Take a few minutes, sit down, switch off, listen and think as you watch this ... share it with your kids and consider your own life ... deeply cool. From the YouTube Video "For complete lyrics, audio and video clip please visit PersianDNA™ Website at http://www.persiandna.com/4u.htm Wear Sunscreen is the common name of an essay, (actually called "Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young") written by Mary Schmich and published in the Chicago Tribune as a column in 1997. The most popular and well-known form of the essay is the successful music single released in 1999, accredited to Baz Luhrmann."

An awesome presentation and Q and A with Gary Vay Ner Chuk. In this he talks very powerfully about "Working the Room", His Strategy, And about how the internet is about getting eyeballs. To use his term he is pretty Potty Mouth. But don't get put off by that, he is authentic, deep and extremely passionate. Awesome and thank you Gary.

Yesterday I let you know that I was going to take the "31 Days To A Better Blog" challenge and I am getting more and more excited.

Day 1

The task for today was to write an "elevator pitch for my blog". This was something that had been on my mind for a while, as I felt I didn't have a strong focus around what I wrote. I genuinely think I could go "toe to toe" and hold my own in a discussion on most of the issues I write about, but I wasn't providing any depth of information. We have deep experience and knowledge in HR, IT, Marketing, Relationships, Leadership, Strategy etc but I didn't want to be an "expert blog" on any one topic as that would be boring for me. I wanted to be a generalist, and share experiences and hopefully inspire. I want to start conversations.

So here is my pitch

Tui's voice is a blog by Stephen Baugh, a successful entrepreneur who, with his family, runs two significant international companies based in the photographic and wedding industries. This blog covers an entrepreneur's journey through business and technology with tips, observations and strategy blended with a little self reflection and fun. This blog covers a breadth of issues with either a human or business perspective. He shares experiences as assistance and inspiration to others.

Why "an entrepreneurs journey"?

Great cultures like the New Zealand Maori have passed their traditions, their rules, their inspiration, their culture down through generations in the form of stories and song. I am not going to start singing anytime soon, but I think that is what I am about, in fact I think that's what our business, Queensberry, is about. We tell stories. Our family jokes that when I was brought home as a child it was to a boat yard, to a house built from car cases. Hardly what you could call luxury: we were emotionally wealthy but financially poor. Today we run two reasonably large companies that trade globally as if we were local in each market and live a very different life from the one living in a car case. I don't tell the story of my journey to brag, I don't tell it to say we are better than anyone else, or even that we know better. We are a fairly humble family so I tell these stories so that hopefully they will assist, and even better that they will inspire.

We've seen it all

As a family running a business together we've seen it all. We've had to deal with difficult family stresses where you wonder if you will get through, in fact we had to meet in restaurants because you can't fight in restaurants. Fortunately we are past that now. We have developed all our own IT infrastructure and now have one that works 24/7 and rivals the world's best. We manufacture, we employ, we've built a software company and we design albums that have been presented to to Kings and Queens. So this blog is simply my story, it isn't a corporate site, it's not polished and some days it will be a little hit and miss, but I do love telling stories and hope you will enjoy them too.

Please join me

If you care to subscribe to my RSS feed or ideally by email I will over then next few months share a couple of things I know you will enjoy. The first is I am going to finish my series "Business Lessons of a Fire Fighter". I am a Senior Fire Fighter (volunteer) in the New Zealand Fire Service and have had some amazing insights into business through my days on duty. Some past ones have included "Trust" and "Have Courage or Die" Secondly I am going to do a series called "Queensberry Rules". This series will share our business philosophy in a way that is powerfully simple. You wouldn't want to miss it.

Finally ...

Finally we live in a world that needs leaders, new leaders, strong leaders, people that care about business, the environment and education. I believe I am one of those leaders. The power and value of what I have in my head through years of experience is multiplied if shared. You are my friends and if you get one little piece of value from it, my time will be of value. Thanks again. Please let me know your thoughts. Is my pitch strong enough, is something missing, how could it be better? What stories do you want to hear? And of course thank you.

Don’t just sit there! Do something!

Over the years I’ve been and done many things. Everyone has. In my case, I’ve been a Xerox salesman, a volunteer firefighter, and a successful entrepreneur. Believe it or not, all these seemingly unrelated personas had at least one thing in common, what I’m going to talk about today, and that is:
A bias toward action.

What do I mean by this? I mean, if there’s a choice between sitting in a conference room planning what I’m going to do, and getting out there and doing it, I hope that I choose action. This is not to knock planning, discussion, and consensus-building. Believe me, I’ve done my share of those. I know that you can’t reach your goals unless you take some time to define them and plan how to reach them. What I mean is, there comes a time when you need to stop planning, talking, thinking, dreaming, and get out there and make it happen. And, too often people use the excuse of planning or researching to keep themselves from taking needed action.

They confuse planning how to do the job with the real job itself.

As a salesman, my “real” job was not to sit at my local Xerox office and plan to call on clients; it was to get out there and make the calls. And can you imagine if a volunteer firefighter arrived at the scene of a blazing building, sat down and whipped out his laptop, and began to develop a keen Powerpoint presentation about how best to put out the flames?

Good Enough

No, there comes a point when your plans are good enough; a point when it’s time to get out into the real world, and make your plan a reality. So whether you’re just starting a business, or you are developing and online business strategy to extend your brand equity, you’re going to have to take action. I know it can be overwhelming at times. You realise just how much you’ll need to do to succeed, and it can freeze you up so you can’t take that first step. The thing to do is try not to think about all the tasks you’ll need to do, and concentrate instead on just doing one thing, no matter how small. Take one baby step toward realising your goals, and you’ll get a boost of confidence and energy. You can use that enthusiasm towards taking your next baby step, and so on. Just do something. And then do another something. And before you know it, you’ll realise all those baby steps added up to that proverbial journey of a thousand miles, and your goal is within reach.

WHY YOU NEED TO MANAGE YOUR PERSONAL BRAND

Something that’s been on my mind lately is the desire to help people succeed in business online. No, I know I don’t have all the answers. But over the years, our two global companies have discovered some answers that work for us, and perhaps they’ll work for your company as well. As always, take what you like and leave the rest!

Why you need to manage your personal brand

Something that’s been on my mind lately is the desire to help people succeed in business online. No, I know I don’t have all the answers. But over the years, our two global companies have discovered some answers that work for us, and perhaps they’ll work for your company as well. As always, take what you like and leave the rest!

To begin with, let’s talk about branding.

The fact is, everyone has a personal brand – whether they know it or not. And the internet is a powerful multiplier. It enables people from around the world to develop opinions about you. It’s important to manage your personal brand so that the message others get about you is the one you want them to hear.

What is a brand?

Many people think of branding as something done by an advertising firm, or at most the marketing department. But in fact the entire enterprise is involved in the development of its brand image. Why? Because every experience the customer has with that firm, from ordering to paying to product quality and service after the sale, contributes to the brand image that customer carries around with him. A brand is everything that a person thinks or feels or believes about the branded item. The brand is influenced by the person’s past experience with the item, what other people say about it and what they can conclude about the brand from the messages it sends out. (Okay, I said “item” there, but you realise that this could be a company or an individual or a service – not just a solid object.) Let’s take Queensberry as an example, since that’s a brand I know from the inside out. When our photographer clients, or their clients, think about a Queensberry photo album, what comes to mind?

Here are some of the things I would hope they’d associate with the Queensberry brand: Established. Trustworthy. Genuine. Authentic. High-quality. Artful design. Emotionally connected. Memories made real. Memories to last a lifetime. Now suppose we decided to cut costs by using a lower grade of paper. Or suppose that we delivered 80% of our orders after the promised date. Would our brand continue to convey “premium quality”? “Trustworthy”? Probably not. (Which is why we’ll never do those two things.) And as you can see, neither of those two hypothetical decisions would have been made by the marketing department. One of them would have been made by purchasing, and the other is the result of a flawed production process. The entire company contributes to the brand image.

So why do you need a personal brand?

Well, as I said before, you already have one. It’s called your reputation. Your track record.

The real question is, does your reputation match the reality?

Does your real reputation match what you want it to be? Have your “customers” – the people who interact with you,who might hire you and so on – been getting the messages you want them to hear about you?

As a personal example, let’s say you’ve applied for a new job. Your resumé is a carefully crafted marketing tool that, in the best-case scenario, sends exactly the message you want to convey, and nothing else. Just like the advertising developed by a firm’s marketing department and ad agency. But remember, it’s not just your resumé – your personal marketing department, if you will – that sends out the messages about you. There’s also how you dress for the interview, your phone manners before and after, whether you’re late or not, whether you’ve been indiscreet on your blog or FaceBook page, and so on – any one of which may send a message undermining your carefully-prepared resumé.

Before you take your business online, carefully consider how you’re going to manage your brand.

To take your business online successfully, you need to establish yourself as an expert. Establishing a strong personal brand of your own will help you get the word out about your company. I’ll cover exactly how this works in later posts.