I'm participating in a ClickFunnels One Funnel Away 30 day Challenge and one of the tasks is to write and publish my origin story. The whole story would fill a book or two so what comes next is a heavily condensed version, with a particular eye on what's most relevant to what's involved in the challenge and why.

35 years ago I entered the worlds of finance and computing and I've been involved with both ever since. While I became a finance professional and have spent the last 30 years working at a senior level in a wide variety of businesses in several very different sectors, the common thread all along has been problem solving. In computing, I chose the super user road rather than programming and took great delight in mastering the various applications I used on a daily basis. In 2003 I set up my own consulting company and have done that part-time ever since, except for a 4 year period when I worked at it full time.

My career has brought me to work in Pakistan for 2 years, Saudi Arabia for a little over a year and now in Qatar for the past 7 years.

I trained as an accountant with KPMG and qualified in 1991. I added a Master's degree in Operations Management in 2006 and am presently finishing a PhD in Quality and Performance Improvement, with a particular focus on Lean Six Sigma.

I have worked with and for businesses of every kind and size imaginable, from tiny one person operations to multi-billion dollar a year corporations employing thousands of people. And I believe the one thing that most clearly differentiates successful from unsuccessful businesses is the ability to systemize operations.

When I worked as an auditor, one of the first tasks was to evaluate and decide whether the audit would be a systems audit where we would test the reliability of the systems of internal control on which the business relied or a substantive audit where we test the transactions recorded in the books and records of the business. Small business audits were usually substantive audits because even where there were good systems of internal control, these relied on the director and wouldn't pass segregation of duties tests. Nevertheless, I noticed that the most successful small businesses did indeed have good systems.

In my many years working with clients to help grow their businesses, I observed that most of them struggled with and couldn't implement the necessary systems in their businesses. They were what Michael E Gerber describes as "technicians". While they knew the nuts and bolts of the actual products & services they were selling, they knew very little about the business side of running a business. To make it worse, most of them didn't really want to learn. In reality, while they believed they had a business, what they actually had was a J-O-B from which they got no time off, were paid last and couldn't sell.

When I got involved in internet marketing, I noticed these same issues coming up over and over again. The more I interacted with people online, the more I realised they lacked an understanding of the business side of running a business. This meant they were very unlikely to develop the systems needed to run their internet marketing like a business and make a profit. Worse, if by chance they some did make money, it would be highly likely they couldn’t replicate it.

That's why I decided to create a simple, step-by-step system that anyone, even a total beginner, can follow to design and implement the essential systems every business owner needs to start, build, grow and manage a profitable online business.

I'm putting the finishing touches to it right now. The next stage is pre-launch testing. If you'd like the opportunity to be one of my testers, please comment below and I'll contact you.

Time to Dive in. Ever since I discovered, many, many years ago, the profound joy in writing something that not only expresses what I think and feel but also evokes the same in others, I have wanted to write.

But I listened to the other voices, you know — the ones that say you’ll never make a living, you’ll starve in a garret, etc. and then later on when I stopped listening to those voices, there was a whole headful of new ones — it’s too hard to get published, who’d read your stuff anyway, stop wasting your time — do a real job.

Eventually, on New Year’s Eve 31 December 2015 I published my first and so far only) book on Kindle and CreateSpace. It’s a book of poems I wrote between 1977 and 2015. I hesitated before choosing publish, feeling all the old insecurities and fears come roaring up from my memory and flooding me with adrenaline as if I was about to be attacked and needed to flee.

Thankfully, I didn’t quit and did publish. The response was significantly different than what I expected. Within 6 weeks, my book was No 1 on Kindle for the category Irish poetry, dislodging (for a few days at least) our most distinguished poets and Nobel Laureates such as Seamus Heaney and William Butler Yeats.

What pushed me to finally publish and put my ‘stuff’ out there wasn’t a desire to publish per se, more of a determination to not step back from the brink.

My fear of being ridiculed has been a lifelong companion — my earliest memory is from senior infants class in junior school at the age of 3, going on 4, when I made a mistake and got an answer wrong. The teacher made fun of me, put me outside the door and told me to go back to junior infants, the ‘babies’ class, and everybody laughed at me. Strange how things like that stay with you throughout your life. That was the summer of ’65, a mere 55 years ago but with the slightest prompt, I’m back there.

In most areas of my life I’ve overcome that fear. I’m comfortable getting up on a stage and talking, or teaching, chairing meetings, giving presentations etc. But those things don’t usually touch my soul or shine a light directly on my innermost thoughts. And when it comes to those, I’m still afraid to invite people in, never mind put myself out there.

This year I will be 59 and I’ve started on a new journey to create a business and life for myself and my family. It involves learning lots of new things, taking new risks, finding and developing new ways of expressing myself and reaching the people I’m most meant to serve. So I’m into Facebook and Twitter and even started Instagram and Snapchat accounts. I’ve been active on LinkedIn for years but this social media is a whole new ball game to me. My natural inclination is to keep pretty much to myself. Instead, I’m being encouraged to widen my circles and expand my horizons.

I started a blog about 12 years ago but let it go when I came out to work in the Middle East in 2012. So I’ve started that up again. Work in progress.

I’m doing a 30 day challenge at the moment and the task for the day I’m on (I’m a week behind, but hey, I’m not giving up) is to write and post here. The challenge given for today is to write here for 365 consecutive days. It’ll help me find my voice. And that I look forward to.

In October 2019, I presented a research paper on the introduction of statistical sampling and quantitative analysis to the audit of clinical coding to a group of 200 Health Information Managers at the 2019 HIMAA/NCCH National Conference held in Paramatta, NSW, Australia. HIMAA is the Health Information Management Association of Australia while NCCH is the National Centre for Classification in Health, The University of Sydney. Click here to download a copy of the Research Paper Summary: Introduction: As part of the preparations for the introduction of a Social Health Insurance Scheme (SHIS) and a move to Activity Based Funding (ABF), we conducted an audit of clinical coding accuracy and compliance with mandatory Patient Minimum Data Set (Patient MDS) requirements. Method: The audit tested a sample of 1,829 discharges selected at random from an un-stratified population of 171,827 cases. The sample was calculated at a 99% confidence level with a margin of error of 3%. Results: The overall accuracy of clinical coding was 66%, i.e. coding errors were detected in 623 of the 1,829 encounters audited. A total of 1,301 coding errors were detected in these 623 encounters audited, giving an average of 2.088 coding errors per encounter with errors. The rate of incorrect AR-DRG assignment was 7.5% including a 1% rate of invalid admissions. 28% of the sample had major coding errors and these accounted for 71% of all errors found. 12% of the sample had incorrect principal diagnosis and 44% of all major errors were found in this group. Of the eight Patient MDS items tested, significant non-compliance was detected in three. Discussion: This was the first audit of clinical coding accuracy and Patient MDS compliance to use statistical methods for sample selection and results analysis. Accordingly, there are no comparative data available. However, the results indicate clearly areas that need improvement and provide a benchmark against which future audits can be measured.        Conclusion: The study introduced statistical sampling and auditing of clinical coding to a major healthcare provider. The results show clearly the areas where improvement is most needed to support the preparations for the introduction of insurance and/or Activity Based Funding. Proceedings of the HIMAA/NCCH 36th National Conference, Health Information Management: Engaging the Next Generation. 23 - 25 October 2019, Western Sydney Stadium, Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia Copyright 2019 Health Information Management Association of Australia Ltd/National Centre for Classification in Health, The University of Sydney Click here to download a copy of the Research Paper directly from the Conference Proceedings Comments are welcome below. If you would like to know more about the application of statistical sampling and quantitative analysis to large populations of data, please let me know in the comments.