Birth of first baby

Riley Ronald Whicker arrived on the 16th November at 7:59am, the day my life changed.

Riley had been planned for many years and has taken over 4 years to arrive but wow was it worth it yes yes yes.

Mum and bub are doing fantastic and at the time of writing this Riley is now 6 weeks old and smiling at us constantly (it could be wind not sure).

Between changing nappies and nursing Riley I am learning more and more about coding and running a sports social media site. Everything is a learning experience both being a father for the first time and running a business that in todays world is very hard.

Over the last few months many things have opened up (still no major investors yet) I and Navsports chairman Dean Viglione have had meetings with venture capital firms Accede Capital and Southerncross investments, some great feedback was acquired from both.

I will be working on some new strategies over January 08 and hopefully we will move ever closer to raising badly needed funding.

Well nappies need changing bye for now.

Time sure does get on

Well its been a few months since the last blog, so I will give a brief run down on whats been happening.

The venture capital broker is working out well the company has been restructured to be investment ready. The site has many great functioning features such as the sports news aggregation service, our getting started program, our navsports tv show and the online shop. The sports clubs directory and social networking side is in development and is looking to be a huge influence on sports promotion.

The employees have finished up working out of my rumpus room and are just doing some fine tuning at their homes to make the existing features on http://www.navsports.com.au/ bug free.

An information memorandum and multi media presentation has been created and sent out to prosepective investors, so its a what and see game now. Navsports will only reach its true potential if it gets funding. (fingers crossed)

Michelle has stopped work and is due in three weeks OMG. I`m going to be a dad. I am blessed.

The babies room is complete and we are just awaiting the arrival of our first child now.

Michelle finished up work on Friday and received nice presents and a warm goodbye from her work mates and bosses.

Well its time to get back to work. bye

Racquet Ball King

Well I have regained my crown as the racquet ball king today flogging Dean in straight sets.

Racquet ball is a favourite sport of mine manly because I am good at it. Next week Dean will probably get his revenge but thats ok because it will be a competitive match.

The team is working tomorrow, still a few weeks behind so they will have to lift their game and get up to speed if we are to finish the project by November.

Oh Michelle and I are picking up the babies room furniture tomorrow, something we are both really looking forward to.

Bye for now...

Time In Vicentia

Michelle and I spent the weekend down at Aileens holiday home in Vincentia southern NSW. We slept in Saturday, watch a pregnany dvd and a couple of Harry Potter dvds.

Saturday night we went to a stonegrill restaurant, it was very unique as they bring your steak out raw on a very hot stone, you cut bite size pieces and it cooks right there in front of you. (very good night).

Things are moving slow with the website but its moving in the right direction.

I have engaged capitalised.com to help raise $1,500,000 for expansion and development of the navsports website.

At the moment I am putting together an information memorandum, its coming together very nicely and I should have it done by the end of the week.

I will be moving the company to an unlisted public company which will make the company more transparent.

I have asked Dean Viglione to be the chairman of the company as he has many years experience in running very successful companies.

well time to hit the pillows big day tomorrow when I take on Dean in a game of racquet ball, he got me the last couple of times but tomorrow will be payback time.

Week Goes Quick

Gee the week goes quick.

I had the meeting today with capitalised.com and the meeting seemed to go well. Its the next step to get the company really moving along.

Michelle and I had lunch with Wendy and her sister Cheryl at Rossettis today, Wendy is my brother Marks wife. She is down from the coast to visit her mother who is in hospital at the moment.

I have decided to employ Glen who will be assisting Ashley with design implementation, he will start next week Mon,Wed and Thursdays.

Brother Billy is moving back to Western Australia next week to work with people with disabilities his family is following a couple of weeks later.

I have to work at the MTA tonight till 6pm as Aileen one of my staff is on a mystery tour today and wont be back until then. I am really not at the MTA except when I have lessons or its a weekend.

Ok pasta tonight again for dinner, I really have to learn to cook more food than just pasta.

See Ya...

Short One

Just a short one today.
I picked Michelle up from her work and we went to the park for lunch today.
Later in the day I had three hours coaching with my 4 top students.

The guys are working well and should have something for the public in the next few weeks.

bye for now...

Monday 23rd July 08

Its Monday 23rd July and Ashley and Kirrily are starting their 5th week working on Navsports. Ash is dropping back to three days per week this week because of other work commitments but we may possibily be getting an assistant programmer(Glen), recommended by Uwe (project manager).

Kirrily is ahead on design but engineering the software is taking longer than expected, Uwe assures me that we are making good time. I am not sure as November is b day. Birth of our first child and I promised Michelle that I would not have anyone working from our house by that time.

I forgot to mention that I set up work stations in our rumpus room for the team to work in, I did not want to go back to what the situation was before, having the old team work as contactors just led to wasted money and time. In this enviroment managing the team is so much more productive and professional.

So what is Navsports about, well its a sports news aggregation site, multi sports club directory and social friends networking site. You might think that their are plenty of these sites around, there are sites that cater to this market but Navsports is 3 years worth of research and development and will be the most comprehensive sports networking site in the world. Already we have over 14,000 clubs listed and growing and we are only in beta mode.

Hardest thing is coming up with the funding to keep the project going (good segway), actually on Wednesday I will be having a meeting with a venture capitalist broker. Should be interesting.

Well I better go do some work, I have the MTA to run Navsports to run and a babies room to start preparing. bye for now.

Shopping for Baby Stuff

Michelle and I went shopping for baby stuff on Sunday and we pre ordered the furniture for the baby room from babies galore out at Penrith. On the way back we called in to see mums grave (mum past away earlier this year, mum was 74).
After that Michelle, her parents and I went to lunch at the Blue Star cafe at Stocklands Wetherill Park.

Pretty much a lazy Sunday, we both watched a dvd then went to dinner then came home and watch another dvd.

I am looking forward to Ashley and Kirrily coming tomorrow to continue on Navsports.com.au.

Day Two

Day two of my blogging experience and its a Saturday. I was up early this morning at the tennis centre preparing the for a big day of coaching I had 5 coaches on 5 courts and about 150 kids today, It was the first day back for term 3 and it was a busy one with parents paying and rebooking. but its nearly 5pm now and I am about to cook dinner for Michelle and I in about an hour.

The website is going really good over the next few entries I will let you in on what we will be doing over the next few months, investment for the business wise and the look and feel of the site. My project manager is happy with the progress so far and is confident that we will have something for the public to play around with in the next week or two.

Dinner for tonight is pasta, I can`t cook that much but my pasta is the best.

Sunday tomorrow and Michelle and I will be going to baby kingdom to buy some stuff for the babies room. still three and a half months to go but the furniture takes 2 months to come in.

Will write more tomorrow bye for now.

Gotta Start Somewhere

Starting is sometimes the hardest thing to do, Well this is my first blog entry of many I hope. I have been reading lots of other people blogs and was inspired to start my own.

My name is Stewart Whicker from Sydney Australia and I am the founder and CEO of Navsports.com.au a Multi sports directory and social friends networking site.

I have been working on the business model for three years, I have gone through two versions and am now on the third. Things were not meant to be easy but I am exicited because after a lot of research I believe that I have the right team and business model to make it work.

My background is sports centre management and elite sports coaching. I currently run the Marconi Tennis Academy in the western suburbs of Sydney. The MTA is a very successful facility I employ 12 coaches and we coach over three hundred students per week.

My own coaching experience includes training a player to multi Australian Junior Championships, Australian Open junior doubles finals and to an ATP world ranking.

Well this blog is to be about my adventure at trying to create the worlds best Sports website. So I will start tomorrow with that.

I will sign off today with letting you know that I am happily married to Michelle and we have our first child on the way, the baby is due in November and we are both very excited to welcome a new person into this world. Bye for now...