My Wealth Creation Journey

Day 298 - Wednesday 18th February 2009

The week is disappearing fast, I'm not around on Friday (off to Budapest) and also I'm at the Laing O'Rourke consolidation centre launch tomorrow, so there won't be much time. So today looks pretty hectic already.

We get the Video Camera ordered for Will, hopefully this will arrive tomorrow and I can pop it around his parents house tomorrow. He's flying to Hungary on Monday and so if I don't give it to him tomorrow he won't get it before he returns.

I've also got to go down and sort out my new phones. Again if I don't give him the Phone tomorrow then he won't have it before he goes back, so I have to sort out my phone first then I can get everything moved across and he can get twittering whilst he is playing in the British League over the weekend and then next week back in Hungary.

The mobile phones takes an hours and a half to sort out. I can't understand to be honest why it takes so long to sort out these phones, it always takes ages! The Business 600 Tarif that I am on seems to not work on the online systems they use and we always end up going back to the Paper version in the end.

So I've picked up an LG Renoire and a Samson Pixon which are both new touch screen mobiles to compete with the iPhone. I'm starting also to transfer things onto the Phone, this is not an onerous task but does take a while what with that and installing the new software as well.

My lad will be using the Pixon to test it out whilst I will be playing around with the LG Renoire which looks like a handy bit of kit !

Confirm the presentation that is happening tomorrow at the consolidation centre although I still haven't had absolute concrete feedback yet as to the location and timing.... still waiting for this.

I have been testing Email footers with Executives on the Web, now they have had firefox removed all appears to be working but this still needs rolling out with the sales people before we can get confirm the problem has gone away finally.

Urfi and Tibbi come over to discuss the opportunity for Urban Progress TTPro. Urfi wants me to pitch what we are doing to Tibbi to give him the bigger picture. He grasps it pretty well and they both end up going away excited about our revolutionary concept for sport development in the UK.

At home tonight, lots to do still but at least an evening to get on with remaining tasks, which are many!!

Day 297 - Tuesday 17th February 2009

Early start today, I have to get some price list changes through the system for Deliver Net. I have to download their database and then work on the changes and put it back up again. I'm all done by 7:30am and release the system so that they are ready to go again!

Getting Otis prepared to add another online ordering account for Deliver Net, now starting to see the bigger picture with regard to the online ordering, cost savings and tying customers in. Hopefully we can add a few more accounts like this for them going forward. There are already some in the pipeline. Online ordering through the forms is better for the customer, costs less to process, there are fewer mistakes and the customers are less likely to move away in the future. All good news!

10:00am my regular call with Philly Richards. Was going to have some more of the book written by this time but not too be as there has been so many other things going on with the WillMeOn Campaign and the One-Hyde-Park project. Anyhow the call follows a similar pattern in that I'm reporting in really. What I should be doing with this call as a stick to getting the book done! Just there is literally no time. I have to get it done soon though as it is holding up the marketing campaign to get i-Tr@der into the market big time.

I've developed a standard intro letter for the WillMeOn campaign that will enable me to fire off an introduction to what we are doing and encourage people to put a banner / badge for the campaign on their websites. I am also using this to send out a CMS Campaign to all my contacts on my regular CMS List.

Otis is busy today sorting out the WillMeOn Banner for the Chesham Rugby Club and also Urban Progress TTPro

Morris came over to discuss adverts for the CRUFC web site, also to review the Shareholders agreement and to go through the details that need to be returned to the Solicitor. Ian Gould of Andard Mount couldn't open my quote, so I sent it to him in a different format.

I put the Fidgit widget onto the WillMeOn blogsite which enables people to see from where in the world people are looking at the WillMeOn site which will be quite interesting as time passes.

Day 296 - Monday 16th February 2009

After the hectic weekend I am now back in the saddle. we had a few panics over the weekend with ensuring that the WillMeOn Campaign site processing through correctly to the registration process once the donation had been completed. We suspect that the buttons are going to have to be redone.

Two parts of the WillMeOn site have still got to be finished from my end, one is the Registration of a corporate enquiry the other is a Form for people to tell us that they have put a WillMeOn badge / banner on their website to help with the marketing effort.

I manage to get the WillMeOn badge / Banner registration sorted out today and tested. Additionally the introduction of an additional box on to the Blog sponsorship page along with quite a few Blog page changes to accommodate the introduction of this form.

A quick bit of advertising to a few local people I know results in some of these banners being introduced on a few pages, examples are : Kings Langley Business Services and my Chris Ogle Blog. If we can seriously build these links onto lots of peoples sites we can start to go Virral with the campaign which will yield a much greater return by accessing a much higher volume of people. I'm now thinking about some high volume sites that I might be able to reach through my connections to get the Badges or banners displayed to turbo the campaign in the short term..... watch this space!

Later on I complete and send a quote for a company that I have been referred to Andard Mount for their project, just meeting my own personal deadline of Monday as promised.

Off for a Table Tennis practice this evening, won't get much chance this week for any other practice, so we will have to make the most of this one

Day 295 - Sunday 15th February 2009

This weekend was always going to a difficult work weekend! What with yesterday at the Harlequin all day and now today Urfi ( Urban Progress TTPro ) has his baby's christening.

I'm being picked up at 11:30am, but before that I have to download some data and do a few odd jobs getting prepared for things I know I won't get time to do today.

The Christening goes off well. we congregate at Urfi's place in Ealing a little after 12:00 noon, and have some food and drink which is happening prior to the Christening at 3pm. This is like a Table Tennis reunion and I get a chance to catch up with a few Hungarians that I haven't seen for a while.

William Maybanks is also there with his parents and we enjoy traditional Hungarian fare with a Beef Pokolt which I have to admit is one of my favourite dishes. The Church ceremony is nice (all in Hungarian) at the London based Hungarian Orthodox Catholic church in Ealing. They have recently moved there from Notting Hill and took over a small school. There is a kitchen and a bar in the church which is unusual for us, but welcoming to 'wet the baby's head' !!

We return after the service to Urfi's flat for a few more drinks and to finish off before I get home at about 7:30pm, I'm preparing a light supper for a friend tonight, so the whole weekend has been absolutely non-stop! Finally crash out at about 12:00 midnight and the start of a new week !!

Day 294 - Saturday 14th February 2009

My alarm fails to go off but I hear Urfi ( Urban Progress TTPro ) moving around at 6:30am. He stayed over this evening to sav going back to Ealing. I've over slept a little but to be honest I've only had 3 hours sleep!

We get going loading up the car and are out of here by about 7:15am to go down to Tesco's to meet up with the rest of the gang and to get some bits and pieces from Tesco's

Then it is off down to the Harlequin to get set up at 8am prior to people arriving at 9:00am. We're all set up and I'm popping posters onto the walls to say what is going on and what we are doing. The whole thing is a little slow to kick off as there are only a few people around early on. We decide to reschedule the Exhibitions and run just 3 throughout the day.

The first exhibition is at 11:00am and Steve Thomas who is pretty good on the microphone arrives to perform on our behalf. The first exhibition is fairly well attended, but the best one is the middle one. Steve can't do the last exhibition microphone so it falls to yours truly (me) to carry this one off.

We finish the last exhibition around 16:30 and then we have to hang around until 7:00pm when the shops shut before we can pack up and take out our kit.

Special thanks to Eddie Dillon - Promedia for taking pictures, the Watford Observer for coming down and taking pictures and doing an interview with Will and for Susanne Jorgensen - The Singles Gym for taking some video and also attending at short notice.

Thanks to all those who visited the exhibition and donated some money to the cause on the day, William and all the Willmeon Team are very grateful.

These are some of the Pictures from the William Maybanks - Harlequin WillMeOn kick off exhibition taken by Eddie Dillon of Promedia 

By the time we get back home, and I've been down to Asda to get some shopping it is already 10pm! Nice valentines evening !! A couple of beers and then I'm just about ready for bed. Tomorrow is yet another busy day !

Day 293 - Friday 13th February 2009

Friday 13th hopefully no problems on such an ominous day !! I'm up at 5am this morning there is so much to do today. Straight on with the programming to finish off the forms ready for tomorrow. I was hoping that the WillMeOn forms would be all finished by now, but there is still a fair amount of work still to do.

Good progress is made during the morning. I'm cracking through the work. Today I'm expecting so many things to happen:-

1. The Posters I have asked to be printed are supposed to arrive
2. The Flyers to hand out are supposed to be delivered to Roger of Phoenix Office Solutions, along with the T-Shirts, clip boards, pens and enquiry sheets
3. The Blog site is to go through many changes to get ready for tomorrow
4. I need to finalise some last minute details with the Harlequin
5. Speak with the Media / PR people and confirm arrangements for tomorrow.

All this as well as finish the programming and testing of the forms loading data into the i-Tr@der system. After all of this I still have to write the programs to display those people who have sponsored and get those i-Frames to work within the blog running data extraction programs from the i-Tr@der CMS module.

Well the Flyers have arrived with Roger. The Posters are late and panic starts to set in, a few calls and we find out the driver has gone to the wrong place. A quick call and some directions means we will get the posters later on today.

DISASTER Strikes.... Business Post have managed to lose the T-Shirts for tomorrow!! We are reliably informed that they reached Birmingham and they are somewhere between there and Milton Keynes. Roger is pulling his hair out and we start to seek alternative arrangements for getting some T-Shirts printed in Watford! Roger manages to find a local T-Shirt reseller who will hot foil print the shirts and do the job at 5pm finish at 7pm on the Friday, and  will provide the shirts free of charge!! Hats off to Roger and the T-Shirt guy who will receive due recognition later on! The only problem now is converting the files from one format to Coral Draw! Another mad panic ensues before we finally have the job underway and work is in progress.

Day 292 - Thursday 12th February 2009

Bit of a later start this morning a little after 7:30am. Straight into programming work this morning. A total of 8 forms are required for the WillMeOn Blogsite to allow users to register themselves after donating to the cause. After this there are then 4 further programs to display those that have donated in a roll of honour, thank you page.

This morning I have an appointment at a local company in Moor Park. This is a new prospect, a global chemical products wholesaler. They have had some poor advice on systems in the past and my mate Eddie Dillon of Promedia has recently created their website. He has asked me to see what I can do for them and I am going along today to find out about their business and to discover what they need and the state of their current systems. The meeting goes really well, how nice it is to meet really courteous people... I promise to send them a quotation by close of play Monday outlining how we will deliver on their requirements. There is good potential here to help them pursue working remotely in a much more efficient manner than they are at the moment. 

Got 4 programs wrapped up in the afternoon, many of the programs are similar however they all have their differences and must all be tested properly. I'm getting on well although interrupted a little by Urfi who comes over with all the PA equipment for Saturday. He has invested in the equipment as this year he will start to run competitions and will need PA equipment for these, so the investment will not be wasted.

This afternoon has also been a very busy support day, like they say it never rains it pours! More work is thrown our way from Deliver Net and Executives on the Web and I haven't even got this weekend to catch up with it all.

Off Table Tennis coaching this evening and to my surprise as I get close to Barnet the more it is snowing. Back in Watford there was no snow, here about an inch already !! Leaving at 8:45pm the snow has settled but no sooner am I on the M1 back to Watford I'm back in a snow free zone !!

Day 291 - Wednesday 11th February 2009

Very early start this morning up at 5am. There is so much still to do before the launch of the WillMeOn Campaign at the weekend and time is running out!

This morning I have some server maintenance to do first of all, the a whole series of small administrative emails as well as the Invoicing for February to get out of the way. This is all cleared up pretty early on and then I turn my attention to the One-Hyde-Park contract. This is to be signed today and so it needs to have my final input so that it can be put before the Select Hire Managing Director to sign off.

A late panic to obtain the certification for the Public Liability insurance to enable the contract to be signed threatens the completion, but I knew we had the documents here somewhere just not filed away. All is done and dusted by circa 4pm and the contracts are on the way back to us for signing.

Finally we manage to get the artwork for the T-Shirts down to the guys in Wales who are doing the job for us. Only 1 day now to turn these around, hopefully everything will be ok. Roger my mate helping out with this from Phoenix Office Solutions is confident that his printer will come good!

There is so much going on at the moment it is difficult to keep track, however I'm making copious notes and reminders for myself to ensure that I do not forget anything. Still haven't really started on the Forms for the WillMeOn database backend, I have to really get into this tomorrow!

No Table Tennis tonight so I'm going to take it a little easy after 8pm, another 15 hour day bites the dust !!

Day 290 - Tuesday 10th February 2009

Bit of a late start today circa 8am, bit of a struggle with all the late nights to get out of the sack this morning. William Maybanks of WillMeOn fame is due over this morming so I spent a while organising my lad who will be taking him through all the gadgets and things. A bit like James Bond and 'Q' here!

Will picks it all up pretty quick he has youth on his side for a starter! Otis takes him through Twitter and how to update using the mobile phone we will be giving to him. Twitpic is also going to be used to update twitter. I've never been to an international Pro-Tour Tournament but through Will's eyes and the WillMeOn campaign we will all be able to particpate and see how it looks !! You Tube will also for hosting Video and we will be providing a Flip Video Recorder to William for this purpose. He will be able to upload these to the system and we can then distribute them into the appropriate areas from here.

We have also set up a copy of the i-Tr@der system which is to be used to join 'Team WillMeOn' together. The platform will enable us to manage Emails for all those involved, Will's diary, store files / images / videos relating to the project, run all the finances to do with the campaign and account for the money. Not only this we will be filing all the names and email addresses of those donating money to the cause into the system automatically so that they can feature in the Hall Of Fame on the website!!

This afternoon, Livia Fekiacova is over to see us. Livia has a degree in marketing and will be helping us with the WillMeOn campaign as marketing assistant. She has been posting all my blog updates onto Typepad and also working with Wordtracker to search up some keywords for our up and coming sales pages. Today is a training day on building her knowledge of Twitter and how this can be used in a marketing campaign. We are using the WillMeOn project as an example of where we are bringing together many different marketing techniques. Online Internet Marketing including using Twitter, You Tube, Flickr, Blogs and email / viral marketing strategies. Conventional exposure with the local newspapers, Fliers and Posters and on the ground PR work with exhibitions, school visits and appearances at various functions.

After the excitement of the day I finally get an agreement with the printer to produce the first batch of posters for the Launch on Saturday. These will be delivered on Friday with a bit of luck.

Now back onto the contract for Laing O'Rourke, this will have to be with them tomorrow, so I need to knuckle down now and get this job out of the way!

Table Tennis again this evening although another lowly placed team in a different league this time the chalfont league. I suspect another fairly straight forward victory. Last night's result was an 8-0 victory.

Day 289 - Monday 9th February 2009

6:30am today, restart of one of the servers as part of our general housekeeping and maintenance. Then onto some Blog posts, for this Wealth Creation Journey.

Lots of bits and pieces to do with WillMeOn this morning. Progressing artwork for the T-Shirts is one of them, we need this today to make sure that we can get them for the weekend.

I speak to William Maybanks this morning to just check with him about who we should speak to at the English Table Tennis Association (ETTA) to inform then about what we are doing. Not that they should be that bothered as we are not asking for funds or anything. They may however wish to add a link to the WillMeOn site and at least be positive about what we are up to because the by-product of all of this is to promote Table Tennis.

Once this email is sent I fire off 4 emails to the local leagues. They can email all those people on their lists promoting the Harlequin launch and also the WillMeOn website.

Ben Jennings is over lunchtime to show us his Illustration for the Posters for the launch. The poster is super and is the commencement of a whole merchandising opportunity for the WillMeOn campaign. Watch this space. Now we need to get the Posters printed. A2 is fairly large and not common place for most printers, some early explorative phone calls turns up blanks. We will tr again tomorrow.

In the afternoon I turn my attention to the Contract for the One-Hyde-Park Project, this is a huge opportunity for us to not only provide a turnkey solution for this project but to additionally become a component in some strategic developments within Laing O'Rourke in general.

Table Tennis match this evening. Won't be a particularly tough match though as this team is at the bottom of the league in the Watford Premier division.