Have you ever had one of those moments in your life where everything changed?
You might not have known it at the time – but the moment was defining, and it changed the course of some area of your life in a way that turned things upside down.
I had one of those course changing moments early in what you might want to call my betting “career”.
It was a moment that eventually resulted in my betting moving from being a hobby that was actually costing me a fair amount of money, to generating a consistent secondary income. It was a moment that at the time didn’t feel life changing – but it was.
The funny thing about this moment is that it wasn’t a discovery of some secret betting system, it wasn’t the day I started following a new tipster… in fact it was a moment that didn’t immediately lead to any particular change in how I betted – because it was largely something that happened in my mind – a paradigm shifting moment.
It all started with nine words from my wife Sarah.
“You’ve got twelve months to make money from betting.”
She then told me that if I didn’t start seeing profits I’d have to stop betting altogether. Our baby son (we now have three boys aged 6yrs to 11yrs old, and growing up fast) was only a few months old at the time, and I guess it was Sarah’s way of reminding me I now had important responsibilities, and we couldn’t afford to be pouring our money away on the horses.
Up until this point I’d been talking about how betting could one day provide us with a full time income. I’d been showing her the growth of the returns from my bets so far, and projecting forward to what they might be in the future if things kept going.
I’d been on about it for months and things were going OK – the graphs I kept showing her were trending up, which actually only meant I was “losing less” - but I could see the possibility of one day being a full time punter.
But I’d been talking a lot…. dreaming a lot…. creating a lot of pretty graphs…. and not really DOING a lot.
I didn’t really see it (I was too close and too caught up in my dreams) but Sarah knew it and so she set me an ultimatum – a deadline that changed my thinking and more importantly led to me changing the way I went about my betting.
In the moments after Sarah’s ultimatum I had a realization that although I dreamed that one day my betting would become a business, up to that point I’d been treating my betting like a hobby.
I knew that if I were to succeed in seeing my betting accounts move from deep in the red, to showing a profit in the next twelve months, then that attitude would have to change. I needed to start looking at my betting as a business NOW – even though right now it was just an expensive hobby.
That moment changed everything.
That was the day that I started to implement several changes….
I started putting serious time aside for analysis and research. I was back then, and I still am today a big fan of speed ratings but I would leave all my number-crunching to Sunday evening, and it would take three or four hours. Often I just couldn’t be bothered to do the analysis, and as a result my figures would become out of date and unreliable. Now I spend thirty minutes to an hour every day during the week, and I can easily keep on top of things.
I became more focused upon my core tasks of monitoring trends. Trends analysis is my passion (I know, I’m a geek, but I love playing with figures!) But I would sometimes get to hear of someone using another method of form study or statistical research, and waste time wondering if I could apply similar methods myself. Rather than concentrating on what I knew and what was already working for me.
I wasted less time on distractions. For example, I would always watch every race in which I had an interest. Not just races where I was actually having a bet, but also races where there may have been a qualifying selection in a system or method I was evaluating. It was madness! Me watching the race was not going to affect the result, and I worked out I was spending an average of 90 minutes a day watching the TV when I could have been using my time more productively.
I became more strategic in my thinking and set myself goals to work towards.
I began to look for new income streams. I gave up my salaried job and went into business with a friend of mine, selling eBooks on eBay. This provided me with an income whilst freeing up more time for me to focus on betting. My information marketing business on eBay eventually led to me creating SkyBlueKangaroo and developing it into an online business.
I started to look for a business coach who could teach me how to take what I enjoy doing, which is researching profitable betting methods and then writing about them, and turning that into a business from which I can earn a living. As the saying goes….
“If you enjoy what you do, you will never work another day in your life.”
That day began the process for me of taking my vision, and turning into the income streams I am lucky enough to enjoy today. Betting and my online business interests give me great personal satisfaction, whilst also giving me the freedom from a nine-to-five job. And it all started with my wife’s encouraging words (or “nagging” as it is otherwise known!)
While not a lot changed immediately in my betting methods that day – the impact over the last four or five years has been significant. I’ve not looked back and many of the things I changed back then have become patterns and a natural part of my daily work flow.
The #1 reason my betting developed into a profitable business was that I began to treat it as one.
Why not read this article next?
The typical professional gambler is a schizophrenic
.
