The current business model is to provide training courses at a discount and get paid a commission from the training providers. We’re similar to travel agents that find you last minute vacation deals. We’re not the ones providing the training, but we help you find the training that you need by working with many training vendors in different cities across North America. We specialize in Microsoft Excel Training in Toronto, Microsoft Word training in Toronto, Microsoft Powerpoint Training in Toronto, as well as other computer training and soft-skills training.

Last Minute Training has been around for a couple of years now, so it’s not that I’m starting a start-up from scratch. We’ve got big plans, though, for how to grow the business and that will involve a lot of technical work on my part.

I’m really excited about this next chapter of my life!

In the past I would try and force myself to work x hours and that if I didn’t work those x hours I would consider myself lazy or unmotivated. When I would fall off the wagon, I would end up constantly checking email, surfing the web or engaging in other unproductive activities.

Here’s how it works:

I set a countdown timer to count down from 20 minutes. For those 20 minutes I make a resolution with myself that I will work on core work activities. At the end of the 20 minutes, a 5-minute countdown timer starts which signals the break time. I’m now free to use the break time however I want – I can just sit back in my office chair and take a nap, I can go out on the balcony and get some fresh air, I can just walk around my place to stretch out, I can surf the web for entertaining but useless content. The point is – I acknowledge that side of me that needs to not work and I structure my work activities that will allow that side of me to express itself. Once the 5 minutes are up, the 20-minute timer starts again and the process repeats itself.

This means that I’m taking 15 minutes in breaks for every 1 hour of work. For the type of mentally intensive work that I’m doing, I think that’s quite reasonable.

I’ve been able to sustain working long hours this way without getting that burned out feeling. Before using this system, I would break down earlier in the workday and just procrastinate for the rest of the day.

Lately, I’ve begun incorporating some productive uses for those 5 minute breaks – I would practice some dance steps from a dance class I’m taking or do a wipe down of the kitchen counters or quickly clean my washroom, or quickly write a fun email to a friend.

I’ve even begun using it for lunches, too – I would break up my lunch into two 20-minute segments. During the 5-minute break in between the two segments, I would do 5 minutes of work. That really helps to put me in a more productive mood once lunch is up.

You can obviously adapt this method for your own needs. For instance, some people might not like the 20-minute work/5-minute break pattern and could play with the numbers. For people that work in an office environment, this might not work as-is, since there are constant interruptions, meetings and other unforeseen circumstances. The main point, though, is that I have a structured way to be unproductive – instead of pretending that we aren’t that way, I acknowledge that that side of me exists and I give it a way to express itself.

I was consistently faster than my target pace for the whole race! This is the fastest I’ve been in 5 years! 5 years ago I got down to 21:50 but never went beyond that. One of my goals in life is to run a 5k in 20 minutes. Now is my chance to continue training and get down to 20:00!!! Because I shaved a full minute off my last 5k race time, I’m now increasing my training by 2 levels instead of 1!

I don’t think the route was exactly 5k. I checked the PDF route map and we didn’t start exactly where the map said we would, but further back, so I’m sure that added at least 100-200 metres. Plus, I plotted the route on Google Maps and the calculated distance was 5.6k – the same distance my watch calculated. So I’m counting my watch’s time and distance and not their time.

Not only did I over achieve my team goal for this race, but I over achieved my fund raising goal, as well. What started off as a modest quest to get to $150 became a $715 $740 fundraiser. Thanks to everyone that donated!!!

A big thank you to my friends and family that supported me on race day – this was a BIG day!

I posted pics here.

I’ve set a personal time goal of finishing the 5k race in 22:30. I’ve been training pretty hard for this race – running about 45km a week, 5 times a week. As many of you know, running is an integral part of my life and I’d like to make this race a stepping stone towards one of my main goals in life – running the 5k in 20:00.

While I’m not normally into fund raising, I’m humbly asking for your support for a worthy cause.

Here is my personal donation page.

Business Partner Traits – Must Have

• has a lot of business experience – has started companies in the past and sold them
• trustworthy/honest/has integrity – I don’t want to wonder if he’ll betray me
• very intelligent
• hard worker – don’t want to wonder if he’s pulling his weight
• kind/giving/not greedy
• upbeat/positive person

Business Partner Traits – Nice To Have

• fully committed to the venture – no juggling a full-time job/other major responsibilities
• older than me
• technical – we could collaborate together on technical problems
• leverage QuickButler technology for a business idea we/they come up with
• willing to have 50/50 split

What type of business do I want to create?

I’d like to create a technology business that can run by itself with a minimum of involvement from me. My background is engineering at Waterloo and I spent my employment years working as a software developer and then created a niche for myself by focusing on automated software testing (developing tools, implementing processes, leading teams). Since starting my company two years ago, I’ve had the opportunity to work for multiple clients and make a decent living at it. However, I soon realized that that wasn’t a way to create true wealth. As long as I was a consultant, the business lived and died with me – it had no real value without me. That doesn’t appeal to me. What I’m currently exploring is a way to leverage my technical skills to create automated services and automated business processes that could function without my direct involvement – an “auto pilot” kind of business that I can set up and passively monitor.

A few years ago I developed an automated testing tool, ABCWebTest, that I used to automate the testing of web applications. I realized that I could leverage this technology not just for automating web testing but also for automating any kind of repetitive web processes.

For instance, I’ve used it to automate searching multiple travel websites to find the best deal – QuickButler.

The same automation technology can also be used to automate other process/sites on the web – for instance:

• searching multiple real estate/rental sites and creating visual map representation of what’s for sale/rent and where
• automating the exporting of your MySpace account content to Facebook or vice-versa
• automating financial reports by logging in to multiple bank and investment sites to construct a complete picture of someone financial health

I must admit that I don’t have the domain expertise in many of the verticals where this technology can be used. That’s why I’m looking for a business partner who can bring that to the table. Ideally, I’d like to partner with someone that knows a specific industry that can leverage this technology.

I’m currently on a quest to find a business mentor(s) to help me build the kind of business and life I want – one that generates automated revenue using technology.

I’ve started calling (yes, calling – not emailing) to CEO’s of companies that I’d really like to talk to. I’m not making any excuses for my calls and I’m trying to be direct – I want to find people that have done what I’d like to do. At the same time, I’m trying to be respectful of people’s time and not be a pest.

This is not for the faint of heart. I’m prepared to face a lot of rejection but I’m feeling pumped (OK, scared, too).

I’ve already called a couple of CEO’s and I felt really empowered afterward – no matter what happened. I was able to talk to one and I left a message for the other one. I’ve got a third (very very high profile) high-tech executive I’m going to call next so wish me luck.

The juice of life is found in moments like this – frightening and yet exciting opportunities.

Yesterday I had trouble working on QuickButler (a growth activity) because I left till the end of the day – after I finished all the non-growth work. I figured QuickButler work was more exciting so I’d always have energy to do it. I was wrong. Yesterday, after having worked the entire morning on non-growth activities, I was having a hard time getting into QuickButler. Today, I found that I was a lot more productive if I worked on QuickButler first. Growth work should take a high priority in my workday and I’m going to start working on it first before all the other work. Up to now, I was always playing it “safe” by working on non-growth activities first.

I made the change today to work on QuickButler first thing in the morning, after my morning routine and I’ve noticed a considerable difference in my productivity.

I also made a public announcement on my Facebook profile that I was committing to getting up at 5 am for this entire week (including weekends). I find little positive pressure tactics like these help keep me from sliding into procrastination. Even after not getting a full night’s sleep last night, I was still very productive the entire day because I started my day on growth activities. I find that getting up at 5 am and not always getting a full night’s sleep actually makes me more productive. After the initial “blah” feeling, that goes away and I’m left with this feeling of great passion determination. This has been a great revelation.

To further keep procrastination at bay, I also made a commitment to not log into Facebook for the entire day – and to give $20 to the person that would catch me on it before 6 pm. This really helped keep me focused on the important tasks of the day instead of going for the easy procrastination activity of going on Facebook.

I feel a renewed sense of passion and determination to make my dreams come true.

The analogy I came up with relationships. I might have a detailed goal of the type of woman I want to have a relationship with. But then how do you translate that to a “what do I do next” action? I’ve had less difficulty translating relationship goals to actions than I have with my business goals.

Pushing myself to grow professionally and personally really highlights my shortcomings and fears. One of my big fears is over-committing to a project/idea that won’t pay off in the end. It’s like I want to have some assurance ahead of time that it’s a worthwhile endeavor. I’m not talking about a guarantee, but just some kind of positive feedback beyond the “I have a hunch” proof. What I’m realizing is that I like to test business ideas before committing to them.

After talking with my coach and reading more of the 4-Hour Work Week I’ve come up with a plan that’s ambitious but leaves me feeling like I know what to do next and that I can change course if things aren’t working out.

First off, I limited my “dream list” to five dreams. This is a manageable number that I can keep in my head all at once. In contrast, I was previously setting about 20 goals every month, which I think was too many. It clouded the important and unimportant goals. I want to focus on the few dreams that will make the biggest difference in my life.

Second, I limited this dream list to 2 time frames – 3 months and 6 months. That way I’m not committing myself to some indefinite period – like a startup that could potentially have an IPO “some time” in the future. Instead, I’m just focusing on a relatively short time frame so I can change course if things aren’t working out. Three of the five dreams are in the three-month time frame and the remaining two are in the six-month time frame.

Third, I included personal as well as business goals in my dream list. The five dreams I set for myself are divided into one business goal and four personal dreams. In the past, I was always putting off setting personal goals and just focused on business goals. Inevitably, my personal growth stagnated. My sole business goal: create a business that generates automated revenue with minimal involvement from me. My personal goals: well, you’ll just have to ask me personally

I used to wake up at 5:00 am every day, excited about all the things I would be doing. I haven’t had that happen in the last few months and I think it’s got to do with me not being clear on the “big picture” dreams and what can I do now to get me there. After taking the entire afternoon to clarify my dreams (instead of being “busy” with low-level and urgent tasks), I feel a new sense of excitement.

Revenue Automation – Separation of Revenue Generation and Time

In programming I like to use the word “decoupling” when you make two parts of a program independent of each other. Well, I’d like to apply the same principles to revenue generation. I’d like to decouple the generation of revenue from the time it takes to generate that revenue. For instance, we’re all familiar with the regular salaried job – you work for x hours a week to get y dollars. I made the conscious decision to quit my salaried job a couple of years ago and I haven’t looked back since. I’ve been generating revenue as a consultant since then so I got to set my own work schedule and rates. But I’d like to step it up a notch and take the revenue generation to the next level – start automating the generation of revenue so I’m not required to work a certain amount of hours to get a certain revenue. Consultants (like doctors, accountants and other professionals) are still limited with how much we charge times the number of hours in a day or the procedure that we need to perform.

I’d like to put the revenue generation of my business on autopilot.

Financial Intelligence

I’m a decent saver by nature, but I haven’t been as diligent with finding good vehicles to put my money into. Sure, we’re sold the idea of putting your money away into RRSPs (or 401(k) in the U.S.) but I think I need to be more on top of making my money work for me – automatically.

Task Automation

I’m a big believer in automation. One of the reasons I was fascinated by automated testing (and decided to specialize in it) is because I realized the leverage in getting programs to do what would take many manual man hours to do. I think the idea has merit in many areas of our lives – automating domestic duties and administrative tasks, automating revenue generations and automating other areas of our lives that tend to take a lot of time. I’m not saying everything can be automated, but I think I haven’t looked hard enough for how I can automate many of the things in my life that I’m currently doing manually. And by automation I don’t just mean having computers do it for me. Automation can also include outsourcing tasks to other people.

Location Independence

One of the things I’d like to do in my life is live in different parts of the world. And I’m not talking about some 2-week vacation that you get after you spend the rest of the year busting your ass. I’m talking about living like a normal person (not a tourist) in other countries. This could be done if I can automate my revenue generation and be able to do my work from anywhere in the world. I’m a strong proponent of the Internet and I feel that we’re in very early stages of a cultural change that’s taking place. Ideas like “working at a job till you retire at 65″ have already been debunked but there are other ideas that

Making a Difference

I’d like to make a difference in the world. I’m not sure exactly how but I feel like there are many worthy causes that I can get involved in. The problem right now is that I feel I have no time for them – after all, I’m busy building my business. But I feel like I would naturally open up to these possibilities if I didn’t have to worry so much about making a living.

Reconnecting With My Interests

I used to perform in many amateur plays when I was in high school and throughout university. I even seriously considered going to theatre school after graduating from university with an engineering degree. In fact I even went as far as applying to a few of them but only got as far as the waiting list for one. It’s been years since I performed my last show and I’ve always meant to come back to it.

I also think there are other interests I’d like to explore but the problem right now is that I don’t have the time (or is that just an excuse?).

A guy whose ideas have strongly resonated with me is Tim Ferris. He wrote a book called the The 4-Hour Workweek that seems to talk about the same ideas that I’ve been thinking about for a few years now. I haven’t read his book but I have read his blog and a couple of the sample chapters so from the gist of it, he advocates living the kind of life I’ve been thinking about.

I got introduced to the idea of business coaching when I was involved in a government program for startups called SEB. Sal Seminara was my business coach and he greatly helped me with my startup and ongoing business challenges. After completing the SEB program in late 2006, I wanted to find a permanent business coach.

My current business coach, Lori Howard, helps me work through my mental blocks and refocus on my business and life goals. It’s not always intuitive for an entrepreneur, being independent and all, to seek out help from an outsider, but I found the process quite empowering. She never says “I think you should do X.” Instead, she asks me specific questions that make me realize what I can do to improve my situation. Today I had my weekly session with Lori and, as usual, I came out feeling more focused and determined to keep pursuing my dreams. And when you’re the only one running the show, it’s critical that you stay focused on your dreams.

The way I found my business coach is an interesting story. I belong to a business networking group, NewPath Networks, and they had a presentation about coaching. I met Marilyn Daniels there who’s also a coach and I told her I was looking for a business coach. She was kind enough to offer to post my “ideal coach description” on a coaching site she belongs to. Sure enough, I found my coach through that post.

As much as I like doing things on my own, having a business coach along my journey has been extremely helpful.

I’ve got a couple of reasons for sharing this with people. I think sharing this list will help keep me motivated to do these tasks, but also, there are a few project ideas here that I’d like to let people know about.

May 2007 Goals

• QuickButler – serve 3 users
  I was disappointed with the usage of QuickButler in April and I’d like to change tactics with it. I concentrated on the web side of things and I’d like to refocus on engaging with live people to get their feedback. I want to provide the QuickButler service to individual people this month instead of trying to make it work for everyone at the same time. I still want to use the web as a communication medium but I’d like to build traffic by going out and talking to real people initially.

If you are interested in freely participating in QuickButler to find a travel deal for you, let me know or leave a comment.

I’ll be writing more about QuickButler in future posts, but in a nutshell – the idea is that you can have automated “butlers” collect information from around the web and serve it to you. The first QuickButler application I started is finding the best travel deals from around the web.

• List Site – create a site of useful lists
  Create a List Site of useful resources on the web, compiled in one place
  Why? This is an idea that I’ve been thinking about over the last couple of weeks and I’m curious to see how it could pan out.
• RSS – acquire 20 subscribers to gomisha blog
  If you’d like to follow along in my journey, consider subscribing to my feed.
• Hits – generate 300 hits on gomisha blog
  This will require creating useful content that people will find through search engines. It will also require reaching out to other bloggers and making connections with people – which is in line with my business and life goals.
• SBI (sitesell.com) – cancel membership, if needed- Review their offering
  - Decide whether to cancel membership
  - Cancel membership and get refund if decide to go through with it
  I purchased an annual subscription to this online marketing service but have been disappointed with their offering. I haven’t used it for a couple of months and have a site up but I’d like to re-examine their offering again and see if it’s worthwhile to continue or pull the plug on it.
• SEB – create business networking siteLast year I completed a special government program called SEB (Self Employment Benefits program) that helps entrepreneurs with funding, coaching and workshops. I recently joined a group of SEB alumni to start a SEB alumni networking group. I’m one of the committee members and I’ve accepted responsibility to put together a web site for the group. Nothing fancy, but just a place where we can post event info and engage with our future members. I figured this would be another way to learn more about web marketing and another opportunity to establish a web presence.
• blog – start a business blogI’d like to document my experiences as I go on my journey of building my dream business. There are many reasons why I want to do this – it will help me be more accountable, it can help others, it can get me to articulate and clarify my ideas and direction, it can generate traffic and revenue to my ongoing business initiatives.
• email – process email Inbox so it’s down to 300 unprocessed messages
  Currently I’m at almost 600 unprocessed messages
• inbox – process all paper in my business Inbox
• web automation technologies – investigate them
  Investigate web automation technologies that are similar to the QuickButler idea:
  - OpenKapow
  - PiggyBank
  - Dapper
• web marketing – educate myself
  - Educate myself about web marketing/traffic building and building web-based businesses

I feel that I will have a strong presence on the web, one way or another and I guess documenting my business growth is part of that. I believe in the future of the Internet and I think we’ve barely scratched the surface of what the Internet can do. So I think there are plenty of opportunities to create value for people and make a good living from it.

I’ve had my own company for about a year and a half now, doing automated testing consulting. I developed a web testing tool, ABCWebTest, and I’ve also developed custom test automation tools, as well as worked with 3rd party testing tools. I’ve written articles and presented on the subject of automated testing at a conference and I’ve contributed to an open source testing tool, as well. While I’m grateful for this period of my life, I think it’s time to evolve to the next chapter of my professional career.

Prior to starting my own company, I worked as a developer and later specialized and became an automated testing developer, where I would develop testing tools for Quality Assurance departments within companies. I led teams in QA for creating automated tests for the company’s product and I’ve also developed custom test tools for companies.

I’m going to go into more details of what kind of business I’m interested in building, but in general I’m very interested in automating web-based processes that are currently done manually and aggregating data on the web from multiple sources. I’d like to leverage the Internet to create value for people.

I’m also interested in building an automated revenue business whereby revenue is generated through automated processes. I’m not sure I want any employees but I’m definitely interested in collaborating with others, either in a partnership or in a less formal arrangement.

I’m based in Toronto, but yet I feel a pull towards Silicon Valley – even though I’ve never been there. I feel that there are more people there that “get” the kind of ideas I’m excited about. I’m not ready to move there but I wouldn’t be surprised if I made my way there sometime in the future.

I started this blog for a few reasons. One, I think this will help keep me motivated since I’ve now given myself an audience to report to on my progress. So if I sit around in indecision (which I tend to do sometimes) this blog will apply some pressure (the good kind) to take some action. Another reason is that I’d like to share my experiences with other entrepreneurs, especially in the web space. If there’s an opportunity to meet other like-minded entrepreneurs to exchange ideas, collaborate and learn from each other, I’d really enjoy that. Also, I’d like to have a record of my progress on my journey. I’d like to look back at my mistakes, triumphs and experiences and have a detailed history of what worked and what didn’t. I think that would be of value not just for me but also for other entrepreneurs.

So here’s to the start of a fun and exciting journey!