Just like old times...

Today was a new day, the bricks on my house in last evenings dreams were fixed and I was going to make it a great day. I'm getting back on that horse and eating healthy.

Tomorrow I'm taking the day off and heading down to the Finger Lakes with Alan Adcock and a couple of guys to do a 100 mile bike ride on Saturday. I think it includes 8000 feet of climbing. I'm looking forward to it.

Before I could leave I had a couple of very important things that needed to be done and could be put off no longer. I'm on a panel at Graph Expo on Monday, it's the largest printing show in North America and I'll be on a panel to discuss photo books. It's a great opportunity to get some exposure and maybe drive some new business. For the panel I needed to provide them with a power point presentation of what I'm going to say. That was my first task of the day, figure out what I'm going to say and make a power point. It took just over 3 hours.

Then I had to prepare a pricing proposal for some new products for a customer. It was a lot of work and frankly I didn't know the best approach. It turns out fate reared it's head and I got lucky. The client is Rocketlife and they use EZ prints in the U.S. Well it turns out that my Triathlon Toons website also uses EZ prints and I had a meeting with my Admin Virtual Assistant today and had to go through my EZ print materials and found their price list. The same list that Rocketlife was using to have me prepare pricing.

This was awesome. I still had to figure out the pricing as per our cost structure, but I was able to compare it to the competition and see where I stood before sending it in to Rocketlife. The reality was that I went in at higher pricing than I normally would have felt comfortable at. It also gave me an opportunity to establish a price list that I could easily use for other customers. I love when I do work and can leverage the time I put into it for the next year to come. I love doing things once, doing it right and then being lazy.

In between doing the pricing I had a phone conversation with my second virtual assistant from India. His name is Moin, aka Abbey, and he speaks very good english and actually has an edge to him, a bit of a sense of humour. A couple of time I swear I heard him say "f#ck" about something that wasn't working. Again, he is a bright guy. We had some problems with Skype and got interrupted. We ended up spending a couple hours on the phone and I was reviewing the EZ print system with him. He caught on quick.

I'm still a little nervous about whether or not this is going to work. I'm actually pleasantly surprised how well its working. Poochie has been working on other stuff and making progress, keeping me in the loop every part of the way. I'm even going to have Abbey prepare some budgets for me for work. Having these assistants is like hiring a kid to do your homework. For only $500 per month for each of them, it's one hell of a bargain. Abbey was telling me he was tired, it was 4 am in the morning for him, I told him "that sucks for you". Definitely want to keep him on edge until he proves himself. I'm not his therapist, don't tell me your hardships, we all have hardships. If you want me to hear your problems, pay me $500 a month.

I picked up my bike and they did me right, actually I think they did more than right. I originally paid $330 for a chain, new cables, tune up, handle bar wrap and an ultegra cog. They put on the Dura Ace cog and we did a straight swap. Essentially all that stuff and the dura ace cog cost me $330. I think I did okay.

My brother is getting really interested in the Sharkey's haircuts for kids franchise. He was talking to the guy that has the rights to Canada and he owns the store in Burlington, near my house. The guy says that in his first year they did $300,000 in sales and made $100,000 and was cash flow positive after 2 months. Bob is very interested in doing something in Winnipeg. Hell, he's getting my interest. They are looking at expanding in Ontario and have no locations in Toronto. Of course my brother is over complicating things wanting to open three locations right away and maybe buy out the competition. I told my brother to not complicate things. This is just a haircutting place, it's not worth trying to merge operations with the other kids haircutting place in Winnipeg.

I told my brother that he doesn't have money to buy them out and why would he? He is so visionary that he is already 5 moves ahead. I know what that's like, it's something I used to do and often catch myself from doing now. Bob may be coming to Toronto in the next couple of weeks to tour some of the Cuts for kids shops. I told him I'd love to join him and learn more. As far as I'm concerned I'm going to look for something and if I find something I'll get involved. Hopefully it will be such that I can still do my sales for AG and do other things. As far as I'm concerned AG is going to come to an end in the next 12 -24 months unless we somehow start making money.

Reid's pumped about school, he's doing his school work when he gets home and has been telling us he's organized now and that he cares about high school and didn't care about middle school. Him and I also made a bet tonight for $100 that will be won by the person that doesn't eat junk food, or snack on anything but fruit and vegetables after dinner. It's game on. I also noticed a couple of drawings he did and took some pictures of them, he's very artistic. He did one as a logo for his production company, he took Alfred Hitchcock and added his glasses and hat to it. He also did a Bill Murray that's pretty good.

Food wise I did excellent today. I went to the grocery store for lunch and bought a salad. It was tough to do, I was eyeing sandwiches and sushi. I fought the urges and went for the salad. For dinner I just had the ribs and salad that Alice made. Then I ate nothing, I just worked at the kitchen table on my pricing until 10 pm. By the time I was done I was brain dead and irritable.

The only way to get back to feeling fresh is to go for a run, which I did. I was not going to miss today's training session. It felt like old times, work hard during the day and still get the workout in, no excuses. The run was very good, it wasn't easy, it was a tempo run and I'm not mailing in any of my workout. I have to train, I'm feeling a little paunchy in the tummy. This morning I weighted in at 190.4 lbs. I was up 0.6 lbs since yesterday. I'm not going to freak, I'm going to adjust. Today was a new day and the first day of my adjustment. The chest is feeling much better, a slight discomfort after the run, I think I'll be back to full swimming and weights by Monday next week.

Tempo Run - 58:08 / 11.16 km / 5:13 avg pace / 143 avg hr.
2604 calories