Having a complete relationship doesn't exclude a mediocre personal or professional life. Read More
Think of the ROI Before You Have Intercourse
The ROI (return on investment) for someone who invests in your company or idea is not simply about the payout when they exit. That can be part of it, but every serious investor wants their money working for them , giving them a return and a big payout later. Every investment will have multiple streams of income that is collectively the ROI. Read More
The Opportunity of Adversity
Through consciousness and connection to self comes clarity, and paths reveal themselves to lead us out of the fog of emotional self sabotage and and inner discord. Read More
Ever feel like you have nothing left to give? Like there’s nothing left in the tank?
A simple technique that works for me when surrounded by negativity in any forum is to close your eyes (or if you are more advanced you can do this with your eyes open and shut out the visual noise), breath and focus on your breathing and on your heart chakra. In my experience, anything from 5 seconds to a few minutes or longer delivers a great energy reset and recharge. Read More
Time is more valuable than money
Money is a representation of our individual and collective perceptions of value for any given product, service, or thing. It is a mindset. We also have a mindset about time. For the majority of people the reason they struggle to achieve a higher value for their time is because their mindset about the value of time is subordinated to their mindset about the value of money. Read More
Healthy and unhealthy forms of collaboration
Collaboration is not charity. It is transactional. Each party brings either equal value to the collaborative venture or they bring value commensurate to the percentage of the rewards the collaborative venture will create for them. Read More
What’s beyond the brick wall of our greatest challenges?
It could be a new beginning and a better future. One way or another it will be a form of new beginning and it can be either a better future or a worse one. The reality of the situation is that when these cataclysmic events happen, how your future unfolds is determined entirely by how you respond, what you do next. Read More
Don’t Have Sex With Your Expert
The concept of legacy has morphed from something physical for the few to something experientially tangible for the many, emanating from the vision of one or a few who inspire a group to exert effort and invest resources to bring about something lasting for the benefit of everyone else, provided it is valuable to their individual circumstances. Read More
Too much communication, not enough connection
As my good friend Paul Dunn says, we need less communication and more connection. When we connect with people we create action, and through action we gain traction, which in turn leads to attraction. Read More
Microsoft employees not permitted to join or use LinkedIn
I shit you not. This is not fake news or some attempt to be funny or catchy. It’s one of those classic occurrences like Bill Gates predicting in 2004 that "Two years from now [thus by 2006], spam will be solved." Read More
Are you one of ‘The Untouchables’
Are you one of ‘The Untouchables’ because in your current business you have neither the financial resources to pay for support or for advertising to promote yourself, and you most likely don’t have a marketing list or sizeable social following? Read More
You DO NOT have to fail constantly to succeed in either your business and/or personal life
There's this BS notion in entrepreneurship circles that the only way to get ahead is by failing repeatedly. Yes, I believe mistakes are essential to success. Just not the only way and they certainly should not be worn like a badge of honour or right of passage. Read More
Fear, Known & Unknown
People don't fear the unknown. They fear the end of that which they know and have habitualised (internalised habitually). Know fear, acknowledge it and move beyond it. Resisting it will simply enable it to persist. When you give over to fear you fuel the paradigms of your current experiences and empower them to control your actions. When you acknowledge it and move beyond it, embracing faith you open up 10,000 doors of infinite potentiality. Read More
Stop Pitching Me
You can have multiple skills and abilities that may be useful, but if you adopt the stance that you can be all things to someone, you risk devaluing the things they may want to do with you. Read More
Become a better networker!? No!! Improve your Business
Become a better networker!? No!! Improve your Business Purpose is lost in the noise Since when has ‘become a better networker’ been the point to going to networking functions? It seems that most of the ‘networking experts’ out there are stuck in the features and benefits mode of business networking events. Almost every general business networking event I have attended in the last six years had someone spruiking the ultimate goal that you should ‘become a better networker’. This approach misses the mark by miles and from what I have observed commonly creates ‘business networker’ drones. People focused on improving Read More
Blue Ocean Strategy in Internet Marketing – Make Your Competition Irrelevant
I’ve been around the Internet since before it went commercial in the early 90’s and have been involved in Internet Marketing as it has evolved over the last almost two decades. For the sake of clarity, I’m not some so-called guru about to pitch you on my latest product. Instead I have seen what works, what doesn’t work, and what is required to make any real money and/or have a real effect on your site traffic. Read More
Positioning Your Start-up Using Blue Ocean Strategy – Part 1
By using Blue Ocean Strategy innovative start-ups can identify market spaces that have no competition, and in doing so render their traditional industry competition irrelevant. The basic premise of Blue Ocean Strategy is that every market can be segregated into both a red ocean and a blue ocean. Read More
Blue Ocean Strategy Principles at Work in the Marketplace
Last month I was asked to present to a group of investment fund managers. The topic was how to leverage social business marketing so I did a little digging and found that besides a large amount of social media spam and some ‘analogue’ multi-modality marketing there are as good as no companies in this space truly engaging in social business marketing. Read More
Some Basic Tips on How Not to Use a Family Office List
Many people make some very basic mistakes when interacting with Family Offices and lists of Family Offices that they acquire. It is as if by simply having these lists they feel connected, empowered, and invulnerable, and end up making some often irreparable mistakes. The reality is that you should conduct yourself with the same level of decency and integrity as you would with any other human being. Read More
How to Value a Family Office Database Resource – What to look for before you buy
This blog will help you to establish a value for a Family Office database resource you are considering purchasing, and as you explore family office databases you will quickly learn what makes them worth acquiring or not. Here are some of the components that make a Family Office database worth the asking price. Read More
How to Choose the Right Family Office Database
The following will provide you with some guidance on how to tell which family office database resources are worth your investment, if you are looking to use them to compliment your efforts to raise capital, or perhaps enhance your marketing activities, within your company. Read More
An Entrepreneurs Insights into Family Office Data Base Trends
An Entrepreneurs Insights into Family Office Data Base Trends The fast growing and rapidly evolving Family Office space as a separate vertical industry is a phenomenon not to be underestimated. This article is intended to highlight some of the top trends that affect the creation, use, and expansion of Family Office data base resources. Whereas this space was hitherto below the mainstream radar, there are daily more competitors jockeying for position and for the attention of Family Offices so that they might gain access to the very large pools of concentrated wealth that these organisations manage. Some of the top Read More
The Secret Colours of Marketing & Communicating Your Message – Part 3
I often speak at events about a variety of topics such as Marketing, Blue Ocean Strategy, Social Networking and Social Media and Business Finance and Securing Investment. The marketing gigs have provided some great questions at the end of the presentation. For example, I am often asked whether there is one thing that I would like clients to do to make it easier for me to support them and contribute to their success that will increase the synergy between us and quality of the output. Read More
The Secret Colours of Marketing & Communicating Your Message – Part 2
In creating your marketing message one of your objectives is to connect with your target audience. To create that connection it is important that you include some of the warmer tones so that people feel comforted. It also introduces a sense of humanity; think of the prison example in the first part of this series. Read More
The Secret Colours of Marketing & Communicating Your Message – Part 1
Choosing the right colours to accurately convey your message or create the right perception in your marketing materials is as much an art as it is a science. Colours impact the emotions and actions of your target audience so it is important to make the right colour choices to maximise these impacts. Read More
How to Make Hotel Investments
There is always very large amount of capital at stake, and this requires meticulous planning and considerable expertise by and of the investor. Investors should upon expert opinion, and often do, before finalising a decision for an intended investment. Read More
Creating Excellence in Your Restaurant
Many companies prefer to make money by cutting costs. I prefer to do it by creating excellence. Do you have a plan, a strategy, and most importantly action points for you and your staff to create excellence in your restaurant daily? Read More
11 Key Leadership Attributes for Restaurant Managers
Your value to your brand as a leader in the restaurant and hospitality industry is derived from your ability to manage various metrics that contribute to excellence in service and profitability of the venue. These metrics include but are not limited to costs for food and labour, and table turnover. Staff engagement and training, and production efficiency also form part of your commercial brief. All of these are areas you are expected to manage and monitor, and improve! Read More
Don’t Drink and Drive, Do Drugs and Drive!
I watched a show last night about random breath testing in Australia. It was one of these reality experience shows, obviously designed to be a community service message about not drinking and driving. Suitably it includes everything from fatal accidents where alcohol was a factor to the 80 something year old granny who had sip too many on her port at the local RSL Club. These sorts of shows are all over the world. Read More
Let’s Rebuild with Commercially Driven Socially Focused Business
I believe that (big) business should be able to reap the rewards of their toil. The greater the toil should equate to the greater the reward ... not always so..... either way, the greater the reward the greater the moral and ethical responsibility to give back, pay forward whatever ..... I believe that tax should be a last resort, in fact it is a bad last option; it is a stick, or at least it should be, to bring those less accepting of their responsibility back into line. Read More
Are Private Bankers Poor at Describing What They Do or Simply Just Anti-Social by Nature?
Last night I attended a private reception for Financial Services Professionals (FSP) specifically focused on private bankers, investment bankers, hedge fund managers et al and a few of the companies that service them. Read More
Challenging Concepts that have Become Platitudes
I believe there is no box or square outside which you need to think. If you think there is a box then you have probably already reached the maximum level of thinking that you can achieve on your own. I believe that the box is an individual’s own perception of their or other people’s limitations. Read More
Stale Old News or What Really is News?
Journalism used to be about developing a story, investigating both sides, uncovering the facts and presenting the case. These days it is about either paraphrasing and rewording social media contributions, or presenting a scenario based on personal opinion or directed by company policy Read More
What’s in a Name?
What’s in a Name? One of the most important decisions when starting a new business is choosing a name. Whether it says exactly what you do, or is one of those made up names, it is ultimately how people will remember you, refer people to you, talk about you at parties, business functions, and networking events. In addition to traditional considerations such as trademarks and proximity to other names, in the Internet age, serious consideration needs to be given to whether or not the name will be available with your preferred generic top-level domain (gTLD) e.g. .com, .co.uk, .nl, .de, Read More
Social Media Noise Is Becoming Louder
The more fake social media profiles are created, the greater the noise will become online. Although there is probably more noise (in terms of total volume) on the Internet than ever before, for those who remember the early Usenet and BBS’s prior to that, I feel the relative noise to level ratio is much lower today than it was back then, but it is creeping up fast. Do I have a solution for this? No. For now just be alert! Read More
If You Write It Publish It
People want to know who you are and what you stand for. They want to be able to at least feel like they know you. That, your general public reputation, trusted third party referrals and their gut will tell them whether they think and feel as though they can trust you at whatever level is necessary for potential interactions between you. Read More
The Tsunami Effect of Very Large Groups on Hospitality Venues
How well would your venue serve clientele when your lunch trade swells to more than double the expected trade? … and what are you doing to give your staff the skills, tools and training to continue to deliver your quality brand experience in these times? Read More
IT Fear & Fifedoms
The reality of most tech organisations is that they will embed themselves deeply in the client organisation. They foster fear amongst users and especially management that they, the tech guru, must be there to make the system safe and keep it running. Read More
