Gavin Allinson » Family

Your blog as your resume how to get started in sports nutrition the best internship

admin — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 06:35:47 +0000

Every week I get contacted by people who wanted to get started in a career as a sports nutritionist. If I've directed you here, then the information in this post if you act upon it could be the defining point in your career. It's not an easy task getting paid employment as a sports nutritionist there aren't hundreds of jobs available and as you may know it's very competitive with lots of universities offering degree and masters courses. One thing I always tell people is to start a website and the article I've added below echos this, your blog is the new resume. What are the advantages of setting up your blog and when should you start. The best time to start is right now, Even if you are on your first day as an A level student you can start a blog, think of it as your online learning journal. Imagine going to an interview and saying that you have a blog with over 500 posts on it, it has 200 visitors each day and you have articles from some of the top nutritionists on there. Is that going to set you apart or what? Here are some strategies you can use to get started Get your own domain name your name.com will be a good start Get a wordpress blog set up. Follow other nutritionists blogs Make comments on their blog posts get to to know them. If you are into a sport e.g rugby follow the strength coaches from that sport Make a list of the nutritionists and strength coaches at all the top clubs post it on your blog Follow these people on Facebook twitter and linked in Ask them if you can reproduce their articles on your blog. Offer to write or edit articles for these people Blog about what you are learning at Uni and at seminars Go to seminars if you can't afford it ask if you can help out setting things up. Write product reviews Review articles Review sports nutrition supplements with an affiliate link to the product to make some cash Become an affiliate for online products. Participate in forums Go to the big shows like Body Power Expo and B Fit Show If you manage to only do any of these really well then you will set yourself apart from the crowd. The reality is if you are not prepared to do these things then you are not going to make it as a sports nutritionist, you need to have a certain amount of balls and confidence to put yourself out there and deal with athletes who are not used to taking any shit and can often smell bullshit or fear a mile off. Anyway I hope this helps. Leave a comment if you are serious and start your process. How I Got Two Job Offers and a $200-an-Hour Consulting Gig from Blogging Six Figure Blogging – Upcoming Teleclass: Blog Tips at ProBlogger This guest post was written by Joe Bunting of The Write Practice. And then something happened that changed my blogging strategy forever. Someone offered me a job. Your blog is your resume Pretend you’re an employer, a marketing firm with 100 employees, and you’re looking to hire the 101st. Who are you going to choose? All the candidates look the same: similar educationa; backgrounds, similar experience. But one of them has a blog with 500 subscribers, a Twitter account with 1,000 followers, and is already an expert with Google+. The other candidates don’t. Who are you going to hire? Here is a strange but true thing I heard an actual employer say: “The blog is the new resume.” Resumes are outdated and growing irrelevant to today’s employers. Your blog gives a much fuller picture of your identity and your expertise. Nowhere else can you so quickly get a sense of a person’s skill, experience, and ability to engage others around what they know. The other model for making money online In only six months, I got two job offers, three requests for consulting work (one for over $200 an hour), and was asked to work on three paid projects. On top of that, I generated hundreds of leads for high-priced, hourly work. How? Just by blogging to a group of people who needed services, in my case, to creative writers. The best part is that you can do this, too. Anyone can. It’s very simple. 1. Who: Define your audience Who is your audience? You need to know who your audience is because you need to figure out what services they need. Define their: career hobbies and interests age demographics annual income. If you’ve been blogging long with any success, you probably have a fairly good idea of this already. I didn’t need to do a survey to realize most of my readers were over 30, well educated, and wrote novels and creative non-fiction as a hobby. If you don’t know this yet, make it your top priority. If you can figure out how they think, you can sell to them (and in this business model, what you are selling is yourself). The best way to define your audience, in my opinion, is simply by meeting them. When someone begins to comment regularly, email him. Ask to chat over the phone; if you live nearby, meet for coffee. By interacting with your fans you solve two problems at once, you get to know your audience and you turn them into friends. Once they become your friends, you get the opportunity to make them into your customers. 2. What: Identify what they need If you don’t know your audience, you won’t understand what they need. My audience is creative writers, so I developed a site that I thought would interest them. Slowly, as I began to understand who was reading my blog, I realized there was a huge need for editing. My readers liked to write, but they didn’t like to edit. I found my opportunity. As you get to know your audience, identify what they like to do and what they hate. What are they good at? What are they terrible at? And how can you help them be better? As you do this, you’ll begin to spot opportunities for your services. They might need: Education: You could develop a course teaching them what they don’t know. Consulting: You could sell your time and expertise helping them solve their problems. Complimentary services: You could sell services that your audience needs. Let’s break down the complimentary services section a bit more because I think this is where this blogging model becomes really interesting. For example, I realized my audience—creative writers—needed editing services. So I began to pitch this to some of my friends and they loved it. Some of them even approached me! If marketers are your audience, on the other hand, offer design or copywriting services. If homebuyers are your audience, offer listing services. If your audience needs a lawyer, then offer your legal services. If your audience blogs, you could offer ghost-blogging, design, editing, or copywriting services. 3. How: What if you don’t have any skills to offer? Now, let’s say you’re writing to people who want to get better at internet marketing. You think your audience needs help writing copy, but you don’t have any experience in copywriting. I had this problem. I knew my readers needed editing help. I had some expertise with editing, but I didn’t feel comfortable selling my services to the guy who comments on my blog every day. What if I do a bad job and he gets upset and leaves? So I started reaching out to editors, asking their advice on how to be a better editor. I emailed, called, and met face to face with them. This is when the most surprising thing happened. One of them, an editor who has worked with bestselling authors, offered me a job. So not only did I get some practical knowledge to help (and sell to) my readers, I had his name to back me up. And one of the reasons he hired me was because my blog was my resume. He saw I was already passionate and talented. It was an easy decision. After that, selling my services became much easier. And a much better way to earn money with my blog than selling Adsense. This is a very quick overview. Do you have any questions about how to sell your services and use your blog as a resume? Have you done this with your own business? Joe Bunting is a professional writer, fiction editor, and platform consultant. You can follow Joe on Twitter and download a copy of his eBook, 14 Prompts, for free. Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger How I Got Two Job Offers and a $200-an-Hour Consulting Gig from Blogging Sent with Reeder Gavin Allinson Sports Nutritionist BSc (Hons) CISSN 07403 379977 01865 742006 www.SportsNutritionVlog.com www.FourWeekFatLoss.com www.YourSportsNutrition.com

Cultured day out in London

admin — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 16:48:59 +0000

Just coming back on the coach from a day out in London.

We headed for Borough Market to begin with, it’s a little bit of foody heaven with loads of great stores.

Got some yummy salads from a middle eastern stall, a bottle of flax seed oil some sumac dried and crushed middle eastern berry and a couple of alphonso mangoes for Jack. Mangos are his favorite.

We then walked along to the tate modern to see the photography exhibition Exposed voyueristic street photography. Good but not great.

Cup of tea on the balcony before walking back along the river to Westminster and home. It’s been really hot so we had half a Stella each. Thought I’d be too pissed if I has a whole pint. Lol how times change

Oxford town and gown 10 K

admin — Sun, 16 May 2010 05:50:22 +0000

Running in the town and gown this morning my mate chalky has predicted a 42 min 30 sec time, not done a 10K for 20 years so will be interested to see the time. Running with a couple of the personal trainers from Vida my local gym so that will get the juices flowing.

Quick turnaround after and off to wembley with my son and his mate to watch Oxford United play in the conference play off final.

Kids Protein shake

admin — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 09:47:46 +0000

My son and his cousins drinking kinetica protein shake

On the caledomian sleeper

admin — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 14:27:14 +0000

This is the way to travel instead of a 10 hour drive, slept like a baby on the sleeper train. Got woken up with a cup of tea and a bacon sarnie.

Can going back to dial up speed things up?

admin — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 13:05:18 +0000

Can you remember what using dial up was like?
I was visiting my in-laws in France with my 4 year old son and his 6 year old nephew and 2 year old niece.

They live in an amazing house right on the Dordogne river, near Bergerac. (rear of the house below)

View from Master bedroom (that’s the Dordogne river)

It’s a great place to come and visit, the only downside is that they still have dial up and not upgraded to broadband.

It’s amazing how much I’ve been able to do in a lot less time.

I know Tim Ferriss talks about stopping the interruptions, I’ve just had a really hard time disciplining myself to do it.

I usually get about 40-50 mails a day about a third of those I
delete without opening anyway. The 30 or so that I would usually open
and read. Because it takes so long to load each e-mail I’m
finding that I am being a lot more picky about which ones I open.

This has got me thinking about how I normally work at home…

I’ve tried being ‘disciplined’
and closing my internet browser, however I’ve got a habit or
pattern of when I get stuck or finish a good section of work I think
I’ll just look at my e-mails and then get back to work. Or if I’m
being ‘good’ I might resist the temptation of the e-mail but
instead head to the kitchen for a cuppa or a handful of walnuts.

I’m only away for a week and I figure if it’s really important then the person will send me a follow up message or one of my team will send me an sms message or a direct
e-mail.

Usually when I’m working from home I
have from 9.15 am until 12.45 am each day as my core working hours
and then in the evenings I spend another 2 hours usually from 11Pm to
1.00 AM. I’ve got all the pieces for the 4HWW in place just not the income yet!!

I’m going to try a different approach back in Oxford.

When I first wake up I’m going to check my e-mail and respond to anything urgent, my 4 year old son is usually pottering around at that time before he gets ready for nursery. I cant really do anything ‘proper’ at that time.

I’m then going to pack my laptop in my rucksack, we cycle to nursery leaving the house at 9.00am, he starts at he starts at 9.10 am. I’m then going to cycle to a local
library 10 minutes away which happens to be next to the gym that I have access to.

Advantage is that I get 10 minutes of hard
cycling, I do bursts at maximum intensity (10-30 seconds followed by a
rest of 10-20 secs), 10 minutes of that is a real good fat burning
work out. I also get 10 minutes on the way back from the library too
so that’s 20 mins quality fat burning exercise.

I’m choosing the library, there are
plenty of coffee shops around but I don’t want to put too much
opportunity for potential interruption in my way.

At the coffee shop there is obviously the coffee, yummy cakes and pastries that I want to avoid and lots of other ‘interesting’ people coming and going. None of that is present at the library, so I’m playing hardball with myself and heading for the library.

I’ll have my laptop powered up and ready to go by 9.30 am.

Let’s see how my new morning routine works out.

What tricks have you played on yourself to increase your productivity that actually work for you?

Tags: 4hww, four hour work week, productivity, france,

Jack and Stan looking like Vampires

admin — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 09:51:10 +0000

Tags: vampireface painting

Do I have any talent?

admin — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 17:22:34 +0000

I spent some time over xmas learning to draw, this was the best of my efforts,
what do you think ?

24 December 2007

Alan Sugar and Donald Trump – You need to look at this 9 year old apprentice

Gavin Allinson — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 09:09:15 +0000

If you’ve got children in your family this could be a way to introduce them to the world of enterprise.

Let me introduce my 9 year old niece Esme, her mum and brothers have been staying with us for the past few weeks. We read about an eglu (www.omelet.co.uk) a funky looking chicken house in one of the Sunday papers last week.

She wrote this letter all by herself, I have helped set her up an e-mail account and she sent the message out to selected members of the family.

I wont say any more because what she wrote is excellent!

Dear family,

Have you hard of a eglu? proberly not. Well, it is a house for chickens but even better because it is fox proof and it has got all the stuff you need to look after two chickens. I will get two fresh eggs every morning. I need £440 which is a lote of money. I need people to give me a bit of money and I will give you eggs. Or I can sell the eggs and give you the money but it would take a year to get £125 by selling the eggs so it would take 4 years to give you back all the money I need to start my egg business. Could you invest £25 or more in Esmes eggs?.

Love from Esme.

This is a picture of a eglu.

P.S. There are some for sale on e-bay as well so we may be able to get one cheaper.

Harry Norman _7 year old nephew swam 25 m for the first time

Gavin Allinson — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 01:23:41 +0000

Young Harry – the intrepid swimming maestro plunged into the shallow end and swam the length of the pool, he tried to grab hold of me with about 5 metres to go, but I got out of his way as he was easily going to do it.

Harry commented

I was pleased because I didn’t make it when I tried last week’