livemygoals Editor Blog

Graeme Allan Beals - Big Goals Around Books and Healthy Thinking

Blog Author — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 20:24:07 GMT

Graeme Allan Beals is not Gen Y, he does not live in Auckland and asks nothing more of others than he expects from himself. At 54 years, with three grown up children, he is currently working on some of his best and most exciting ideas. He has big goals around books and the principles of healthy thinking.

He has just returned from the Frankfurt Book Fair (the world’s largest) where he and his wife Jane create opportunities for Kiwi authors. I caught up with him just before he left and tried to understand what makes him tick and what drives him to leave Taranaki on a very regular basis to visit the big city.

Graeme’s Life

My companies:

Jane and I own Zenith Publishing Group Ltd which contains

Publishme.co.nz (a fast growing assisted self-publishing option which has attracted over 2000 members in its first year of operation),
Curriculum Concepts (an educational publishing arm) and
Zenith Print (a sizable specialist digital book-print operation).
I also run our finance company; Aspire Finance Ltd (thankfully we only loaned – never borrowed)
I work in The Healthy Thinking Institute Ltd in which we have a shareholding.
It sounds like a strange mix but there are many synergies.

My interests:

I’m really interested in the interplay between mind, body and spirit and the power of the mind to turn paradise to hell, or vice versa. As part of that I feel very connected to nature and spend a lot of time walking in bush or by the sea and rivers, growing things and just dreaming outdoors.
As a publisher, of course I also do a lot of reading, in matters related to business, politics and people’s interconnectedness with the physical and the less obvious. As a scientist and educator I also read a lot in these areas, though I am a major science skeptic in many ways these days. So much science proves nothing more than the narrowness of the researcher’s mindset or the perversity created by science funding systems.
I also celebrate the roles the various arts play in enriching us spiritually/creatively and the opportunity to travel and share in the rich cultural diversity within and beyond New Zealand. My family is the hub from which these explorations radiate.

The roles that I play:

I am dad to three great kids – the eldest girl Emma (27), a communications manager to the Chief Executive of the Lambeth City Council in London, my son Hadleigh (25) Associate Director at UBS bank in Auckland working in mergers and acquisitions, and my youngest daughter Bridget (22) one of the few girls on the trading floor at Westpac in Wellington, spearheading Commodities and Carbon Trading.
I’m of the age where ailing parents take a lot of time too – a time to give a little back. I visit daily over lunchtime and I cook the evening meals so Jane can visit over tea time. It’s all highly choreographed, but it works.
I’m on the Taranaki Arts Community Trust running the TArt Gallery for the development of Taranaki’s visual artists and Limelight for our performing artists.

List a few of your recent accomplishments that you are proud of:

I’m pleased that we have started publishme.co.nz to give New Zealand authors their voice back as the publishing world is transformed to the detriment of their traditional pathways, and I feel that we are well placed to bring them unique value from being their own publishers.
I’m delighted my kids are off the payroll and into exciting avenues of endeavour that will open up great opportunities for them to add value to the world too, and that after 33 years married (I was 20 – Jane 19) we still have a great relationship that allows each of us to grow as people without shading one another.
As General Manager of Distance Learning and IT at Practical Education Training Centre Ltd (one of NZ’s largest PTE’s) I set up a distance education model for their 4000 students (75% Maori, 75% women at home – often on DPB) which dramatically altered engagement and pass rates such that it became the model the Government has put in place for all funded distance education in NZ now.

Did you celebrate them? And how?

Yes, we celebrate success with a special morning tea each month where certificates and awards are handed out by us, and the staff can make awards too. For big achievement goals we take the gang out to dinner or put on a shout.

I am busy at the moment doing:

Tweeking the website (as you do)
Follow up from our stand at the Frankfurt Bookfair.
Development of the Healthy Thinking courses & formation of the Foundation.
Overseeing the finance company.

My big hairy audacious goal this year is to:

Have 5000 publishme.co.nz members by Christmas.
Attract $1m into the Healthy Thinking Foundation

I knew I was onto something when:

I did the Icehouse owner managers long course at Auckland Uni last year and for the first time in nearly 20 years in business, was able to stand back and have a protracted look at our businesses, what was in them that was good/bad/developable, where they were going, where they could go and what a model for an ideal business could be.

I was armed with that info as we designed and built publishme.co.nz and it made me see the opportunity in The Healthy Thinking Institute Ltd clearly, so I bought in.

My secret for getting things done is to:

I’m a random, creative type person who likes chaos and change. I learnt at the Icehouse that I need a strong team of great people around me who dot i’s, cross t’s and develop strong systems to enact what I vision. I need to convey the vision really well, then keep out of the day to day stuff, to ensure that the actual customer focused operation IS focused and reliable through its systematic predictability. I also need space for the reading, visioning and planning, but I can be involved with a number of operations because I’m not so hands-on. When there is a need in any of the companies I will take on a fixed role for a fixed period to achieve an agreed outcome, and then draw back again. We have that working in each of the companies now and it runs well.

My darkest hour was when:

General publishing hit the wall almost overnight a few years ago. The change came as a wave as Amazon and the like penetrated our borders taking bookstore market-share, bookstores formed chains and began buying overseas to get better margins, and international publishers who used to republish New Zealand titles came under similar pressure and cut back, leaving New Zealand publishers with little access to NZ bookstores or overseas markets.

We hemorrhaged cash, and eventually had to lay off good staff, cut way back and create a new way forward – an online aggregator. It met both our needs and the needs of NZ authors who were also suddenly missing out in this change.

I came through it by:

We had to sell a few properties and bring the cash back into the business as well as cut back on the cost lines, but for three years we got no income from publishing at all and were reliant on our finance company and property income for personal cashflow.

I came up with the idea for/to:

Start an online model- as it seemed obvious to me at the time that if publishing was dead or dying because they couldn’t sell enough books or had to give away more margin than they could afford to, NZ authors couldn’t get published, and the public was increasingly being offered international titles in bookstores, that they were going to still want NZ material.
I looked at what other creatives were doing – musicians were delivering direct to the customer online as were film-makers increasingly and I realized that these two markets had just beaten books to that point because they were largely the preserve of the young and tech-savy screenagers, but as the older book readers caught up technologically, they would also want the same.
I gave it a lot of thought and decided that if we could offer the author effectively an entire small publishing house – i.e. all the help with preparation, marketing, sales and accounting that they would need, then we could disintermediate the publisher.
The author would make the same or more from fewer sales, and we’d do well charging very small amounts for making it all happen for them.
Also, if we could aggregate enough NZ writers into the one spot, as TradeMe did with goods-traders, then the economies of scale would benefit all – print would be cheaper and a customer brought to the shop by one writer would see the books of another and so forth.

How old were you when you first had the idea?

53 years

How many businesses have you tried before this one?

Quite a few. I have started quite a number including a weekly newspaper, and put some profitable ones to bed because they weren’t profitable enough. I was in an educational software company that developed the economics program for schools with Dr Alan Bollard – Treasurer of the Reserve Bank – and Photographer software for Kodak. I sold the software in USA but the prices plummeted and it wasn’t economic. Later I entered a VC IT incubator in Wellington doing English as a Second Language software, but it crashed when the NASDAQ went down and all VC vapourised. So I’ve had some fun along the way without doubt. You’ve got to try a lot of things I think.

What do you do to cope with stress?

I don’t get stressed at all so I don’t have to cope with it as such. I have used positive thinking techniques for many years such that I am pretty much able to wipe away most emotional upsets leaving little more of a trail than a bird flying across the sky. I still feel, but I choose thoughts that do not lead to emotional stress.

How many hours do you work each week?

Normally 8.30am-5 pm five days and no more except if I am traveling or have an evening meeting for some reason. I do read magazines and the internet at night though and prefer watching TED.com and the like rather than most standard TV programs if I am drawn to watch tele. Most nights the tele stays off after the news.

What do you do when things aren’t going your way?

As part of the healthy way of thinking, I will have first programmed my brain’s expectation centre with words like prefer and rather than must and should, so that I’m little damaged by such things which are, after all, a regular part of life. You’re setting yourself up for constant falls if you hold too tightly to targets, as in this sort of exciting business environment, there will be plenty.
Usually I try to jump over to the other person’s side (by thinking or talking to those who are there – customers or whoever) and try to see it from their viewpoint. That often changes your approach to something more successful.
But we always take the longterm view. There’s no point in poisoning the water to catch animals. You’ll catch yourself at some point.

What is the most important piece of advice you’d give to people who are struggling to create a positive change in their lives?

Learn to think effectively. We get letters from all over the world from people who’s lives have been changed – in some cases saved – by learning to think in a healthy way. These simple techniques to gain control of their thoughts, and thereby, of their emotions.
Other than that, I’d also add two other things that serve me well time and again;
- doing what you always do will get you what you always got, and
- when everyone else is turning right, take a good hard look at what’s happening going left. That’s often where opportunity lies.

What is the hardest lesson you’ve had to learn in life/business?

In life – that no matter how good or deserving you are, when it’s your turn to go, it’s your turn to go. Life’s not ‘fair’, so live it fully while you can and be thankful every day for the fact that you can.
In business – it is all founded on trust unless you are large enough or concerned enough to back up your contracts with litigation. Thankfully, most can be trusted and doing business with them is a pleasure. However, some people can’t be. If it looks too good to be true, it probably is. If the person who is offering you the deal is telling you about a sneaky way they make money, then expect to be shafted. I value integrity, expect it in my business associates and staff, and like to be able to rely on it. If you deal with people of integrity, contracts are effectively just a way of expressing the shared terms of agreement or vision.

What separates successful people from unsuccessful people?

I think you have to love business to be good at business, but I think the real separators are clarity of thought, ability to retain focus over time, empathy and responsiveness.

Do you have any daily rituals that help you keep focused and in the right mental state to succeed?

Yes, I have moments throughout the day that I treasure – the first coffee (of two), or emptying the morning’s inbox for example – and I take the time to notice those things and be grateful for them. I have them all through each day, so that there is stability within change, and so that I can take many small moments to feel good as I go along. It doesn’t matter what they are really. Just the act of feeling grateful on a regular basis is hugely uplifting and raises the spirits enormously.

What was your working background before you started what you are doing now?

I was high schooled in Te Kuiti then South Auckland, getting asked to leave at 6th form. I tried a few things and through a set of circumstances ended up as acting General manager of the Mandalay Reception Lounge in Newmarket for 3 months at 18. I was offered the role permanently, but decided to get a qualification. I applied for teaching and went to Palmerston North. I always expected to get back out of teaching, but stayed in it for 17 years as I kept getting thrown new challenges including a rural school lifestyle, principalship, science advising, science lecturing at Massey, and running a regional Teachers Centre. When Tomorrow’s Schools came in I realized that teachers wouldn’t want the resources they had been given by the old boards if they held the purse strings. So I left and started publishing from home, seeing the children to school and home again, while my wife went back teaching part time to support us. It just grew from there.

Do you have any school/study qualifications?

B ED (Hons), TTC, Dip Ed

Do you have any other business interests at the moment?

Working on setting up an informal Taranaki Internet Entrepreneurs network (Crazy TIE)– maybe leading in time to an incubator here. Being Taranaki we’ll do it a bit differently – include high school kids and capitalists etc.

What are the three most important personal qualities you’ve had to develop to become a successful business person?

Total integrity (like pregnancy, you can’t be a little bit integritous).
The ability to interrelate ideas from different settings.
An adventurous spirit.

What are the three most important skills that you would advise up and coming youngsters to develop?

Listening
Noticing – being present
Wondering – how, why and what particularly

How do you know when you’ve found a good idea?

I just know in my inner self. I trust my intuition. I sleep on it and if it still seems a great idea, I’ll go with it.
I am more able these days to take note of the inner warning voice. “Do you REALLY want to get tied up for two or three years doing this?’
I’ve got tons of ideas that I’ve reserved for another lifetime or that I occasionally give away to the right person.

Do you have a formal goal setting process?

Yes.

Have you ever been scared in your role/business? What did you do about it?

Not really

What comes first...success or confidence?

I was confident as a teenager, so I can’t say. For me it was confidence.

How do you build confidence if you’re not a confident person?

Lack of confidence, luckily, is a state not a trait and you can change it. Usually it is brought on because you are a bit of a doom merchant and a fortune teller combined – i.e. you always think of the worst that might happen and then you predict it probably will and tell yourself that you shouldn’t try for this reason.

The Parting Shot: When I feel frustrated that things are not coming together as I wish, I proceed to:

Analyse, empathise and reformulate.

Graeme Allan Beals has a busy life, but he has put in systems to help him achieve his goals. What support structures do you have in place to ensure you create an inspired life for yourself?

Rich Henry : Goal Focussed -Never Gives Up

Blog Author — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 22:57:55 GMT

Rich Henry was a frustrated twenty two year old bloke, except he wasn’t frustrated by the issues most guys his age face; like “where can I find a cold beer or does that girl in the corner have an Adam’s apple?” No, his goals were not that shallow.

“I was looking at setting up an importing and distribution business and couldn’t find any decent New Zealand advertising channels that were targeted to male professionals. So I decide to do something about it”, says Richard, founder and managing director of getfrank.co.nz.

During Rich Henry’s time at Otago University, he was continually searching for and attempting to start up his own business: from lawn mowing, through to owning exclusive rights to import & distribute a top-end male grooming range in his final year.

“The two years from initially conceiving the idea were amazingly lonely, working around the clock and killing myself in exhaustion, frustration, and fear for an idea that no one else really either understood or appreciated, but myself, knowing full well that if I did cave in, I’d be left to carry the regret and burden of ‘what if ’.”

Richard is now 25 and the magazine attracts more than 50,000 readers per month. He describes it as a website for intelligent, professional men. "There's a bit of love and lust, a growing collection of videos and online games, as well as articles about business, politics and fatherhood. Rich

My companies:

Getfrank.co.nz, and RDH Concepts

My interests:

Business, Scuba Diving, Paintball & the edge of anything

The roles that I play:

Entrepreneur, Mentor / Big Brother for “ I have A dream” Foundation

List a few of your recent accomplishments that you are proud of:

Getting getfrank.co.nz into profit
Buying out our competition – bigfella.co.nz
Stepping get frank. into the Australian market
Organising the Getfrank Winter Experience

Did you celebrate them?

Nine days in Queenstown. Need I say more.

I am busy at the moment doing:

Blue Skiing for another round of investment to take the brand up another level.
Living in a caravan down in Takapuna Holiday Park – cheapest beach front property in Auckland!
2 months into Cross Fit training regime, getting the body back up to its peak. (Used to be an international rep in double mini trampoline – 20th World championships, 4th Teams)

My big hairy audacious goal this year is to:

In the middle of a refocus on a new set of goals. Next is to take the site into the Australian Market

I knew I was onto something when:

Searching for an effective way to connect with a professional male market - crazy lightbulb moment, a common sense solution. Win-win-win-win-win for all involved.
Took a pen and paper, and wandered around Otago University until the sun came up sketching out a ‘catch 22’ path to build the business from nothing.

My secret for getting things done is to:

Post it notes, once something is on the list I won’t leave until it’s done.
Self discipline – I get up at 5.30 every morning so I can work without distractions.
Watching the sun rise over Rangitoto from the caravan window every morning makes it worth it.

My darkest hour was when:

I launched the site, with 40k of personal loans and 60k of my parents money to see no one visiting and only a couple of months liquidity left.

I came through it by:

Dropping out of fulltime work at PricewaterhouseCoopers to work on the venture fulltime to try and save it. I was very lucky to secure Shane Bradley as an Angel Investor, and three years since the light bulb moment the ventures finally cash flow positive.

I came up with the idea for:

Experiential marketing - when I was trying to create a highly geared and brand intensive campaign to promote the website.

How old were you when you first had the idea?

How many businesses have you tried before this one?

At least half a dozen. Used my course related costs to fly to Bali to open an importing business, sushi stall, lawn mowing business, tutoring service. Seven times as many business ideas and plans in my scrap book.

What do you do to cope with stress?

Work harder and longer – a dog out hunting doesn’t notice it’s fleas

How many hours do you work each week?

It’s a lifestyle choice, I’m either working, socializing, or sleeping – working, always over 60 hours at the moment, up at 5.30 each morning to nail down the content, spend the days networking and building new relationships, and the evenings out or preparing for the next day.

What do you do when things aren’t going your way?

Go back to sitting on the cliff and review my strategies.

What is the most important piece of advice you’d give to people who are struggling to create a positive change in their lives?

Search and read about Admiral Stockdale, and the Stockdale Paradox

What is the hardest lesson you’ve had to learn in life/business?

It’s hard work.

What separates successful people from unsuccessful people?

Perseverance, working smarter not harder, actively learning and pursuing new opportunities.

Do you have any daily rituals that help you keep focused and in the right mental state to succeed?

Weekly I sit on a cliff with a pen & paper and map out what I want to achieve in the coming week, and strategies on how best to do that

What was your working background before you started what you are doing now?

Finance & Accounting Graduate, Auditor at PricewaterhouseCoopers

Do you have any school/study qualifications?

Bachelor of Commerce, Finance & Accounting + a diploma for Graduates

2 years more work needed to become a Chartered Accountant

Do you have any other business interests at the moment?

Helping out other up and coming young entrepreneurs.

What are the three most important personal qualities you’ve had to develop to become a successful business person?

Vision
Tenacity
A Drive to learn

How do you know when you’ve found a good idea?

It makes logical sense, and all those involved will walk away with significant value, really significant value - otherwise people won't provide the time and effort to see their part through.

Do you have a formal goal setting process?

Yearly, Monthly, Weekly, Post it notes. My walls are covered in quotes, ideas and goals so it’s always around me.

Have you ever been scared in your role/business? What did you do about it?

Back when I was working fulltime and leveraged up to the hills, just backed myself.

“I’d rather regret something I did, than something I didn’t”

What comes first...success or confidence?

Confidence / Belief

How do you build confidence if you’re not a confident person?

Start small and then keep raising that bar.

The Parting Shot: When I feel frustrated that things are not coming together as I wish, I proceed to:

Go back to sitting on the cliff and review my strategies.

ps. Here is that view that Rich was talking about where he plans how he will achieve his next personal and professional goals

Where do you go to be inspired and create action?

Tom Bowden: Doing Something You Believe In to Achieve Big Goals

Blog Author — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 19:59:00 GMT

Tom Bowden is an achiever. He does not do anything in half measures. He and his wife have five children aged from 17 years to five-year-old twins. His other ‘baby’ is HealthLink, a long-standing public-private partnership with the New Zealand Ministry of Health. Not surprisingly, this doesn’t leave much time for anything else. After setting up his own business at the age of 21, Tom has been a committed entrepreneur ever since, stopping only to do an MBA which helped him become even more fascinated with the transition from paper-based processes to electronic ones and how to use the changes to achieve his own goals.

Tom Bowden is the founder and CEO of HealthLink which has been the electronic heart of the New Zealand health system since 1993. Facilitating the transfer of one million pieces of patient information per week between general practitioners and other health service providers (including laboratories, hospitals and specialists), the company operates throughout New Zealand and in much of Australia.

Healthcare is a very contentious area. From the outside it looks like an environment with kind people in white coats looking after others. In reality it is just a massive scramble for resources. It is, as someone said recently, a series of warring tribes, each with their own religious beliefs.

Right now the health sector is fairly combative. There are all kinds of agendas, and the challenge for government is to align those agendas as much as possible, to minimize conflict and get everyone heading down the same road.

When you have 50 staff to look after it is hugely important to know where you stand with government. We have a million items of medical information a week, and we answer 150 fault calls a day, so it’s an important piece of the health sector. That’s a lot of paper removed and it is an awful lot of complicated systems.

The good news is that GPs are strong and are generally in good heart. Ninety-five percent of New Zealanders are enrolled with a GP, and GPs are doing better financially, are happier and have a major influence over the direction of the health system.

If we see a change in government in November, GPs will probably get more autonomy. That will be good, because the health bureaucracy has blown out due to a desire at all levels to micromanage. GPs are highly qualified professionals and you have to be able to trust them to get on with the job, so you should set the broad parameters and let them go for it.

HealthLink is to a large extent the electronic glue of the health system. It allows GPs to exchange all sorts of information with other parts of the health sector and it provides the security needed to secure medical information. Every piece of information we send is encrypted (or scrambled) and electronically signed. We don’t really support the formation of central repositories of information – there are potentially major privacy issues with those. That’s why it’s important, in my view, to make the GP responsible for ‘stewardship’ of his or her patients’ information.

Ideally our goal is to increase in the efficiency and effectiveness of patient care. One day we want you to be able to move right through the health system and allow anybody that is helping you to find all the relevant information about you that they need, without compromising your privacy by inadvertently accessing information that you wish to remain private.

I set up a business early, at 21 – I suppose I like being in charge of whatever I am doing. My first venture was a design and print company. After seven years I undertook an MBA part-time and I became fascinated with the transition from paper-based processes to electronic ones. This was 1984 to 1987, pre-deregulation and Telecom.

I had been in printing when it was becoming more and more IT-based. I observed the changes keenly. From 1978 to 1987, when I was doing it, there was huge technology development, with creations like the Apple Macintosh which revolutionised the printing industry, almost overnight.

Aware of impending changes I decided that telecommunications was the place to be, so I became an employee again in a specialist subsidiary of Telecom. Among the areas that clearly could benefit from electronic communications was healthcare, so we talked to the Ministry of Health which, in the early 1990s, wanted to have partners because it didn’t want to get into running computer networks.

As long we were good boys and girls and played by the rules and did good things for the sector, the Ministry was quite happy with whatever we did.

The Ministry was very encouraging, but not very keen on giving us funding to do anything. We had to go and turn it into a business, which is when we founded HealthLink. I persuaded my Telecom bosses to invest in a joint venture, and a year later we set the company up as a stand-alone specialist business and bought services from Telecom.

One catalyst for us was the 1992 health reforms. Simon Upton totally changed the whole New Zealand health system, and fortuitously, what we provide supported the newly reformed health sector very well. If you devolve responsibility for day-to-day healthcare delivery to GPs that is good, but if you still have a largely paper-based system all you do is create an administrative nightmare.

On day one, 15 years ago we had no clients, and the health sector didn’t exchange information electronically at all. Now we exchange a million items of information a week.

We have raised the level of information movement around the health sector to a very high level, by international standards. Two years ago a Commonwealth Fund (www.commonwealthfund.org) report on IT put New Zealand at the top of the 10 OECD countries it had measured. It happened to measure all the things we do at HealthLink.

We can only improve health information at the rate at which people trust the integrity of the health system. If people start to lose trust, as they have in the UK, the whole health system is affected. If they do not trust the confidentiality of the health system, people won’t be frank with their doctor.

The main thing driving me is a desire to improve the health system. Having got into the system more by chance than design, I now know how important information is. We have a very clear policy and strategy – to enable primary care to communicate easily, dependably, and safely. That is our entire focus.

What seems to work best around the world is a primary care-led health system, which is what New Zealand has. That means, effectively, that your GP organizes how your personal healthcare is delivered. This approach has been almost conclusively shown to be better value for the taxpayer and better-quality care for patients.

We are also in Australia. There we spent a long time trying to change the health system before we realized that it was like trying to turn around an oil tanker. We’re now biding our time, doing what we can while we wait for the system to realize it needs to change. The recent change in government seems to signal a commitment to fundamental healthcare reform and a desire to implement a primary care-led strategy.

There is no question that the health systems of all western economies must change. Our population as a whole is ageing and the baby-boom generation is going to put a big burden on the health system. As a consequence there is a real skills shortage and an international market for skilled professionals. This is not working in our favour at present.

We are targeting British-style health systems, because of the way in which they are organized. A health system like India’s, which is not organized and has little automation, is impossible for us to work with. The fact that the New Zealand system is automated makes a huge difference to patients. Here, people go to hospital, get treated effectively and then go home. In Australia, without a good communications system, their health sector is somewhat less efficient.

We have identified Australia and Canada as being the first markets we will pursue. Once they are under our belt we will look at others. In Canada we are looking at forming a joint venture, while in Australasia we are operating on our own.

My purpose is to lead a worthwhile and fulfilling life – to have enough money to feed and clothe the family, and to do useful and interesting things.

I have five children, aged from 17 to five-year-old twins. It’s all on at home! I am usually up at about 5.30am, and fairly early to bed. I don’t watch any TV apart from the news.

Getting good people around you who can complement your skills is very important. It’s also a matter of ploughing into it but knowing when you need to notch back a bit – not going so hard at it that you end up hitting the wall. I have learned to pull back. I have a very busy, demanding life, so some weekends I will work 20 hours and on other weekends I will do absolutely nothing work-related.

I have some good people in Australia, but there was a time when I was there every two or three weeks, and that is hard with a lot of kids. It is very hard on my wife to leave her behind coping with the rabble. Fortunately she is highly organized.

I think if you are doing something you believe is good for the country and society it encourages you, because you can look around and see the real benefits of your work. Seeing the healthcare service visibly improve through your own efforts is incredibly rewarding.

Every year in early January, my wife and I write a personal plan of what we hope to achieve. We then measure ourselves against those goals and make sure we are both committed to the same objectives – one of the biggest failings in marriage is when two partners are after different things.

Tom Bowden At A Glance

Chief Executive of HealthLink Ltd
Involved in electronic communications for 20 years
Built HealthLink from scratch, starting in 1993
HealthLink now has offices in Auckland, Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth
Responsible for the exchange of one million pieces of patient information per week
Has five children and lives in a 150-year-old historic home in Parnell, Auckland
Propagates native plants and grows old roses as a hobby

Goalgetting Tips for Today

Never, ever give up on something that makes sense, however hard it is to achieve
Understand and try to influence the main drivers that are affecting your environment - eg Government
Understand your business in great detail and respect those who can do likewise
Be very clear about your five most important strategies and pursue them relentlessly
Be a force for good in your community and in your work environment

What are you passionate about? How can you use this passion to achieve your goals?

The Politics of Getting Ahead

Blog Author — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 21:20:02 GMT

We all have our constituents and supporters, even if we are not in politics. How do you go about managing perceptions around you in order to achieve your own goals? How do you live your own goals, while knowing that you are part of a community of others with their own needs?

As we head to elections in some key countries across the world- it becomes evident that it helps to have a clear idea of what you stand for, if you want people to support your ideas. It also helps to be able to clearly identify what value you can add to your supporters and inner circle.

How do you go about getting support for your ideas? The same ideas that help you achieve your goals?

In This Post:

Steven Joyce has had a remarkable career so far and continues to push himself to new challenges. He shows us the attitude required to move from his degree in Zoology, and then transform one little radio station into the highly successful RadioWorks group. He also lets us know of his intentions to make a big difference in the country though his upcoming role in politics.

Jo Mills informs us how to negotiate the political minefield that many people often find themselves in, at the office- preventing them from achieving their lofty goals. She talks about 'PQ' - your "political intelligence" and how to use it to get ahead, how to form alliances and be authentically visible. Jo also gives us the Ten Tips for getting out of a career rut.

Chris Wingate- who signed up to Livemygoals.com recently- is a man with a mission. Married 24 years with 4 kids, he was a self made millionaire by the age of 25. He has lived in Australia, New Zealand, Vancouver and Hawaii.

In 1997 he funded Auckland school kid Scott Dixon to race Formula Holden then the following year he set up Scott Dixon Motorsport to fund Scott's racing career. In 2003 Dixon won the Indy Racing world title in his first attempt and then in 2008 won the Indy 500 and the Indy World Title.

No stranger to adventure himself, in 1999 Chris shipped a 4wheel drive to India and drove to London with Sir Peter Tapsell and Prof. Frank Brosnahan via India,Pakistan, Iran, Syria Jordon, Lebanon,Turkey etc.

Chris shares with us some of his goals around making judges and politicians more accountable!

Enjoy taking this moment and reflecting on how other people are doing it, have done it, will do it.

Chris Wingate : Achieving Goals - Against The Odds

Blog Author — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:36:29 GMT

Chris Wingate has oodles of character. If you have seen the film "Once Were Warriors" that was how Christopher Wingate grew up. The difference was his parents were white and the house a bit more flash. But all the other dynamics existed in Rotorua in the 1960's.

He knew from a young age he wanted a different life - he has always had big goals and so instead of spending his days hanging around the Western Heights shops he spent it in the bush or wondering around some of the tourist businesses talking with the owners.

"Each Friday night we would have fish and chips- one piece of fish each. The others would hog their piece of fish but I would focus on the chips knowing my fish would be there long after they had scoffed their fish. I guess then I knew I was different"

Married 24 years with 4 kids, Chris was a self made millionaire by the age of 25. He has lived in Australia, New Zealand, Vancouver and Hawaii.

He is currently filming a movie called GOVERNMENT, a 9/11 type film about what he calls "idiots in power."

What Drives Chris?

HOME TOWN

Rotorua (now lives in Australia)

HOBBIES

Reading, writing, painting, sculpture, poetry, cooking, studying humans, bush walks, humanities, law, nano technology, CERN, design, playing the piano, didgeridoo

LIFE GOAL

To make politicians and judges accountable by getting the public to help remove Crown and Judicial Immunity. Our political systems of managing our countries are a failure. We really need to separate the nice smiling people from the constructive ones. Our politicians and judges want mana and prestige which they prioritise over the more important responsibility of being the most important fiduciaries in the world. If any other fiduciary fails they only harm a few. If our politicians and judges fail they can and unfortunately do ruin the entire nation.

My Favourite Time of the day is...(and why)

Being woken by our pet birds at 5am. Here in Australia when you go outside the sound of the forest all around us is just coming alive like an orchestra.

I really enjoy...

My family and seeing others succeed in life.

List a few of your recent accomplishments that you are proud of:

Picking my sorry self up out of New Zealand after losing the Matakana litigation, coming back to Australia to start again from scratch. But my greatest success has been seeing my children being successful.

Did you celebrate them? How?

Everyday we talk about their objectives and goals. I tell them I am proud of them and encourage them to keep moving forward

I am busy at the moment doing:

We are currently filming a movie called GOVERNMENT, a 9/11 type film about idiots in power.

My big hairy audacious goal this year is to:

Lose weight and get really fit, and be a better father and husband.

I knew I was onto something when:

I realised intention was the prerequisite of doing.

My secret for getting things done is to:

Prioritise things. Draft a list of what I need to do. I recall the words of a Tibetan Monk who escaped the invading Chinese army by walking over the snow and ice covered mountains. When asked how he did it, he said "One step at a time"

My darkest hour was when:

I lost the Matakana Island litigation at the Privy Council. I had won the 4 week trial in the NZ High Court - the defendants were clearly guilty and all the documents and cross examination proved that. Then the Court of Appeal changed the facts and ignored others, I was shocked democracy could be so negligent or corrupt. The Privy Council were supposed to be the beacon of intelligence so when they rejected my appeal I just went blank.

I came through it by:

On the flight back sitting in first class talking with a Chinese businessman from Singapore we started talking about what we did. I explained I had just lost a court case and began talking about it all . I started showing him some photographs of Matakana Island from my briefcase and among those photo's were pictures of my family and our home, While looking at them I realised my family were about to lose their home as we had put everything into the litigation. Suddenly I found myself crying.

The Singaporean man put his hand over to mine and said " Maybe I don't know how bad things are for you but I want to consider this, imagine if you were on this flight for a different reason, imagine if one of your family had been killed and you were flying back to New Zealand for that reason, you would be here right now praying to god he take everything you own in exchange for that family member to be alive again. Money is not as important as family that is your priority and that is your wealth and reward". I got off the plane with a smile and my family needed that.

What would do if you were not ...

If I didn't do what I did I would love to be a postman. What a lovely calm life that would be.

What do you do to cope with stress?

As I have got older I cope better. Often I think of planet earth flying past in space and when I think of it from out there I remember whatever my problems are they really don't matter in the big picture.

How many hours do you work each week?

I guess I seldom stop if you consider thinking through things as work. The issues I am working on are huge. Everyone is caught up with the current system of political management but that system is failing and they know it. So where my mind is most hours of the day is reforming political management. By that I mean getting better performance from those who say to society "trust us with managing your society" The human apathy, technical, logistical and media obstacles in that are enormous and require endless thinking in order to hatch a plan to win. And I don't plan on losing the world can't afford that.

What do you do when things aren't going your way?

Never give up. But I don't keep banging my head against the wall I stand back from it and think about all the options. But the key is never, never give up the objective. And often the wall is an illusionary obstacle. In other words the things that you think are in the way are not really what's stopping you. And perhaps most important- when someone says no, don't worry about that, perhaps they just don't yet understand.

What is the most important piece of advice you'd give to people who are struggling to create a positive change in their lives?

You should never struggle to make a positive change because being alive is the most positive thing and with that whatever you think is getting you down is really not important in the scheme of things. People I come across who are in a rut are nearly always holding onto the rut like a blanket.

What is the hardest lesson you've had to learn in life?

Realising titles create the illusion ability exists. Learning to struggle with intelligent people in government power who have no common sense. Experiencing government incompetence among the drowning flood of silence.

What separates successful people from unsuccessful people?

Successful people do lots of things and unsuccessful don't do much at all. But success is in the heart not in the wallet. I know plenty of people with money but I only know a few of them with happiness. A friend of mine who taught swimming to the rich in Beverly Hills once said "The only happy people in Beverly Hills were the staff"

Do you have any daily rituals that help you keep focused and in the right mental state to succeed?

Go go go !!! Life is short. And remember the problem with doing nothing is you don't know when you are finished. So get off your bum and do something.

Do you have any school/study qualifications?

Dropped out at 15 with no educational qualifications but an attitude of I can do anything and I knew I wanted to see the world and be a success at whatever I did.

What are the three most important personal qualities you've had to develop to become a CEO?

I am still learning I don't think you ever stop that. But if I had my time over again the rules from the start would be - never lie, never steal, never do anything that wounds your soul, respect others, work hard and never give up.

What are the three most important skills that you would advise up and coming youngsters to develop?

Never do anything wrong that you can't come back from. Pay your bills. Talk about your objectives and explain how you require relationships in order to meet those objectives. In doing that everyone knows where you want to go and what part they can play in it. But for those who have tried and have failed, remember to rebuild to last we must be aware why we failed.

Who inspires you the most and why?

Firstly my wife. The greatest human I have ever known. If the world was seeded from her this would be a wonderful planet with wonderful people. There would be no wars and no problems.

But apart from her, Sir Peter Tapsell. He was a raised without shoes in a poor family. But his hard work and sense of drive led him to the top of sport, medicine and politics. Then in retirement he has found total happiness in saddling up his horse at 5am and riding into the hills to fix a fence, move livestock around. Peter lives life by looking forward, he never looks back. He is perhaps New Zealand's greatest son. I love the man dearly.

Do you have a formal goal setting process?

First goal is being able to see it and keeping your eye on it. When I was 18 Reg Ansett founder of Ansett airlines asked me if I could shoot a target at 50 yards on a barn door. When I said yes he then asked if I though I could beat the worlds best shooter to which I said no. He then said if you put a blindfold over the champion shooters eyes you could beat him. The lesson was it does not matter how much talent you have, if you can't see the target anyone can beat you. So if you want to hit a target you have to take off the blind folds in order to see the target. I have often thought about that. The blindfolds come in many forms with comments like you can't do that, you're too young, too old, it's too expensive, too hard, too far. Just focus on the target and don't let people put blindfolds on you.

Have you ever been scared to .........? What did you do about it?

I am not scared of anything which scares the hell out of those who travel with me. When my son was 8 we were screaming along on one hull out of the water on Lake Rotorua in our catamaran one cold windy winter's day. He was crying scared we would tip over and he would drown. I said to him if he feared dying and was hanging on doing nothing about it then would it not be better for him to try managing the event rather than being a passenger. He got the message and soon was helping me control the boat. That was one of his most important life lessons.

What comes first...success or confidence?

Confidence, you must have confidence about your plan. And as soon as you have confidence you have become more successful than those with money and no confidence. I recall an old Italian guy who owned a timber yard in Sydney talking about a young lad working for him who had just won lotto. He said "Everyone is saying he's rich. But he's not rich his heart, his soul is poor, he will never be rich."

The Parting Shot:

When I feel frustrated that things are not coming together as I wish, I proceed to... Again I look at the objective I am chasing and review the bridges and steps I am making to get me there. If you plant seeds, it's only one good seed that may count. But perhaps the most important thing I recall is something I wrote at the Privy Council in London. "The cost of failure is experience, but the cost for not trying is your soul"