Well today, has been a pretty exciting day. Apple launched their latest professional photography software, Aperture 3, and for me it was particularly special as we (Queensberry) were involved in our own small way. After approximately a year of working with Apple, including a trip to Cupertino in October, today's announcement shared information on how professional photographers could buy our wedding albums through Aperture. Using a cleverly developed plugin our clients can now use their favourite image tool to order albums from us. It's not just exciting because we're working with Apple, but I've been an Apple fan boy since I was literally a boy of maybe 9 or 10 years old, when Dad brought our first Apple IIe. I have only owned Macs etc since, our companies run almost exclusively on their gear and our own software is largely developed on Mac workstations. I'm obviously proud. Quoting their website, it's not only great to be included in an elite group of "some of the world’s finest bookmakers" but I get to work closely with a company I have admired for decades. The team there are an awesome group of really nice people, and I congratulate them on the success of a great product. Thanks Apple. :-)

I'm a believer in education, I really am, and my children's eduction is very important to me. I've pursued high-level tertiary education myself, and I regularly attend business and personal development courses. But I'm also a believer in determination, passion and experience. A huge believer in fact, and sitting next to a guy in the Wool business one evening  after speaking at an Icehouse event, I was reminded of why...

His story went something like this:

He was sacked from his first job packing shelves at K-Mart when he was young. I believe he left school early as he suffered with dyslexia and to add insult to injury, as he walked from his job that day, his boss told he would never amount to anything. That comment ignited a fire in his belly. He so badly wanted to prove the world wrong. He now owns and runs a company in the wool industry turning over tens of millions of dollars each year. The key to his success wasn't some fancy education - it was something thats hard to teach - it was pure determination, passion and drive to achieve his dreams. I truely believe some people are born with it. Born with such determination and passion that it'd be hard for them to fail - like Gary van Ner Chuk. I blogged about him a couple of days ago and posted a video in which he explains how school wasn't really for him. His constant 'F' grades told him that. But get this. During the weekends he was down at the mall earning over $2k selling base ball cards each week, and dispite what the education system said about him, he's gone on to become famous and build a company  turning well over $60m a year. A lot of people fail in the 'system', but one of the things I've learnt over my career in is that there's no substitute for determination and passion. Someone who's clear about their dreams and has the drive to achieve them, will almost always outsmart someone with only an education. I've also learnt as a father that I'll only influence my children if I have their attention and respect. More important than my children's education is that they learn to focus, to be strong in themselves, to form their own opinions and believe they can do anything. Their self esteem is precious to me. Unfortunately those values aren't always treasured in the education system, but I am certain it will do a lot more for you over the long term than any single university degree. Do you agree? What are your thoughts?

Hi everyone. I have been asked a lot recently about my website, especially who hosts it and about the fact that I have it monitored 24/7 for uptime and reliability. Basically late last year I had lots of issues with uptime of my blog, so moved to Host Gator. They have been amazing. The server is quick, but the support has been even better. Even while a hurricane battered their data and call centre the support tickets continued to be answered. Below is a link to their site if you're interested, trust me they are cool and about 10 of my friends host with them now, they consistently rate high on "Best ISP" lists, and I love that they have an environment policy and plan. As I said in an earlier post I really love how they present themselves giving a sense of size, combined with the promise of support from the owner ... You can even chose for your support ticket to go to CEO Brent Oxley if you're not satisfied with the help you're getting. Anyway setup was easy, registration and getting started took less than 20 minutes, just like it should be. It might seem weird that despite them being so good I would therefore want to monitor my site. Well to me it's about piece of mind, I mean I might even mess up. InternetSupervision.com monitor my site every hour automatically 24/7 and another 20+ services our companies run from FTP, SMTP, HTTP, DNS etc. It is so cool, despite these services being on various servers around the word, I know pretty well as soon as one goes down. Like last night, a local fault in a fibre cable had us hidden from the world for a few hours. When this happened I knew almost immediately, so could log a fault, and was advised as soon as service returned both times via email and SMS message. I believe even the smallest site should consider such a service. Offerings start from Free, but a few services with SMS notification will cost only a couple of dollars a month ... that's less than a cup of coffee to sleep soundly at night. Remember ... whether you like it or not, a downed website reflects on YOU.

I love drawing and outlining at my white board or in my note book because I connect emotionally with my thoughts so much more powerfully and with more clarity than if I use my computer alone. In this video Milton Glaser talks about drawing while he is drawing, and makes an observation of art schools where drawing has been removed from the curriculum to allow time to learn software. It seems increasingly that students now have the creative tools, but not the emotional connection with their craft.

MILTON GLASER DRAWS & LECTURES from C. Coy on Vimeo.

'How did you become so wealthy?' is a question I've asked plenty of people in my life. But the answer I got from a very successful colleague of mine when I worked at Xerox wasn't about a product, or a service, or a sales  or marketing strategy. It was about a belief that underpinned everything he did. His answer was this. "I got rich by making other people rich... I add value to peoples lives." He took it upon himself every day, to go out and add value to peoples lives - whether it was his clients', or his customers' or his friends'. Now you're not necessarily going make people rich simply by adding value to them, but by believing you can add value in a way specific to your industry, the wealth in whatever form it may be, will follow. Let me use Queensberry as an example. We add value to our customers by doing three things: 1) Helping our clients make more money - by differentiation 2) Saving our clients time - by offering to do their post-production work or providing tools so they can do things more easily 3) Giving our clients with a better experience than anyone else If our clients don't feel like we deliver on at least one of those areas - we may as well not exist and we wouldn't be flourishing if you didn't add value to your customer's lives in some way.

You need to express your care in a way people will value

I wrote a while ago about how I demonstrate my love for my wife Sonya by turning her light off for her each night. I do this because I know that she likes me doing it. The same principle applies in business. It's our job to understand how our clients like to be loved and what makes them tick. Then we can go the extra mile and add value in a way they didn't even know we could. At Queensberry, we know it's simply not enough to just add value to our clients' (Photographers) lives as they are not the end user. Their Brides and Grooms are the ones turning the pages of our albums, cherishing the memories and emotionally connecting with the story they tell. It's our goal to add value to them also by providing a treasure that they can remember their day by and hand down through the generations. If we do it right, we might even provide Brides and Groom's with an experience better than they had on the day. Their album is a reflection of the detail, the emotion, the love, the family, the venue... most of which is often just a blur. We're adding value to our clients, by also adding value to theirs.

Be clear how you add value to your clients

The challenge is to do it in an authentic, respectful and in way that honors people, and real value is only really provided when it's perceived as of value from the other persons perspective. When a Bride and Groom cries when they open their album for the first time, or when our product helps a photographer up-sell to their clients, or when we can help a photographer spend more time with their family by doing some of their work for them - we've added value to their life in a way that no marketing or sales strategy could ever achieve. Cheers, Stephen.