I am in the process of becoming a book keeper. Better yet I should say I am developing a book keeping business! And I have been tossing around the notion of using an online book keeping service, of which there are a couple of good ones. [saasu.com & xero.com]

However, I am missing the point. I don’t care what the interface is like personally. Or the “access anywhere” from an internet connection. I will be paying emplyees to do the data entry tasks. Any other business that is wasting their valuable time doing the manual data entry of book work, in their accounting system, should outsource it as soon as possible.

To a book keeper of course. I am biased here, but think about it. Its the most mundane task of running a business. I will not be doing the books for my business, myself. In this case I’ll have staff, but even if you don’t, small to medium business should get a book keeper to do it. ASAP.

Robert Kyosaki’s first actuall tip that he wrote in one of his books was “get a book keeper”. He has more money than me so I think he might have little bit of knowledge worth listening to.

D

I was reminded of KAIZEN today from this post. It took me back to the first time I heard of this concept in a Tony Robbins CD I borrowed from a former employer. Even way back then I thought it sounded like a good idea.

Think Kaizen! Kaizen (改善) is Japanese for improvement. It is a Japanese philosophy that focuses on continuous improvement throughout all aspects of life.

Challenge yourself.. improve or get left behind. Particularly if you are over 39!

In his post on the history of the safety pin, Seth uses my pet peeve phrase, “exactly nearly”.

You either are “exactly” 212lb OR “nearly” 200lb

Exact & nearly are extremely opposite ideas. Now Seth may have done this on purpose to catch peoples attention or just generate confusion. I am not privilged to the inner workings of his mind, nor should I be.

Lets all be exact in our wording, because it is nearly my highest rated pet peeve to combine the two words.

With daily fluctuations of up to 15%, for the retail price of fuel, its time the government stepped in and had some further input other than just appointing a petrol commissioner to the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission.

Now they propse a “Fuel Watch” system. Will it work?

Just get used to higher prices as India and China have a middle class that all are driving more than they have in the past and have a huge demand for petrol globally.

PRICES WILL RISE!

I have recently been checking out 37signals products, Basecamp, Highrise & Backpack. They are all excellent products, however that will be the subject of future posts.

What I did learn about has been the OpenID concept.

Its great.

There are many providers of OpenIDs, including AOL and WordPress and Verisign just to name a few.

The concept

Tim has a great blog post about the concept of intermittent fasting. I haven’t tried it in this manner. I have however tried a “one day a week” fast.

Pick a day, I used Friday, just because it starts with ‘F’ and so does ‘fasting’, then don’t eat. Simple.

Not sure of the science behind it, just that it gives your ’system’ a rest. I had pancreatitis in early 2007 and the first part of my treatment was ‘nil by mouth’ for 8 days. The most unpleasant part of this was that the first thing I did eat was hospital food!? The doctors told me that the only way to heal the Pancreas was to rest it. In this case not even liquids!

When I was discharged after 13 days in hospital, I was on insulin 4 times a day and monitoring my blood sugar 5 times a day. I got to know what makes a difference to my blood sugar fairly quickly. Walking was my only exercise, 8800 steps a day and no sugar and very little carbs.

3 months later, I was on no insulin, healed, fit as I have ever been and feeling a million dollars. If you had said to me before hand that I could feel so good having lost the weight I would not have believed you. I did loose some weight with the Pancreatitis, and shed about 30kgs or in real terms, 7 belt notches!

So I figured for a healthy idea, given that the pancreas is so critical to our survival, that giving it a regular rest should improve things. Low carbs I reckon are a must,  eat your carbs, if you must in the morning. This very interesting post about low carbs v low fat is worth reading. My experience would agree with this post.

Just an interesting anomaly - if you use the word “blog” or “podcast” in a post using wordpress.com, when running the spell checker, they show as mis-spelt words.

Surely someone should add these to the dictionary, they are very common words on wordpress I would imagine. Not to mention that their whole business model revolves around blogs and podcasts etc.

PS.. I have just run the spell checker and it even identifies “wordpress” as mis-spelt! 

I was recently reminded by a post from Tim Berry’s blog about the value of the Stanford University content on their Educators Corner, of the main website.

I humbly suggest you subscribe to their podcast and listen to some excellent and inspiring interviews and presentations from some of the worlds best entrepreneurs. It has expanded my concept of what is possible.

Tim Ferris makes for some very interesting reading on his blog post about sleep. I am a big fan of better sleep. Read these to-do items and see if it helps you.

Also I must add, buy a great matress, you spend 1/4 - 1/3 of your life on it so spend to get a great one. I own a Wenatex mattress and have just ordered a Queen size and a couple of singles for my wife and kids. They are the best I have ever come across.

When I was a car nut, I always yearned for a SAAS steering wheel for whatever the current dream car was going to be. Things have changed, I like motorbikes now, and SaaS, along with steering wheels, now stands for a technology that will steer business IT decisions in to the next century - Software as a Service.

I LOVE the idea of Software as a Service, no updates, no hassle with licences for every machine the software is on etc.. and everyone always throws back at me about security and what happens if the ‘net goes offline.

Security - if you do online banking, with 128bit SSL security then surely if that level of security is enough for our banks then it should be fine for business.

Offline - If the ‘net goes down, great! The companies involved are always apologetic and rush to fix it. 2 hours away from the computer screen won’t do anyone any harm, in fact it will probably lift productivity. Have a meeting, go to lunch, the bathroom, maybe even go outside for a short walk. Imagine if companies had policies that allowed you to take in some fresh air during outages. Mobile phones can stay at the desk or not. WOW what a place to work.

Even better, read the 4 hour work week by Tim Ferris, if we had all our apps online and a mobile phone, what does it matter if you are in the office at all? Meet clients face to face at pleasant places or if you are a mobile worker you have virtual offices all over this country. McDonalds! They have air conditioning, WiFi, unlimited refils of coffee and someone else does all the cleaning and take the garbage out.. all they need to do is add a printing and fax service [I agree these are almost redundant] and you have a full virtual office for the simple price of a cup of coffee. Need to have a meeting, the birthday room is rarely used during the day.

PS… I almost forgot, these SaaS companies listen to user feedback and update their product regularly… “Goodbye Microsoft and thanks for all the fish!”