For many of us who have worked hard to make this day possible, this is truly a day of celebration. I think for all Americans, regardless of your political persuasion, we should be happy to look forward to what the possibilities are for us in the years ahead.

In a bit of a spate of irony, I may be personally contributing to this economy. I have had to recently think about buying a new car. With the state of the US economy and in particular, the US automakers, the question is: should I buy a car from one of our troubled US automakers? I’m thinking so.

At The Car Connection, my most recent haunt for online car shopping, I’ve been looking at GMC cars. I like the Car Connection’s website since it makes it easy to locate the various models and features and has quite a bit of detail on the ratings. While GMC might have its share of financial problems (probably much more so than Ford and certainly Toyota), at the very least they don’t have as much of the significant quality woes as Chrysler. I once owned a PT Cruiser, and while it was fun for the first year or so, you could easily tell by the second that quality was not job one over there.

Anyways, GMC, like most automakers, are now producing Hybrids that approach the fuel efficiency of the Japanese automakers. I am hoping that they can power past that and work directly on Plugin Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs), which would be my preferred mode of transportation.

Should I buy a car? Should I wait? What should I buy? If you were put in a position where your current car was no longer available, what would you do?

First, the site is now upgraded to WordPress 2.7, and I’m looking at fixing a number of glitches in the site, including missing downloads, incorrectly functioning tickers, etc. If you spot a problem that needs fixing, please let me know.

Second, I’ve been making lots of progress on personal goals and especially around the FHWW. May “main job” has now been pared down to 4 hours  a day (I know, not a week, yet), but this year I will be paring it down even more. I will spend more time thinking about and writing on muses and microsourcing, so if you have any thoughts, please let me know.

I have a few posts queued up, so I will be uploading them over the course of the next few days. Stay tuned!

I think the timing of reading the book meshes quite well with the beginning of the year. Maybe it’s not coincidental — picking up the book in the first place was motivated by having more time on my hands due to the holiday season (more time to read) as well as being a very retrospective time of the year. (What can I work on / improve / eliminate in the year ahead?)  Regardless, I am really looking forward to making serious progress on my goals, and I have to say, reading the blogs of other 4HHW bloggers really is helping.

4HWW Resolutions for the Business

First, I have to continue working in my existing business, which is right now generating 90% of my income (the other 10% coming from investments and interest). But the goal will be to reduce the time requirement for that down to 20-30 hours per week from the 40-60 now. The primary way I plan to do that is by strategically outsourcing certain parts of the business.

One of the big parts that is consuming lots of my time is marketing some of our events and attracting attendees to a number of our upcoming events. This is something that is urgent and important (Quadrant I Covey), but not something that requires such an expensive resource as me to perform. I think this would be ideal for off-shore, outsourced resources (perhaps located close to the regions to be contacted). I’ll have to start my search on eLance.

Once that’s outsourced, the next activity is around delivery of some of the services and training, which I think can also be done through partners and other resources, leaving me to do sales and business development, my forte. But the big goal is to get the company sold in 2008. This will leave me to pursue the other businesses, which I think will be more aligned with my ongoing entrepreneurial drive, desire to enter the product business, and achieve the time (life/work) balance I seek.

More importantly, I want to start my other businesses in 2008. There are two businesses I am most interested in running. One is a Web 2.0 company that, if it actually manages to work and get traction, I could build into something with real value and potentially sell to one of the majors. The other has absolutely nothing to do with the IT industry and can potentially also prove to be very lucrative.

Oh, and I have an idea for a simple product (a fad, really) that I’d like to test market and develop a prototype. But I’ve never developed anything like it, so I need to gather some experience in doing that sort of product.

Is this too much to all be done in one year? Let’s find out.

4HWW Resolutions for this Blog

First, I want to learn from other 4HWW bloggers and hope that the community can continue to motivate me to my goals and increasing efficiency. In particular, I’m following the blogs of the Four Hour Trial (which looks very interesting – I think I might even ask for some advice!) and the Four Hour Work Week Journal, which seems to be just starting.

I will then endeavor to post what I learn about time savings, outsourcing, product development, marketing, and work/life balance. Hopefully this will encourage all to do the same.

And while this might be a long shot, I’d like to earn at least $5k in first-year revenues from the blog. This would be around $400-$500 a month in revenues, which would be from my primary revenue sources:

• Google Ads (click on the links if you are interested in what they offer!)
• Amazon.com Affiliate sales (buy they books if you want to help me out)
• Cafepress Items (buy my items if you like the designs)
• Adbrite (not quite yet set up)
• Pay-to-Blog (I’ll try that soon, and let you know how that goes!)

If each of these contributes $100 or so a month, I’ll get there.
4HWW Resolutions for MADFUN

• Restart my music hobby. I want to learn how to play guitar and mandolin (maybe banjo) as well as other instruments. I’ll see if I can get the weekly music lessons going and see how far I can get.
• Enter an MBA program. This is the big “muse”. While not a revenue-earning muse as referred to in 4HWW, it is a good investment in myself. I found a good weekend MBA program that might be suited for my particular profile as an entrpreneur. It will take 2 years, but if I can prove I can run 4 businesses, complete an MBA, have MADFUN, and still have a life, I think this 4HWW concept will be well proven.
• Continue my dance hobby. I love to dance. I’ll see if I can squeeze it in at least 2 nights a week
• Cook more at home, take cooking lessons. Home cooking is not only more economical, but also healthier than the alternatives. I love to cook, so I will make it a goal to cook as frequently on my own or find a means to outsource the parts that are time consuming (groceries?) and see if that helps to optimize the schedule.
• Leave weekends as free as possible. The end goal of the successful four-hour-a-weeker.
• Expand my contacts and personal / business network. This is all a stepping stone to the next big thing. If I can succeed on the above, I will then take my efforts one notch further.

Resolutions for Me

So, what does this all mean? I’m being quite ambitious, and some of the above may have to fall by the wayside. After all, the idea is more revenue, less time, more enjoyment, less stress (eustress, not distress, remember?). But can that be done? I’m still less than 30 days into this experiment. But 2008 is when it all kicks in.