, Atlanta and California. Going to South Africa was definitely not in my plans. However, the stars seemed to align to make this trip possible.

I didn’t start thinking about going to South Africa until May of this year. I had a friend who was returning there. When she left to go back, I said I have to go there.

Now prior to this the only countries I’ve visited outside of the U.S. was England and Antigua. And the longest flight was about 11 hours.

South Africa is roughly a 22 hour flight.

So I heard from the grapevine that another friend of mine was planning to travel to South Africa in July. After speaking with him, he offered to let me stay at his place during my visit.

So I hadn’t bought the ticket yet and I already had a place to stay I the foreign country.

Since this was my first time traveling there, I felt it was imperative that I travel with my friend on the same flight at him.

Now remember I wasn’t planning to go to South Africa so I didn’t have money saved up ready to purchase the ticket. You can search on your own to see how much a round trip ticket to South Africa costs.

So while I am trying to figure out how I’m going to pay for this plane ticket, I get an email out of the blue from a gentleman from Denmark who is ready to give me money.

It sounds hard to believe, but yes. This guy wanted to give me money to buy one of my domain names. The timing couldn’t be more perfect.

After a few emails back and forth, I had the money deposited in my bank account.

I was able to go to South Africa. I had a blast. Check out some of the photos.

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One thing I should mention about how this relates to having an online business is that I did not have a job. Things might not have gone so smoothly if I did. I wasn’t tied down to a 9 to 5; so I could travel at any time. I didn’t have to check how many sick days I had left or get my vacation approved by a manager. The keyword is flexibility. Flexibility, or freedom with how you spend your time, is one of the great benefits of having your own online business.

The plane ticket cost over $2,000. I sold a domain name for a few thousand dollars in profit. The entire process was done over email. This more than paid for my trip.

So when you think about it; I traveled to South Africa for free. Actually, I made a profit!

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5 Great Reasons Why You Should Set Goals

By Arthur Cundy

In my business I am learning that I need to set goals in order to make sure I am getting things done. If I don’t then I lose focus quickly, projects get delayed and money goes away. In this video, I talk about the 5 reasons why you should always be setting goals.

  1. Gives Clarity On Your Ultimate Goal – You now have direction to where you want to accomplish.
  2. Pushes You Forward – Gives you motivation to keep doing what you are doing.
  3. Makes You Super Focused – You don’t waste time going after shiny objects. You spend time on what’s important.
  4. Get Things Done Faster – You make things happen faster and are more efficient.
  5. Keeps You Accountable – It makes sure you are doing what you need to be doing.

Here are 2 of my goals:
Lose 25 pounds by December 31.
Write at least 4 posts per week.

Please comment below and let me know what are your goals are. Let’s keep each other accountable!

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Happy Thanksgiving Day

By Arthur Cundy

I am very grateful that you take the time out of your lives to listen and read what I have to say. Of all the websites on the internet you came to mine and for that I am thankful. I am also thankful that in this day and age we can start businesses online and not rely on a job to earn income! Learn about one of my relatives that has to work on Thanksgiving Day this year. She has a job and therefore, no real control over when she works. Watch the video for more info.

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What My Son Taught Me About Business

By Arthur Cundy

In the past few weeks there has been a lot of things going on at ArthurCundy.com HQ.

First, my son started Pre-K. It’s his first time going to “big kid” school and it’s my first time dealing with a child going Pre-K. He is having fun, learning new things, making new friends. I am adjusting to his new dress code and much earlier schedule. Here are a couple things I have learned about business in the process.

Get Up Early

Before Pre-K, my son went to daycare. The daycare opened at 7:30am but you could pretty much bring your child whenever you want. Since I had no urgent appointments (like a job) to go to, I was very laid back about when I brought him there.

But now he’s in school. And in school he needs to be there at 8:30am on the dot. They are very strict about this. They gave many reasons why. The reason that stuck out to me was that once a child is in the public school system, everything goes on their permanent record. So if he’s late in Pre-K, it will effect him when it’s time to go to Junior High.

Business Lesson Learned:
Be diligent about going to sleep on time.
Be diligent about waking up on time!
Understand that my actions today can and will effect what happens in the future.

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My Outsourcing Mistake

By Arthur Cundy

Recently, I had an interesting experience with outsourcing a project of mine. In your business it’s always good to outsource some or all of your tasks. There are many reasons for this. It frees up your time to focus and be on your business instead of in your business. If don’t correctly you can get things done quicker and better than doing them yourself. You can leverage someone else’s knowledge, skill and expertise to help you be more productive and make more money.

3 weeks ago, I got a new project for an e-commerce website. Everything started out routinely enough. The website had a simple design and just needed it to be built with a shopping cart/cms backend. I had just finished a similar project and I wasn’t  completely satisfied with the company I used for that one so I set out to find another vendor to work with.

I chose a company called CSSChopper/Sparx Technologies to work on my project. They seemed professional and had a really nice website and portfolio. I chatted with a lady named Shilpi who showed previous e-commerce websites they had done in the past. I showed her the design and asked how long it would take to build the website. She said “9  business days”. “Are you sure?”, I asked. “Yes”, she replied, “I guarantee it will be done in 9 business days”.

Now the contract I had with the client gave me 3 weeks to complete the website. So I thought even if Shilpi misses the 9 day time frame, I still have a week to iron out any issues. Not only that, but to start a project with them I only needed to pay 10% upfront instead of the usually 50% or 100%.

We begin the project. I get an email with my login for their project management system, activeCollab. I thought “Oh wow, this is cool. My last vendor didn’t even use a PMS.” However, as time went on I realized the mistake I made. The following is list of major things that happened during this outsourcing endeavor.

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Watch me build passive income…online

By Arthur Cundy

My name is Arthur Cundy and I want to welcome you to my website. This is something that I have wanted to do for a long time and I am so grateful that I was able to have this opportunity to share my knowledge and experiences with you.

Who am I?
Well I am many things but for the purposes of this post I have outlined a few buzz words that I feel relates to me.

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