After Sheila’s passing, I was an emotional mess, I had the good sense to arrange for two of my lovely grandchildren to come stay with me, Charlene (15)

charlene at 15

and John (10)

John at 10

Without them I would probably have been joining Sheila within three months,

Having my grandchildren to look after (or were they looking after me?) Parental mode kicked in and life started rebuilding, with what focus I could muster being directed toward school life and parental guidance for the children.

The business killer came in May of 2007 when my main hosting company was attacked and the server and backup were destroyed. My hosting business disappeared along with all my own sites. Total loss of business.

One huge lesson learned ALWAYS keep a current backup of your server away from the host.

Sods law dictates!

The same week my hard drive also packed in (now partial data recovered) but thankfully not before I managed to upload some (but incomplete) parts of my own sites back to a new server, I lost all but two of my hosting customers (only to be expected) In my grief depressed state; I had neglected my business.

Thankfully, as I had been doing some things right cash was not a real problem, as I was still deep in depression work on resurrecting the business was slow.

The recovery starts… Part 3 to follow.

It was just two years ago today so suddenly, and unexpectedly I lost my dear Sheila, about 00.30 Sheila had gone downstairs for a snack, I suddenly woke to a strange noise, jumping out of bed and running downstairs I found Sheila chocking on a nutragrain bar of all things, despite me performing the Hinderic manoeuvre then manually clearing her throat and performing CPR, I could not revive her.

Sheila was the love of my life, sole mate, wife and best friend. She had been so supportive in all things, even when in 1999 I started the long journey into online marketing, working full time then sat at the computer often until 3 in the morning and up again for work before 7.

Sheila and I the last photo

Sheila would proof read all my typing despite having poor eye site, correcting my grammar and spelling mistakes she knew I would make it on line. 2002 found us together 24/7 when at last I could go full time on the internet.

The next four years were good despite various health problems and family tragedies we supported each other in every aspect.

Although I consider myself a strong person on Sheila’s passing grief depression set in a big way, for months it took me all my time to just scan my email, thankfully I received very few customer service requests as even the simple ones appeared to be a huge amount of work, I had no focus at all.

Part 2 to follow the business killer…

Adam Ginsberg hit the stage with a wealth of information to use myspace to great advantage as a marketing tool. DO NOT DO DIRECT MARKETING using myspace. This is a great medium and so versatile to be able to use suggestion marketing. Adam’s proprietary system is a real winner having the ability to enhance the myspace page and add friends targeted to your nich is superb.

At this point I must give an apology Tom Hua was back on stage giving a detailed run through of www.worldinternetoffice.com when I had to nip out for a call of nature, well I bumped into Shaun and ended up having a deep conversation. Consequently missing Toms talk. For that I am sorry you can follow the link above to gain an overview. For my own solid backend office I personally use Fantasos so solid an earthquake cant shift it.

Now we come to the closing hour and a half. If you like the look of these last four posts and wish you had been there with me then you are in for a treat. The attendees at this event earned the rights to the full dvd set of everything that happened over the last four days. Want to know more? Click hear It did take a little while for the licences to be handed out.

The closing parade of speakers left us with an afermation message from each one.A last tour round to say good bye for now then it was off to the pub for dinner and a pint before heading back to the hotel to type this up. 

If you enjoyed these posts do look in again I have pulled the Britpack files out of the roundtoit, more on them tomorrowJohn