| Date | Title | Description |
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| Nov 16, 2010 | The Christmas wishlist | On the weekend I was having a chat by the pool with a friend of mine who is an executive producer at Channel 9.
We see each other every week as the kids have swimming lessons at the same time. Last week she was thinking about Christmas pres... |
| Nov 2, 2010 | Timing is everything | People talk about price as if it’s the only thing you negotiate. It’s not, obviously, but pricing can have interesting impacts on your business and the timing of your sales. I was at a family function many years ago when an older Jewish rea... |
| Oct 26, 2010 | Syncing mechanics | Last week I talked about how I had come up with a better solution for syncing my calendar and contacts information across a variety of devices, including my windows based computers, iPhone and iPad. But I didn’t go into the actual mechanics... |
| Oct 19, 2010 | Syncing phones, computers and other devices | So here’s the problem I noticed. I was browsing Facebook on the weekend, and noticed a friend of mine had recently purchased one of the new 4G phones, the Samsung Epic 4G. He posted that he had finally managed to be able to transfer his con... |
| Oct 12, 2010 | My very own hotspot | During the school holidays I went down to the Morning Peninsula and spent time entertaining the children. I managed to get a kite up in the air for around 20 minutes, so I felt completely validated as a parent.
While I was away I still mana... |
| Oct 5, 2010 | Super profits from the arcade | I just spent a week down on the Mornington Peninsula with the kids over the school holidays. I tried to keep my mind on kite flying and mucking about at the beach, but I came a across a small business that I found just fascinating in how th... |
| Sep 22, 2010 | Meet the CEO, he’s tall and stupid | The average height of an Australian male in 1995 was 174.8cm (5ft 9in) by the ABS. I am 174cm (5ft 8½in) tall. So imagine my irritation when I met with the CEO of a major ($1 billion in revenue) Australian organisation who was around 188cm ... |
| Sep 14, 2010 | The language of business | I was in the Army when I first heard the expression, “The best way of learning something is to teach it”. Another expression I like is that, “you don’t truly understand something until you have to explain it”. This is especially true when y... |
| Sep 7, 2010 | One hand for you, one hand for the ship | I have a friend who was complaining to me two weeks ago that he couldn’t understand why the press had stopped ringing him for a quote, after he had left his high profile business development role with a multinational business, to work with ... |
| Aug 31, 2010 | What to do with IP | Here’s an interesting thing: the most prolific inventor currently in the world (by number of US patents lodged) is actually an Australian by the name of Kia Silverbrook. Kia runs an outfit called Silverbrook Research out of Sydney.
However,... |
| Aug 3, 2010 | How to monetise anything: part 2 | Last post I looked at the question “how do I monetise this?” and suggested frameworks for monetising, as per the below. In this week’s post I want to look at identifying the attributes of a situation you want to monetise.
Identifying the at... |
| Jul 27, 2010 | How to monetise anything: part 1 | I drink a lot of coffee. Unless I have decided to be completely anti-social I normally meet someone for coffee twice a day. It’s part of my investment in networking.
First meetings tend to be wider ranging as we get to know each other, and ... |
| Jul 20, 2010 | Need some help? | The other week I had coffee with Chris Stewart who is a Melbourne-based entrepreneur and strategic foresight consultant. Both Chris and I have lots of different skill sets and we both enjoy starting new ventures. We tend to catch up around ... |
| Jul 14, 2010 | iPad on my fridge | I decided I wanted to purchase an iPad. The first roadblock was my wife, the more level-headed of the two of us, she said: “Of course honey, but by the way, what’s your business case?” I didn’t have one other than, a) I wanted it and b) I w... |
| Jul 6, 2010 | Do ya feel lucky, punk? | At a recent Churchill Club function in our innovation thinking stream, we ran a fascinating event titled “Luck”. As part of the panel, we brought up a chap called Jason Bresnehan from Tasmania to talk. Jason is a corporate advisor who last ... |
| Jun 29, 2010 | Planning for good luck | Every win in my career has been due to hard work and great strategies. Every failure due to bad luck. About 10 years ago I won a million dollar a year support contract. It was due to the sensational sales strategy we had in place. Two years... |
| Jun 22, 2010 | Six reasons not to attend networking events | Two weeks or so ago I took part in a panel session on networking for CIOs. It was an interesting conversation, although it pretty much centred around event attendance and using social networking tools like LinkedIn. At the end of the sessio... |
| Jun 15, 2010 | Would you take on Apple? | Like renovating a house, managing your brand online is a journey rather than a destination. From the early days of the web where you may have just been dealing with a domain name or a piece of software, things have evolved very, very rapidl... |
| Jun 8, 2010 | What’s on your alternative resume? | I have this idea I like to play with which I call the “Alternative Resume”.
Everyone we meet in business has a resume. It’s normally a very dry, three to six page document that lists your contact details and all your achievements, in chrono... |
| Jun 1, 2010 | 6 tips for “un-networking” | Imagine this scenario….
You go to a networking event, hovering at the edges of the crowd, desperately searching for someone you know, to talk to.
Succumbing to the pressure to “network” you give up and introduce yourself to a nearby strange... |
| May 26, 2010 | 5 Olympic-sized opportunities | Having recently done a bit of work with people from the City of London, I have suddenly, but probably not strangely, become aware of the next Olympics, set for July 2012 in London.
It’s also come to my attention that a number of Australian ... |
| May 18, 2010 | 10 thoughts on business card design | I’ve just come back from a two week business development campaign with a client where I collected about 100 business cards through one-to-one meetings and event attendance. I then went back to my office and spent 10 minutes scanning every c... |
| May 12, 2010 | Problems & solutions | A few weeks ago I wrote about experience versus wisdom and mentioned different types of solutions. What I was really talking about was solutions from the entrepreneur’s point of view. I have found myself discussing this a bit lately, in fac... |
| Apr 21, 2010 | Five tips for getting NDAs signed | When I was a pimply faced lad and had just received my commission to be an Army Officer, I had my new boss, a senior Armoured Corps Officer held up to me as the example I should emulate. It wasn’t because he was a particularly great leader ... |
| Apr 13, 2010 | Making life twice as easy | Earlier this year I had Keith Ishikawa from TBM Consulting Group speak at a Churchill Club function about applying Lean Manufacturing techniques to software engineering. Keith was one of the original engineering team for Lexus and a major p... |
| Mar 30, 2010 | Experience versus wisdom | I’ve noticed a pattern…
This morning a colleague of mine complained to me that he was confused by the fact that the builder who is doing his house renovations has 30 years experience but appears to be completely useless.
Last week during th... |
| Mar 23, 2010 | Selling services at a fixed price | Recently I had a look at billing time and materials for your services. This time around I thought I would have a look at packaging your offering and selling it at a fixed price.
Packaging up your offering is not for the faint-hearted though... |
| Mar 16, 2010 | Targetting “fans” | It’s not news that social media is big business at the moment, and rightly so, because it’s a game changer. Consider this: if I am interested in raising awareness of my product with the type of person who barracks for Melbourne Football Clu... |
| Mar 9, 2010 | Do “comission only sales” actually work? | Quite regularly I get offered commission only sales work. Rarely though is it ever phrased that way. Normally it’s a discussion about how exciting and lucrative the opportunity is, with a statement at the end like “we don’t pay retainers th... |
| Mar 2, 2010 | Avoiding time wasters | I recently met with “John” at a coffee shop where we were to discuss his business idea that involved sports sponsorship and the internet.
John put down his crisp manila folder on the table and we introduced ourselves as we ordered coffee. J... |
| Feb 23, 2010 | It’s often not the answer that matters but the question | My son, like many children, had his birthday around the cut-off date for entry into primary school. So my wife and I had a choice: do we send him a little earlier, or a little late? My position on the matter was: “Give me one good reason we... |
| Feb 16, 2010 | Selecting your start up funding source | One of the things that drives me up the wall is hearing the local start up community complain that the venture capital market in Australia isn’t like the US. Of course it’s not, we are in Australia, a much smaller market, with a completely ... |
| Feb 9, 2010 | Some initial thoughts on the iPad | Once again Apple will export California-chic to the rest of the world. Certainly Apple is likely to carve out a “new” niche with style and an interface that just works with its new iPad.
The success of netbook has proven that most users don... |
| Feb 2, 2010 | Time & materials versus fixed price billing | Just before Christmas I had one of my coffee/mentoring sessions with a vibrant young Victorian entrepreneur and an interesting question came up around how she should invoice her services.
Although not an expert in the area of pricing models... |
| Jan 20, 2010 | Keeping smart, productive people | So after last weeks post on looking after smart but lazy people, I got some interesting feedback from a friend who’s a Human Resources Manager in a national organisation with a couple of thousand employees in what seems like hundreds of loc... |
| Jan 12, 2010 | Cherish smart but lazy people | So last time I posted, I discussed dealing with lawyers – lessons learnt from my long lunches with a barrister/army friend.
Another interesting discussion we had was around the need for stupid or lazy people. Ian’s point of view was that in... |
| Dec 22, 2009 | Six lawyer lessons | I once spent two weeks living inside an armoured vehicle with a guy who was destined to be a lifelong friend, despite (much to my disgust) he later became a lawyer. The week we spent together was in 1990, and since then we catch up roughly ... |
| Dec 15, 2009 | Four keys to deploying social media | Last Thursday the Churchill Club ran an event on using Social Media for Sponsorship and Fundraising. It was a great evening with perspectives coming from Peter Williams (CEO Deloitte Digital), Jeremy Kann (General Manager, Sales & Comme... |
| Dec 8, 2009 | A checklist for solid business plans | Pretty much on a weekly basis I get sent ideas, business plans and/or information memorandums for capital raising. Everyone who sends me one, tends to think it’s an expertly crafted, zero-risk proposal to achieve a massive return with a wor... |
| Dec 1, 2009 | Scammers, spammers & spivs | I got an email yesterday from a journalist who wanted to know about scams and dodgy websites. Basically the question was: “Is there a resource you use to understand whether something is right, wrong or just a scam?”. Well there isn’t any pa... |
| Nov 24, 2009 | A look at the MindX mind mapping tool | I had coffee with an entrepreneur last week. As an aside, it appears from the relationship I have with baristas in a variety of locations, that I spend half my life drinking coffee with people.
Anyway, he and I were discussing open source t... |
| Nov 17, 2009 | The invisible bee sting | Last weekend I staked out my spot in the shade at the skateboard park. Got out my book, biscuits and water bottle and prepared for a relaxing hour while the kids went completely berserk. It seemed like only two minutes later when all of a s... |
| Nov 10, 2009 | Innovation by walking through mud | Over the Melbourne Cup long weekend (yes, I know it wasn’t a real long weekend), I took my family and another family over to Lakes Entrance for four days of fun and frivolity. One of the activities we organised was a bush walk/navigation ex... |
| Oct 26, 2009 | It’s the great ideas I want, not just the good ones | Last week it was my parent’s something or other wedding anniversary (north of 45, south of 50). I got my daughter to give her Grandmother a call to say “Happy Wedding Anniversary, thanks for making me possible”.
Anyway, my daughter and I go... |
| Oct 20, 2009 | A quick story on warranties | This happened to me a couple of years ago, but nothing much seems to have changed so I thought I’d share the story.
I purchased a rack mount server (one of the skinny ugly computers) from Dell as well as some software and assorted other bit... |
| Oct 13, 2009 | Style versus substance | I was having coffee with a colleague of mine, Steve, this week. Steve works in international sales for a highly successful Australian air monitoring business called Ecotech.
Over coffee we were drawing a parallel between pain and knowledge.... |
| Oct 6, 2009 | People in the ecosystem | In recent years I have met with a vast number of people who didn’t even come close to living up to how they represented themselves. This has led to a desire for me (see how I’m avoiding angry words) to share some of my more bitter definitio... |
| Sep 29, 2009 | Networking up | Yesterday I had a cuppa with a good friend of mine where she chatted about some issues at her workplace. She works for a not-for-profit with national reach and a couple of thousand employees. Although the discussion covered a variety of top... |
| Sep 22, 2009 | Networking and names | When I gave up the darts after 15 or so years as a smoker, it was really hard for me. I tried a whole lot of systems but they all failed. Then it occurred to me that the only thing the systems had in common were that they were systems, and ... |
| Sep 16, 2009 | Networking and manners | Last week I met with a woman who facilitates cultural change within large enterprises. The discussion was around business development for sole practitioners, plus a 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false
She had realised that her client ... |
| Sep 9, 2009 | Expanding your network | Last blog I talked about the best business development people I know being great networkers, so I thought I’d talk a bit more this week about expanding your network.
Despite social networking being all the rage – LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook... |
| Sep 1, 2009 | Networking numbers | I was thinking the other day about two guys I know that are really good at generating new business. Earlier in the day I had dismissed both of them with the comment – “they are only selling into their existing networks”. But at my afternoon... |
| Aug 26, 2009 | The year I stopped watching TV | Understanding who you are is generally rewarding. Unfortunately it’s also usually a bit painful as well – or even depressing.
I say that because I was a bit depressed when I realised in regards to TV, I was pretty much representative of the... |
| Aug 18, 2009 | Geographically embarrassed businesses | Geographically embarrassed. It’s a euphemism for being lost. Whenever you go wandering about in the bush on an Army exercise, individuals or groups are sure to get lost. In my experience, the first assumption made when you realise you are l... |
| Aug 11, 2009 | From Super 8 to Handbrake | One of the things I find terrific about being alive today is that we can actually see what people whom are no longer in their prime or have passed away, were actually like. Not just movie stars, but old documentary footage of leaders such a... |
| Aug 4, 2009 | A parable for tough times | Most forecasters seem to agree that despite the fact we have sidestepped the worst of the global financial crisis, we still have tough times ahead. And in tough times, one of the things you need to do is be innovative and work your assets h... |
| Jul 29, 2009 | Impartial, knowledgable and CRM | There has been a lot of talk lately about the benefits (and risks) of SaaS, Cloud Computing and Open Source software.
Some of the problems with these concepts are that the definitions aren’t static, they are not absolutes, and that every co... |
| Jul 21, 2009 | Getting more done in lean times | Last week I wrote an email that started off with: “Sorry I’ve taken a while to get back to you, I have been swamped lately”. It’s not the first time I have written those words lately, and I don’t reckon I’m an orphan either. Because the GFC... |
| Jul 14, 2009 | Are the experts always the ones to go to for advice? | Life rewards expertise. Judges earn more than factory workers (mostly), society respects experts (we award them AO’s and AM’s simply for doing their job) and it appears to make sense to seek out experts to solve your problems – who wants to... |
| Jul 7, 2009 | With every business milestone it’s time to take stock | Three times in recent weeks I have been asked the question: “Is LinkedIn useful?”. All three people had a service offering (lawyer, designer, facilitator) and were on LinkedIn, but had less than five connections. My response in all three ca... |
| Jun 30, 2009 | Words from the wise | The other week I wrote about the advice I would give myself if I could go back in time to when I was a fresh faced graduate. I had a couple of other ideas as well, but on reflection I realised they weren’t actually mine.
They were great pie... |
| Jun 23, 2009 | Plans to grow by | Two events last week prompted me to write this post. The first was that my wife watched some crappy movie with our daughter the other week about magically becoming young again for a while.
Actually “crappy” was her word, not mine, although ... |
| Jun 21, 2009 | Tracking an innovative path | Once a month I have a boy’s night out at the movies with a group of other guys. We normally have a quick drink, see a movie, then a quick discussion afterwards. As the amateur film critic, I have developed a pattern of thought in where I as... |
| Jun 16, 2009 | How good is that idea really? | Last week I mentioned I was going to have lunch with an old workmate, Glenn, to discuss a business idea he been asked to get involved with.
I responded to his initial email in detail about things to think about in regards to getting involve... |
| Jun 9, 2009 | Get it right before you start-up | When Glenn and I went our separate ways many years ago, I felt it was because he wanted our business to be more about lifestyle than I did.
He wanted the office to have New York attic style windows and be above a coffee shop. I felt we had ... |
| Jun 2, 2009 | Simplifying remote access | Ages ago I wrote about remote access.
However, I have just discovered that it doesn’t work as well as it used to, as the free product doesn’t work with Windows Vista. And Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Connection software doesn’t work with all ... |
| May 26, 2009 | How effective are you? | The other day I had a catchup coffee with Scott Kilmartin (known as @ScottKilmartin on Twitter) where we were having a discussion about his very cool business Haul, and the life of the entrepreneur.
Haul has a couple of different levels, bu... |
| May 19, 2009 | There is no secret to getting investment – just hard work | In the past fortnight I have had a couple of experiences with quite dramatic contrast.
On the one hand, I have been asked by a number of people (I’ll call them “start-up groupies”) for support in getting their pitch ready for investors.
On ... |
| May 5, 2009 | Recession busters | So Michel Hogan and I got invited together to a lunch. As part of our back chatter (using the free Skype Instant Messenger), I pointed out that if I tried really hard, I could probably eat for free during the week – in fact you could elevat... |
| Apr 28, 2009 | Time is money, literally | A long time ago I studied accounting at Monash University (well it seems like a long time ago).
When I did it I was in a small sub group who had plenty of varied work experience. In fact at that stage I had been a software engineer, salesma... |
| Apr 21, 2009 | How to write blogs | The another day Amanda Gome rang me for some advice and to have a chat about some future events.
We got to talking about blogging, and how difficult it was. I was among the first group of bloggers for SmartCompany two years ago (around 20 o... |
| Apr 15, 2009 | Is your SEO expert ripping you off? | There is a nice conversation running in a LinkedIn group called On startups – The community for entrepreneurs. The conversation is titled: “Is your SEO expert ripping you off?”
Interesting, as I often wonder the true value of SEO because : ... |
| Apr 14, 2009 | Rethinking the ‘office’ | Last weekend I went to an event called Trampoline, which was an un-conference (the attendees decide what topics are going to be spoken about).
Weirdly though, it got me thinking about my own office. Actually offices, as I have three. My Nor... |
| Apr 7, 2009 | Disruptive technologies | In 1999 a small web development business called Pyra Labs was founded by two people. They were trying to build an online project management system called Pyra.
Times were tough and staff numbers fluctuated dramatically (at one stage, down t... |
| Apr 1, 2009 | Connecting your social media content | Having decided to have a crack at the Twitter thing, I have run into the problem that my day can now be chewed up managing content online.
My main poetic activities now seem to be writing quick posts on what I am up to in LinkedIn, then Fac... |
| Mar 31, 2009 | Jury’s back. Crowd sourcing works! | Does crowd sourcing work?
Consider this, Wikipedia is just over nine years old and currently has 2.9 million articles. Contrast this with Microsoft’s Encarta at a little over 42,000 articles which was founded 16 years ago when Microsoft bou... |
| Mar 31, 2009 | Good innovations need good failures | In mid February the Churchill Club ran a program called Innovation DNA, which was about making innovation a sustainable program in Australian SMEs.
One of the panelists, Wes Sonnenreich from Deloitte, mentioned that a good failure was one t... |
| Mar 24, 2009 | The rise of shadow media | Shadow media is a new term that has arisen, which refers to traditional media professionals leaving their secure, traditional media jobs and bringing a new professionalism to online media (think Amanda Gome throwing caution to the wind, lea... |
| Mar 17, 2009 | Want to survive? Just innovate | A book title that really appealed to me was “Why Things Fail” by British economist Paul Ormerod, so I picked up a copy last year. The book is a study into similar patterns of failure that appear in a variety of different environments (biolo... |
| Mar 10, 2009 | Open source lessons | Hi Amanda,
Congratulations on SmartCompany moving to Joomla, an open source content management system. How do I know it’s Joomla? Well by clicking “File” then “View Page Source” in your web browser you can see the internal code that makes u... |
| Mar 3, 2009 | When tech mirrors life | I have a mate called Marts who I’ve known for 25 years. Marts is always completely bloody minded and the stories about him are legend.
He was fired from his first job two weeks in because he altered the artwork on his business cards to get ... |
| Feb 24, 2009 | Sack well, and prosper | I was reading Michel Hogan’s piece from last week Let Culture be your Guide and it occurred to me that Michel didn’t talk much about the people that were let go. Other than “we let them know why they were going and we worked with many of th... |
| Feb 17, 2009 | Real (user-generated) innovation | One of the things that I love about my iPhone is that is a fully fledged 16GB iPod as well as a multimedia device and phone.
Every time I go for a drive (or catch a tram) I am now entertained and/or challenged by podcasts that I subscribe t... |
| Feb 10, 2009 | The social side of networking | This morning I got a message from my niece on Facebook, two messages from colleagues on LinkedIn, one SMS message and a couple of dozen emails.
Which got me thinking about networking.
I use social networking tools LinkedIn and Facebook regu... |
| Feb 3, 2009 | The boogey man | One of my relatives occasionally drives me mad with his worrying: How would it look if he failed? What would his wife say? What if he didn’t like it?
His worrying almost always takes the same form.
Identify the worst case outcome (usually a... |
| Jan 27, 2009 | Bookmark this! | At any one time I have around five books on my bedside table. I tend to buy books I want to read and dump them there until I get to them, plus I tend to read more than one book at a time.
To stop myself from just reading trashy novels, I ha... |
| Jan 19, 2009 | Making CRM your friend | Customer relationship management needn’t be difficult – in fact it can be downright helpful. BRENDAN LEWIS
By Brendan Lewis
I’m connected to Jodie Benveniste of Parent Wellbeing via LinkedIn. I’m not exactly sure how we met (she’s in Adelai... |
| Dec 16, 2008 | What the porn industry can teach us | The business of adult entertainment is making serious recession-proof money, and could have business lessons for all of us. BRENDAN LEWIS
By Brendan Lewis
Fiona Patten and I were both born in 1964. At around age 26, I made a major change in... |
| Dec 9, 2008 | Taking the ‘Bah’ out of Humbug | I decided that my long-suffering wife deserved a great gift this Christmas. Here’s how I did it. BRENDAN LEWIS
By Brendan Lewis
According to Lifestyles of the Rich and Tasteful I am a member of the Australian middle class, and I am either d... |
| Dec 2, 2008 | Jedi training for entrepreneurs | Training takes many forms, but how is an entrepreneur made? There may be more value in hands-on experience. BRENDAN LEWIS
By Brendan Lewis
My five year old son is addicted to Star Wars. He and I have sat together for hours either watching t... |
| Nov 25, 2008 | iPhone apps make sense | The ease of use of smartphone applications makes you wonder why companies aren’t falling over themselves to use them to push their brand. BRENDAN LEWIS
By Brendan Lewis
Get daily business news.
The latest stories, funding information, and e... |
| Nov 18, 2008 | Know your unknowns | We can’t always prepare for every event, but we can be ready to be surprised. BRENDAN LEWIS
By Brendan Lewis
Get daily business news.
The latest stories, funding information, and expert advice. Free to sign up.
To read more Brendan Lewis bl... |
| Nov 11, 2008 | Feeling free and online | I have now managed to get most of what I need to run my business online, and free. BRENDAN LEWIS
By Brendan Lewis
Over the last couple of weeks I have written about moving all my systems online, so that I could take advantage of a low cost ... |
| Nov 5, 2008 | Accounting on a cloud | Organising finances over the web? Yes it can be done! BRENDAN LEWIS
By Brendan Lewis
In 1998 I stopped getting paid to be an accountant. I came to the conclusion that being a scorekeeper wasn’t satisfying enough for me, I want to be kicking... |
| Oct 28, 2008 | Calendar boy | Synchronising your business needs (even your private life) is made all the more easier with a proper calendar. Here’s the best way to go… BRENDAN LEWIS
By Brendan Lewis
Get daily business news.
The latest stories, funding information, and e... |
| Oct 21, 2008 | Solutions (and they’re free) | Generating, and using, documents doesn’t sound like very exciting stuff – but finding alternative solutions to these everyday problems certainly is. Here’s what I discovered. Feel free to share. BRENDAN LEWIS
By Brendan Lewis
After email an... |
| Oct 14, 2008 | Web-based email marketing | Changing operating systems also forced me to change my email marketing. The alternative I found is great, and it’s free. BRENDAN LEWIS
By Brendan Lewis
In 2000 I was running a multimedia business called Carradale Associates and had the oppo... |
| Sep 30, 2008 | Living online | Smartphones have shown us that we can do so much more online, but they are not the only tools that can help. BRENDAN LEWIS
By Brendan Lewis
After four years of trusty service, my notebook computer is starting to look a bit dodgy. It’s getti... |
| Sep 23, 2008 | Good advice, easy | Advisory boards are an incredibly useful tool that are often overlooked. BRENDAN LEWIS
By Brendan Lewis
Get daily business news.
The latest stories, funding information, and expert advice. Free to sign up.
The advisory board gives you a gre... |