Retiring

Due to recent events, I’m considering retirement.  The thought of lounging around at home in a bathrobe, drinking gin and tonic, and frolicking around the seniors centre with a bunch of other geriatrics appeals to me.  Well change geriatrics to beach bunnies and I’m in.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to chronicle the process of shutting down a business, the decisions that were made and insights into the mind of one of the greatest businessmen that I know – that is if he’ll let me.  More on that in a few days.

A second blog update in a week is on the way.  Web update is done and facebook page is done as well.  I forgot how easy it can all be if I remember the process and system that I’ve put in place – before that it was a drag and a time vampire.

Another youngin’ is spreading her wings and spending 3 months helping at an orphanage for developmentally challenged girls in the Ukraine – more info here.  I wish that I could be at the fundraiser and wish her the best in her travels.  Good luck Stef!

I’ve found that doing a short workout before dinner has helped me the most over the past few weeks – not that I’ll be able to continue it, but just that it’s the only thing that I’ve been able to do more than once in the past few months and it’s kind of fun.

Ok, sleep beckons.  I know that I’m forgetting the whole reason for writing this but it’s late and tomorrow is a new day.  Remember if you’re not getting what you want, you need more hugs (either give them or ask for them).

Goodbye my sweet delicious friend

There were a few delays leading up to today and not only with the start of The 62 Day Sprint.  Last week I was bogged down on one project that turned out to be a dud.  On top of that the mail server crashed, had to replace my phone system, and was down for most of last week – much to the frustration of clients and business partners.

Today turned out to be a fun time of going through 250 emails (another 100 to go through tonight), returning phone calls, and getting back in touch with people.  I have a feeling that I will crash early tonight and pick everything back up tomorrow morning (no more burning the midnight oil – see below).

Points for today – 228

Marketing – 225
Sales – 0
FHL – 3  (2 fitness, 1 hobby)

Someone very near and dear to me has been constantly asking the same two questions:

1.  What is your plan for the next 12 months?

2.  Where do you want to be 5 years from now?

There are a few complications in my life right now that prevent me from seeing beyond the next 3 months.  I do know that in the next three months I will be launching stage two of Ten Million Entrepreneurs, have a better idea of where I will be living full time in 2012, have a steady form of personal income, and will have helped over 3,000 entrepreneurs since I launched Gobi (only 9,997,000 to go).  My plan for the next 12 months is the same as it has been for the past 12 months – build a business / an organization that helps entrepreneurs while allowing me to run it from anywhere in the world.  Five years from now, I imagine that I’ll still be doing the same thing except on an exotic beach or from a tree-house in a rain-forest.

It’s true – no more burning the midnight oil.  I’ve cut out coffee and most forms of caffeine with the exception of green tea and other low caffeine teas.  I realize that green tea is not that low in caffeine, however I use loose leaf green tea and fill the cup back up with hot water using the same leaves throughout the day.  Why would I bother to cut out something that I enjoy so much – I was using it as a crutch.  Feeling tired – pound back a double espresso.  Still feeling tired? Try a double double from Tim ‘Homophobe’ Hortons.  So the crutch is gone after four days of headaches and I’m substituting in decaf in the morning and green tea the rest of the day.

The only other thing I have to do is get a haircut and trim up the mustache before Wednesday.  I want to keep the handlebar mustache but it makes me look ugly – even uglier than I looked before.

31 Works Days

The hard numbers:

• 1569 marketing points
• 22 fitness points
• 7 life / hobby points
• 1598 points!
• 5,927.27% productivity increase from the first week to the last week
• Weekly average points increased from 2.2 per day to 133

Overall, I feel pretty damn good.  So good that I made a wee presentation for you!

In case you didn’t take a look at the presentation, yes I’m doing another 31 days of excitement.  However, the focus this time around is not on marketing, but on sales.  I will be tracking marketing, FLH (fitness, life, hobbies), and sales, but the majority of my focus will gradually shift from marketing to sales.  The best part is, the next 31 Day Sprint (aka The 62 Day Sprint) starts today!

On that note, I will leave you with a quote:

“Every morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle – when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”

-Unknown

30 years ago…….

Happy 30th Birthday!  Yippee!

Ok, I’ll admit that a week ago I was not as happy.  For as long as I can remember, I’ve dreaded birthdays.  They seem to creep up on me around the same time of year the weather goes from happy and joyous to absolute misery and wetness.

I started the day off by waking up like most days around 5:20am.  This time I promptly went back to sleep until 7:30am.

Sleepy!

I managed a quick trip into the metropolis of Alliston to get a few things, then I was able to start my adventure!  I drove north into Creemore to find an elusive beer that is sold at a gas station.  Well it’s technically not beer – there’s no alcohol content.  You buy the 2L bottle for less than $5 and then you pop in a yeast pill and wait for 14 days.  After 14 days, you can say “NOW I have beer!”  Couldn’t find it and wasn’t really willing to get out of the car to look around gas stations (yes there are two gas stations in Creemore) for a beverage that I would have to wait 14 days to consume.  This trip was all about today and living in the moment.

Rolling rolling rolling

 

Mudders on a dump truck

I continued driving north through the lively and vivacious town of Stayner and watched all of the little teenie boppers march from the high school to Tim Hortons for their caffeine fix and lunch.  Normally, I’d say good for them, but it just so happens that Tim Hortons had a little trouble with homophobia (see related articles here and here and here and here and here) and I did not feel like joining the teenie boppers for homophobe coffee.

Onwards north I hit the junction between Wasaga Beach and Collingwood – where you go from 80 km/h down to 60km/h if you’re lucky.  I was not – 45km/h in a line of 20 cars all slowly making their way to Collingwood.  Eventually I made it to Collingwood, drove around a little bit and decided to grab something to eat.  Fast food was out of the question (I’m 30 now I have to watch what I eat!) and I wanted to find something within walking distance to the lake shore.

I parked and paid a total of $0.50 for an hour of parking then walked to the Huron Club.  I selected a veggie and chicken curry that did not disappoint and washed it down with a pint of Creemore beer (ever since I drove through the town I was thinking about it non-stop).  I paid my bill and walked north to the lake shore.  I dipped my toe into Georgian Bay, took some pictures as mementos, then walked back and made the drive back south.

Creemore Beer at The Huron Club

 

Delicious veggie and chicken curry at The Huron Club

Walking along Georgian Bay

Collingwood Grain Elevators

I opted for the non-geriatric traffic jammed route back towards Wasaga Beach and headed straight south along the Collingwood Airport.  The road went from ‘paved and smooth’, to ‘paved in the 80′s’, to ‘unpaved and bumpy’ to ‘holy shit I’m now a rally car driver!’  Needless to say it was fun and the view was amazing.

The Ridge

Reno'd Barn with windows

Dinner was amazing and I spent two hours in a sauna.  The celebration is not over as I will be in Toronto later on this week to catch up with people that I did not see on Oct 25th.  It also turns out that my body can feed 74 hungry weasals – how about you?

Created by Oatmeal
Points for the past two days:

• Oct 25th – Day 26 – 64 points
• Oct 26th – Day 27 – 92 points

The goal for the rest of the week remains the same – increase income by 10% and get a minimum of 63 points each day.  I have not done any fitness for the past two days, but I have had a few new projects come into my inbox.  Today was basically a recovery day to prep for tomorrow.  I’m aiming for the best day ever tomorrow and I’m armed with 5 questions that will turn everything around.

It should also be noted that all of the landscape pictures were taken with my little blackberry while driving at least 85 km/h.

Ignorance is not an excuse!

I found a picture that I will be using in the Weekly Photo Challenge – you can see the picture and post here.  If you want to see other pictures posted by people, you can see all of them here: DailyPost: Opportunity.

Sunday Run – 50 minutes – 1 point / Monday workout – 45 minutes – 1 point

Marketing points – 196 points for talking to new people (yes that’s 196 people that I spoke to on the phone or received a response from via email) / 2 points for new contracts

Total points for the day – 200!

A little point on ignorance.  Every day I seem to fight against ignorance.  Most of the time it centres around the theme of finance and money, but over the past week it’s been more around computers / IT / social media as a marketing tool.  It turns out that people are lazy.  I guess I used to be part of that majority – that is until I discovered a magical thing called Google (and YouTube).  Don’t know how to use bookmarks in your web browser?  Google “how to use bookmarks in a web browser” or look up the same thing on YouTube – goodness me – step by step instructions on how to do it?  You’ve got to be kidding me!  Hold on, you mean I can do that for any topic?  You mean there are other people in the world who’ve had this problem in the past?! (note the sarcasm please).

Tomorrow will be a half-day for work – probably the morning but it will depend on a few factors.  I’m so psyched as I’ll be turning 30 with nothing solid planned aside from being open minded.

Self shot

The View

The Road Less Traveled

Day 23 & 24

Thursday and Friday of this week were a struggle.  After a 90 minute run on Wednesday morning I was feeling lethargic and slow until today.  It took me a while to figure out that getting four hours of sleep each night is not enough if you plan on not having a sedentary lifestyle.  I’ll be gunning for 6-8 hours of sleep each night and will try to keep the productivity level high.

Here are the updated numbers:

• Total Weekly Points: 337
• Average Daily Points: 67
• Rolling 7 Day Total: 491
• Rolling 7 Day Average: 70
• LinkedIn Connections – 1,700+

In otherwords, I managed to hit my goal even though Thursday and Friday were technically a flop.  In addition to the Gobi Capital site, there are four other sites that are being prepped for launch.  One of them will be a subscription based portal that will provide business owners and soon to be entrepreneurs the tools to test their new business/product/service idea, launch their project and then achieve a high level of growth.

The objective of next week is based on income.  The whole purpose of The 31 Day Sprint was to achieve a higher level of activity that would enable an increase in income for myself.  I’ve been toying with the idea of doing another 31 Day Sprint, but adjusting the metrics slightly and setting a different objective.   When I was studying in Findland, there was a course based on a book called The Balanced Scorecard – I think I’ll start to adopt some of those concepts and take a more holistic approach to the next sprint.

Hard numbers for next week:

• 63+ marketing points each day (minimum of 315 Monday to Friday)
• 8 fitness points for the week (Saturday-Friday)
• 5 life points for the week
• 10% increase in weekly income
• Identify 5 new potential projects

That’s it for now.  Have fun!