Filed under: Personal, life —
Posted: 22:37
January 31, 2010

We live in the Internet age. Everyone and anyone is connected to the Internet, some more often than others as it becomes common place for mobile phones connected 24/7. In these changing times it is very easy to forget that, while the Internet is a wondrous place to be, it can also be dangerous…let me explain.

Many years ago while I was working at a local Nottingham ISP I was asked to go on a radio show to discuss the dangers that the Internet presents to the younger generation. Evan all those years ago people were aware of the dangers but they still needed to be reminded of what to watch out for. Now lets roll forward some 8 years to the Facebook, MySpace and MSN generation where you are considered strange if you don’t have a Facebook, MySpace or MSN account and to not be on the Internet makes you a ‘dork’*.

So is the Internet any safer now that it was back then? No.

What we are seeing more of very passive behaviour on the part of parents and the role that they *must* play in order to keep their kids safe on the Internet. Now that may seem like a harsh statement and I would like to think that most parents are sensible but many aren’t. Only today I heard that someone I know has just signed their son up to a free Live email account and then set them up with a Facebook account despite their son being below the age of 13 required by Facebook. Now we all know that there are kids out there below the age and the that is a fact but there are ways that this can be done *safely*, let me give an example.

Firstly if you wish to give your child an email account of any sort then you should setup the computer so that you get a copy of ANY emails that they get. This means that you can ensure that they are not talking to people that they shouldn’t be that could bring them to harm. Second, if you are going to set them up with a service like Facebook ensure that you set it up under an email address that is delivered to YOU not to the child. That way if someone wants to add them as a friend then you will get to know about it so that you can make sure that they do REALLY know them and they are not just added them for the ‘numbers’.  As adults there are a great many people that just anyone as a friend on Facebook as it is a ‘numbers game’ which is ok as we are mature enough to make that decision, but as a child then this *must* be policed by someone who is responsible. This does not even take into account ensuring that ’safe surfing’ is taking place with kids.

The fact that someone in this day and age has setup an account without putting any measures in to place to ensure the child’s safety is really bewildering and disturbing to say the least. In our house we have an ADSL router which has built in content filtering to ensure that all of the children are able to surf the Internet safely without exposure to ‘unwanted’ content. I have also setup OpenDNS to ensure that whatever the filter in the router does not pickup then OpenDNS will get it. The children’s computers also run Interguard which allows me to monitor things that they do such as MSN, web mail as well as keystroke logging. This means that I can monitor things that they do without them knowing, not so I can play ‘god’ over what they do but so that I can be a responsible parent and ensure that they are safe. The last thing is, when old enough, they can go on Facebook but email notifications are sent to me or Jules so that we can make sure that they are not doing anything daft and the kids respect that.

I like to think that our children are quite ’savy’ when it comes to computers and the Internet and they are but when they’re chatting on MSN they have no idea that the person they are talking to is really who they claim they are…that’s my job.

At the end of the day this is just my opinion for what it’s worth and as much as I would love it to be, the world is not perfect but you can be damn sure I will do all I can to make my kids worth perfect. As always I welcome you’re thoughts on this as opinions always vary.

- Rob

* not sure if the term dork still exists but it did in my day.

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Filed under: Business, Personal, Personal Develoment, Uncategorized, life —
Posted: 09:37
December 28, 2009

I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas break and Santa brought you lots of lovely things, this post was originally due to be put up last week but unfortunately the time just didn’t appear !

I was speaking with a friend the other day and he was having a bad day. First off in the morning his car wouldn’t start as the battery decided to die. Then after a neighbour had managed to get it jump started he then couldn’t get out his street because of all of the snow and had to wait until there was some grit down which meant he was late for work.  Once at work things didn’t get any better one of his companies servers started to have problems which is when we were speaking.  He explain how his day had gone and I said to him, “sounds like you’ve had some fun today”. At this he replied “ain’t that the truth, still, s**t happens!”. This got me thinking.

How many times have we all heard that said? I know I have said it a fair share myself over the years but when you say this what are you really saying to yourself and more importantly what are others hearing? Ok we’ll start with what others are hearing as that is sometimes more important in life. At best they find this funny and laugh it off as just something funny, however more often you will be seen as a very negative person, a ‘glass half empty kinda guy’. People inherently do not like to be around negative people, they want to surround themselves with positive, happy people that are going to help them to feel positive and happy themselves. After all when you meet with someone and they ask if you are well, they don’t want to hear that your back aches from driving 4 hours to see them, or that your tired because you had to get up at 3am to get to the appointment with them on time. They want to hear how great you are and how wonderful life is (though not literally).

So what does it say to yourself? If you are not able to find the positives in any situation then you will always see the negative, obviously. However, the impact on your life can be massive as over a period of time (which could be months or years) it can eventually start to make you feel unhappy with your life and every thing will just seem dour and pointless. It may seem a little extreme but I have been there and after a number of tough years in both work and family I found it hard, real hard with daily life but I still carried on. What changed me was two things. First of is someone who I consider to be a very good friend who over a period of time helped me to see there was two ways to look at everything and what you take from it is a choice and you must choose to take the positive or the negative. The second was when I joined a business networking group, the people there were *very* positive people despite being early morning. What I learned there was while you will make some close friends you can really talk to your must put your best business face on and show everyone there that you are having the best day ever because when you do people naturally gravitate to you.

With that in mind lets take another look at my friends day and see what he could have took from this had he looked at things differently:

“First off in the morning his car wouldn’t start as the battery decided to die. Then after a neighbour had managed to get it jump started” – What can be taken from this? Ok first off the car would not start which is a real pain for anyone who has had it happen. That said a good neighbour came over and helped him get it ‘jump started’ which took a LOT less time than waiting for a break down truck to come. So he has good neighbours to be thankful for.

“….he then couldn’t get out his street because of all of the snow and had to wait until there was some grit down which meant he was late for work.” - So he couldn’t get out of the street straight away because of the snow, after all we did have some last week. However, the positive here is that it turns out that once again one of his neighbours had some grit and went out and spread it the length of the road so all the neighbours could get out.

“Once at work things didn’t get any better one of his companies servers started to have problems which is when we were speaking.” – Here again is another positive. Ok on of the servers is down and clearly he was out of his depth, but what he did was called me and we located the problem, resolve it and had the server up and running in less than an hour.

So next time you’re having a tough day, always, always find the positives in whatever happens because it is always there. It’s all too easy to focus on what it negative in the world but it takes true spirit to find the positives.

I wish you all the greatest success for the New Year, hope you all have a great one!!

- Rob

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Filed under: Business, Personal, life —
Posted: 21:37
November 16, 2009

I wrote last week about the importance of checklists for all aspects of your business. Expanding on that I learned a valuable lesson at the weekend in the most unlikely of places, in a hospital.  Our youngest son has had some medical challenges which started before he was born, he was given a 1 in 10 chance of survival when it was first diagnosed. However, he didn’t let it hold him back and battled on growing stronger each day. By the time he was finally discharged from hospital he had been an inpatient for almost 3 years, but he is unique. This means that he has to be managed much differently to any children with ’similar’ ailments so much so that his consultant has made oxygenation plans, care plans, flow charts for his care etc. Last night we had to take Danny in to children’s A+E as he had a bad chest infection. When we got there we explained the situation to the nurse and then again to the doctor. I explained that his oxygenation plan states that unless he is in 3lts of oxygen he should not be admitted. We also explained that there are certain procedures as to how Daniel is dealt with in most situations and he should consult the PICU unit to get more information.

To cut a long storey short the two key things happened that sealed our fate to 6.5hrs in A+E and a lot of stress and arguments. The first thing was that the doctor did not contact the people we had clearly told him to speak with to get more information. Instead he just rang the on-call person which mean that the wrong information again was fed back. The second was that the carefully written procedures for handling Daniel and the care & oxygenation plans were not made accessible to all people that may be in contact with him. This mean that he was given all of the wrong treatment.

So what has this to do with my IT life? Simple.  The first lesson is when you are dealing with a client, new or existing, the most important thing to do is LISTEN. Let them talk, make notes and ask questions. This simple step alone can save you hours in wasted time and if the client is on a flat-fee contract this means money saved. Second lesson is as you begin to create business processes, checklist and procedures to run your business smoother make sure that everyone that needs to know they are there..know. After all you could have the best product/service on the planet but shouting about it in the middle of a dessert is not gonna do a great deal of good is it.

So to summarise; Stop, Listen then Talk….in that order then you can’t go far wrong.

Any thoughts? I’d love to hear them.

- Rob

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Filed under: Business, IT Support, life, small business — Tags: Business, IT Support, life —
Posted: 19:37
May 13, 2009

Over the years I have seen a great many IT engineers come and go, after all 16 years is a  long time in the trade. During that time I have also taught a number of engineers the best ways to do the job, many of which had no formal qualifications such as MCP, MCSE etc. The first lesson that I have always made a point of teaching is to listen; listen to the client. Whenever you go out on a service call you will be given a description of the issue that you are there to resolve. In my opinion, the golden rule is to sit down with the client and ask them to explain the problem and listen.  There are two reasons why I always do this; firstly the information that you have been given on your job sheet will be what the help desk interpreted from the client but may not be accurate so best to check. Secondly, you will allow the client to vent themselves to you and during the discussion you can usually connect with them on some level which will invariably given you a better insight to both the issue faced and the client personally. I have always felt that this was standard, common sense in all businesses.  However, those of you that follow me on twitter (@robfranklin) will have seen the experience that I had with Dell’s tech support on Friday which left me feeling somewhat frustrated.  Here is how the conversation went:

Me: “Hi there, I have a problem with BackupExec for Small Business Server that was supplied with these new servers for my client”.

Dell: “What is the problem?”

Me: “When I enter the license key it says that it is invalid. It accepts the “Premium” license key but it will not accept the SBS key”

Extended period of silence…now 15 minutes in to the call and not progressed

Dell: “What license number do you have?”

Me: “The license key is…”

Dell: “That’s a serial number”

Me: “It says license key?”

Dell: “No that’s the serial number”

Me: “But it says on the front cover that it is the “Software License Key” and inside, just above the key, it says “Software License Key”. Surely it would say serial number if that is what it is?”

Dell: “No that’s the serial number, you need to go to the Symantec licensing portal and register the serial number”

Me: “But I have done dozens of these and I have always just entered the key into the software”

Dell: “They have tightened up the licensing recently”

Me: “Hmm, ok where do I go to register the ’serial number’?”

So now we go to the Symantec licensing portal, I complete the registration in order to log on to the site. After entering the ’serial number’ it says that the ’serial number’ is invalid.

Me: “It says the number is invalid”

Dell: “Are you sure it is entered correctly?”

Me: “Yes I’m sure but it does not say it is a serial number it clearly says it’s a license key”

Dell: “Ok I need to speak with Symantec, can you hold"?”

Me: “Err yeah ok”

So I was put on hold, 35 minutes in to the call and I had made no progress. Needless to say I did not stay on hold as by this point I was completely frustrated by the fact that the support technician was simply not listening. The conversation above it not verbatim but I must have explained to this guy about 10 times that it clearly states it is a License Key and not a Serial Number but he was not listening.

The most important skill that any person who is in a customer facing role can do is just listen. By not exercising this most fundamental skill during this call my whole experience with Dell’s “Pro-support” was completely destroyed and had this been my first experience then I would be one very unhappy client and would think twice about buying Dell again.  That said only a week before I had spoken to them and the support tech I spoke to I cannot say enough about. He listened and acted on what I was telling while verifying what I was saying was correct.

I can only assume that my bad experience was a one-off but none the less it was a bad experience.  So if nothing else, don’t talk just listen and everything else will take shape.

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Filed under: Personal, life —
Posted: 22:06
April 4, 2009

Funny statement to make but it is all too valid, the reality is that without the past we cannot develop or grow. Today has been a funny kind of day really. With the onset of the nice weather the shed beckoned to be sorted out and as much as I didn’t really want to do it I needed to so that is what I did.  We moved in our house about 7 years ago and when we moved in there was some stuff that still needed sorting, as it always does, that was never sorted and it ended up in the shed. This was the day when it was going to be sorted out once and for all as I needed the space back that was being occupied by this stuff that had not been looked at in over 7 years. The first job was to empty all of the day to day stuff, such as the kids bikes, scooters, mowers, tools etc until I got to the old boxes that were hiding at the back. I knew, for the most part, that almost all of it would end up in the bin as I was working on the basis that I had not looked at it in about 7 years but I needed to go through anyway just to be sure. What I didn’t expect to find in the shed was “regret”.

As I was sorting through all of the old stuff I found some letters, and at first I thought they were from an “ex” so thought I had better make a hasty disposal. However, I checked them first and that was not the case. When I was about 13 years old I joined a cycling club as I loved cycling, something which I was good at and won a number of trophies for. When I joined most of the people there were “old”, at 13 everyone over 22 was considered old. But there were some younger people there, older than me but only by a couple of years which meant that I was at least able to relate to them as I had always tended to hang out with people a little older than me. There was a couple of lads and a girl, Ali, but they all welcomed me in which for a young and timid lad was great.  Over the next couple of years we all became good friends with regular “club runs” at a weekend taking us cycling into the Derbyshire Dales as well as cycling weekends which took us as far as Ladybower Reservoir. Now at that age it was like travelling to the other end of the planet. As you can imagine we all became kindred spirits as we became a group within a group because of the age gap. We all drifted away from cycling in the end as we got older, this would be around 1991 as I started working on the nights that the club met. However, I never lost touch with Ali, as she was that little older than me she went on to college in Lincoln at Riseholm Hall studying ‘arboriculture’ which is Tree Surgery. I went up to see her there a couple of times which was great as a young kid like me, only 16 at the time, never really got out that much. She then moved on from there and got a job in a youth hostel up in Yorkshire and again I went to visit this time on the motorbike I had at the time, again a long trip for me at the time though now I wouldn’t think twice. Not too long after this she went off to University in Aberdeen as this was one of a few uni’s that ran the course she wanted to study. This is where the past catches the present as what I found in the shed was the letters that she used to send to me when she was there. Now just to clarify; we were just friends and I mean really good friends which makes it all the more disappointing that I had not really thought about this properly until today. It was the kind of friendship that normally does not exist between a boy and girl without some kind of sexual tension but it just wasn’t the case as we were great friends. I did once ask her out but she said no as we were such great friends that it would be wrong, at the time I struggled to understand but now I see it with such clarity.

So what’s the point of this I hear you thinking? Well the point is that after she went up to Aberdeen Uni we just drifted apart and despite letters passing I could have tried harder to keep contact with her, my friend, but as a 19 year old I was busy working and not seeing what was really important in life.

Now we have regret, something which I do not really partake in as it is a flawed emotion, as far as I’m concerned, due to the fact that things cannot change just because you realise that you f***ed up. But on this occasion I do regret not doing more and I wonder what happened to her. Whether she completed the arboriculture course which would have qualified her to cut back trees that were overhanging busy roads. Whether she got married, had kids or all the other things that we do when we “grow” up. So how do you deal with regret? What is the value of such a flawed emotion in the modern world if nothing can be achieved as the past is the past? Well the first thing that you can get from it is to learn. When I say learn I mean you learn from the mistakes you made, and lets face it they are mistakes that’s why you feel regret. You make damn sure that it doesn’t happen again. The second thing that you can do is to try and put things right, if possible. What I mean by this is that in my case I can try to track down Ali, I don’t know how yet but I will try, as I said before this is not some “old flame” but a true friend and for that reason I owe it to myself, and to her, to try and see if there is some way to reach out and just say “hi, how’s it going? has life been kind…”. There are no perfect people in this world only perfect intensions, I am certainly not perfect but I am always looking for ways to get a little closer even if I know I’ll never get there I can still try.

So the thought of the day is to embrace all emotions as they all hold some benefit to your life even if it is not always clear some part of you can develop because of it. For now though I will try to find my old friend just so I can say “Hi”.

- Rob

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Filed under: Personal, insane stuff, life —
Posted: 20:25
March 10, 2009

You may remember a film called Pay it forward in which a young boy was given an assignment by his teacher to think of something that would change the world and put it into action.  The boy came up with the idea to “pay it forward”, the idea was simple in that he would do a good deeds to three people on the proviso that they would “pay it forward” to three other people and so on.  The films tracks back from a reporter who was a benefactor of one of these good deeds back to the child that created it.

This film, while I only half watched it first time round, has left a very lasting memory for myself.  The reason for this is that the concept is so simple, so powerful and more importantly it is completely against what seems to have become normal behaviour in society today.  There are still a massive majority of businesses and individuals that will not do anything unless they know what’s in it for them, they only give to receive.  A couple of weeks ago I had a call at the office from a guy that was looking for a job.  He told me that he had been made redundant from his current job and was looking for work.  He asked if we had any positions, I explained that there was nothing at present but I asked him to send his CV through and I would forward it on to some of the other IT partners that I work with.  I said thank you for doing it and almost off the cuff said “if only other companies were so helpful” then hung up.  The amount of gratitude from this guy was enough, there was no promises made as I didn’t know what others had to offer and in reality there really was much effort (2 minutes) involved in forwarding this to some of our partners.  It was just a very simple act that absolutely any one of the companies he had spoke to previously could have done without any real effort but it was clear that none had.

So do something special today, tomorrow, everyday or whenever the opportunity comes available.  Do something for somebody without asking “what’s in it for me” or expecting something in return.

If you have any thoughts then I’d love to hear them.

- Rob

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Filed under: Business, IT Support, Personal Develoment, life, small business —
Posted: 08:09
March 7, 2009

When I was a kid growing up I used to get all sorts of aches and pains, when I asked what they were more often I was told these were ‘growing pains’. With the sharp departure of my teenage years meant I saw the last of these ‘growing pains’ but I didn’t realise that they would again come back to haunt me.

Recently business has been good, I mean very good.  The last couple of weeks has seen my week more than full of work which has been absolutely great as more work means more money of course.  The difficult thing with this type of influx of work is trying to manage this influx of work with the existing work as well as fulfilling the expectations of new clients.  This in itself is not an easy task as predominantly most new clients have a major or a significantly challenging issue which requires urgent attention.  For example, I had a customer call through to the “on-call” support phone at 8pm last Friday night asking for someone to go out straight away as he’d had no email for 2 days because the broadband had been changed over. This meant that despite being on a Exchange installation over the weekend it needed sorting out, 3 hrs later I was back home again. Going out at that time was not an issue, after all I love what I do, the trick is managing all of the expectations that come with this. This type of work also throws the entire work schedule into disarray and some tough decisions need to be made as to how to organise the week. 

Our clients have always understood that if ever there is a high priority job because of an emergency that we pull out all the stops to sort it out. Which essentially means that if the scheduled work is non-critical, ie. routine visit, then we would ask to rearrange the work if an emergency comes up. They agree with this policy as this is the type of service that they would expect so when it is their stuff that needs rearranging, once we explain the situation they will work with us to rearrange.  This policy has been a tremendous help both in the past as well as in the present but sadly there is not always enough hours in the day to get things done. As it stands we are getting close to the point where we will have to consider bringing another body on board to cover the new work but we need to ensure that the work coming in is of a consistent level before making the leap.  So how do I decide what’s not so important? Here’s some simple guidelines:

• Is this job a fault/failure?
  Some site visits may not be as a result of a fault or failure they may be in-fact a scheduled site visit.
• How many people does this situation affect?
  If the issue that you are responding is affecting more than one person then it will be difficult to “bump” it but if it is only affecting one user then it may be possible.
• Can the client wait until tomorrow/the next day etc?
  If it looks to you like the job can wait, them ask your client. We always explain to the client why we need to change the appointment and explain to them that in case of emergency we always endeavour to pull out the stops and would do the same for them. This usually sways things.
• How important is it really?
  This is a tough one as you may not see a signature in Outlook as being critical but to the user you can be sure that it is.
• Can it really be done remotely? 
  This should be a no-brainer as it should have already been tried but sometimes the client will ask for a site visit and you just agree.

The most important thing is to engage your client and explain why, at then end of the day no matter how much preventative maintenance we perform, no matter how much proactive management we do there will always be something that breaks/goes wrong. We always make a point of explaining to clients that we have the “bump” policy that says that if an emergency arises then we will attempt to reschedule any non-critical site visits so that we can get the maximum man-power on to an emergency situation.

Hope you all have a great weekend and better week.

- Rob

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Filed under: Business, Light relief, insane stuff, life, small business —
Posted: 21:40
February 4, 2009

This week has been an interesting week for UK business.  We have discovered, surprise  surprise, that as a country we are totally unable to cope with any kind of weather outside of the standard drizzle of rain or a sparkle of sunshine.  As a Brit I am truly embarrassed to call myself a UK citizen this week.  I mean there are countries that have 5-6 times more snow in a day than we saw over the last three days and the wheels of commerce continue to turn.  But the good old UK can’t even keep the Underground running..that’s right the underground I mean what the hell does the underground have to do with snow I ask.  All buses services in London were ceased which meant most people were left with three choices; a) either make their way in cars, which for London folk is just impossible due to costs etc; b) they walk but that is too far for some; c) phone in sick/work from home.  The Federation of Small Businesses have estimated that 20% of the UK workforce, that’s around 6.4 million people did not make it in to work and as of early Tuesday morning they estimated that it had cost the British economy £1.2bn which is probably much higher.

It was not just the public transport system that failed miserably it was also the hi-tech systems that run the UK.  Mobile networks creaked heavily under the extra load of trying to call friends and colleagues, it’s reported that some of the networks experienced up to 73% more calls that usual and a steep increase in the number of picture messages being sent as snowmen make rare appearances in gardens.

There was also politicians that venture into the fray making bold statements about how sadly unprepared the country was despite having plenty of warning from the Met Office.  Liberal Democrat shadow transport secretary, Norman Baker said it was "an absolute disgrace" the country’s transport networks were unable to cope with bad weather.  He went on to say "The lack of preparedness is astounding and damaging for the economy. I have travelled from Stockholm to the Arctic Circle on a train that arrived five minutes early, yet Britain lapses into chaos at the first hint of snow,".

So why was this country so unprepared?  I don’t have the answer just an opinion; that is that we are just British, no matter what type of “extreme” weather we experience we just panic with hosepipe bans in summer while pipes lay leaking gallons of water per hour.  The economy stops when snow falls because a lot of people see it as a great way to get out of work.  Either way we need to sort ourselves out and get prepared as the country cannot afford too many of these “snow” days..

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Filed under: Business, Light relief, Personal, insane stuff, life —
Posted: 21:07
February 2, 2009

This was the scene in Nottingham today.  Not too bad considering how bad the weather gets in other countries but as true Brits we were totally ill-equipped to cope with the snow.  Still it was fun and apparently there’s more snow on the way, lets hope so then the media can blame the recession on Snow!!!!

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Filed under: Personal, Personal Develoment, life —
Posted: 20:15
January 23, 2009

Drive and motivation typically go hand in hand but it’s something that typically does not come naturally.  I love running, in fact the only thing that I love more than running is cycling, but with the hectic lifestyles that we lead today it is difficult to find the time to do these kind of activities especially when you have a young family.  One of the reasons that I love these sports is just the sheer love of the outdoors and the fact it is just a little time where I don’t have to think, just simple primal instinct.  The other reason is that it keeps me fit & healthy which ultimately is better for me.  In order to fit this in though 3 mornings a week I get up at 6.15am and I’m out on the road by 6.30am.  On Thursday I got up as usual and on this night we had carers staying over to look after our little boy (see www.potter-tate.co.uk for more on Danny), when one of them said “I wish I had the dedication to get up at this time and exercise, perhaps you can give me a little of your dedication”.  This got me thinking why do I got up at this un-godly hour and run in the cold, rain snow or whatever the weather brings.  If fact most of my friends think I am insane for doing it but I still get up and I still run.  Don’t get me wrong it’s hard, it’s tiring and sometimes I just feel like stopping and walking back home but I never do.  So why do I do it?

There’s no simple answer I’m afraid, but what I can tell you is that the need to run/cycle is NOT enough.  I want to stay healthy and more important I started about a year ago to struggle, and I mean really struggle to get into my clothes.  This bothered me a lot, I mean I am about 5′ 8″ and was weighing in at just a touch under 14 stone (196 pounds) which was just TOO much.  I thought of dieting but to be honest I love food, all sorts of food and the I couldn’t handle the concept of limiting it through traditional diets.  What I did know was I need to loose it. So I decided that the way to do it was to exercise so I started the Couch to 5K runner plan which too you from nothing to 3 miles in just 9 weeks and it was great.  By summer I was running 3 miles regular in about 30 mins but then I got pains in my legs which too me out so I started back on the bike.  I was cycling 14 miles a session 5 days a week which took about 45 minutes to do and I loved it.  Sadly the bike broke in late November last year so I am back running again which is great.  Throughout all of this, the thing that got me out of bed each morning was the fact that I wanted to be fit & healthy for myself and for my kids.

Now, your probably wondering why the life story?  Well the thing is most articles that guide you in goal setting they don’t usually help with real world examples so hopefully my experience will you.  The thing with goal setting is that you can meet the stages short-term but if you want to continue on day-by-day then you have to have a long-term goal that these little steps go toward.

I don’t have the answers to real goal setting, but I know what worked for me and maybe this can help you.  Any question then please feel free to drop me a line.

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