During this past week I watched my wife, Roselyn, cross the finishing line of a thirty-kilometre charity walk. I was incredibly proud of her achievement as it was the culmination of a large amount of sacrifice, hard work and dedication.

I remember when Roselyn first told me that she would like raise funds to save people’s eyesight by participating in the CoastTrek charity walk. Once the decision was made she quickly developed a laser focus to her achieve the goal.

Goals are amazing things. They can inspire us to new heights as we stretch the boundaries of what we thought was possible. To be worthwhile, goals need to be big and audacious! They are also personal.

For example, if an Olympic marathon runner signed up for the thirty-kilometre walk they would probably view it as a bit of a warm up. What they need to inspire them is something much longer over as short a time as possible. In the case of my wife, she’d never done anything like this before and for her it was definitely BIG!

This past week I’ve been wrestling with developing a number of graphs in Google Charts. Wrestling is more of a polite way of me thinking a bunch of four letter words combined with hitting my head against a brick wall. It’s been a lesson in frustration while a carrot dangled tantalizingly just out of reach.

I hate giving up on anything…..it’s one of my strengths and is also one of my weaknesses. I’m like a dog with a bone. I’ll just keep on gnawing away at some problem until it’s fixed or in some cases redefined.

It all started when I decided to build a dashboard for some clients that displayed a few graphs on a webpage. How difficult could that be? After a few 3am working sessions, I figured out how to pull data from a database, convert it to JSON format, push it to Google charts and voila! Out popped a beautiful chart!

There was just one problem….I’m a bit of a stickler when it comes to design, so I wanted to have the right colours. OK, solved that, tick! Then I thought, it would be nice if the clients could scroll through a date range……a few hours later, tick!

My wife Roselyn and I have fallen in love with New Zealand and more specifically Queenstown which is situated in the mountains of the South Island. Looking around the incredible vistas is like stepping into The Misty mountains from “The Lord of the Rings” middle earth.....it's stunning.

While walking around the township we discovered a hiking business that takes people on a five day walk from Queenstown, across the mountains and down into Milford Sound. For those of you unfamiliar with Milford Sound, it’s one of the most picturesque, unspoilt places on the Earth with waterfalls cascading thousands of feet into the ocean, wales, dolphins, and soaring mountain ranges. All good!

We’re pretty excited about going on the hike in just under two years’ time (we’re doing a lot of other already planned travel this year) but there’s one problem. We need to get a LOT fitter. To paraphrase Borimir from Lord of the Rings, “One simply does not walk into Milford Sound through the mountains. There’s ups, downs, river crossings and a host of other obstacles in the way.”

So we have a goal…..lose weight (which is a good thing) and get a lot fitter. Goals can be like New Year’s resolutions that are forgotten after the first week or you can choose to take them seriously.

We’ve now bought hiking boots and enough gear to make us feel a little adventurous. Our first hike was a few kilometres in the rain through a fern forest in the hills outside of Melbourne. We’re walking, riding or rowing machining every day to increase our stamina. The goal of the Milford track is inspiring us to get fit (which is always a good thing) and to get healthier.

Like our personal hiking goal every business needs to have goals to strive for. Whether it be the launch of a new product, a financial hurdle to strive for or getting a new client onboard. It’s healthy to have a target that you and your business can be measured against. In fact, I would go as far as to say that a business without a vision/goal is already in a state of decay.

So what’s the goal for your business and are you taking it seriously? Many people have lofty goals but few people actually put legs on them by taking the first steps forward. For Roselyn and I, we’re watching what we eat and doing “stuff”.

It could be that your first step is to pick up the telephone and call a perspective buyer for a domain you own. Whatever it is you need to do I can guarantee that your journey into the unknown will be like Frodo crossing the boundaries of your “Shire” and into the wilds of adventure.

Have a great weekend!

This past week I saw my son Timothy come alive. I’d just stepped into the house after the 30 hour journey from ICANN, Dublin and he told me that he’d just been found out that he’d got a job. This wasn’t just any job but one that involved him going from school to school teaching children English through theatre in Italy.

After competing for the position from applicants from all over the world he’d managed to secure the position and he was over the moon! I was so happy for him and it wasn’t long before the whole family was caught up in his enthusiasm.

As a part of his application Tim had to put together a “show reel” for the company in Italy which showcased his acting talents. I must admit that it was hilarious and that his Russian and Irish accents for the big bad wolf and three little pigs was a scream.

There’s something really special about achieving a goal. Whether it’s getting a new job, building a business or achieving something personally in your life. It’s more than a tick….it’s an inner sense of satisfaction that causes you to smile on the inside…..and then let it burst out on your face.

For the past eighteen months the ParkLogic team have been completely redeveloping our entire platform from the ground up. Several weeks ago at “The Domain Conference” we released a sneak preview of the dashboard (you can see this at http://next.parklogic.com) and just this past week we completed migrating our complete hosting infrastructure to a new environment as we gear up for Next.

The redevelopment was a big audacious goal that had a lot of risks with it as the team balanced the needs of the existing platform with the new development. The good news is that we can now see the light at the end of the tunnel….and it’s not a train coming in the opposite direction.

ParkLogic Next will be released in early 2016 and like my son I’m going to have a great big smile on my face at NamesCon. It’s not just that the platform is much better than our legacy system. It’s the fact that a goal will have been achieved and what's inside will reflect on my face.

Have a great weekend!