Martin Gilliard

About Martin Gilliard

Posts by Martin Gilliard:

Morning Routine, General Diary, Thoughts, and Ideas

Got up a little late and completed my morning routine.

My brother contacted me to say he’d caught a cold, which means Christmas at my brother’s is canceled tomorrow as my son hasn’t enough lymphocytes in his blood to fight off a virus yet.

Decided to cook some burgers on my mini-egg barbeque, it’s taking a while as haven’t used it for ages so needed cleaning out and a bit of getting going.

Today’s picture is making my morning latte using my coffee-making machine.

Today is day 31 post bone marrow transplant for my son, all is still good! 🤞.

Food Diary

Today I ate:

Too much again…

2 home made cheeseburgers

2 packets of crisps

Today I Am Reading

My goal today is to read some of Build and Promote Profitable SaaS Business

My starting point for today is location 820 or 33% complete.

My ending point for today was location 852 or 34% complete.

My Learnings Today

My learnings from reading Build and Promote Profitable SaaS Business by Kateryna Myroniuk

Keynotes from the book today were:

Testing – vital to devote time to the quality assurance of your SaaS product.

When starting, focus on the release of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Which is to get the minimum amount of features out into the market as quickly as possible. Only focus on the core features at first, that way you can get a feel for what people think about your product.

Drive early traffic either through Google or Facebook ads or SEO.

The first offering just needs to work and satisfy the main needs of your customer.

Get inital users to run Beta tests for you, this is wher you get general feedback on how well the product works. A stable, reliable product is essential. Possibly use:

BetaList is a community of makers and early adopters showcasing their startups and exchanging feedback or BetaPage to find testers for your product. They can charge fees for placements or you might have to wait a few months for testers. MVP is testing validity, Beta testing is testing for bugs and use cases that fail.

My Core Journal

Here is my core journal, the part that I don’t expect to change too much on a day-to-day basis

What did you achieve yesterday?

Yesterday (Friday 23rd) I:

I eventually ordered some Skis and Boots, ready for my skiing trip in January. ✅
Got the fridge ready to be replaced only to find out the effort was pointless due to not having the right fittings for the new fridge. ✅
Put some more investment buy orders in place. ✅

What would make today great?

2 to 3 tasks, see core journal – micro goals

My micro goals for today (Saturday 24th) are:

Start work on a high-level plan ready to put into practice next year.

Morning Routine, General Diary, Thoughts, and Ideas

Got up early as was expecting our new integrated replacement fridge to be delivered. Only partially completed my morning routine. Had to spend most of the morning emptying the fridge so that it was ready to be replaced.

The new fridge arrived but apparently, I also need to order some door fitting extras, which were not clear when booking the damn thing. Anyway, the problem is now solved the new fridge is sitting in our garage, the fitting equipment is due to arrive on Wednesday and our fridge is going to get re-installed on Friday.

Today is day 30 post bone marrow transplant for my son, all is still good! 🤞.

Bought and sold a few shares in my investment account today.

Food Diary

Today I ate:

Too much again…

3 Packets of crisps

A load of shortbread biscuits out of my wife’s Christmas hamper gift

One leftover chicken curry with rice

3 small chocolates

3 small wine gums

2 crumpets with melted cheese and HP sauce

and a load of noodles with spicy Costco flaming-chicken tenders.

Sirloin steak, peppercorn sauce, baked potato, and roasted parsnips

Today I Am Reading

My goal today is to read some of Build and Promote Profitable SaaS Business

My starting point for today is location 762 or 31% complete.

My ending point for today was location 820 or 33% complete.

My Learnings Today

My learnings from reading Build and Promote Profitable SaaS Business by Kateryna Myroniuk

Keynotes from the book today were:

Integrate into your product a:

payment system
- Part of this was covered in previous journal entries
email automation
- Part of this was also included in previous journal entries.
- Start with a welcome email – an explanation email with a call to action. Either with your company logo or just plain text. Emails with images apparently have an increased chance of being marked as promotional. Plain text has more probability of avoiding the spam folder.
- Send marketing emails “to your customers or potential customers with the purpose to see or upsell, persuade to perform an action or inform.” Unlike trigger emails, marketing emails are not expected so open-rate is generally twice as low as transactional. Marketing emails include newsletters, retention emails, surveys, or re-engagement emails.
- All emails should have a clear structure and be understandable. The subject should be consistent with the intent. Address people by their name given at subscription. Email delivery services allow you to run A/B testing to compare open rates based on location, time/date, and check link clicks.
- Sign transactional messages on behalf of the team
- Sign marketing emails from one person.
- Always provide an unsubscribe option.
- Sign up process
  - Happy day as a potential new customer
  - Welcome them onboard and inform of the next step. Show that you care
    - Include contacts for correspondence and feedback
    - An intro in the form of a video or an article
    - Links to your most engaging blog posts
    - A direct Call To Action
    - If you offer a trial or freemium model then the welcome email should validate the user. You need confirmation so that people don’t get free access using multiple account emails. Two or three-step verification processes are popular for pre-screening potential customers. Use Captcha codes to prevent bots from signing up.
    - Offer access only after they confirm the email.
    - Disposable email lists exist on GitHub, use these lists to block or detect temporary accounts in the sign-up process.
    - Ease sign-up by offering Google or Facebook sign-up, consider:
      - normal sign-up but later switching to a social sign-in account
      - social sign-up but wants to log in with a password and email
      - sign-up with one profile but then wants to use another say corporate profile within the app
customer messaging platform.

My Core Journal

Here is my core journal, the part that I don’t expect to change too much on a day-to-day basis

What did you achieve yesterday?

Yesterday (Thursday 22nd) I:

Sorted out my MasterCard login as was unable to log into online banking. ✅
Caught up with my personal banking accounts. ✅
Updated the Christmas opening times for one of my customers ✅

What would make today great?

2 to 3 tasks, see core journal – micro goals

My micro goals for today (Friday 23rd) are:

Still need to order some Skis and Boots, ready for my skiing trip in January. ✅
Get the fridge ready for being replaced ✅
Sort out my investments accounts, maybe schedule some new orders ✅
Start work on a high-level plan ready to put into practice next year.

Morning Routine, General Diary, Thoughts, and Ideas

Got up relatively late and completed my morning routine.

Today is day 29 post bone marrow transplant for my son, all is still good! 🤞.

My wife and I are crawling up the walls having to isolate ourselves while the rest of the world post covid are not, so last night we decided to walk to a local wine bar. The bar was quite busy so we sat outside in the cold, in our coats, and had a few drinks. Turned out to be quite an enjoyable night, was great to get out of the house. I felt a little rough today though.

Due to the beer and wine last night we needed to feed our hangover, so we did a trip to McDonald’s drive-through, which always seems like a great idea until you’ve actually finished the meal and feel like crap afterward. So today’s picture is an AI-generated big burger to depict all the Mcdonald’s crap I ate for lunch!

Played racketball in the evening, and my fitness is slowly coming back as I beat the friend that beat me last week.

Food Diary

Today I ate:

One packet of crisps, one Big Mac, one double cheeseburger, and a load of fries.

For dinner, I had two lovely, decent-sized pieces of pork pie at my squash club. I’m guessing Pork Pie is a UK thing, I doubt that you get them in the US. They are excellent though. If you’re from the US and you visit the UK make sure to get yourself a pork pie from a decent butcher while you’re over here! You will need lashings of HP sauce to go on top!

Today I Am Reading

My goal today is to read some of Build and Promote Profitable SaaS Business

My starting point for today is location 750 or 30% complete.

My ending point for today was location 762 or 31% complete.

My Learnings Today

My learnings from reading Build and Promote Profitable SaaS Business by Kateryna Myroniuk

Keynotes from the book today were:

Integrate into your product a:

payment system
- Part of this was covered in previous journal entries
email automation
- Part of this was also included in previous journal entries.
- Set up emails for various user interactions and inactivity, for example not using the product for a certain amount of time. Maybe send a coupon or ideas on how to use certain features. Trigger emails need to offer solutions.
- Create use cases for emails that customers should get immediately after sign-up. Ask for the email on sign-up. Get further information in the second step. So you can still contact them if they abandon the sign-up.
- Popular email offerings are SendGrid, MailChimp, and Active Kit. They all cover transactional and marketing emails.
- When developing your blog think of ways to gather your visitor’s emails for future email marketing.
- You need to create the email sequence that guides them through the setup process.
customer messaging platform.

My Core Journal

Here is my core journal, the part that I don’t expect to change too much on a day-to-day basis

What did you achieve yesterday?

Yesterday (Wednesday 21st) I:

Spent most of the day completing some complicated government form related to benefits due to caring for my sick son. ✅

What would make today great?

2 to 3 tasks, see core journal – micro goals

My micro goals for today (Thursday 22nd) are:

Still need to order some Skis and Boots, ready for my skiing trip in January.
Sort out my MasterCard login as I seem to be unable to log into online banking. ✅
Catch up with my personal banking accounts, I still use Microsoft Money for this purpose ✅
Update the Christmas opening times for one of my customers ✅

Morning Routine, General Diary, Thoughts, and Ideas

Got up quite late again, I think I need to start going to bed a little earlier. My morning routine had to be stopped in its tracks as I noticed a support request from one of my customers. The survey tool had been reported by someone to be causing an error. I tested it though and all seems to be fine. I really need more information as to how the person got the error – so I requested that they find more info for me.

Today’s post picture is of our Christmas tree.

Today is day 28 post bone marrow transplant for my son, and all still looking good. 🤞.

Feel much better about things today, so hopefully, I can complete some productive work.

Ended up spending a good chunk of today completing a government benefits form related to us caring for our sick son.

Food Diary

Today I ate:

A ham and cheese omelet, a packet of crisps, and a chunk of left over beef brisket.

Today I Am Reading

My goal today is to read some of Build and Promote Profitable SaaS Business

My starting point for today is location 733 or 29% complete.

My ending point for today was location 750 or 30% complete.

My Learnings Today

My learnings from reading Build and Promote Profitable SaaS Business by Kateryna Myroniuk

Keynotes from the book today were:

Integrate into your product a:

payment system
- Part of this was covered in the last 2 days’ journal entries
- SaaS companies tend to use Stripe, PayLane, FastSpring, PayPal, or Paddle – we use Stripe, PayPal and GoCardless
email automation
- Email is vital for onboarding. Need welcoming emails and other emails to communicate with the user outside of the platform. Emails move subscribers through the steps. People should sign up, log in and receive basic emails from the start.
  - Transactional (or trigger) Emails
    - are automatic, based on customer action. They respond to an action on the website. These emails include sign-up confirmations, account creation, billing receipts, password resets, and actions related to the account.
    - Correct, timely emails are essential for converting freemium customers to paid subscriptions.
    - Emails should be personalized, thoughtful, and timely. The subscription process needs to gather enough information to be able to personalize the email.
  - Marketing Emails
customer messaging platforms.

My Core Journal

Here is my core journal, the part that I don’t expect to change too much on a day-to-day basis

What did you achieve yesterday?

Yesterday (Tuesday 20th) I:

Played another (come back from full isolation) racketball game ✅
Didn’t do much else all day as felt really down, I think all the events related to my son’s bone marrow failure hit me hard yesterday.

What would make today great?

2 to 3 tasks, see core journal – micro goals

My micro goals for today (Wednesday 21st) are:

Still need to order some Skis and Boots, ready for my skiing trip in January.

Morning Routine, General Diary, Thoughts, and Ideas

I got up pretty late today and completed most of my morning routine. Not had a great day today, if I’m honest, I think all the issues with my son’s health and bone marrow transplant hit me in the face a little today. I’m not usually one to have any kind of depression but today I felt terrible. Feel sorry for all those people out there that have depression on a regular basis. I did some of my Wim Hoff breathing exercises that helped slightly. The picture is of a depressed man as that’s a bit of how I felt today.

Today is day 27 post bone marrow transplant for my son, and we got some new blood numbers, all are still trending in the right direction, so 🤞.

I did little work today as I felt too “down in the dumps”.

I went to my local squash club and played with one of the fittest guys in the club. I lost 3-0 which was kind of expected. I think it was a bit ambitious playing someone so good when I’ve had almost 2 months off from playing due to my son’s hospital stay.

We did another late-night shopping trip so as to avoid people that could potentially pass something nasty on to us that we subsequently pass on to our son with a limited immune system.

One of our new squash club booking system customers is using Eventbrite for tickets to their pro squash player events. They probably aren’t aware that our booking system has an events system built into it, but that also got me thinking… What if we pulled out the events system as a separate product and went into competition with Eventbrite? I would just need a glammed-up website, better pricing, and a load of advertising budget! Maybe something to add to the projects to consider list.

Food Diary

Today I ate:

A cheese and ham omelet for breakfast and then a load of meat for lunch. I had one pack of crisps as a snack and nothing for dinner.

Today I Am Reading

My goal today is to read some of Build and Promote Profitable SaaS Business

My starting point for today is location 681 or 27% complete.

My ending point for today was location 733 or 29% complete.

My Learnings Today

My learnings from reading Build and Promote Profitable SaaS Business by Kateryna Myroniuk

Keynotes from the book today were:

Integrate into your product a:

payment system
- Part of this was covered in yesterday’s journal entry
- Need a system that accepts a payment card and returns the result of the transaction to the site. We already have two of these, set up, we have PayPal and we have Stripe. So our customers can choose between the two. For customer payments (recurring billing) we use a third-party direct debit provider which in my opinion is excellent, called GoCardless. It’s important that the payment service works well in the country in which your customers are based.
- Include reviews on the pricing and landing pages
- Include trust badges and logos from reliable companies in a prominent location. Payment certifications boost loyalty, e.g. verification by Mastercard SecureCode.
- Make it a clear customer journey on the way to checkout. The user will be looking for accreditations, social profiles, support, and anything else that can confirm trust in the process
email automation
customer messaging platforms.

My Core Journal

Here is my core journal, the part that I don’t expect to change too much on a day-to-day basis

What did you achieve yesterday?

Yesterday (Monday 19th) I:

Updated this journal and that was about it

What would make today great?

2 to 3 tasks, see core journal – micro goals

My micro goals for today (Tuesday 20th) are:

Still need to order some Skis and Boots, ready for my skiing trip in January.
Nothing, feeling down, all the shit from the last 2 weeks has hit me hard today! ☹

Morning Routine, General Diary, Thoughts, and Ideas

I stayed up watching TV until the early hours last night and ended up drinking too much too. Got up and didn’t complete my morning routine. The plan is to have an afternoon nap and do an afternoon routine instead.

Today is day 26 post bone marrow transplant for my son, and all is still good.

Today’s picture is of a lego baker or cake maker character. It was out of a Christmas lego advent calendar, not this year though, it was from a few years back but it popped up on my past photos feed.

Food Diary

Today I ate:

A big chunk of leftover beef brisket, one pork sausage, and a packet of crisps.

For dinner, I had another pork sausage, some more leftover brisket, and some chicken nuggets

Today I Am Reading

My goal today is to read some of Build and Promote Profitable SaaS Business

My starting point for today is location 595 or 24% complete.

My ending point for today was location 681 or 27% complete.

My Learnings Today

My learnings from reading Build and Promote Profitable SaaS Business by Kateryna Myroniuk

Keynotes from the book today were:

Keep your software products in the cloud either Amazon Web Services or Google cloud. We already do this although we use Microsoft Azure. Cloud services are great if you even need to scale your SaaS product.

Integrate into your product a:

payment system

First, identify the price of your SaaS product

Pricing Strategies

- - Per user – popular in B2B environments
  - Per usage – charge users for a certain amount of credits, hours, or other scalable items. Can include pay-as-you-go pricing.
  - Flat rate – price varies depending on the subscription type, you can pay for a month or a year.
  - Per feature – different prices depending on the features used
  - Freemium – This is where part of the product is always free. If the user wants more of the software then they pay for an upgrade. Freemium is usually good for building customer loyalty.

Your goal is to not confuse the customer with your pricing strategies.

Three pricing options are usually preferred with variants for monthly and annual subscriptions.

Possibly offer an on-demand payment option for those who don’t want to subscribe to regular billing.

List the benefits of each pricing package, the author suggests putting the most expensive on the left and working down in price. I don’t think I have seen this before. Putting the most expensive on the left enables people to consider the limitations of the cheaper option.

email automation
customer messaging platforms.

My Core Journal

Here is my core journal, the part that I don’t expect to change too much on a day-to-day basis

What did you achieve yesterday?

Yesterday (Sunday 18th) I:

Made my version of Denny’s breakfast skillet ✅
Did a beef brisket joint on my green egg BBQ ✅
Watched the world cup final ✅

What would make today great?

2 to 3 tasks, see core journal – micro goals

My micro goals for today (Monday 19th) are:

Still need to order some Skis and Boots, ready for my skiing trip in January.
I think today will be a right off, drank too much last night!

Morning Routine, General Diary, Thoughts, and Ideas

My wife’s friend who lives in California must have stayed up late as she called my wife early doors, so got a bit of an early wake-up call. Luckily I managed to fall back asleep and ended up having a bit of a sleep-in! Got up after 10 am and completed my morning routine.

Today is day 25 post bone marrow transplant for my son, and all is still good.

I started the day by trying to make my version of an American Denny’s Diner breakfast skillet, was very nice too, if I do say so myself. I included small fried potatoes, scrambled eggs, mushrooms, red pepper, spring onions (green), chorizo, ham, and pork sausage all with grated cheese grilled on the top.

I also put a big chunk of beef brisket on my big green egg BBQ.

A friend of ours called round with a gift for us for Christmas, we’ve done nothing in terms of Christmas due to my son being so poorly.

The afternoon I watched Argentina beat France in the World Cup final, and what a final it was! Argentina dominated the match up until approximately the 80th minute, was 2 -0 to Argentina up to that point but then France made it 2-1, and then 2-2, Mbappe was class. Extra time led to another 2 goals to make it 3-3 but then Argentina finally won it on penalties. I’m glad Argentina won as I wanted to see Messis who is arguably the best player to have ever existed hold the world cup trophy.

For dinner, we have planned roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, and other vegetables, and my BBQ, slow-cooked brisket, should be lovely.

Food Diary

Today I ate:

The breakfast skillet that I made.

One bag of crisps, 2.5 sausages, a small piece of Brussels pate, and the beef brisket Sunday dinner.

Today I Am Reading

My goal today is to read some of Build and Promote Profitable SaaS Business

My starting point for today is location 571 or 23% complete.

My ending point for today was location 595 or 24% complete.

My Learnings Today

My learnings from reading Build and Promote Profitable SaaS Business by Kateryna Myroniuk

Keynotes from the book today were:

Content varies depending on the stage of the sales funnel:

Discovery: Blog posts, videos, and infographics that educate potential customers and address any questions that they might have.

Consideration: Reviews, demos, and case studies that demonstrate the software features that solve the problem.

Conversion: Landing pages, testimonials, and the pricing page that persuade the client that your product is the right solution

Retention: Emails, onboarding messages, and customer support that provides brand advocacy and keeps users satisfied with the choice they have made.

All messages need to be clear and consistent with the customer’s needs in mind. Content should be exactly what your ideal customer is looking for. Don’t over-complicate the text and keep it short and to the point. It needs to be understandable.

Create call-to-actions, identify what your website visitors are looking for and offer it.

Not relevant to me at the moment but if you are looking for a name for your business and need help with ideas then you can use a name-generating tool such as Namelix

It also recommends using a version control system for your software such as GitHub. We use the Microsoft version controlling, I forget its exact name. It can be modified to connect to GitHub but we just use the standard version.

My Core Journal

Here is my core journal, the part that I don’t expect to change too much on a day-to-day basis

What did you achieve yesterday?

Yesterday (Saturday 17th) I:

Completed a free quote page on my Objitec website with a call to action. ✅
Added a squash excuses blog page to my Mad About Squash Website. ✅

What would make today great?

2 to 3 tasks, see core journal – micro goals

My micro goals for today (Sunday 18th) are:

Still need to order some Skis and Boots, ready for my skiing trip in January.
Make my version of Denny’s breakfast skillet ✅
Do a beef brisket joint on y green egg BBQ ✅
Watch the world cup final ✅

Morning Routine, General Diary, Thoughts, and Ideas

Got up just after 9 am and completed my morning routine.

Today is day 24 post bone marrow transplant for my son, and all is still good.

Had a pretty good day, did some work on my Objitec business website, and created a blog page for my Mad About Squash website.

I watched the third-place decider World Cup game between Morocco and Croatia. Croatia won, so today’s picture is of a Croatian flag.

Food Diary

Today I ate:

Some overcooked pork belly that I did on the BBQ last night, was rather crispy!

Then I had two poached eggs, some bacon, sausages a few mushroom,s and a fried tomato

Chicken wings are planned for dinner

Today I Am Reading

My goal today is to read some of Build and Promote Profitable SaaS Business

My starting point for today is location 462 or 19% complete.

My ending point for today was location 571 or 23% complete.

My Learnings Today

My learnings from reading Build and Promote Profitable SaaS Business by Kateryna Myroniuk

Keynotes from the book today were:

Today was about how to get a SaaS app developed, not of much relevance to me as I can develop myself and my two business partners are excellent developers.

You can use Upwork and Freelancer for freelancers. Rates can be as low as $20 per hour

Most good website designers list themselves on Behance or Dribble.

You are responsible for your website so it’s up to you to decide on the number and type of pages that you want to include and the landing pages that your website will have.

Consider having internal pages for a dashboard, user cabinet, etc. Take ideas from websites that you like or that impress you. What features are the most appealing? Mockup ideas in WordPress, a text editor, or using a mind mapping tool.

The content should:

Answer questions that your prospective clients might have
Be good as it “is the blood of the organism you create”, without it the business is silent.
Try and get all your content in place within 30 days.
For grammar and spelling help use applications such as Grammarly or Hemingway.
Try and create short sentences as they are easier to read.
Include customer reviews if you can as that is what customers pay attention to.
Show what to expect from the product on no more than 2 to 3 screens.
Keep a minimalistic impression while showing the general features of the product.
Consider your end user and create content that appeals to their pain points
Include a story about how the company came into existence on your home page. Ensure that the story is interesting and is told in the best way to make people feel good about your business.

Actively collect customer feedback from your product to use on your website

My Core Journal

Here is my core journal, the part that I don’t expect to change too much on a day-to-day basis

What did you achieve yesterday?

Yesterday (Friday 16th) I:

I created the first draft of a recurring work schedule ✅
Started a plan for a free quote page for my Objitec website ✅

What would make today great?

2 to 3 tasks, see core journal – micro goals

My micro goals for today (Saturday 17th) are:

Still need to order some Skis and Boots, ready for my skiing trip in January.
Complete the free quote page on my Objitec website with a call to action. ✅
Add a squash excuses blog page to my Mad About Squash Website. ✅

Morning Routine, General Diary, Thoughts, and Ideas

Got up early-ish and completed my morning routine.

Today is day 23 post bone marrow transplant for my son, all still seems to be going well.

First time back playing Racketball last night after about 6 weeks off due to my son’s illness. I played terribly, lost 5-1, against a friend of mine that I usually do OK against. Everything was aching and my chest was tight. I so need to get my fitness back, although 9 days before Christmas isn’t possibly the best time for it!

Today’s picture is my excessively large heating bill for the other day. It’s pretty cold in the UK at the moment and the heating bills are excessive thanks, I guess to Putin’s War and the country is in the shit from all the money they spent on Covid – although I’ve no real clue if that’s the real reason for the high energy costs. Just rambling on, really!

Food Diary

Today I ate:

A toasted French baguette with pate on was very nice! x2 as I had the same for lunch with a little bit of tikka-flavored chicken to go with it.

Today I Am Reading

My goal today is to read some of Build and Promote Profitable SaaS Business

My starting point for today is location 422 or 17% complete.

My ending point for today was location 462 or 19% complete.

My Learnings Today

My learnings from reading Build and Promote Profitable SaaS Business by Kateryna Myroniuk

Keynotes from the book today were:

Study your competition and their top countries for traffic. Can use a web tool called Similar Web for this.

When you have a set of keywords that you want to focus on study your competitors’ content so that you can determine what you are competing with.

Consider combing keywords into one article.

When you have all this, develop a structure for the website. I personally like to use mind-mapping tools for doing this.

My Core Journal

Here is my core journal, the part that I don’t expect to change too much on a day-to-day basis

What did you achieve yesterday?

Yesterday (Thursday 15th) I:

I ordered a new integrated fridge, it comes on Dec 23rd ✅
Did a big shop with my wife, late at night, when there are fewer people to reduce our chances of catching anything and subsequently passing it on to our son with a low immune system. ✅

What would make today great?

2 to 3 tasks, see core journal – micro goals

My micro goals for today (Friday 16th) are:

Still need to order some Skis and Boots, ready for my skiing trip in January.
Create a recurring schedule
Update Objitec Website

Morning Routine, General Diary, Thoughts, and Ideas

Got up early and completed my morning routine.

Today is day 22 post bone marrow transplant for my son, and he’s still Ok.

My friend Neil came round to my house early doors to help me determine if an integrated fridge that I am intending to buy to replace the old knackered one, will fit in the gap that I have.

After Neil left I made a spaghetti bolognese (minus the spaghetti) in the slow cooker ready for tonight’s evening meal.

Today’s picture is of a squash/racketball court as today was my first day back on the court. Six or seven weeks off didn’t do me well, I lost 5 games to 1! But so pleased to be back playing again.

Venturing out to see even more life tonight as my wife and I are going to do a late-night shop, we’re assuming fewer people will be in the store late at night.

Food Diary

Today I ate:

4 slices of Bovril on toast.

A microwave meal chicken curry, which I added extra spices to

And a spaghetti bolognese

Today I Am Reading

My goal today is to read some of Build and Promote Profitable SaaS Business

My starting point for today is location 387 or 16% complete.

My ending point for today was location 422 or 17% complete.

My Learnings Today

My learnings from reading Build and Promote Profitable SaaS Business by Kateryna Myroniuk

Keynotes from the book today were:

Have a clear message for your target audience, what does your brand resolve through its existence? The positioning needs to add value to the product. How does your product stand out from the crowd? It should change user behavior and deliver it.

If you promise something and the product delivers then you will get loyal customers. Measure your customer loyalty using the NPS score (The Ultimate Question by Fred Reichheld) – 9 and 10 are brand ambassadors, and 7 and 8 are neither loyal nor irritated, work to get them higher, dissatisfied customers will answer 6 and lower. The product needs to make people’s lives easier.

If customer satisfaction drops then they will soon switch to a more appealing competitor’s product.

My Core Journal

Here is my core journal, the part that I don’t expect to change too much on a day-to-day basis

What did you achieve yesterday?

Yesterday (Wednesday 14th) I:

Finished the restoration of my Innovation-Creativity site, hooray!! ✅
Ordered my son some memory for his gaming PC as his Christmas present. ✅
Sent an email to the school about my son’s education or lack of it given all of the hospital appointments. ✅

What would make today great?

2 to 3 tasks, see core journal – micro goals

My micro goals for today (Thursday 15thth) are:

Order the new fridge ✅
I also still need to order some Skis and Boots, ready for my skiing trip in January.