Early last year I had three things on my mind. I was researching the possible use of Amazon AWS for a project we were working on; I was watching the events at the Auckland Startup Weekend wishing I was there; and finally I was preparing for a presentation I was due to give at the College of Business at Massey University. It was a holiday weekend, so much to Sonya's dismay, I wondered if I could run my own Start Weekend. The question I asked myself was "Could I launch an internet business in one weekend, in the process write all the code, learn AWS including EC2, Route53, To View More >>

'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 To View More >>

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, 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 >>

Why is it that people spend so much time asking how, and so little time asking why? Did we as kids run out of some predetermined number of "Whys" we had been granted? I know my kids ask me constantly, why dad?, but why? ... Why after why, after why? Nothing unusual, I am sure you did it to your parents, I know I did it to mine ... The question is why did we stop? I am often asked for advice about starting a business, and in the early days would jump in and try to help. I'd give support, and maybe some direction, until I noticed how few people actually did something. I still helped, but only if To View More >>