My Wealth Creation Journey

Day 562- Tuesday 10th November 2009

6:30am start this morning... I managed to write all the blog posts last night and get them out of the way so this morning straight onto those reports for Deliver Net (yes still working on them). They require information being pulled from a variety of sources and what I am doing at the moment is working out how to get the reports in the correct format for them. Once we have done this then it will be pretty plain sailing we can produce the reports as specials and set them up on a desktop for them to run every month. They take quite a while to run also, so each test takes 10 minutes... at least I can get on with other things whilst they are running though... as this is being done on a spare laptop!

Otis is out today... he is taking some personal items from his car the was written off last month. So he's not about today. In his absence I am putting some products onto the Laing O'Rourke One-Hyde-Park Logistics Management System ( i-Tr@der in disguise ) to get that job out of the way. We've got another list in from them today as well of new products to add... I'll email that over to Otis he can do that in the morning.

I spend a bit of time going through the seven steps with Livia today. As our marketing person she needs to get a good grasp of what we are trying to do and develop an overall understanding of our strategy. The website also probably needs a bit of updating to deliver the latest message and be consistent with where we are in our thinking now.

Some support requests in today also from Kan, Blue Autumn and also a reply to my online training suggestion to Northern Healthcare. I must develop this over the coming month or two.

Speaking with Mark Hall today re the Franchise model for rolling out the 7 Steps, they are very keen to pursue this and are going to set up another business to handle this project. We set a meeting for the 20th November which gives them a chance to put together all their thoughts then we can go through this and thrash out the basic numbers and the framework for how we are going to operate. Mark has also got an appointment for us to go and see a lady who works for an Accounting firm who have expressed an interest in being able to work with their clients remotely.

I catch up with Morris (my business partner) today as well to give him an update... more of a brain dump actually and he is reeling with the volume of information I hand over... He will need this in written form to digest I fear... so I will have to get something down for him and send over.

My mums partner was supposed to be off to hospital yesterday for a heart Bypass and Valve replacement but they called yesterday ... the hospital doesn't have any beds... I ask you, how much money have we poured into the health service and what has been the incremental return ??

A long conversation with Claire Raikes who I have managed to catch up with... I wanted to go over our plans for steps 4 and 5 of the 7 steps... internet marketing and outsourcing... she introduces me to a new online service called http://www.jigsawbox.com which looks like we could adopt for delivering the 7 step process through out franchise channel.

My 'trainer' JV partner and I having a good Jam session on lots of ideas until well into the wee hours... there is a lot of excitement and buzz around at the moment on many aspects and I think this partnership could well turn into something special !!

A Blog post for the Watford Table Tennis Blog site and then off to bed a little after 2am !!

Day 561- Monday 9th November 2009

Now the alarm went off at 6:30am and I got up at 7:30am... not best pleased with myself however I am pretty fresh this morning and so feel that I will be quite productive today.

First things first the Barchester Reports for DeliverNet. Now these require me to first sort out all the Commodity codes which means sorting it in the stock system before passing it across into sales... the way this has been given to me is not great and it is going to take a lot longer than I have initially anticipated... I drop Ruth a quick QMS to explain the problem and she is ok... these should be done by the morning.

No I have to jot down the expanding ideas for our In2TheClouds - 7 Steps to the Business you really Want!! Steps 4 and 5, Internet Marketing and Outsourcing have just got mega interesting. I write up the ideas into two WPD files and email them over to Livia and to Otis... they need to read these and then we can start to implement the concepts. This is a slow burn but vital to the long term goals of what we are doing and so a good deal of effort and emphasis needs to be put into this to get it moving... I am targeting Livia and Otis to work on this together to ensure that it gets sorted in the next fews months, ready for when the book comes out and the Business model for rolling out the 7 steps starts to come to fruition.

We are working on the Revolution Telecoms data import today and Ian has rattled off the CMS upgrade to prevent duplicate Account References from being used. I have asked Revolution Telecoms if we could delay invoicing for a day or two to enable us to complete the Invoicing modifications but I have not had a reply today and so we press on with what we can do. Perhaps they are busy doing the invoices which is why they have not replied today?

Otis has met a lady from 4Networking who is involved with Video production so I spend 30 minutes talking to her about what might be relevant with this for us... we agree to wait until the book is out before exploring further. The Printer arrives late in the afternoon with the final samples for the artwork which is to be run off over the next couple of days. The colours look fine now and so the packaging for the Promotional Merchandising versions is nearing completion... just a few other bits and pieces to order now so that we can start to ship the first few hundred into this market!!

I wanted to catch up with Claire Raikes this evening to discuss modifications to the upcoming book title... I need to change this from Running a Business Online, to ... In2TheClouds... we registered the .com and the .co.uk domains today and we need to amend the artwork we have for the book to refelect this. Claire is tied up and we run out of time... looks like tomorrow afternoon now.

Table tennis practice this evening... not playing too bad... although difficult to see in the conditions at Ravenscroft (Barnet) but an enjoyable evening... it's a while since we have had a good practice and Friday is out this week as I will be in Hungary.

Back at Base continuing with the Barchester Reports, writing some Blog posts and finishing up some of the Thai food leftovers from the weekend with some freshly cooked rice... washed down with a bit of wine... very nice... Off to bed now... 12:00 midnight again... where do all the hours go?

Day 560- Sunday 8th November 2009

Another lay-in this morning... must be something to do with the late night yesterday... a lovely yet cold morning today...

No early breakfast this morning... still not hungry on account of the late meal last night! 11:00am arrives and now it's back to the daily grind after a fantastic Friday and Saturday evenings! The computer beckons and after rattling of some wealth creation blog posts I am now into completing the setup and configuration of the General Ledger for Workway UK Ltd.

The General Ledger done... I realise we have not yet set up the Invoice imagery for the top of the invoices. I email Otis to attend to this first thing tomorrow and also while he is at it he can start to prepare the Business Process document for how to technically set up a new system. This will serve as a check list for him but double up as a training document for others to learn the skills necessary.

Now off to Asda's and then onto my mothers. Her partner is off to hospital tomorrow to have a heart bypass and a new Pig's Heart Valve fitted! Here's hoping this all goes well and without mishap. My sister is once again there and I tentatively suggest we put aside some time the week after next to get the G/L up to date and also reconcile all the bank details to end February 2009. Done!!

Back at base just a bit after 5:30pm... now onto sorting out the Four Seasons Health Care reports for Tim at Deliver Net. This is just a cut and paste job into the new current version of the Sales database. We will get the reports written for next month but for expendiency I want to just get these knocked out today. They are done and sent before 9pm...

Now it has taken me quite a while to sort out those reports for Tim... and it would not have taken me so long but for having a couple of pretty excellent ideas during the evening as well. Not so much brand new ideas but expansions on two of the 7 Steps to getting the Business you really want - In2TheClouds! Now I'm going to have to document these and then discuss the ideas with Livia and Otis... these are two projects they can get stuck right into and help me out big time!! More on these tomorrow!

Now settling down to eat some food and watch Bruce Willis in his latest incarnation as the man in the wrong place and the wrong time... Not too bad... then off to bed... I want to get up early tomorrow... so lets hope for a good night sleep !

Day 559- Saturday 7th November 2009

Leisurely and fun start to the day! Not my normal hectic weekend start... quite a late night last night, so taking it easy... ate my first yoghurt for about 12 months today and surprised myself at how much I enjoyed it... must get more of those!

Onto the work finally at about lunchtime... sorting out a couple of issues for Workway... I also notice that the details I have sent over relating to the website are not really well placed on the site... it needs a bit of rework and also there appears to have been some duplication of some of the text which is not right. I'll have to drop Andras an email with these points.

Off to Asda's... Thai food tonight and I want to prepare a fair selection not only for tonight, but so that I can eat well during the first part of the week without having to cook so much... Chicken with cashew nuts and Chilli, Beef with Oyster sauce... grilled chicken, Massaman peanut and potato curry... with Thai Jasmin rice... just the ticket...

The afternoon passes by without incident and it is soon time to start getting the evening meal together! a few beers, wine and a leisurely cooking of each dish provides ample time between each dish to listen to music, mess about on the Internet amongst other things... what a way to pass a Saturday night!

The evening is quite a clear one tonight and many people are having Fireworks tonight to celebrate Guy Fawkes's attempts to blow up parliament... I fear his sentiments are empathised with by many in the current climate with the MP's of today! 

Some entertaining Facebook dialogue with my cousin Ruth and friends before finally crashing out at 2:30am... still there is no mad rush in the morning, work to do but nothing that can't be done in the time available!

Day 558- Friday 6th November 2009

6:30am up and about this morning... Answer a few emails... pepare the troops for the day ahead as I am off now to Maindenhead to meet Mark Hall and his friend and potential business partner Mike.

I'm meeting Mark at Junction 4 on the M40 at the Holiday Inn... from where we will go together to Maidenhead where we are meeting Mike who runs a Letting Agency Franchise in the town centre. Mark saw Mike last week and took him through our 'Into The Clouds' - 7 Steps to getting the Business you really want....  and now Mike wants to hear it from the horses mouth so to speak.

Being fairly crtical and being Devils advocaate, Mike wanted to understand the breadth, depth and scale of the opportunity. Mike and Mark both have corporate IT backgrounds steeped in Process related activities and Mike as almost got his franchise business down to a series of business processes and is now looking for something to get stuck into and over the next 10 years allow him to move somewhere warmer and perhaps more relaxed!

The meeting goes very well, we have lunch together at a local mexican place and the meeting ends close to 3pm. There are quite a few things to think about from both sides in terms of the franchise model that we would want to put in place and also the Master Franchise, what that entails and all the numbers that are involved.

One thing is for sure is that this puts pressure on me to get the book finished and now I have others waiting for the book to be released, who will need it drive their sales message and build clients and other Franchise units. So I have to really get on with it now and get it finished... January is my target date.

On the way back to the ranch, stop off at Asda's to get some provisions for the meal I am cooking tonight.. no Table Tennis tonight... played well this week 6 out 6 wins... so quite pleased... we will play Monday instead! Back at base... catch up with the Team and my friend (the guy who runs Urban Progress TTPro) is around with his baby (1 next Wednesday.. 11th Nov.) and his Girlfriend... so the house is pretty full! Catch up with all the messages, make a few calls and then settle down into the weekend.

Chicken in a Chris Ogle freestyleeee tonight...bit of this, bit of that, but pretty damn tasty even if I do say so myself! Roast potatoes (King Edwards rock) and Steamed Brocolli... !

Day 557- Thursday 5th November 2009

Guy Fawkes night tonight... I am up at 6:15am this morning... loads of things to be getting on with, one of which  is the Web Site content for my friend at Workway.

WorkWay is a Hungarian company who is setting up in the UK for the purposes of helping Hungarians who wish to migrate to England for work. Their philosophy is to provide a professional, well managed and effective service both for those wishing to take on these workers and for the workers themselves. There have been some horror stories out there of promises of work, places to stay which have resulted in some terrible experiences. WorkWay wants to make all this a thing of the past. 

I get a fairly innappropriate email from the financial controller at Deliver Net today. He is complaining in an email about the situation of this reporting problem earlier in the week which turns out to be a bug in the operating system not our software... I can't understand for the life of me, why people don't pick up the phone and smooth things over to get the result they want, because sending an email of this nature causes only problems and upset. If this email had got to my colleague after we both had circa 2-3 hours sleep sorting their problem I may have had a resignation on my hands!

Graham from Business Dashboards gave me a call today... He was talking with a guy at a 4Networking meeting about his product, and asked the man he was talking to what he did... this chap Mark Hall said he was getting involved with a Web Based business platform... to which Graham said it's not i-Tr@der is it, to which Mark said, yes it is actually... Graham rang to update me on the conversation... this I think is the first time (or one of them anyway) that two independent people nothing to do with IPS or our customers have been discussing out product 'out there'.

Andras is around at 2pm to go through the things I am writing for him, and no sooner is this finished Morris is over to go through some changes for the Chesham Rugby Club that he wants to implement. A couple of other bits of positive news about a future project that is slowly coming to fruition and a real positive Vibe in the office this afternoon... busy busy... chop chop!!

Finally managed to get up to date with a few Table Tennis posts and now getting ready for my match tonight in Watford... A friend pops in around 6pm... going into London tonight for a dinner / meeting... I'm helping out with a lift to the station... then off to pick up Roger for tonights match.

Match goes well.. Jets Cougars vs WWCC A - Match Report duly written and posted onto the Watford Table Tennis Blog once I return... we narrowly scrape a 5-3 win!

Some more transportation fun back and forth from Watford Junction and then off to bed !! Early start again in the morning!

Day 556- Wednesday 4th November 2009

Well a 2:00am finish and didn't appear to have been in bed 5 minutes when the alarm goes off at 5:30am.. funny though, even I had so little sleep I woke up 5 minutes before the alarm was to go off. Amazing thing the brain... I forget how many hundreds of times this has happened to me... but it always staggers me that we can do this...

Well I'm logged in... Ian my colleague has been up since 4am working on the Deliver Net problem... we think that we have found a possible solution but we won't know until he has run the job again which takes about 1.5 hours... so it will be 8:45am or so... he sounds like he's been up all night... wonder if I sound the same! Customer of course knows nothing about the levels of support we deliver... ignorance is bliss..

I'm still battling with the email problem and a couple of carefully adjusted parameters in our email program should enable me to remove 99% of these... talking with my email technician he checks what I should adjust and I will make the necessary changes later on today.

Am feeling a bit tired, but my main task today is to get the WorkWay UK website content written. I check the website that they are having put together to make sure that I understand exactly where the stuff I'm writing for them is going to be located. Once I have this then I can make sure that I get it right for them...

My main technical guy Ian calls me just fter lunch, he thinks he has now cracked the problem we were having with the long aged debt report... The fact that we were not flushing the buffer as the program ran, appeared to then cause HTTP to restart the program.... anyway but by outputting the lines as we process through the client accounts it seems to behave itself... ok... good work around... so we deploy and test... that's at least a difficult problem out of the way. Well done Ian!! although this sounds like an operating system bug or an Internet Information Server v6.0 issue.

Some Great conversations with you know who today... you don't know?... oh well all will be revealed very soon...

A couple of conversations with Deliver Net today about response times and special reports that we need to write for them for one or two of their customers. My appointment for tomorrow at Park Royal has been postponed due to illness there and some feedback from Workway UK on my initial thoughts for the home page have gone down quite well.

No Table Tennis tonight... a chance to pick up with some great online conversations... the skype log of these is becoming quite large already... just 11 days with my new contact / business partner and things are moving at quite a pace, watch out for the book on how this took place... but must stay focused on current projects for the minute... there we go again, creative stars... haven't done he profiling but I bet that's what I'd be!!

Pop into Asda's pick up a few bits and pieces for breakfast and cleaning... (must outsource that) which I;m on top of at the moment!

Into bed at circa 12:30am... Emails seem to have got more under control... just got to now disable one alias that is being used indiscriminantly on the web by some spoofers and then I think I'll have it cracked. Early start again tomorrow... 6:00am ish... lots to do!

Day 555- Tuesday 3rd November 2009

Alarm off at 6:00am but unable to levitate until 6:40am this morning... Some problems with one of the main reports at Deliver Net last night and so I need to copy the database for my colleague to take a look this morning, then advise the people via Email at Deliver Net of what we are doing.

Amazing how much business the Royal Main are losing because of these strikes, Amazon have moved as has Marks & Spencers and now even Deliver Net have now made a policy decision to send all Invoices electronically. This will result in millions upon millions fewer letters being delivered by Royal Mail with the ensuing loss of jobs... I still don't understand the logic of the minds of these union leaders...

So I've knocked out a quick report for Deliver Net with all their live customers that don't have emails and they can get their database up to date and start the transition to Electronic Invoices... will save them around £800 per month... this was an inevitable transition.... just the Royal Mail strikes have exacerbated the decision.

Onto some Blog posts now... Table tennis site has got a little behind... so a couple of posts quickly added there. Must now set up the Printer as a Supplier and place my order with him for the BillBandit project. Paid the VAT electronically and now moving on to sorting out some website content for a Hungarian friend who is setting up UK subsidiary for a Hungarian company here near London.

Update on progress on the Deliver Net report... my colleague has spent most of the day on this problem and is no further forward. Looks like we have stumbled on a problem which is about the boundaries of web technology and what we are doing. We restart the server an re-run the job in an attempt to see whether it might be a program that has got in a mess... but the same thing happens. I'm off to Table Tennis now and it looks like it is going to be a late one tonight.

We are playing the top team in the Chalfont league tonight and to be honest my head is not really on the game. So many problems and things to do back at the ranch. Anyhow the match goes ok really we come away with a 5-5 draw and I won all my 3 singles so seems like even though I was tired and not really up for it I came through... maybe it was because of some exciting texts that I received during the course of the evening... more on those later !!!

Back at base... I have to import some Product data for a Select Hire's subcontractor Ruddy Joinery. They asked yesterday for some products to be added and normally Otis does this, however I will have to sort this out because he's busy on another project and I can see that tomorrow we will have to help sort out the reporting problem with Deliver Net. Couple all of this with some 50,000 + Spam messages suddenly coming into our server I'm up until 2am... with a projected 5:30am start to sort out Laing O'Rourke on the One-Hyde-Park project... tired and concerned off to bed....

Day 554- Monday 2nd November 2009

7:26am logged into the system this morning!! Everything is up and running and the start of another week. Quite a few tasks for today... the first of which is to get the weekends Blog posts out of the way!

I've remembered that Deliver Net also have asked me to setup the Xmas message on their Delivery notes. I get the list of xmas messages into a Spreadsheet and fire it over to Nigel... he will need to give us the appropriate text for each delivery day which changes depending on which day of the week Christmas falls. I'm waiting for the response then we'll write some SQL to update the system.

It's real busy on the phones today! Otis is sorting out the new Products for the Bathrooms International sub-contractor on the One-Hyde-Park project, this is hand written and to be honest the hand writing leaves a bit to be desired! So a few interruptions helping out Otis and then it is the month end for Deliver Net and this always raises its fair share of questions and challenges.

Also new Budgets for Deliver Net's customer Guardian need a bit more work, and another client who moved to consolidated Invoicing is getting their first invoice which is also another challenge for the beginning of the month.

The above plus a few other issues means I'm going to have to spend some time tonight working on databases and catching up with some of the Blog Posts for the Watford Table Tennis League. Well at least this evening I am home which means I have a chance to get some of the backlog cleared away.

Tomorrow morning I want to get up early and tackle setting up an FTP site for one of our clients and also I have to place a Purchase Order for some printing for the BillBandit plus I need to speak with Tina at Kan who will be marketing the BillBandit into the promotional merchandising sector. She will need some of the photography we have had done. Apparently the cylinder packaging is now almost ready to roll... and so next week could see the product marketing commence... finally!

Always so much to do and not enough time to do it! Bed beckons at circa midnight... and an early start tomorrow looks on the cards!

Day 553- Sunday 1st November 2009

Lazy start to the day today... 9:45am up and about... quite a relaxing weekend this one so far... but now I have to get on with the work for Deliver Net. Guardian Budgets need to be altered today and downloading the database takes some time.

I've also discovered that our domain name is being used out there as the sending address for spam email. Well this has resulted in about 10,000 lovely email rejections... so a little bit painful... takes a while to get rid of all of the but finally it's done!

I have to get myself over to Asda's to get some food... not much in the fridge and a new week almost upon us! Then onto mums...

Lots of news at my mums today, my sister is also there... the very same one who is doing my bookkeeping and runs a bookkeeping bureau service... she is now offering bookkeeping to people who use the i-Tr@der business platform... which is great news for her and us. She has already signed up three new accounts because of i-Tr@der and there are more in the pipeline too!!

We talk a bit about business and recent activity (even about yesterdays interesting developments although not too much detail as yet... that needs more knocking into shape before it goes public) with the BillBandit and Urban Progress TTPro as well as other things.

Now our family is a bit disjointed with people not speaking to others etc. I'm sure this happens in many families, anyhow to cut a long story short my brother was moving to Cyprus and now isn't, their furniture business is a bit stagnant at the moment, and worse still his 19 year old son has some serious problems with his knees... the doctors are saying he'll be in a wheelchair by the time he is middle aged !! I guess it is times like this that family should be around to support but for some bizarre reason he avoids this...

Back from my mothers, getting ready to meet up with an old friend. The evening passes without incident, and in the sack reasonably early ready for another week ahead... good God it is November already! Really where has the year gone!