I have reached the ripe old age of 55! And I celebrated this past weekend with some of my closest friends and of course my wife and children. When I was in my 20’s I thought that by age 40 I would retire. But as time goes on I have realised the true cost of retirement and I am not financially stable enough at this time and I look at people like Lord Sugar, Warren Buffet, Donald Trump and Richard Branson and realise that despite the fact they could retire now from a financial perspective just like them though I don’t think I could ever stop working, I could take a back seat and allow my managers run the day to day stuff but I could never quit and relax on a beach or golf course full time. That isn’t me.
I must admit my best birthday present was the loan of my best friends 458 Ferrari Italia 
Spyder which still only had 155 miles on the clock when I took delivery, so it was still almost brand new just out of the box. This was great, so I was able to have a blip around Bournemouth with my son and daughter. I know I am too old to be a boy racer, but you have to grow old, you don’t have to grow up!
We drove over Canford Cliffs, Sandbanks and Poole quay with the roof down enjoying the rare nice weather. And it is funny I still get inspired by nice things, as I drove through Poole quay I looked right to see Eddie Jordan’s new Sunseeker being completed and tested on the water.
What ever level you or your friend’s are at there will always be people with so much more but an entrepreneur always needs something to aim for and the Ferrari I was driving was a good achievement to aim for, even the luxury boat was inspiration (that I may never reach). But as they say if you reach for the stars and end up on the moon you have done pretty well.
Back in business land and franchising for Ovenking is all getting set with the marketing, we have had a great run on the business with our current vans creating work and re-bookings so we are pushing the franchises out now and I say to all the other oven cleaning franchise companies watch this space.
They may feel they are established and secure in the industry because of length of time they 
have been trading but they have never competed against me yet, We are right up there with the big boys in the industry with our cleaning quality and service, we have a few interesting twists on the usual franchise model offered by competitors to ensure our franchisees can make the £1000+ a week or more that all the other franchise companies are proclaiming.
Keep an eye on our progress and I am very pleased to announce we have in fact already sold our first franchise in the Southampton area, and Gary Knight is proving to be the ideal franchisee, after he signed contracts and before he came down for training he was already leaflet dropping his area. Gary had jobs booked as a result of his efforts before he completed the training and before we had done his promotional launch. So well done Gary welcome aboard and keep up the good work, Gary will be fully qualified and certified as of tomorrow and we know he has the makings to be a successful franchisee.
Just another quick note on our franchising exploits, as people understand that it is one of my main strengths and an industry I know a lot about I am being approached by a couple of different businesses to consult on their existing and future franchising. This is another good opportunity and I am open to consulting opportunities. As I have rambled on enough I will update you all on Self Global and Self Trading another time.
To finish off on a light note, we created a very funny marketing video for OvenKing which has been a surprise over-night success. I leant a very good friend the OvenKing Mercedes sprinter van and he assured me as he left with it that he was a good driver, I did have my doubts and he proved my concern was well founded watch this video and you can draw your own opinion.