We had to install a fresh copy of Windows 98 onto a laptop today and like good IT Professionals, the first thing we did post-install was visit Windows Update to get the “latest” patches for the machine.

Unfortunately, Windows Update kept failing with Error “0x80072F89” – refusing to scan for the latest patches.

The fix? We installed Internet Explorer v6 SP1, rebooted, and Windows Update worked just fine.

Yes – although we really did genuinely come across this error today, Tubblog has neither gone technical or retro technical – I just thought I’d post this to see how quickly my man “angry” Andy Parkes responds to it!

Have a great weekend Andy, and everyone else! ;-)

We experienced an odd issue today wherein a client trying to connect to a Desktop PC via Remote Web Workplace under SBS 2003 experienced an error.

Despite all necessary Firewall ports being open, and all necessary privileges being given to the user to connect remotely, the client consistently got the error “Connectivity to the Remote Computer could not be established”.

Trying to connect to this PC internally via http://localhost/remote produced the same error, ruling out any Firewall issue we’d not spotted.

The answer came by way of a Microsoft Knowledgebase article at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/886209 - “Users cannot connect to remote desktops by using the Windows Small Business Server 2003 Remote Web Workplace“

The problem was with another process having snatched Port 4125 blocking RWW from using it. In this case, we restarted the IISAdmin service and the issue was resolved – the end user able to connect to the PC in question via RWW again.

We’ve now made the necessary registry changes documented in the article and have scheduled a reboot for the server out of hours to ensure the problem doesn’t re-occur.

One of my favourite Television shows, Five’s Gadget Show, will be running the “Gadget Show Live” at the Birmingham NEC on 17th – 19th April 2009.

I’ll be attending on Friday 17th April as I’m flying off to Dallas for my HTG11 meeting the next day.

If you’re going along, let me know so I can say hi, and make sure to take advantage of The Gadget Blog who have secured a discount on the ticket prices by using the code KUD2.

Gadgets, Tech and Suzi Perry live – what more could you want?

“With more than 4.5 million small businesses in the UK providing 13 million jobs, kick-starting the banks into renewed lending to them is vital to the economy.

Theo Paphitis talks to BBC Breakfast about what he found in Credit Where It's Due.

More than 100 small businesses are shutting up shop each day, according to the Federation of Small Businesses, which predicts some 30,000 firms will have gone bust by the end of this year.

In an attempt to turn the tide, the government has come up with proposals including the £1.3bn Enterprise Finance Guarantee Scheme to throw small businesses a lifeline.

However, while welcoming the scheme, organisations representing business - big and small - say positive impact from government initiatives has been slow to materialise, and times are tighter then ever.

In Panorama: Credit Where It's Due, business guru and Dragon's Den star Theo Paphitis, who has been running his own businesses for 26 years, examines whether the banks are doing enough to support small businesses. “

***

See http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_7902000/7902189.stm full the full synopsis, with thanks to the excellent Microsoft UK SBSC blog for drawing this to my attention.

I’ll be watching this show with interest. Everything I’ve heard from fellow SMB owners, especially those I met during the meeting we had with Lord Mandelson in November, is that banks aren’t holding up their end of the bargain and are making it more difficult than ever to borrow money when it is needed most. We’ll see whether Panorama makes these same findings.

At my last quarterly HTG 11 meeting in January, a few of us within the group exchanged information on what our invoices to clients looked like. Our own invoices were pretty much like many within the IT industry – they featured single lines saying things like “IT Managed Services”, “IT Consultancy” and so on.

Before the meeting I suspected that we were missing a trick with our current invoice template, and that suspicion was soon confirmed when my drinks so well I’d swear he was British HTG 11 facilitator and “Mr Virtualisation” Dave Sobel of Evolvetech in Washington, DC shared that his companies invoices were nowhere near as bland – in fact Evolvetech invoices were positively used as an excuse to demonstrate value to the client – listing every service his company undertook for that client, sometimes on many pages.

So one of my personal To-Do’s coming out of that HTG 11 Quarterly Meeting was to re-vamp our recurring Invoices to clients to greater demonstrate the value of the service we delivered.

In between that HTG 11 meeting and my implementing that new Invoice template, I  received a call from a client. They wanted to meet with us and talk about cutting costs. The recession is hitting hard everywhere, and if you’re a business owner who has not received a call along these lines yourself – expect one soon.

The meeting was set for this week, and before then at the start of the month we sent out our new client invoices as usual – only they now ran to three pages listing every job we do for the clients flat fee each month rather than the previous one-line entries.

I met with that client today and the discussion over cost cutting went roughly like this. Client - “Explain to us again what we’re paying for each month”. Me - “Ok, here’s your last monthly invoice, let’s go through it a line at a time” (I produce new style invoice listing all services we undertake for clients flat monthly fee). Five minutes of client listening later. Client - “Wow. That’s exactly what I wanted to hear. Thanks”. The client then said they didn’t want to change anything about their current service, and furthermore went on to engage me in a conversation about three other pieces of work they’d like us to quote on.

I think that counts as a result doesn’t it? :-)

I suspect that if we’d implemented our new invoice 30 days earlier still, the client wouldn’t have even called the meeting at all. Think about it – if you’re looking to cut costs, do you investigate the invoice with 30+ items of value assigned to a cost, or do you continue looking through the pile for a one line item with high value?

What else can you do to spruce up your invoices? Well, we also put payment instructions on the bottom of every invoice (make it easy for some administrator at your client to do their job, and you’ll get paid quicker) and we’re just about to implement a referral scheme which will include a call to action to the company accountant on every invoice on how he can reduce his bill by referring us new clients himself.

If you work in a business where you invoice for your time rather than flat-fee, perhaps make sure to include not only details of the time spent on the job, but what the problem was and how you resolved it too. Over communicate to the client to demonstrate value.

So before your client picks up the ‘phone to you to ask for that meeting on how to cut costs, make sure your invoices accurately demonstrate the value you deliver to them – and at worst you’ll be making them think twice about calling you to haggle about cost!

Another mention of this Twitter thing I keep going on about, and a quick shout out for this Thursdays Twestival event, which is taking place at over 175 Worldwide venues raising money for Charity:Water.

The Brum Twestival will take place Thursday 12 February 2009, 19:30, Poppy Red, Poppy Red, The Arcadian, 70 Hurst St, Birmingham, West Midlands B5 4TD.

If you’re attending – then drop me a note on Twitter @tubblog and I’ll see you on the night for a few beers and a “real-life” chat! :-)

If you’re in two minds whether to attend – well here are half a dozen good reasons why you should come to Brum Twestival!

So as I said in my look back at 2008, throughout the year I kept a Daily Journal. The way it works is this. At the start of every day (after I've had breakfast and got ready, but before I leave the house) I take 5 minutes to sit down, think about what is the most important task I need to work on today and write it down. I then think about what one thing I could do today that would help me achieve a future goal. I write that down too. As I'm the sort of person who jumps out of bed with a million different ideas on his mind, this five minutes in a morning helps me slow down and stop myself from being "busy" working on the wrong things (i.e. anything but those important tasks I’ve written down!).

In the ten minutes it takes me to walk to the office from home, I've also had time to think about how I'm going to tackle that most important task, and that future goal.

At the end of every day, or sometimes the next morning, I then write down whether I got that important task completed, whether I worked towards that future goal, and if not on either count, the reasons why not.

I also take a few moments to write down any lessons I've learnt (or re-learnt) during that day. This can be anything from "Never respond to an e-mail when you're angry" to "Get to bed on time - working when tired isn't much fun". When looking back and reviewing those entries, if that same lesson appears two or three times in a month, you really start to laugh at yourself and realise how ludicrous it is that you're making the same mistake again and again...

Back to those two tasks in my Daily Journal. Looking back into my 2008 Daily Journal entries, something becomes very apparent. On those days when I didn't achieve my goals, the reasons for not doing so were more often than not listed as "interruptions".

Well - it's not like I could have expected to get a load of e-mails or two dozen 'phone calls during a day, right?

Yeah right. There are interruptions to your working day, every day, without fail. But the question is... do I really need to answer that new e-mail right now? Do I really need to take that phone call immediately?

Of course the answer to both is a resounding no.

Therefore one thing I'm going to work on in 2009 is focusing on the job at hand and ignoring those distractions when there's something more important to hand.

I've already turned off Microsoft Outlook's new e-mail "beep" sound and icon (that's Tools > Options > E-Mail Options > Advanced E-Mail Options), I've begun to tell the wonderful ladies who manage my telephones that I'm unavailable for x mins/hours and to take messages instead, and I've even - gasp - signed out of Skype and Live Messenger until important jobs are done.

Oh, and I've turned off the e-mail notifications on my Windows Mobile device as well. The GG will be especially happy about this, she can sit and watch TV with me for more than 30 seconds without the 'phone buzzing...

Only time will tell but I'm guessing that if I stick to this new regime, my 2009 is going to be even more productive than my 2008. :-)

In my last blog post I talked about the first step I take in setting goals for the Year ahead, and that is reviewing how I fared against my goals for the year just gone.

I also made a weak excuse for why I’m posting this blog entry in February 2009 and not January 2009 like normal organised people. :-)

Seriously though, if I’m finishing my goal setting for 2009 in February, and you’re reading this having not written down any goals for the year at all yet, then I’m still miles ahead of you – so you definitely should at least read some of this stuff.

That aside, here I’ll share my process for how I set goals for myself for 2009. That process begins with me re-iterated that I think writing down your goals is important.

Why bother writing down goals?

Well there’s a famous story about a Harvard Business School study conducted on students in an MBA program. In that year, students were asked “Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?”. Only 3% of the graduates had written goals and plans, 13% had goals but they were not in writing, and 84% had no specific goals at all. So the story goes, ten years later the members of the class were interviewed again with the following findings. The 13% of the class who had goals were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84% who had no goals at all. What’s more, the other 3% who had clear, written goals were earning, on average, ten times as much as the other 97% put together.

Wow. I’m not sure if that story is true or not, but if it is then it sure makes a compelling case for writing down your goals eh?

Reviewing Goals

One of the main obvious benefits of writing down your goals is that it makes it easier for you to review where you are against those goals.

In 2007, I reviewed my progress against my 2006 goals at the start of the New Year. The trouble with that is, if you’ve not achieved a goal by the time of the review, you’re not going to achieve that goal this year because your year has run out!

In 2008, I tried something different – I reviewed my progress against my 2007 goals on a weekly basis. How? I simply kept a Journal. I’m not talking “Dear Diary” here – but something that takes 3 minutes every morning at most. I’ll talk about what I write in my Journal and how it helped me in my next blog post, but the point is, I was regularly reviewing my goals, enabling me to take action on those goals I wasn’t making good progress on, and to reward myself for those goals that I was achieving.

Whatever method you use, make sure to review your progress against your goals. Quarterly at a minimum, but preferably monthly or weekly.

How to decide upon goals?

So, how to set Goals for the next 12 months? There’s plenty of web-sites out there that can help you with this, and I encourage you to go looking for them (some key-words to search on are GTD and SMART) but here’s my own process for doing it.

First off, I grab a pen and large sheet of paper and sit down to brain storm.

I find setting Short Term goals fairly simple. When I start brain storming, they are the first images or ideas that pop into my head as things I’d like to achieve soon – so I write them down and can flesh them out later.

If you’re anything like me though, those images that pop into your head will mostly be material in nature. I want a nice car. I want a nice holiday. I want a TV so big that it needs planning permission to install in my house.

Material things are nice, but it’s no use having a 90’ Television if you’re never at home to watch it. So I start to work backwards from those images to work out what I *really* want. So I want a large TV. Why? Because I enjoy watching movies on it at home. Why? Because I enjoy turning off from the outside world and immersing myself in the thrill and excitement of a movie. So it becomes a bit more clear that actually, my dream is not just to have a large screen TV, but to have the time to be able to turn my phone off, ignore the e-mail, and sit and watch my favourite movies in glorious large-screen.

So now you’ve got two goals for the next year – a large screen TV and making more time for relaxation.

Continue this process until you have a few things written down, and try to think about different areas of your life such as health and wellbeing, personal relationships, travel and leisure and finances – not just about business or work.

Let’s not worry about how we’re going to achieve these goals for a short while yet, because now you’ve started thinking of goals that are not just material things, let’s see if we can find a few more of those types of goals.

Dream Boards

This is where you might find a “Dream Board” useful. Before you stop reading and think this is all a bit hippy – remember back to when you were a kid and used to cut pictures out of catalogues of cool stuff you wanted to own and then looked at them from time to time. You stopped doing that when you were an adult, right? Why? Having visual reminders of things you’re aspiring to is a great way to motivate you to achieve!

So grab a big large piece of card, some glue, and a ton of your favourite glossy magazines. Flick through them, and any images you see that take your interest, cut them out and put them in a pile. This might be material things again, or it might be images that suggest something to you – for instance my Dream Board for 2008 contained a picture of New York City, some Walking Boots, a picture of people partying and a cottage in the country – representing a desire for me to visit New York City again, to start regularly walking again to improve my fitness and health, to spend more time with friends and a long-term goal of a relaxed life somewhere quiet.

When you’ve finished massacring the magazines, start sorting through those cut-outs and start picking out the ones that are really important to you.

Grab the glue, make a mess, and paste those images onto your card until it’s full up. Voila – one “Dream Board”.

Here’s a good article on Dream Boards to learn more, but here’s some of my personal tips – grab some magazines that you don’t normally read to cut out of – if you’re a geek and surround yourself with tons T3 or Stuff magazines, you’ll surely end up with a dream board full of pictures of just iPods and Suzi Perry – and I’m pretty sure your dreams stretch further than just geek-stuff (or maybe not…). Holiday magazines, Lifestyle magazines and similar can be a good source for your imagination.

There’s too much to do!

So now we’ve got some goals and dreams written down and in picture, but what exactly are you going to do to meet these targets? If you’re like me then you often look at big goals and get overwhelmed by how unobtainable they appear, and so become paralysed by fear and never even get started towards those goals. So to use another of my favourite expressions “How do you eat an Elephant? One bite at a time!” – simply chop those big goals up into a series of small goals.

For instance, that large screen TV you wanted. Well the first thing you might set as an action against that goal is researching which TV’s are best, and how much they cost. Once that action is complete, you might then realise you need to save money to afford that TV, so your next action is to setup a savings plan to enable you to raise the money to buy the TV by a certain date…. and so on.

This technique works really well, but I’m as bad as anyone for getting overwhelmed by all my goals – so when you find it happening to you, simply think about the next sensible small thing you could do towards achieving that goal and concentrate on completing just that one thing. It gets easier from there!

Being Held Accountable for your Goals

So we’ve now got some goals, we’ve set some sensible actions towards those goals, we have our goals written down and we’ll be reviewing them regularly. Now one last thing to do that will help you achieve those goals – start telling people about them! That Dream Board you created? Rather than drop it into a dusty draw, pin it up by your desk so that you see it every day and other people get to see it too! They’ll ask you what it’s all about and you can tell them about the goals it represents. By doing so you’ll remind yourself why you wanted to achieve those goals, and you’ll begin to make yourself accountable at a low level to others for achieving those goals, because they’ll start asking you “how’s it going with the plans for the trip to New York” or “How’s the diet going?” and so on.

You can announce your goals by telling your friends and family, by e-mailing people, or by writing it on your blog – but don’t keep them to yourself, because it’s a lot easier to give excuses to yourself for not achieving things than it is to explain to someone else why you’re not making progress towards a goal.

This works in business too. Once we’ve decided upon them as a group, I write down our goals for Netlink IT for the next Quarter and for the next year and pin them to the Notice Board. Everybody in the office is then regularly reminded of what they are working towards, and when we have days when we’re getting a bit overwhelmed fire-fighting, a glance at those Goals can remind us we’re getting pulled off track and what would should be concentrating on again.

Taking it to the next level, our HTG group sets goals every quarter, and at the next meeting we are held Accountable for those goals. This is a great motivator because nobody wants to turn up to the next meeting and explain why they haven’t achieved a goal!

Likewise, If the group thinks the goals we’ve set are too easily attained, we push back and make them harder. If we think the goal is unobtainable or unrealistic, we voice caution. It works well – and you can easily do the same with friends, family or your peers. If you really can’t find anybody else, e-mail me with your goals and it’ll give me great pleasure to become a PITA and regularly asking you how you’re getting on!

So now you’ve got some goals written down, you’ve got a plan to achieve those goals, and you’ll be held accountable for achieving those goals through other people and through your own review process.

Get on with it!

Blimey, I wrote quite a lot there didn’t I? One of my goals for 2009 is to learn to be more concise. :-)

I’m constantly learning about this stuff, and I’m no expert (I’d strongly suggest talking to this guy, buying this book, or reading this web-site for people who really know what they’re talking about) but I do know that by setting goals for myself using the techniques above I achieve more than when I just fool myself into thinking that by being busy I’m being productive. The two definitely aren’t one and the same.

Good luck with the remaining 11 months of 2009!

Next blog entry I’ll talk a bit more about the Journal I kept in 2008, and some of the things that might get in the way of you achieving your goals.

So it’s the start of February 2009 and the title of this blog entry is something that most people think about over the Christmas and New Year break – so what gives? Well, as I alluded to in my last blog post, January 2009 has been an exceptionally busy time for me and as a result I’ve missed out on something that I know from experience is really really important to my future – Goal Setting for the coming year ahead.

There’s a quote I’ve heard which I’m fond of “When you begin your new year with solid direction and desired outcomes in mind, you set yourself up for awesome success.”

I’m a huge believer in writing goals down, and in December 2007 I sat down and set myself Goals for 2008. So before I belatedly set myself some new goals for 2009, I sat down and reviewed (already, see how important it is to write those goals down for future reference?) my 2008 goals to see how I fared against them – and that’s what I’ll write about in this blog post.

Why bother blogging about this? Well I do it for two reasons – one, because I enjoy it and find it useful to me personally (so there!) and two, because I know from chatting to them that a lot of other business owners and individuals are either in the same position as I was in late 2007 or have started down the road I took in 2008, and that they’ve told me they find it useful to hear about my experiences. If my ramblings can help someone else along the road, so much the better! :-)

Onto the review of my Goals for 2008:-

Business

My business, Netlink IT, is a huge part of my life. Like most people, I spend most of my waking hours at work and so I want that time to be fulfilling and enjoyable to me. In the last quarter of 2007 I came to the conclusion that I no longer wanted to own a job (as a one-man-band IT Consultant) but to own a business (Thanks Michael Gerber!) and so one of my goals for 2008 was to make that happen.

Once that goal was set, how to achieve it? Well one of the problems I struggle with is thinking large goals are insurmountable and therefore throwing my hands up the air in despair that I’ll never achieve them.

So I broke that big goal down into smaller action steps. These included moving out of my office at home into a fully fledged office, taking on staff, beginning to systemising the business so that I could more successfully delegate tasks to others and most importantly, getting a grip on the business finances to help plan this growth, and increasing revenue to pay for this growth!

So how did I fair? Well in mid-2008 I took somebody on to help with Administration and Outsourced our Telephone Answering to a service provider – freeing up my time to work on some of the other jobs I needed to do. If you’re a “one man band” with aspirations of growing, then I’d recommend outsourcing all the jobs you can, as soon as you can – you’re an IT person paid to do IT work, right? So why are you spending it answering your phone to Sales Callers or filling in VAT returns?

Shortly afterward this initially hire we bullied persuaded one of our clients into renting us some office space they had going spare. Some furniture from Ikea and a lick of paint later, we had a “home base” to work from. There are arguments for “virtual working” with remote access facilities and the like, and I agree with a lot of those arguments, but for us getting a “home base” was an important step to build upon.

This extra space then enabled us to take on someone else to help with some of the Technical and Service Delivery aspects of the business, further freeing up my time for other jobs, and we also automated or outsourced a lot of the repetitive technical tasks we needed to do.

Next, we changed Accountants. There was nothing particularly wrong with our old Accountants – they were friendly and helpful – but we needed someone not only to help us file our taxes and pay our VAT, but to spend time with us to help us analyse where the money in our business was coming from and going to. Our new Accountant, Helen, has been a regular visitor to Netlink Towers and has helped us whip our electronic accounts system, QuickBooks, into shape and produce regular Management Reports. This in turn has helped us open more Credit Accounts with Trade Suppliers, chase outstanding invoice payments, and pay our suppliers on time, which makes cash flow easier to handle. In 2007 Financial Management was possibly our weakest area, but at the start of 2009 I think we’re very strong at it.

Now we’d reached a stage where because I wasn’t fire-fighting the day to day running of the business on both a Technical and Administrative front, I had time to start reviewing the other things I did repetitively and started to systemise them to delegate to others. This was a huge win for us, but more on that in a future blog post! :-)

On the revenue and income side of things we forced ourselves to be brave and raised our prices, we up-sold to existing clients and we became more efficient to reduce costs – but there was still a huge barrier to growth here – and that’d be me. In late 2007 I realised that there’s simply no denying the fact that I’m a huge geek, and like any good geek, I liked to talk about the geeky coolness of software and hardware to clients whenever I had an opportunity. This was a major turn off for clients, who not being geeks themselves, actually wanted to hear about how we could help their business, now how fantastic SBS 2003 R2 was. So I stepped quite a bit outside my comfort zone and signed myself up for some ongoing Sales training. At the start of 2009, I’d not say I’m a natural Salesman, but we have won business ahead of competitors with our new clients telling us they chose us because we “understood our business”. Result.

Finally, I set myself a “naughty” goal of helping Netlink IT to reach Microsoft Certified Partner status. I’ll admit, this was a goal based on vanity more than anything else, as I simply wanted to “announce” that Netlink IT was now more than a “one man band” – and achieving Certified Partner Status said this quite well. I still smile at our Certified Partner plaque mounted in the office. Yes, I know that’s sad, but I did say I was a geek… On a more serious note, in 2009 we need to work out how Netlink IT is going to make more use of it’s Certified Partner relationship with Microsoft. There’s an example of how reviewing even the smallest of last years goals can lead you to goal setting for the year ahead!

Travel

I didn’t do much travelling in 2007, and realised that I missed a change of scenery. So I set myself some lofty travel goals for 2008. I wanted to head back to Texas to see my best buddy and his family, and I wanted to go back to New York (‘cos I love that town!) and also visit Las Vegas and Tokyo, Japan for the first time.

Well I didn’t get to visit Las Vegas (although I’ve carried that goal from 2008 into 2009) and I didn’t make Tokyo, but when the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference came up as being held in Houston, TX – I simply had to go. That trip was some of the most fun I’ve ever had – from spending time with my buddy Matt, a Brit and very old friend of mine who now lives in the States, to meeting all the folk in the SMB Community I’d chatted to but never met in person. Some great friendships were formed there, and truthfully, the visit had a profound impact on both me and Netlink IT as a business.

If you’re a Small Business Owner who’s planning to grow his business, get yourself to one of the big Conferences such as a WWPC because it’ll certainly open your eyes and help you raise your game. If you’re a “one man band” or similar and asking yourself the question of how in the hell you’d manage to take a week out of the office to do this, then I’d challenge you in that you’ll face this same problem for any holiday or even sickness you’ll face – so isn’t it worth you doing what I did and start exploring how you’re going to overcome those obstacles? I went ahead and booked the trip to Houston, TX without having any cover in place at the time – I then made sure that between the time of booking the trip and the trip itself I accelerated my plans for making sure I had the cover and support I required. Nothing like an immovable deadline to motivate you. :-)

Oh, and I flew First Class to Houston for WWPC. That was my reward to myself for the hard work I’d put into achieving some of the other ambitious goals I’d set. I think it’s important to reward yourself for achieving goals, or else there’s a danger life just turns into a slog of you striving for goal after goal. Yes, a First Class flight is a *big* reward, but then what I was doing with my business was a big struggle with lots of effort required of me. Plus, truthfully, do you want to fly somewhere First Class? Yes? Have you investigated what’s involved or as is more likely simply said “I’d love to do it, but it’d be too expensive”. Well I’ve always wanted to fly First Class so I investigated what it’d cost me, built some targets around what I’d need to achieve to enable this dream to come true, and then worked towards making it happen.

I also managed to take a short-trip back to New York as planned. The trouble with that town is that it’s simply awesome! I want to go again, and again, and again – every planned trip to the USA now includes investigation as to whether I can stop off in NYC for a few days!

Have you got some places you want to visit in 2009? Do yourself a favour, and book those trips now, especially if you’re hesitating because you don’t think you’ll be able to get away from work. If you don’t make that booking today, something will invariably get in the way of you making that trip. You’ll work out the other stuff around that immovable deadline – have faith and you’ll make it happen!

Personal

In 2007 whilst I did spend some time with my friends and family, I realised I’d more often than not spend long nights and weekends working “in” my business. I planned for 2008 to be different. It was surprisingly easy because once I’d started committing to get-togethers, parties and functions and got myself out of the door from work, let’s face it, spending time with friends and family isn’t a chore! (If it is then I strongly suggest you find some new friends, and perhaps a new family…)

As I mentioned, I also found time to visit my best buddy Matt in Texas and got to spend July 4th, Independence Day with he and his family watching Fireworks over Houston – a great memory.

As anybody who follows the photos I upload to my Facebook profile will attest to – I’ve enjoyed my time spent with friends and family in 2008 greatly. :-)

Health

Well, it’s all been quite positive up until now hasn’t it?

Like 99.9% of the Western World, my New Year always starts with me bemoaning the fact I’m not as a fit or healthy as I was the year before, and how I damned well need to do something about it.

The start of 2008 was no different. I was going to join a gym, I was going to eat healthier, I was going to go walking more.

I failed. Big. Just like the increase to my waistline in 2008.

The reason? I don’t treat improvements to my health and wellbeing like other goals in my life – I don’t break down goals such as weight loss and increases in fitness into short term achievable objectives. That needs to change. I like the infamous phrase “Being dead is bad for Business” because it’s funny, but it’s true!

Unlike Netlink IT in the New Year, 2009 has got to see Richard Tubb shrink, not grow. :-)

***

So that was my 2008. There was other great things that happened to me, but I didn’t plan for them to happen – they just came along. My gut feeling is that without doing the majority of the stuff above, those other good things I hadn’t planned for may not have happened as a result.

I know the “story” I’ve painted above is not too dis-similar to some of the challenges peers and friends maybe facing at the moment or in the process of first tackling. If you want to discuss anything specific in more depth, don’t hesitate to get in touch and I’m happy to ramble on some more.

In my next blog post I’ll talk about how I went about creating my goals for 2009, the importance of sharing your goals so you can be held accountable for achieving them, and measuring your success against those goal targets.

If you’ve “put off” setting your goals for the year ahead, you’ve still got 11 months to go of 2009, so make sure you get started straight away! Better late than never!