After what I originally believed was a disastrous first day at work, things improved as that first week progressed. On the Tuesday, I took in a ceramic mug which was heavier than the flimsy plastic coffee cup I had struggled with on the first day. In addition, it had a handle, and, as the coffee machine only filled the mug three-quarters full, I managed to carry my own coffee back to the audit room without spilling any.
The ticking and checking work remained tedious, but as I asked John more questions about exactly what we were achieving, I did find myself becoming a little more interested in our work.
John kept emphasizing that my boredom would become less after my upcoming bookkeeping course was over, after which I would better understand where this work was leading.
“By the end of this fortnight,” John told me when we were drinking coffee one afternoon. “I’ll be sure that the underlying records are basically accurate, which will allow me to go on and produce accounts for the building of the bridge, up to the 30th of June, which I can be sure will accurately portray the financial position of this venture.
Although that made me feel that I was a very small cog in a very big wheel, it was the start of me understanding ‘the bigger picture’ and I was grateful to John for starting to clarify it for me.
Mid-afternoon on the second Friday, Jean and I said goodbye to the company’s staff and the three of us walked back to our own office, with John and I taking turns to carry the heavy comptometer, swapping over every hundred yards or so, although John’s 100 yards tended to be longer than mine. Back in the office, I had my first chat with Anna, the only other student taken on by the firm that year, and we were both told where to go to attend our bookkeeping course, which was scheduled to last two weeks. As Anna lived on the other side of Glasgow to me, and I would get off the train two stops earlier than I had during my first two weeks, while she needed to travel further, we agreed to meet up at the venue at 9.00 a.m. the following Monday.
I had assumed that, as maths was my best subject at school, bookkeeping, which I had imagined would be little more than simple arithmetic, would come easily to me. As usual, I was totally wrong.
As the lecturer, an elderly retired Chartered Accountant, about the same age as I am now, went on and on about debits and credits, assets and liabilities, income and expenses, I became more and more confused. He talked about General Ledgers, Purchase Ledgers, Sales Ledgers, Day books, Cash books, Books of Prime Entry, Bank Reconciliations, Journal Entries, and a whole lot more gobbledygook, which, by the end of my first week, had me completely confused. John had told me that the course would help me understand things a lot better, but I went home after the first Friday in a state of complete overwhelm.
Things did start to fall into place, both for Anna, who had indicated that she was as confused as I was, and me over the following week. Certainly not completely, but a lot of the loose ends were tidied up. I even grasped why, when you lodge money into your bank, and the bank acknowledges that you have credited your account, you would make a debit entry in the bank account in your ledger. (Let me know in the comments if the answer to that conundrum interests you).
On the final Thursday afternoon we were given a short test. The tutor worked hard that evening to be able to give the 30 or so of us who were in his class the results on Friday morning. Anna got a score of 70% and I scored 65%. Not brilliant, but it was a lot more than I would have guessed I would get if you had asked me what I thought I would score the previous Friday evening. The tutor then spent the rest of the final day explaining the correct answers to all of the questions, and that was a great help in clarifying everything even more.
You may now be wondering what this story has to do with Affiliate Marketing. However, before I explain, let me confuse things even more. Imagine you are a young man who has always wanted to be a driver. You’re not sure exactly what kind of driver you want to be, all you know is that you want to make a living driving a motor vehicle. It could be a taxi, a limousine, a fire engine, an ambulance, a bus, a lorry, or a motor racing car. The day after you pass your driving test, you will be faced with a dilemma. That dilemma is, what kind of vehicle should you begin driving to do what you want in the future? The answer is, have a go at all of them before you decide on one. The most important thing though, is that before you can have a go at all of them, you have to have mastered the basics of driving. Hence the need for a test.
It takes at least five years to qualify as a Scottish Chartered Accountant. It actually took me six years, but that’s a story for another day. During those five or six years, students are taught a lot of different accounting-related disciplines. Be that large, consolidated company accounting, small business accounting, taxation, auditing, investing, to name just a few of the subjects that the course covers. However, there is one basic discipline that you need to master before you can understand any of these other, more difficult topics. That basic discipline is Double-Entry Bookkeeping. That is why, Anna and I were sent on the basic bookkeeping course before we undertook more difficult studies in other, more complicated, but related subjects.
Similarly, as an Affiliate Marketer you could concentrate on one, or more, of a wide variety of methods to achieve success. These include, but are not limited to YouTube, TikTok, Blogging, Facebook advertising, Facebook Lead Ads, Facebook Messenger, to name but a few. However, just like driving and accounting, there is one basic discipline that all Affiliate Marketers in whatever niche they are concentrating on, and whatever method or methods they are utilizing, need to be cognizant of to be successful.
That discipline, which can be divided into four parts, is what Dean Holland, my mentor, calls the Four Core Areas of Focus. These are set out in Chapter 5 of a book written by Dean called “The Iceberg Effect“.
In another series of blog posts that I have written on this blog site, I have summarized Dean’s book chapter by chapter. Normally one chapter per blog post, but Chapter 5 has four blog posts dedicated to it. The series of posts can be accessed by hovering your mouse over “Blog Post Menu Pages” at the top of any page and clicking on “The Iceberg Effect”. This will take you to a menu of all the blog posts in the series.
Just like our AI generated driver who NEEDED to pass his driving test, and Anna and I NEEDED to spend two weeks being introduced to the intricacies of double-entry bookkeeping, all Affiliate Marketers, no matter their length of service or level of success, NEED to read and fully understand the contents of “The Iceberg Effect“. Please acquire this 163-page FREE book (a contribution of $7.96 towards postage and packing is required) by clicking the link below or clicking the image at the foot of the right sidebar
Cheers
Phil