Ira Glass on Hard Work, Taste and Getting Started This is great. I saw this a while back and wanted to share but lost the link, sorry. Everyone was once a beginner; taste and creative skill develops with time, but only comes once you get started. To View More >>

I'm new to blogging and although I have seen consistent and significant growth in unique visitors, I have been keen to find tips to grow my blog quickly. I've spent my spare time over the last few weeks researching and what I have found scares me. There are lots of ways to grow visitor numbers and one of the most heavily promoted is back-links. The benefit of back links is that search engines give greater ranking to sites that have lots of back links as these links are seen as votes (endorsements) from other sites. Of course this makes sense and like everyone I will be doing my best to develop To View More >>

Why oh why do people find providing good customer service so hard? I guess probably for the same reason so many people struggle with relationships, that is that they co-exist, rather than truly throw themselves into the situation in the effort to find a real connection. Don't get me wrong, I don't believe that the customer is always right, they often aren't but in that moment they do deserve to feel significant and cared for... Often that just takes a little empathy and a smile. Why is it that when people talk about great business they can rattle of a list of companies specializing in various To View More >>

Imagine if there was something that, if you did it consistently, would improve all relationships completely. Wouldn't that be amazing? I don't want to overstate it, but I think the concept of the "Umbrella of Rapport", might just be that powerful, so please enjoy. Today I came across some notes from an internal presentation that I did for our sales people last year on how they might improve their relationships, in this case with our clients. Part of it included this powerful idea. I don't take credit for it, I first heard it from Tony Robbins, but I have added my own thoughts below. In my opinion To View More >>

Over the last 6 months or so I've been to France, UK (twice), Australia (3 times), Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, USA (3 times), and if you are based in New Zealand like me that's a lot of flying. For a lot of people that sounds glamorous, and on occasion it can be, but seriously, the inside of a hotel room in Paris isn't much different from one in Las Vegas and if you don't get out of it you could be anywhere. I've just got back from a course in San Antonio (Texas) and by the time I left I felt like a caged rat. In 8 days I only got outside my hotel 4 times, and that was to cross the road To View More >>