My nasty cold came back today, so I ended up staying home.   Amazingly (or maybe no so amazingly) we had a record day, operations worked, and I was completely unnecessary in the operational side of business.  Had a brief chat with Mina about state of affairs, price of gold going up and  cash needs, but he handled that via video conf call.

Responded back to one customer that some how found my personal number in the US and called me (he was a UK guy).   It has been a while since I reached out to a customer direct and it felt great.   Need to put in process in place where ‘customers’ that are NOT satisfied in our Customer Care are reviewed and our processes are made to self adjust.   In this case, this gentleman took the time to call me over 10GBP price discrepancy.  When someone does that, you know its not about money, about about something else.  So, basically, somewhere somehow we managed to piss off a customer for no good reason.      Adding that to the process improvement for next year – disliking to use strong words, but I HATE, really HATE, when we piss of our customers.    Yes, its a negative statement but really expresses how it feels for me.  So, will do better here soon.

Besides that,  I though more about getting an English PA for my house – to lighten the load on my PA at work.     I think I will go that route – have a PA/housekeeper with English language to manage my personal things – and give Eileen more time to help me with higher value things (like screening emails, access to me, etc.). 

Actually, in terms of access – and maybe this is for a different day – but I have been considering starting to remove access to myself from the staff -  part of me dislikes doing that as it takes me away from the things I love, BUT at the same time, the daily distractions do take me away from the really important things I should be doing (like raising, hiring execs, etc.).     Plus, in some ways, I feel, that the people that I have don’t really need me – but perhaps culturally its a sign of respect to ask for my input.   Regardless, am thinking about ‘access’ and how best to focus on my high value activities.

My accountants talked with CN tax bureau today– all is well – but funny how things run here – and how you get a call from the tax agency and you are supposed to jump and go next day.  Not sure if IRS works the same way, but in a way its ok –things get cleared up and answered nice and quick and relationships and understanding of the business between CN officials and the company gets deeper.  A partnership in a way.