My Wealth Creation Journey

Day 218 - Sunday 30th November 2008

Ok, 9am start this morning, not the crack of dawn! I'm sorting out my Northern customers end-of-month reporting today (one of the tasks to do).

I was hoping at this stage we would have had the reports available for them to create their own monthly reporting pack however we have been focussing on the end of month closure process and ensuring that this is water tight.

I copy all of the databases just so that we have a copy of all the data as at the end of the month in case we ever need to go back to the figures that we had at that time. Although they are running the management reports to capture this information, something might get forgotten.

I also have some things to tidy up for my Lichfield customer. Tomorrow they are going to go live with the email and I suspect we may have a busy support day for the 1st of December!

Tonight I cook some Pad Thai one of my favourite Noodle dishes, Eggs, Prawns, Noodle, shredded carrot, spring onions, beansprouts, peanuts, chilli powder, fish sauce, sugar and vinegar, quite a full on meal, nutritious and filling !!

Day 217 - Saturday 29th November 2008

No lie in this morning, I have a raft of minor projects to clear out of the way this weekend and also it is my Northern customers Month end again.

Today I set to writing the introduction to my e-Book. Authors today often release a chapter of their book on the Internet to get people interested prior to complete book being published. I'm not sure whether the intro I am writing will feature as a chapter in the book itself, however I want to use it as a marketing tool to get people registering for the e-book which I want to release on the 14th January 2009. The e-book will be called 'Running a Business Online'

The subject matter although interesting is potentially very technical and hence I need to keep the language both simple and conversational to engage with the reader.

I craft around 19 pages once formatted and layed out correctly, just can't find the e-book image for the front cover!!

I'm quite pleased with the result, and tomorrow I will run through it again before sending it out to Claire to have a read. Having now written this intro and designed a style it has clarified the e-book in much more detail and I am looking forward to writing this over the xmas period.

Day 216 - Friday 28th November 2008

An early start this morning has enabled me to get the Quotation for Hysen finished by 10:00am. This is emailed over to them using our File manager service which enables me to know when the document has been read. I get this confirmation about 15 minutes after it is sent. What an important feature this is and I wouldn't be without this now!!

Upon checking this Blog again I can see we are already at the 20th November, just this weeks posts to go up and we are completely back up to date with all the blogs. I must add a new post to the IPS Blog today and this is on my to do list, I haven't posted one here for a week or so what with everything else going on.

Things are looking really promising at the moment, the likelyhood is that we will have taken on some 8 or so new i-Tr@der product licences within the past 10 working days! This means December is going to be our busiest month ever with no mistake!

We have noticed over the past week some issues with people registering for Bronze on the Internet Marketing Help Pages but with the help of Nikki Pilkington we have managed to iron out the problems and now all is working well with the process.

All the new Help files are now uploaded with the iFrame in place and all appears well. We have also added three experts derived via the forum thread which has received well over 300 reads, excellent promotion for us! Otis has been targeted with posting at least 2 blogs on the IPS Freedom Blog (Internet Marketing) each and every week to ensure that this starts to generate traffic of its own.

We have also updated our Internet Marketing Gold service with a template for recording results out of Google. This will be invaluable for the clients we are working with to ensure that they are managing their marketing effectiveness and honing their Published resources to maximise sales.

Day 215 - Thursday 27th November 2008

Checking on the progress of this blog and the loading of the past 3 months posts, we are almost up to date which is a great performance, well done Livia who I can see as becoming a really good resource in 2009!

This morning Otis and I start to put together a recording mechanism for accumulating the statistics from Google Analytics. What we want to be able to see is not only that the visits are going up but as an average of the last 60 days what is the underlying tend. Of course we want to see that we are getting a steady increase in traffic across all our key sites, IPS Blog, IPS Freedom Blog (Internet Marketing), i-Tr@der website, Internet Marketing Help Pages and the IPS-Hub i-Tr@der User / business networking Group.

Google analytics is a fantastic tool which can help to ascertain not only Traffic, but what keywords people are using to find you, which links are being most used on your site (i.e. most popular), how long people stay on pages, how many people arrive and click away immediately etc. etc. OK it only deals with Google results but as an indicator for overall performance is without parallel.

We have designed a methodology using the iFrame to extract the right hand column from our Internet marketing Help pages and maintain that as a single file. This has come about because the Money Gym have changed their affiliate programme and we were using the old one. So this needed to change across 200 or so pages. Now we just need to amend the one page and everything is updated, Great !!

I still have not completed the last (and most complex proposal) for Hysen and although this is well underway I will either have to finish this later tonight or early in the morning.

Day 214 - Wednesday 26th November 2008

6:30am start again this morning! I want to take advantage of the postponed meeting and get some overdue quotes out. I have two remaining, once for Primate Designs Ltd and also one for Hysen International (which is a little more complex).

I manage to get the Primate Designs one out of the way fairly quickly. He wants his people to look at the website to ge a feel for the product before we get on with the implementation, so it probably won't kick off until next week. Anyhow we have added him to our Internet Help marketing pages which he likes so we're off to a good start.

I also have been trying to catch up with my details on Ecademy and some of my social networking things such as Twitter and Facebook. Sometimes these are left lower down the priority list, but they are still important to maintain.

The IPS-Hub is now starting to take real shape. Claire Raikes - Business Blog Angel is doing some stirling work getting our Membership site together. The imagery is now taking shape and there is a nice look and feel to the whole thing. I am starting to publicise this as the place to get answers to questions and when I receive queries from clients will be putting the questions and the answers on the HUB and encouraging the users to go there to find the answers. This will hopefully over time develop this as the primary mechanism for non-urgent help enquiries.

Another Table Tennis match this evening. This is a cup game against the side which 2nd in the league behind us in the Watford Table Tennis League. We should win with the team we are putting out and after last night's performance where I played particularly well we ought to be ok. But the opposition are old campaigners with years of experience so it won't be a walk in the park!

Day 213 - Tuesday 25th November 2008

I'm up and about at 6am today. I have to prepare for the meeting today. The purpose of my visit is twofold :-

1. To review the current status of what has been implemented so far, to feedback and determine any course of action we now need to take to continue the excellent progress already made
2. To plan the next stages of the implementation, which sequence and when to do the necessary training to get things operational. The timing of that is also crucial

I realise after checking my diary that the meeting is scheduled for 10am not 11am and it is already 8am, which means two hours to get to Lichfield. OK, not impossible but I have to get my skates on now !

I arrive bang on time. The initial meeting to review where we are goes well and with the information about how the system is being used we agree to get all the sales staff in, explain how well it has gone so far, what needs to be done now, and how that is going to happen and ask for any known issues / operational problems that could prevent this. Nothing of substance comes forward and so 1st December Outlook is to be switched off except for historical backup, and the i-Tr@der system is to be used for all future outgoing emails.

I get back around 3pm, to find that my meeting tomorrow on the one-hyde-park project has been postponed either to the end of the week or early next week. No problem I have some quotations to write which I am not overdue with and need to send out.

Table Tennis tonight another tough match, but I am looking forward to this one. We are lying third in the Chalfont League at present and playing the team in second place, so a win tonight would put us in second place!

Day 212 - Monday 24th November 2008

6:30am start this morning. I have to get some emails sent out and check where I am going on the Google maps this morning. should only take circa 45 minutes to get where I need to go.

The company I am seeing is a startup who are providing Patient Feedback questionnaire / equipment for dental practices. They are developing the software in India and the market is for all the Dentists around the UK initially. There are 000's of these and with a modest monthly rental plan, the business can work very well for them, it is very similar to what we do with our i-Tr@der Business Platform.

The meeting goes really well, I meet all three of the business founders, the dentist practice owner who is funding this business, his wife and also the young guy who is basically putting everything together. The young guy, Daniel Seal was one of the Students at Brunel University where earlier in the year I had been invited by another customer to speak to his 100 university MSC students on our Business Platform. Further to this lecture, his entrepreneurial spirit and the opportunity that he is now involved in has culminated in this meeting.

I agree to send a quotation in the afternoon, and by the close of play the deal is done. We will speak later in the week to fix the kick off meeting and do the initiall training on the system.

Tomorrow I am off to see the customer in Lichfield. The project has been live now for some 6 weeks and I need to just check who is using the system and what they are doing. Looking through the emails, the ones from clients are coming in but it would appear they are still using Outlook to send outgoing mails. This will need to be addressed in the meeting tomorrow and a strong management lead will need to be taken to push through the necessary changes to start getting the real benefits from the system.

Day 211 - Sunday 23rd November 2008

Nice lie in this morning, I have been very busy over the past few weeks and am a little tired. Start off by working on my plan for the coming week. I have a new business appointment meeting on Monday in Stevenage and then a project kick off meeting regarding the One Hyde Park project.

I think with all the work which is likely to hit during the month of December that I am just going to have to suspend any alcohol consumption. It really does affect the brain even in small quantities and I am going to have to be able to work 16 hour days at least during the coming month. This can't be done if drinking. I'm no alcoholic let me get this cleared up and often go for long periods without. One amazing thing I always find is my best ideas come when not drinking !!

I manage to get the majority of the new Help files implemented there are around 6 or so left to do. we are looking now for experts to be associated with the various aspects of Internet marketing and so this week we will get a post onto the forums to see if we can both promote the site and also get some people to 'feature' as experts for us. We will provide links to their websites and it won't cost them any money either! This should be an interesting exercise at the very least.

Late afternoon I'm off to see mother. My sister has also been around there today but by the time I arrive she has already departed. Try and get an early-ish night tonight lots of things to do in the coming week and I need to be on my game !

Day 210 - Saturday 22nd November 2008

We still have not received confirmation from Northern Healthcare in Ireland to sort out the stock figures and also start off the General Ledger. This was a plan for this weekend but now I will not be doing this.

We have been collecting new Internet Marketing Help Pages over the past week and I have to get these up to date this weekend. There is around 30 new ones to do. Although my lad has been organising these some of them appear to be in the wrong categories and there are also additional anomalies which require sorting out but in the main he has done a good job !

I am also doing some cooking this evening and so will have to go to the shops to get some provisions. I am going to cook chinese again, and decide on some Beef in Red curry sauce with sweet potatoe, Chicken with Peppers and Snow peas and Phad Thai which is a great noodle dish !

Was supposed to be paying county Table Tennis this weekend...... but with all the work going on I have decided to opt out, maybe after Christmas, but we'll see.....

Day 209 - Friday 21st November 2008

A chance to get back into the backlog of work at the office today, not going anywhere. I receive an email reminder about the year end accounts. Our Accountant is away on his Xmas break from the 14th December and needs all the information prior to that so he can get the books done. This means that have got to get the figures worked out for him beginning of December. Roll on the General Ledger upgrade when much of this work and the Bank reconciliation can be done monthly and this task will be much simpler.

I was supposed to see my good friend and Business associate who is running Urban Progress TTPro a Table Tennis club based in Barnet. He has had his car broken into and so he won't be coming over. No worries we have a million things to do. His business is starting to really move in the right direction so we reschedule for next week.

In the afternoon Livia Fekiacova a friend from around the 2000 / 2001 era is coming over to take a look at our system and Typepad with a view to getting this wealth creation Blog up to date! We have well over 100 posts that still need to be uploaded, I have been writing them, just not posting. The meeting goes really well and I have to say she picks it all up much quicker than most. I'm looking forward to seeing the results over the coming week. Livia is also a quick typist and so making a Transcript of the James Morley - Blue Autumn Interview will be another task we can get done!

Table Tennis tonight which I am looking forward to. Roger Pyle (who hadn't played for 23 years) is starting to find his old talent again and we always have a great workout. I play Table Tennis for fun now and the focus for me is to keep fit and healthy, it's not the winning, that is a bonus!  I tell everyone I win every week because I have a good work out and am staying healthy..... depends where you put your focus. Losing a match doesn't bother me so long as I enjoy it, play well and have had a good workout!