thinkBIG magazine - issue 11

thinkBIG Le a d e r s B u s i n ess Mindset Wea l t h

$7.95 inc GST Volume 3.1 Feb/Mar 10

James Marcus Bach The Scholar’s Voyage Inside the mind of an entrepreneur

PLUS

• How to trade like Warren Buffett • Protect your website from hackers • Payment plans to lift your profits

MICHELLE OBAMA Portrait of a First Lady

WHY ONLINE TRANSACTIONS MAKE LIFE EASY

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Contents Regulars 6 8 20 64 69 70

Editor’s letter As You Think Your story Thought leadership: Books to make you think BIG Inspiring stories Calendar Of events

Section 1: Mindset 24 Lyn Woodward: Weight loss goals, slim chance or fat chance 26 Brian Sher: What good is a billion dollars if you are dead?

Section 2: Business 32 Tom Petryshen: Protecting your website investment from hackers 36 Darren Brown: Not getting paid?

40 Michelle Murchison: Gratitude during times of credit rationalisation 42 Damian Kay: The right franchise is an extension of you 44 Andrew Vincent: Be organised and successful in 2010 48 Ken Wood: The easy but overlooked way to lift your profits

Section 3: Wealth 50 52 54 56 60

Lachlan Elsworth: How to master your day trading psychology Jamie McIntyre: Prepare for another property boom Aussie Rob: Time to rough things up Carly Crutchfield: 7 stages of property development Robert Kirby: 5 easy ways to guarantee success

Features

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12 4

Cover Story

Michelle Obama:

22 28

An end has a start – by Ashley Da Silva

46 58

The returns of the King – by Justin Beeton

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The Corporate Ninja speaks about life skills

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What I Wish I Knew: Stand and deliver

The First Lady is a lady first In politics image is everything, even for the First Lady of the United States who has battled image problems to become a success in her own right.

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Mind over manager – by Jonathan Jackson What is the mindset that defines an entrepreneur? thinkBig asks three of Australia’s best about entrepreneurship.

Rowie Dillon discovered her mind, then found business success.

Will the real Jonathan Livingston Seagull please fly – by Daniel G Taylor James Marcus Bach welcomes his past as it shapes his future.

How to replicate the high returns of the ‘Oracle of Omaha’.

E-Commerce to get smarter – by Diana Scott Online transactions are a part of everyday life, no matter what generation you’re from.

Adriana Bracks, PhD, interviews Ron Lee, ‘The Corporate Ninja’, about personal empowerment, life skills and financial success.

– by Marty Wilson Naomi Simson looks back on life and success. www.thinkbigmagazine.com

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E D I T O R I A L : J O N AT H A N J A C K S O N

Our Team

Publisher Graham Maughan graham.maughan@thinkbigmagazine.com Ph: 02 9994 8963 Fax: 02 9994 8008

The Kindness Key

W

elcome to the new improved 2010 version of thinkBIG magazine. The team hope you had an exceptional holiday/festive season and that your goodwill, good luck and success carry on throughout the coming months.

This issue marks the first issue of the year and the first of what we hope to be a fresher, more inspirational magazine moving forward.

Over the next couple of issues not only will the design of the magazine change, but you will also notice subtle changes to the content as we strive to bring you more inspirational stories; tales of those who have overcome dire adversity, of those who have taken ideas and turned them into fortunes and of successful motivators, educators and everyday people who have made differences to the lives of others.

There are plenty of stories out there and we have several lined up for the first few issues of 2010 that we hope will motivate you on toward your goals and dreams; some will bring a tear to your eye, others will empower you, several more will bring a smile to your face and raise your spirits.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my time, it is that even those who don’t see themselves as spiritual possess enormous spirit. It doesn’t have to be religious; the will of man to do good and to help people goes beyond religion. It is innate in all of us. I believe that we are on this earth to help each other become successful, to help each other achieve goals and dreams, to be friends in times of need and help others survive when an occasion looks grim.

One only has to look at the generosity of people over the past 18 months to know that in times of need help is not too far away. Bushfires and floods throughout New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria generated enormous support from people who wanted to be involved and help communities rebuild. The stalwart of all charity telethons, The Royal Children’s Hospital Appeal once again generated record donations, even after people had already donated millions of dollars to the causes above.

As I write this I realise that Random Acts of Kindness Week is upon us. From February 15-21, do yourself and others a favour and help somebody out. It doesn’t have to be financially, it may just be the old cliché of helping an old lady across the street, but I guarantee you’ll find that one act begets another and everybody will be paying your act of kindness forward in a snowball effect. Go to actsofkindness.org and read about what others have done.

A comment by a woman named Sandra on the website thekindnesscure.org probably best sums up the value in being helpful. Sandra writes: Weaving the thread of kindness into your everyday life can be as easy as choosing to offer a hearty “Good morning” and “Good night” to your co-workers or neighbors, a stranger on the street, or the grocery store clerk. When you commit a kind act, you are momentarily disconnected from your ego and bonded with the individual who has benefited from your kindness. Being fully present in each moment of your life facilitates kindness as it increases your awareness of the people around you. You’ll discover that each act of kindness you engage in makes the world, in some small way, a better place.

In 2010 make it a goal of yours to commit to accomplishing acts of kindness; they don’t have to be big gestures, a simple greeting or praise will do, but by doing this you will find your year is even more complete.

Have an excellent year and achieve all you set out to.

Jonathan 6

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Managing Editor Jonathan Jackson jonathan.jackson@thinkbigmagazine.com Subscriptions Manager Amanda Peros amanda.peros@thinkbigmagazine.com Ph: 02 9994 8963 Fax: 02 9994 8008 National Sales Manager Paul Jackson Ph: 02 9994 8963 Fax: 02 9994 8008 paul.jackson@thinkbigmagazine.com thinkBIG Website Manager Mark Robberds Ph: 02 9994 8963 Fax: 02 9994 8008 mark.robberds@thinkbigmagazine.com Directors Ken Wood Reuben Buchanan Contributors Aussie Rob, Darren Brown, Carly Crutchfield, Kim Fenton, Chris Howard, Damian Kay, Robert Kirby, Jamie McIntyre, Michelle Murchison, Tom Petryshen, Dianna Scott, Daniel G Taylor, and Andrew Vincent Creative Design Abigail Paul, ASourceOfJoy Graphic Design Website/subscriptions www.thinkbigmagazine.com Enquires info@thinkbigmagazine.com Mindset Media Pty Ltd ACN 129 256 300 ABN 94 129 256 300 GPO Box 519 Sydney Australia 2001 Ph: 02 9994 8963 Fax: 02 9994 8008 thinkbig Magazine ISSN: 1835 7733 Important Message – Copyright and Disclaimer thinkbig magazine is owned and published by Mindset Media Pty Ltd (ACN129 256 300).

The publisher, authors and contributors reserve their rights in regards to copyright of their work. No part of this work covered by the copyright may be reproduced or copied in any form or by any means without the written consent of the publisher.

No person, organization or party should rely or on any way act upon any part of the contents of this publication whether that information is sourced from a website, magazine or related product without first obtaining the advice of a fully qualified person.

This magazine and its related website and products are sold and distributed on the terms and condition that: •The publisher, contributors, editors and related parties are not responsible in any way for the actions or results taken any person, organization or any party on basis of reading information, stories or contributions in this publication, website or related product.

•The publisher, contributors and related parties are not engaged in providing legal, financial or professional advice or services. The publisher, contributors, editors and consultants disclaim any and all liability and responsibility to any person or party, be they a purchaser, reader, advertiser or consumer of this publication in regards to the consequences and outcomes of anything done or omitted being in reliance whether partly or solely on the contents of this publication and related website and products.

•The publisher, editors, contributors and related parties shall have no responsibility for any action or omission by any other contributor, consultant, editor or related party.

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1As You Think2 T Sow an act, and you reap a habit; sow a habit, and you reap a character; sow a character, and you reap a destiny.

–George Dana Boardman

he only true equalisers in the world are books; the only treasure-house open to all comers is a library; the only wealth which will not decay is knowledge; the only jewel which you can carry beyond the grave is wisdom. –JA Langford If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true were really true, there would be little hope of advance.

–Orville Wright In everything the ends well defined are the secret of durable success.

–Victor Cousins

We are all motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is, the more he is inspired to glory.

–Cicero Success does not consist in never making blunders, but in never making the same one a second time.

–Josh Billings

W

inning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is.

–Vince Lombardi

Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.

–Thomas Jefferson The ability to concentrate and to use your time well is everything if you want to succeed in business— or almost anywhere else for that matter.

–Lee Iacocca Play for more than you can afford to lose and you will learn the game.

–Winston Churchill If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.

–Henry David Thoreau

It requires less character to discover the faults of others, –J Petit Senn than to tolerate them.

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1As You Think2 Do not follow where the path may lead.

Go instead where there is no path, and leave a trail.

–Harold R. McAlindon (also attributed to Emerson & others)

A

teacher affects eternity: he can never tell where his influence stops.

–Henry Adams

T

A general is just as good or just as bad as the troops under his command make him.

–General Douglas MacArthur

Leadership: The art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.

–Dwight D. Eisenhower

In what you say of another, apply the test of kindness, necessity, and truth, and let nothing pass your lips without a 2/3 majority.

•–Liz Armbruster

By learning you will teach; by teaching you will understand.

–Latin proverb

Give thanks for what you are now, and keep fighting for what you want to be tomorrow.

–Fernanda Miramontes-Landeros Good for the body is the work of the body, and good for the soul is the work of the soul, and good for either is the work of the other.

–Henry David Thoreau

he history of the world is but the biography of great men.

–Thomas Carlyle

No great man ever complains of want of opportunities.

–Emerson Laziness will cause you pain.

–Slogan on t-shirt worn at the Vee Arnis Jitsu School of Self-Defense What chance gathers she easily scatters. A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together.

–Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

There go the people.

I must follow them, for I am their leader.

–Alexandre Ledru-Rollins

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What If...

Are you exactly where you want to be?

In the 7 areas of your life, are you entirely satisfied, or are you stuck and frustrated? Give yourself a rating out of 10 regarding your satisfaction levels in these areas: My Career/Business My Family My Intellect/Mind My Health My Social Activities My Spirituality My Wealth

What if you could:

• Demonstrate levels of physical and mental power that you previously impossible.

• Reduce your stress levels at any time.

• Know the “Bushido” technique of negotiation.

• Learn the secrets of inner strength and tap into your energy reserves.

• Balance and boost the seven areas of your life.

• Effortlessly cope with the unexpected.

• Turn negative energy into positive energy.

• Increase the effectiveness of your immune system.

• Learn how to use “chi” energy.

• Advance beyond “going with the flow” to “guiding the flow”.

• Experience a significant increase in your personal power.

• Dissolve all barriers that are preventing you from your dreams.

Want proof?

In the 1970s and 1980s, Ron Lee CSP, “The Corporate Ninja”, saw every sales and business “guru” available, from Zig Ziglar to Tom Hopkins, to Jim Rohn, and how could you avoid the hype of Tony Robbins? In a further effort to improve his situation, he joined some MLMs or network marketing systems.

Everyone else was doing well; they said so on stage and Ron was impressed, but all of this input made no favourable impression on his life, especially when it came to money.

What, or who, was the common denominator in all of this?

Ron sought to find what was blocking him; it had to be psychological. Once he found the cause, his quest was to work out how to address it, so in the past 30 years, Ron learned eight forms of martial arts and studied Universal Laws, Metaphysics and Eastern-Western Philosophies and came up with simple ways of helping people to dissolve their self-imposed blockages.

Since participating in a Corporate Ninja seminar four years ago, Debbie Carr, Principal of Coyote Management International and Director of True Colours Recruitment, experienced these results: • After 7 years with Crohn’s Disease, now controls the symptoms with her mind and spirit and without any drugs.

• Moved from getting up at 4.00 am for a city job to a relaxed Manly lifestyle running her two successful businesses.

• Convinced ex-husband to also move to Manly so each could spend more time with their two daughters.

• Found the perfect man and anticipates marriage soon.

• Earned 5 times her revenue compared to the previous year (impressive in the GFC).

As for Ron, he has long been a “CSP”, a global distinction that is awarded to the very top level of professional speakers, works with C-level and other executives on four continents, and is a regularly-invited lecturer in Communication at universities.

Limited people ask, “What if?” Winners ask, “What’s next?”

Contact “The Corporate Ninja” to find out how you can free yourself to achieve all that you’re capable of being for yourself and your family. www.thinkbigmagazine.com

www.corporate-ninja.com • ron@corporate-ninja.com Volume 3.1

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In a world where impression is everything, Jonathan Jackson examines the transformation of Michelle Obama’s image to suit a successful political forum.

The First Lady Is a Lady First

At a speech in Wisconsin before the last history-making US election, an excited young woman introduced Michelle Obama as the next President. In the very calm manner that she exudes in public, Michelle walked over to the podium and with a big smile said, “I like that promotion that I got. I don’t know if Barack knows yet. We can announce it on the news tonight. He’s going to be the First Lady.”

A wry sense of humour, sometimes lost or misinterpreted in the press, is the first sign of a personality that has charmed the majority of the American public.

Today, when she takes the stage to introduce her husband, she unleashes a charm offensive that not only befits a First Lady, but deems her the toast of talk shows and glossy magazines.

Her charm, however, has not always been in evidence.

Early in the election campaign she was deemed an ‘angry black woman’ by a harsh media. Some websites attempted to propagate this image prompting her to respond: “Barack and I have been in the public eye for many years now, and we’ve developed www.thinkbigmagazine.com

“

Your

word is your bond,

and you do what you say you’re going to do.

Treat people with

dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them, and even if

”

you don’t agree with them. a thick skin along the way.

When you’re out campaigning, there will always be criticism. I just take it in stride, and at the end of the day, I know that it comes with the territory.”

There was, in fact, more criticism than she would care for.

On February 18, 2008, she commented that “For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback.”

Later that evening she reworded her speech, saying “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my

country, and not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change.”

She was widely criticised for her remarks, forcing the campaign to issue a statement that “anyone who heard her remarks...would understand that she was commenting on our politics.”

Debate about Michelle’s comments was still in vogue in June 2008, when First Lady Laura Bush commented on the controversial words: “I think she probably meant I’m ‘more proud,’ you know,

is what she really meant... I mean, I know that, and that’s one of the things you learn and that’s one of the really difficult parts both of running for President and for being the spouse of the President, and that is, everything you say is looked at and in many cases misconstrued.”

The changeling A driven woman, Michelle LaVaughn Robinson was born on January 17, 1964, in Chicago, Illinois to Fraser Robinson III, a city water plant employee and Democratic precinct captain, and Marian Shields Robinson, a secretary at Spiegel’s catalog store.

She and her brother, Craig (who is 21 months older), skipped the second grade and by sixth grade, Michelle joined a gifted class at Bryn Mawr Elementary School (later renamed Bouchet Academy).

Michelle graduated from high school in 1981 as salutatorian after becoming one of the school’s most honoured students and then followed her brother to Princeton where she became active in social change.

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challenged the teaching methodology for French believing it should be more conversational and she spent her free time running a literacy program for kids from the local neighborhoods.

When she moved to Harvard to study law she shifted her efforts into attracting African American undergraduates to the course: her politics were practical, not inspirational.

According to one of her professors, Charles Ogletree her purpose was to get things done. Another professor, Randall Kennedy told Newsweek, “When [Barack Obama] spoke, people got quiet and listened. Michelle had a more modest, quieter, lower profile.”

Yet it was her bluntness and practicality that could well have played a small role in derailing the election campaign.

As part of her requirements for graduation, she wrote a thesis entitled, Princeton Educated Blacks and the Black Community. Years later during the election campaign this thesis was temporarily withdrawn from the Princeton library, causing controversy the campaign could do without.

“I remember being shocked,” she says, “by college students who drove BMWs. I didn’t even know parents who drove BMWs.” She wrote in her thesis: My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my ‘blackness’ than ever before. I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don’t belong.

Regardless of the circumstances under which I interact with whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be black first and a student second.

Her university years show Michelle grappling with race and identity. She wasn’t angry, but her Princeton thesis displays a woman concerned with a society in which a black Princeton alumnus might only be allowed to remain “on the periphery.”

Had more been made of this thesis, the soon-to-be First Lady may have run second as certain groups painted her as militant and even racist. However, that is not what Michelle is about. She stands up for what she believes in and sometimes this defies conservative convention. However, her goals are to

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bring about social change for the good of community.

This attitude is evidenced by the fact she gave up her high paying legal career (in which she met and mentored her husband) to take up differing local government positions including in 1993 (encouraged by Barack Obama) the position of executive director for the Chicago office of Public Allies, a non-profit

The First Lady has softened her image, but remains intent on reaching her goals without compromising her integrity.

organisation encouraging young people to work on social issues in non-profit groups and government agencies.

She told Newsweek: “I started thinking about the fact that I went to some of the best schools in the country and I have no idea what I want to do.

That kind of stuff got me worked up because I thought, ‘This isn’t education.

You can make money and have a nice degree. But what are you learning about giving back to the world, and finding your passion and letting that guide you, as opposed to the school you got into’?”

So the trick for political advisors when Michelle became First Lady was to soften the image of the hard woman while promoting her social conscience and bringing about the glamour she seemed to lack.

Image is everything?

This hasn’t been easy, focus on ‘what Michelle is wearing’ or those toned arms at times borders on absurd.

Columnist Bonnie Erbe has argued that Michelle’s own publicists seem to

be feeding the emphasis on style over substance. Erbe has stated on several occasions that she is miscasting herself by over-emphasising style.

And while this may be some of the case, it seems attitudes have certainly changed as Michelle’s persona has softened.

Like her husband, she has won the hearts and minds of a majority of Americans by not only glamourising herself, but by presenting her politics and social morals as those that represent the majority.

On the first night of the 2008 Democratic National Convention, Michelle said both she and her husband believed “that you work hard for what you want in life, that your word is your bond, and you do what you say you’re going to do, that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them, and even if you don’t agree with them.”

During her early months as First Lady, she continued the work to which she had become accustomed and enjoyed. This time it was a representative of the White House. She has frequently visited homeless shelters and soup kitchens. She has also sent representatives to schools and advocated public service. On her first trip abroad in April 2009, she toured a cancer ward with Sarah Brown, wife of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and she advocates on behalf of military families.

As the public is growing accustomed to her, she is becoming more accepted as a role model.

Michelle has learnt, some would say the hard way, that you can stand your ground and fight for your principles while maintaining a level of popularity and respect that is vital for survival in business, government and life in general.

She has softened her image, but remains intent on reaching her goals without compromising her integrity.

Political aide David Axelrod told Newsweek, “Michelle has always been in the camp of, ‘Let’s not forget what we’re fighting for’.”

Part of her appeal today (she draws audiences of 1,000 plus to her speeches), is that she comes across as normal.

She has positioned herself as a woman of conscience, a family woman and someone who enjoys glamour but doesn’t necessarily let it define her.

She is the First Lady, but a lady first who has transcended the ‘angry’ tag to become one of the most impressive public figures in the world. TB www.thinkbigmagazine.com

WOULD YOU DRIVE YOUR CAR WITHOUT INSURANCE?

So why do you insure your car but don’t insure your superannuation from a market crash?

The majority of Australians insure their car, some insure their house, and others even insure their life – yet only a few savvy investors know how to insure their superannuation! Do you?

The reason the majority of Australians insure their car is because they know if they crash their car the financial consequences can be dire!

The financial consequences in retirement if you do not insure your superannuation could be catastrophic!

In 2008 alone over $300 billion was lost within superannuation due to the global share market and property crash. The average superannuation fund declined by almost 30% meaning many Australians will be forced to work longer or reduce their lifestyle in retirement.

To Discover The Low Risk/HIGH Return Investment Strategy aimed to maximize returns while protecting your capital go to www.jbglobal.com.au/thejbway to request your FREE copy of The JB Way (Value $29.95) www.thinkbigmagazine.com

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The characteristics, behaviours and habits of entrepreneurs have been long debated and discussed. It seems scientists, researchers and businesspeople alike have differing theories on what makes this species of business person a success or failure. In the first of a two part series, Jonathan Jackson spoke with three members of the Entrepreneurs Organisation (EO) to talk about mindset and the affect of this on accomplishment.

P

lanning, projection and process is a winning formula in the battle to build business empires. It’s simple really: plan how the business will work, the requirements necessary to meet the demands of your potential consumer or client base, project where this will lead you in one, five, ten or 20 years and then write the processes you believe will help you achieve your goals.

This method is known as causal reasoning and is taught the world over at universities and business schools. Causal reasoning works, having produced many of the world’s great managers, but does it take into account other business building processes?

Sue Jackson is the executive chairman of Solterbeck, a company that provides performance management services to many of the world’s most successful businesses.

Sue cites “What makes an entrepreneur entrepreneurial?” an article written by Saras Sarasvathy, as the perfect case study into the two schools of business thinking. The article separates business learning into two categories: causal reasoning and effectual reasoning. She says that while causal reasoning has its place, entrepreneurs fall into the latter category.

“Entrepreneurs are creative thinkers, they

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are not risk averse. The entrepreneur explores many questionable directions without a map but they usually come out fine.”

Sarasvathy’s article states: All entrepreneurs begin with three categories of means: 1. Who they are—their traits, tastes and abilities; 2. What they know—their training, expertise and experience and, 3. Whom they know—their social and professional networks.

Using these means, the entrepreneurs begin to imagine and implement possible effects that can be created with them. Most often they start very small with the means that are closest at hand and move almost directly into action without elaborate planning.

This theory is backed by Sue who says, “Where others want answers, entrepreneurs will capture an idea without knowing the solutions or the exact market, but they will still proceed down the path because it is a good idea.

“They are also more likely to bring a business to fruition faster. They consider who they know and what they don’t know they try to find out; they don’t

become overwhelmed because they don’t overanalyse. If you instinctively make decisions you move things along and when you’re starting out, it’s better to get things moving.”

Carlo Santoro agrees. He says, “Sometimes ideas can be overanalysed to the point they are not going to work, but entrepreneurs can believe in an idea so much they make it work, even when others tell you an idea isn’t viable.

Carlo is the Global Board Member of EO and director of Retail Care, facilitating the start-up of numerous companies including his own. Retail Care develops and manages operations and IT infrastructure for retailers. His new business is rolling out a new franchise in Victoria called Flight Experience, which offers the public the opportunity to fly an airline simulator.

He is a man of incredible energy.

He speaks quickly. He is emotional and considers himself a relationships man.

Carlo fits well into the effectual category.

It has been this way since he was a kid making violet crumble to sell at school.

For Carlo entrepreneurialism and emotion go hand in hand; it is where man connects with an idea. www.thinkbigmagazine.com

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Carlo G Santoro

Rob Cecconi

Sue Jackson

Rob Cecconi, president of EO has a slightly different take, but the principle is the same. Rob is the Executive Chairman of Sportsnet Corporation and like any entrepreneur came about the idea for his business, a sports-based travel company, by discussing the lack of ticketing options with friends and confirming his suspicions over snags at a barbecue.

“Heart is everything,” Rob says. “You wouldn’t do what you did if it wasn’t in your heart. Many entrepreneurs are driven by something far greater than profit.

It’s about creating freedom, a lifestyle, a great business or something that needs to be done. It is the passion of the entrepreneur that grows the business.”

Carlo agrees. “To me entrepreneurial success is access of freedom but that can be defined in many different ways.”

the business fails.

“In my opinion the acquirer neglects to understand the culture and by looking at things from a profit and loss point of view they take the soul out of the business. They don’t stick around with the entrepreneur long enough to learn about the business. Corporate Australia could do so much better by understanding what the entrepreneur represents before asking about the business.”

differ in personalities, their one similar characteristic is attitude.

And this is clear when speaking with Sue, Rob and Carlo. For all three of them, the drive comes from, as Sue points out, “believing in possibilities and realising them if you want to.”

Rob reiterates the point. “Some entrepreneurs have great passion, others don’t. Some have enthusiasm, others don’t. What they share, however, are the common traits of dreaming and drive and the can-do attitude.”

In the case of the entrepreneur it seems heart and mind are interchangeable; wanting to succeed is an emotional pursuit and you have to want to succeed to make a fist of your project.

Rob cites the buyout of his business in 2004 and the subsequent repurchase in 2007 after it was put in the hands of the administrator as a lesson in why effectual reasoning is so important.

“What happens with many businesses purchased from the original owner is that people are scaled down; that is how the purchaser makes money. What they fail to do is look at the reasons behind the construction of the business. They haven’t understood the culture and importance of the process. They look at the business from a balance sheet perspective, but without a heart and passionate people

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All three entrepreneurs we spoke with for this piece are gifted with both causal and effectual traits, but they are guided more by their ideas and the goals those ideas represent than by the business process.

While possessing a combination of causal and effectual traits, Sue is driven by ideas and learning. However, she understands that once the idea is up and running there has to be solid business practices in place to make things work.

“I portray those traits (causal and effectual) but at the same time we run a very solid business; just because you are an entrepreneur, it doesn’t mean you play around in high risk areas. The way I use entrepreneurialism is to ensure there is always a future plan and direction to go in: it’s about finding new products and services and getting a kick out of something you haven’t yet done or learnt.”

Sue didn’t consider the question of entrepreneurialism until four to five years ago when she was approached by the EO and became involved in discussions about shared characteristics. She has found over the years that while entrepreneurs can

So if entrepreneurs work on an emotional plain, does this make them rational in business?

“We do it for years without profit and we make sacrifices with family and lifestyle. Is it rational to forego that stability?” asks Rob. Carlo cites the absolute belief in an idea as irrational behaviour. Sue, however, believes that if it wasn’t rational the business wouldn’t be successful. “It takes a certain kind of person to be successful,” she says.

All three of them run successful businesses and all three probably straddle both the causal and effectual trait lines, yet all three possess completely different personalities. This brings me to the conclusion that an entrepreneurial mindset transcends personality and is dictated by belief.

As Sarasvathy rightly concludes in his article: they believe in a yet-to-be-made future that can substantially be shaped by human action; and they realise that to the extent that this human action can control the future, they need not expend energies trying to predict it. TB www.thinkbigmagazine.com

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Independent Business Associate

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Y O U R

S T O RY

A few years ago, as the Sydney director of a large US-based recruitment business, I was having lunch with a client when he put down his glass of mineral water and out of the blue said, “You know what Paul, I have to admit you really are very good at what you do. Surely at some point you’ve considered going out on your own.”

The Journey

From Employee to Entrepreneur •Paul Slezak I had thought about it, but somehow I had always had an excuse. The timing never felt quite right and I didn’t consider myself much of a risk-taker.

Today, as the founder of my own enterprise, (and having realised along the way that I am in fact a risk-taker), I can honestly say leaving the security and stability of the corporate world and starting my own business has been the best (albeit by far the toughest) decision I’ve ever made. Not only has it given me an incredible sense of personal achievement, but I now have a level of autonomy and freedom that I never would have dreamed of having had I

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remained with my former employer.

The idea of starting out on my own had been niggling at the back of my mind for many years. But I was comfortable (there’s that dreaded word!) so I never let the idea gather momentum.

The notion of comfort zone plays a huge part for anyone weighing up the pros and cons as to whether or not to go it alone. It was, when I found myself in a somewhat un-comfortable situation (reduced salary, reduced hours, reduced www.thinkbigmagazine.com

responsibility, economic downtown ...), that the decision to rip off the bandaid was pretty much unavoidable.

Ask anyone who’s taken the plunge and opened the doors to their own business venture and they’ll tell you there was a particular moment in time when it became a no brainer.

And it’s the same with others as well. After six years managing a sales team, Jeannine was told a new regional director was being brought in from outside the company to manage her. It was then she had her aha moment; as the penny dropped she realised she could build a sales team of her own. Now she has a thriving business with seven highly motivated staff working for her.

Antony woke up two weeks before his 40th birthday (a time in his life he still refers to as his age of discontent) and realised he actually hated the IT industry where he had been slaving for most of his working life. He walked into his manager’s office and resigned from his $150,000 salary to follow his dream. One month later, he opened a photography studio. He had always had a passion for the craft and knew he was good at it. Today (four years later), Antony shoots for some of Australia’s leading corporate and architectural firms, choosing to only work three days a week.

Many people get caught in the romantic notion of starting their own business: the flexibility, the freedom, the autonomy.

But let’s face it, not everyone is going to be an overnight success so it’s important to balance the positives (which don’t get me wrong, are liberating) with the downsides: potential isolation, the need to keep yourself motivated 24/7, potentiallity of reduced income as you build the business.

So before you get caught up in the excitement of it all, pause for a moment and think realistically whether it is in fact the right move for you.

Ironically (or perhaps not), one of the arms to my business focuses on helping people make the transition from employee to entrepreneur. I am currently working with one client who is going through all the preparatory stages of setting up her own venture but has decided to stay working full time with her current employer until she is 100% ready to jump. Straddling the dual employer/entrepreneur mindset can be demanding, but it certainly makes the transition less painful as the master plan comes to life. So if you are not completely ready to bite the bullet, and feel more comfortable testing the waters first, it might be worth considering a strategy like Madison’s.

Quite often it’s making the actual decision that can be harder than facing the many obstacles that may well present themselves in the first years of your journey. However (and this is coming purely from personal experience), as long as your motivation to start the business is consistent with your passion and enthusiasm for the service you are delivering, you’ll never look back. TB

Paul Slezak has a background in recruitment and advertising in Australia and Hong Kong and is the founder of 2 dots (http://www.2dots. com.au/), a business that facilitates career or business change for individuals, teams and organisations. www.thinkbigmagazine.com

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End Start AN

HAS A

Story by Ashley

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D

De spite selling her range of gluten, wheat,

yeast and dairy free cakes and biscuits to clients such as Qantas, David Jones and Singapore Airlines, Rowie Dillon – creator of the Sydney based kitchen Rowie’s Cakes – is not a formally trained baker.

Nor is 43-year-old Dillon a trained writer, yet her recipes feature regularly in Australian food magazines and she is close to finishing her first cookbook.

A passionate believer in creative visualisation, for Dillon it’s less a case of what you know and more a case of what you believe, you can achieve.

“If you want to succeed you need the stamina of a jaguar,” says Dillon.

“You need to believe without any disbelief that you can do it.”

Dillon conceived the idea for Rowie’s Cakes in 2001, shortly after injuring herself when she fell onto a pot bellied stove, severely burning both her hands.

“It was like the universe telling me a message,” she says. “Like a force coming down and saying: Stop! I’m going to incapacitate you for a bit so you can actually think.”

With three months off work to recover, Dillon was free to consider her future without the usual distractions of her advertising job.

It was during this time she wrote the story for Rowie’s Cakes, mapping out a detailed vision of where she wanted the business to be in the future.

“You need to start with the end in mind,” says Dillon. “Picture what it would be like at that point, how it would feel.

No one’s telling you what to do, you’re creating...I was going to be Australia’s next Sara Lee.”

Yet it wasn’t until Dillon encountered another unforeseen setback that she decided to set Rowie’s Cakes in motion.

Fully baked

In September 2001, Dillon was told her position at a Sydney advertising agency was being made redundant. The agency offered Dillon one month to find another job, but having already decided she didn’t www.thinkbigmagazine.com

want to be there, she chose to leave the next day.

That evening, a liberated Dillon took off her shoes, walked into the water at Balmoral beach, threw off her sunglasses and screamed out to sea.

Dillon then walked to her friend’s house and announced she was starting Rowie’s Cakes.

Within days of her decision, she was already baking. “I was worried about how I was going to acquire income,” she says. “There’s no such luxury as 10 days off—that’s just 10 days lost to achieving the dream.”

By November Dillon had secured the greengrocer.com account and was supplying to local cafés and restaurants.

Taking last orders at midnight, Dillon would deliver her cakes by 6am and then set to work on finding more clients.

pursuit of success... It only takes one or two breaks to get some momentum.”

Dillon says the ability to remain focused on her vision is driven less by selfbelief, and more by her unwavering belief in the brand itself.

“My body is a machine for the brand,” says Dillon. “I’m the vehicle, I’ll drive it there.”

In April, Dillon will take the brand further than it’s been before, travelling to Singapore and London to investigate options for exporting.

Having never been overseas, Dillon is excited about her trip but says she’ll return home quickly to invest time in other projects; her recently released savoury pastry mix, publishing her cookbook and launching a new biscuit.

Executing a dream

Dillon confesses to always striving for more, but hopes her ambitious goals are a positive influence on the team.

“I raise the bar all the time,” she says. “Sometimes the production manager has to say ‘slow down, let’s consolidate’. I hope I’m inspiring to work with...I like to think I am kind.”

Even after the success of her business, Dillon still keeps the original story she wrote for Rowie’s Cakes, and the letter R in her logo is the same R she hand painted during her first week of business.

Nearly a decade since beginning her journey, today Rowie’s Cakes bakes 70 hours a week and employs over 15 staff.

Reflecting on how much of her story has eventuated, Dillon says anyone can achieve their dream if they follow ‘the three Ps’: planning, passion and persistence.

“And start with the end in mind,” she reiterates with a knowing smile. TB

“It’s one thing to dream and another thing to execute,” says Dillon. “I’ve got the ability to do both.”

According to Dillon, the difference between dreaming and executing comes down to planning, passion and persistence.

“If you really believe it, plan it out correctly and push yourself, you can do anything,” she says.

But it hasn’t all been smooth sailing, and Dillon admits to having endured some difficult times.

“There have been a lot of tears along the way,” she says. “I’ve had nights at home baking where I’ve thought—how am I going to do this?”

When faced with a challenging situation Dillon says it pays to stay committed to your end goal and keep on pushing yourself.

“Set backs?”asks Dillon. “There’s no such thing. You need to be relentless in

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M I N D S E T:

A S S O C I AT I O N

Weight Loss Goals:

Lyn Woodward specialises in the psychology behind weight issues. activateyourmind.com.au

Slim Chance or Fat Chance?

Have you ever wondered what the difference is between those of us who struggle with weight and the ‘naturally’ slim people? You know, those of us who have tried every diet known to man, who constantly think about food and would find it easier to cut their arm off rather than leave the last three Tim Tams in the packet.

W

hat is the difference between those of us who start a new diet and fitness regime only to come unstuck by the family-block-of-chocolate-a-day and those ‘naturally slim’

people who seem to be able to eat anything they want and still stay skinny?

The difference lies in our mindset and how we think.

The problem, and the solution, lies with the different, ingrained associations that we have towards food, eating and exercise, what we believe and how we deal with our emotions…oh, and a few bad habits we’ve picked up along the way.

Let’s look at the associations…

• You may think of salad and vegetables as boring and associate them with dieting and restriction...a ‘naturally slim’ person loves them and associates them with health and vitality.

• You may find exercise a chore and associate exercise with pain and failure...a ‘naturally slim’ person really enjoys getting moving, finds it fun and loves how it makes them feel.

• You may love sweets (and chocolate and cheese and cakes and chips!) and associate them with being a treat or reward...a ‘naturally slim’ person will reward themselves in different ways and wouldn’t even consider food.

These mental associations are unconscious, have generally been learnt and ingrained over a long period of time. This means that no matter how much you try to lose weight by dieting and forced

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exercise, these underlying associations will always be there to sabotage you.

Think of the emotional eater who reaches for food when they’re angry, stressed or upset. It’s not surprising really that we turn to food when we’re emotional. When we cried as babies, our mothers fed us. If a child throws a tantrum, isn’t it easier to give them sweets to keep them quiet? Whose grandparents (who tend to be linked to unconditional love without the scolding) gave them sweets every time they visited? For a lot of people, it is easier to find comfort from food than it is to find a way to deal with the unwanted emotions or emotional baggage that may be hanging around.

Our beliefs will have a dramatic effect on our waistline. From believing that we’ll never reach our target weight, to believing that we are big boned, to believing that we don’t deserve to be slim, to believing that we will end up with our mothers’ body shape (the girls that is!). Our unconscious mind will do everything it can to hold up our beliefs; to the extent where it may even slow down our metabolic rate or tell us that we’re ravenous even though we have only just finished a meal. Think of the yo-yo diet scenario: we go on a diet and start to head towards our target weight, our unconscious mind will kick in just before we get there to support our underlying belief that we will never achieve it.

How about our habits? There is a specific strategy to everything that we do, for instance a ‘boredom strategy’ may be: sit down in front of the TV, turn the TV on, flick through a

few channels, think to yourself ‘there’s nothing on again, what shall I do’ and then all of a sudden there’s a bowl of chips in front of you! When you become aware of the strategy, you can read the signs leading up to the unwanted habit and interrupt the strategy.

Many of our unwanted habits or beliefs around food may not even be ours. There are so many nutrition, health and fitness ‘experts’ out there telling us conflicting stories about what we should eat—how do we choose who to believe?

Is it possible that we are eating the same types, or quantities, of foods that our parents, friends, partners or even children eat? One person’s idea of overeating may be very different to another’s and how many people find it impossible to leave food on their plate, even though they are full to bursting, because there are ‘starving children in Africa!’

Our brain encodes all of these different associations in different ways and we all have very different emotions, beliefs and habits that make up who we are and which, unconsciously, dictate how we act.

If we can become aware of our own associations we can start to think differently. When you think differently, you behave differently. If you think like a ‘naturally slim’ person won’t you behave like a ‘natually slim’ person? If you start to think and behave like a ‘naturally slim’ person, won’t you become a ‘naturally slim’ person?

Food for thought? TB

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M I N D S E T:

H E A LT H

What good is a

billion dollars, If you are dead, Mr. Packer?

Brian Sher is a best-selling business author and author of The Anti-

Isn’t it fascinating how times change. What was once regarded as great success is today a complete failure.

Ageing Diet. workwithbriansher.com

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D

uring the rule of the Roman Empire, food other than for basic sustenance was a luxury item. Banquets became a symbol of great wealth as society’s elite frequently gorged themselves. Being fat in this era was a symbol of status and an outward sign of wealth and power.

In the modern era, being overweight has a negative social stigma and is an outward symbol of poor thinking. In the year 2010, being overweight is frowned upon. This condition is a result of nutritional poor, calorie rich processed foods being abundantly available.

Being overweight is now classified medically as a disease, because it (as does smoking) shortens life expectancy and impinges on the quality of the years we are alive.

Being rich now has completely different connotations.

Today... “to be rich is to be healthy” and ‘success’ is measured by the quality (and quantity) of our years on earth.

After all, what are we working for?

Why would anyone want to achieve great financial success and their lifelong dreams, only to discover they have some terminal illness such as cancer (now affects one in every three people), or simply drop dead of heart failure.

In simpler terms... what good is a billion dollars, if you are dead?

In 2002 I had occasion to meet privately with Kerry Packer, who at the time was Australia’s richest man. It was no secret his health was failing due to

kidney failure and heart disease and his days were somewhat numbered.

I was there to introduce him to an emerging, yet fast growing global medical speciality—anti-ageing medicine.

During that meeting with Mr Packer it became apparent that he would have given up his entire fortune in exchange for his health and extending his life by another 10 years; unfortunately we were not in a position to trade. This made me think about the price of health: the cost is very little if you have it and worth a fortune when you don’t.

Most people I come into contact with take their health for granted and fail to give it a second thought.

Only when crisis occurs, or what Paul Zane Pilzer (bestselling author of The Wellness Revolution) calls a ‘Negative Health Event’ do people have this mental awakening.

This is a big mistake for big thinkers.

Thinking big cannot exist without clarity of mind, plentiful energy and an internal power that must be sustained over time to realise your dreams. Achieving success is more like a marathon than a sprint and without a healthy body and therefore healthy mind, success will elude you.

So what is the lesson here for anyone on the road to success? Success cannot be achieved without you. If you are incapable of travelling this full journey and negating the neglect of your body and mind it stands to reason that when your ship arrives, you will not be on it.

I wish you the best of health. TB Next month:

Eating to succeed on the anti-ageing diet. www.thinkbigmagazine.com

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{

“I am Jonathan Livingston Seagull,” says James Marcus Bach, son of Richard

}

Bach, author of inspirational classic, Jonathan Livingston Seagull. “I didn’t realise that until I was writing [my] book,” James continues. “I’d lived the plot of Jonathan Livingston Seagull in a metaphorical sense.”

Will t

Jonatha

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the real

an Livingston Seagull

please fly?

M

• By Daniel G Taylor

Many children of famous parents want to distance themselves as they claim their space in the world. Not James. “[My father’s] book is deeply influential in my life. I’m very proud of my father. I wish to impress my father by showing him that his ideas work.”

James—who dropped out of school and then went onto become the youngest technical manager at Apple Computer by the time he was 20—has done that in The Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar, a book that snubs the traditional approach to learning and encourages people to learn what they love.

He left school because his teachers wanted him to learn subjects that bored him, while they wouldn’t reward him for learning more about the subjects he loved. Part of the plot of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, is about Jonathan’s choice to fly apart from the flock, who are calling him to conform. Needless to say, Richard supported his son’s choice.

A choice that led James to live his passions. “I had a kind of obsession with computers from the moment I first touched one, from the moment I first saw one in a magazine,” James says. “I looked at all the keys and I thought, ‘Each key does something different.’ I guess I saw a computer as a portal to alternate realities, worlds that I could imagine and control, and I wanted to control something in my life.”

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F E AT U R E :

J A M E S

After Richard bought him his first computer, James taught himself how to program. In a serendipitous video store encounter, a manager from Apple Computer hired him.

“Why would someone hire me over people with college degrees? I was a lot cheaper.

Whether you’re schooled or not, if you can solve a problem, someone will hire you.”

How to learn what you love “Unlike other books about learning, I don’t say, ‘Well, just buckle down and study.’ I don’t say, ‘Just do it.’ My book is an approach to learning for people with very little self-discipline. I don’t use selfdiscipline [to learn] in the classic sense.

When I say self-discipline, what I mean is I don’t have the ability to force myself to do things that I don’t want to do. What I do instead is my mind loves to wander.

“I wanted to learn Homeric Greek once, and then I kind of lost interest and went and did something else. And that happens to me over and over and over again. I used to think that was a bad thing, and it certainly prevents me from doing certain kinds of things, however, it turns out that it’s also a tremendous asset. I’ve adapted to having a mind that wanders and I end up doing things and pursuing things that people with wandering minds are able to do better than people who are highly self-disciplined about what they think about.”

Sometimes an authentic problem will draw him back to a subject, perhaps years later, with a deeper understanding and appreciation. An authentic problem is best illustrated with an example: James asked me why reading his book had inspired me to learn some more math skills. Since high school, I hadn’t needed anything beyond basic math, but now my business and personal finances would

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benefit from knowing multiplication, division and percentages.

“You have what I call an ‘authentic problem,’ James says. “You need to know to do certain math better and if you’re able to do that then you will feel that you’re able to solve problems that are important to you, and now that you have that feeling, you’ll find it easier to learn math than it was before.”

The Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar gives 11 elements for self-directed learning. “Not only do I have the elements, but I have a whole set of heuristics and those heuristics are basically patterns and guidelines. These patterns define and describe the form of learning that I engage in.” James also teaches how you can create your own syllabus, to learn what will be most useful to you now.

The book was 26 years in the writing, with Richard prodding James to write it. “My father was dealing with me according to the ethos of Jonathon Livingston Seagull. He wanted me to live a free life. He didn’t want me to be doing things just because he wanted me to do them, but he wanted me to follow what my passions are in life. He’s always asking me, ‘What’s the most important thing in your life?’ Or, ‘Why aren’t you doing it?’

“I feel that having Richard Bach for my father, I am a product of his ideas.

I think I’ve demonstrated that you can leave the flock of formal education and develop your own ways of working and thinking and learning and you can find success there.” TB

The Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar • by James Marcus Bach If you’ve ever heard that successful people give themselves an ongoing education, what have you done about it? Would you like to know an easy system that turns learning into an adventure?

James Marcus Bach’s story is that you don’t need to conform to the requirements of formal education to succeed. Instead, be an intellectual buccaneer-scholar: “Buccaneers… were bold and aggressive, they lived free, and they lived by their wits. That’s how I want to be as a thinker.”

Bach looks at 11 elements of self-education, under the acronym SACKED SCOWS. An example of such thinking: once I would have learned to spell words I may never use. Now I learn spelling relevant to my current writing project, like ‘buccaneer.’ Explore freeform learning and make it an adventure.

—Reviewed by Daniel G. Taylor

Visit www.buccaneerscholar.com and follow James Marcus Bach on Twitter @jamesmarcusbach. www.thinkbigmagazine.com www.thinkbigmagazine.com

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BUSINESS:

WEB PROTECTION

Protecting Your Website Investment From Hackers

Tom Petryshen is the chief executive officer and founder of Amplify. amplify.com.au

More businesses than ever now depend on their website to act as the face of their business. For e-commerce and web based companies, their websites are the business. Downtime of any type or length can have a catastrophic effect on sales and the bottom line.

W

hile most website downtime is caused by technology malfunctions or human error, there is a more sinister concern that is waiting to wreak havoc. And rather than waiting for you to stumble across their websites, criminals are increasingly going where the traffic is by targeting legitimate websites.

In fact, the rising tide of malware is causing chaos for companies of all types.

Every website, including those from businesses you know and love is potentially a threat as hackers increasingly exploit vulnerabilities in web servers to plant their malware for unsuspecting visitors.

In addition to the initial clean up and lost revenue from downtime, your brand may be tarnished and any investment in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) lost.

Over the past three months, we’ve been called in to help clean up the mess left by hackers for two businesses that depend heavily on their websites for marketing and sales.

In addition, we’ve also seen hackers change the links on the website of a large, well known Australian retailer to redirect visitors to their own infected websites.

Hacker’s creativity leads to drop in Search Engine Rankings In the first example, hackers were able to exploit known issues in old database

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software to gain control of the server. Once in, they created thousands of content pages containing sexually explicit and drug related material and hid the content out of sight.

They then added hidden links in the code of the company’s actual product pages that pointed to their new content.

While the links and content was not visible to the visitor, it was easily discovered by Google. After finding the hidden links, Google then found and indexed the hacker’s content.

After only a few short weeks, Google started to display these pages in the search results and deliver traffic to them.

While no malware was installed on the website, the hacker’s attempt at creative literature had a negative impact on the company’s search engine rankings and the corresponding traffic and sales. If left unfound, the long term impact on the company’s investment in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) would have been even greater.

Malware affects visitors to website In a second example, hackers were able to gain access to the web server of a nine month old business by exploiting the code of a Content Management System and in doing so installed malware directly to the server.

Unsuspecting visitors were then infected with the virus.

While the malware was quickly discovered by Google, the website had to be taken down for three days in order to clean and test the server. Unfortunately this downtime led to lost business, not to mention the hidden cost to the brand for those that were infected. ...Continued on page 34

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33

Hackers divert visitors

to malware sites Finally, in a more high profile case, hackers were able to exploit the server used to display ads on a large electronics retail business. In this case, the hackers changed the links on the ads that were displayed on the retailer’s website.

Visitors who clicked on the ads were then directed to a website that contained malware. While the e-commerce website was not directly affected, the fallout from customers who became infected would have been devastating to the brand.

So what can you do to protect

your website?

Whether it’s malware, links to websites with malware or actual downtime the real costs to business for any downtime today are high. For companies that depend on their website for leads and sales, the fallout from hackers and their handiwork can be costly.

Don’t allow your business

to become a statistic Follow these seven steps: 1. Ensure your hosting company has the latest software installed on their servers. Hackers tend to look for and exploit known vulnerabilities in older software. If the software is updated

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it drastically reduces the chances of them gaining access.

2. Sign up for Google’s and Bing’s Webmaster Tools. Both search engines now provide alerts and notification if they find malware on your website.

3. Scan your website using free tools from McAfee (www.siteadvisor.com) and AVG (linkscanner.avg.com) to detect threats.

4. If your website is mission critical consider using one of the paid website monitoring service from Binary Canary (www.binarycanary. com), HackAlert from Armorize (hackalert.amorize.com) or Purewire from Barracuda Networks (www. purewire.com).

5. Don’t use a common password that can be easily guessed and change it every six months or when staff turn over.

6. Ask your developers or web hosting company to hide website errors.

Hackers are able to use the error messages to exploit holes in any databases you might be using.

7. Keep your own virus software up to date so that you don’t inadvertently give the hacker your passwords via a key logging malware. TB

Tricks And Techniques Employed By Hackers To Break Into Your System

T

he first, most common technique used by hackers is scanning.

Hackers have created tools that scan computers for weak spots. It can be an operating system that hasn’t been upgraded or a port in the computer that it is open without the knowledge of the user.

Hackers use this ‘open window’ to get inside your computer in order to do whatever they want to do.

The interesting thing about this is that these hacker tools are available for free via the Internet. So, with a couple of hours of instructions, almost every computer user can become a hacker.

Another way that hackers can access your machine is through malware: programs designed to capture vital information from your computer, like login users and passwords. Malware could be hidden in a PowerPoint presentation sent by email or even in an innocent Instant Messenger message window. TB Source: Hackingalert.com

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Break Free from your business Do you run your business or does it run you?

You probably got into business to achieve some financial rewards or lifestyle goals.

Or perhaps your goal was to build an asset that would help you to create a solid future for you and your family. The big question is: Has your business delivered?

It’s not rocket science; it’s business.

Business owners frequently get bogged down in the detail yet there are steps that can you can take right now to create the business of your dreams. To do it you’ll need a mixture of practical information, structure and guidance from people who’ve done it themselves. The Your Business Success program provides step by step instructions on how to make your business work with or without your daily involvement.

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One of our program developers has written a book about his own successes in business. Owen Joyce started a business in 1999 and sold it to Seek.com.au in 2004 for just shy of $4m. In his book ‘Small Business: Practical Guidelines for Success’ Owen shares how this successful business model was created from scratch and how you can apply the same rules to your business. This book is valued at $24.95 and is free to the first 100 people to request it. Go to:

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35

BUSINESS:

S E C U R I T Y

Not Getting Darren Brown is a Senior Associate of Kliger Partners, Lawyers. kligers.com.au

There is little point running businesses if you are inefficient in making sure you get paid. Getting paid by customers can be a battle in itself and it is essential that you employ effective tools and tactics against your debtors, designed to assist in securing payment.

A

properly drawn Credit Application and Terms and Conditions (‘Terms of Trade’) is a cost effective weapon to assist a business to win the competition to get paid.

This competition is often as fierce as the competition of making a sale.

A hard fought for sale is worthless and even damaging, if you do not get paid or if payment is long delayed.

Allowing debtors to be in control of when (or even if) to pay can clearly be very damaging for any business.

Attack…

Terms of Trade should not merely be a document setting out payment terms and shipping details. They are a weapon to be wielded and designed to: • require debtors to pay your accounts on time or risk payment of interest and administration charges. Didn’t pay on time—be entitled to charge interest and administration charges to compensate you for the increased hassle of chasing up debtors. Problem debtors will soon learn.

• assist you to become a secured creditor and rank in priority to other creditors. Tired of not receiving payments from debtors in administration while secured creditors get 100 cents in the dollar? Use Terms of Trade to become a secured creditor.

• require the debtor to pay your legal costs of recovery, making debts recoverable that would otherwise be uneconomical to recover.

• require a company’s directors to pay you if the company does not. Don’t allow a

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Paid?

director to hide behind the company to avoid paying you.

• allow caveats to be lodged over land owned by a debtor and its directors.

• facilitate the appointment of an Administrator to the debtor company. Debtor not paying—put someone else in charge of the company.

• permit the recovery of goods that have not been paid for.

Above all else, Terms of Trade are used to get you paid.

…and defend A common tactic employed by debtors to avoid or reduce payment is to allege, often months after the goods or services have been provided, that the goods or services were defective.

Another is to claim that the goods or services did not conform to what was ordered or that the creditor/supplier failed to deliver on time. Often these claims are without merit but are made simply to delay, reduce or avoid payment.

Terms of Trade can be used as a shield to defend against claims of that type as well as being a potent sword to be wielded against a debtor.

Terms of Trade can be designed to: • require a debtor to raise its claim for defective goods and services within a short period of time after delivery (i.e. seven days after delivery and not six months later when it is being chased for the debt).

• protect you from late, short or non delivery. www.thinkbigmagazine.com

• minimise your exposure to claims for damages and compensation from a debtor.

• protect your intellectual property.

• stop debtors from using spurious claims as a means to delay, avoid or reduce payment.

One size does not fit all Competition is not simply competition in getting a sale. Every business needs to get paid.

Your bad debtor may have debts with your competitors and other businesses and it is in your best interest to get paid first. Terms of Trade can provide a competitive advantage in recovering payment. Use a debenture charge to rank ahead of competitors for payment instead of equally with them.

A business should not adopt a ‘one size fits all’ mentality to their Terms of Trade by utilising similar terms and conditions to competitors or from other businesses. If you have the same Terms and Conditions then you are on equal footing to collect payment. You need to get paid first. What happens if the Terms of Trade you have signed contain a defect? Your ability to rank ahead of other creditors could be compromised and, in a worst case scenario, you may not even be able to recoup the debt owed at all.

Terms of Trade should be tailored to industry and business specific issues and reviewed regularly to take into consideration changes in the law or other circumstances.

Do not use a set of clauses copied from others. Often this leads to ambiguities or contradictions which can result in the Terms of Trade containing fatal flaws. Terms of Trade clauses should be properly designed as a whole to work together, rather than as a set of ‘ad hoc’ clauses. There is little point having a clause allowing you to place a caveat over a debtor’s property if you do not have a clause giving you the appropriate rights to support the caveat. Without that power, the debtors may be able to easily have the caveat removed.

Terms of Trade are, and should be, regarded as formal contract conditions that apply between a business and its customers. They should be prepared by a lawyer.

giving a creditor/supplier sufficient alternative powers against the debtor to aid in recovery. A threat to sue does not create the fear it once did. However, registering a debenture charge to place a debtor into administration still has the power to terrify.

Reducing the need to resort to litigation can also reduce the number of debts that you may have otherwise chosen to write off because of the possible legal costs involved.

Debtors are generally aware that most people will avoid litigation wherever possible due to its associated cost. They will sometimes rely on this assumption and attempt to ‘hold out’ hoping that a creditor will write off a debt rather than sue. You must, therefore, arm yourself with other alternative weapons via effective Terms of Trade.

Properly drawn Terms of Trade will provide avenues for recovery, often at less cost and inconvenience than legal proceedings.

Must Terms be long & unwieldy?

Terms of Trade can be drafted to fit on the back of a consignment note, invoice or quotation.

They can also include a fully fledged Credit Application through which valuable information is obtained which can be used to assist in recovery.

Will I always get paid?

Sadly no. There will be situations where recovery is not possible or commercially viable. There will also be instances where a debtor will have no assets with which to pay. However, questions contained in the Credit Application (utilised in conjunction with the Terms of Trade) can be carefully designed to help identify these problem debtors before a decision is made to trade with them.

Increased ability to obtain payment from debtors The ability to obtain payment from a debtor is greatly increased with well drafted Terms of Trade. To illustrate, ponder this question—who would you pay?

Creditor A: who has sent a letter of demand begging for payment; or Creditor B: who has exercised powers under their Terms of Trade by registering a debenture charge over your company, taken out a caveat over your family home and investment property, is about to place your company into the hands of an Administrator and take steps to sell up your properties?

Well drafted Terms of Trade can assist to put you in the shoes of Creditor B. TB

Legal proceedings required?

Terms of Trade can be designed to minimise the need to sue debtors by www.thinkbigmagazine.com

Volume 3.1 3.1 Volume

37 thinkBIG 37

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39

BUSINESS:

C R E D I T

Gratitude

Michelle Murchison is the owner of Money Advantage. moneyadvantage.com.au

During Times of Credit Rationalisation “There is a law of gratitude, and if you are to get the results you seek, it is absolutely necessary that you should observe this law… it is the natural principle that action and reaction are always equal and in opposite directions.”

—Wallace D Wattles, The Science of Getting Rich

W

hile credit rationalisation continues across the finance industry, by being informed, planning and taking appropriate action, you have a greater opportunity to obtain the desired ‘reaction’ from a lender for finance.

Some areas that may impact on people wishing to invest further are…

Cash out—when accessing equity from property (to buy investment property or invest in shares/managed funds) in the past, minimal disclosure of the purpose of funds was required. This has now changed. Often evidence or explanation by way of a pending purchase contract and/or letter from an accountant or financial planner will be required.

While it’s often recommended to build in ‘buffers’ for unforseen expenses, this requires the right context for the lender to accept as reasonable and realistic.

Valuations—depending on the type of property and where, bank valuations are tending towards conservatism despite the apparent demand for the property.

Unfortunately, this can sometimes be the difference in the transaction proceeding or not, as the bank will lend up to maximum LVR (loan to value) based on contract price or valuation, whichever is the lesser.

Low doc/no doc—predominantly designed for self-employed borrowers and not requiring the same level of financial documents, borrowers would declare their income and the Lender would rely on this. Low doc policy is now becoming more stringent and/or commanding

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higher interest rates, to reflect the perceived higher risk by the lender. Several lenders are now requiring BAS statements within this policy. These products have been impacted the most by the credit rationalisation and may take some time to readjust over time.

Set an intention to create, not compete There is still an abundance of money to be lent to those who understand how best to present their application (with the right advisors).

With appropriate forward planning, consider borrowing for future investment plans, when you don’t need to. By doing this, you place yourself under less pressure to seem ‘desperate’ to the lender for the money. If you are clear about what you want to achieve—and it’s reasonable—it’s amazing how this conveys in a finance application.

Mortgage finance is an ever changing market place and there is every sign it will continue. Therefore, it is important to have a strategic, forward-planning approach to your finance needs by engaging the services of an experienced mortgage professional that can provide solutions and alternatives.

So take the time to consider your ideas and strategies for the next one to five years, seek the advice of a mortgage advisor who knows and understands what benchmarks are relevant for you to plan in advance. Keep your finances in order (stick to your budget!), so you can act upon opportunities and be ready to use borrowings to leverage—the smart way to build wealth. TB www.thinkbigmagazine.com

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BUSINESS:

F R A N C H I S E

F I T

The right franchise Is an Extension of You

Damian Kay is Managing Director of Telcoinabox. telcoinabox.com

If you’re looking to buy a franchise in Australia, and with over 1,200 choices you’re asking about where to start, the answer is easy...sort of. Start with you.

M

ost people looking to buy a franchise for the first time make one big mistake: they start by looking at all the different opportunities first. When you start this way, you can end up paying good money to do the same job you did as an employee; a job that you probably didn’t like in the first place! We do this because it is what we know and it seems logical. However, if you are ready to purchase your own franchise business and want to guarantee you make a great decision, let me give you some ideas to make choosing the right franchise more fun and profitable.

When you buy a franchise, it needs to be an extension of you. You need to ensure that the franchise you buy satisfies the following two criteria: 1. You are doing what you enjoy.

2. You are doing what you are good at.

In order for the franchise opportunity to be an extension of who you are, it needs to satisfy these two criteria. Before you start looking or if you are looking now, go through the two exercises below.

1. Answer the question ‘What do I like doing?’

Start a brain dump and write down anything you can think of. Write down everything that interests you and everything you enjoy doing, no matter how silly it seems. You can refine your list to be more business focused later on. Once you determine you have captured what you like doing, move onto the next exercise.

2. Answer this question ‘What are my strengths?’

A good starting point is to ask your friends or colleagues. You’ll get some great answers. Be prepared, however, because they might also tell you what your weaknesses are. This can be

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powerful yet confronting. This exercise ensures that you do not search for a wrong opportunity.

Once you are confident about what you like doing and what your strengths and weaknesses are, try to match your likes with your strengths. This requires thinking about what strengths you could use with what you like doing. For example, if you like sales and you know you are good at it, this is a great match. However, if you like landscaping but your strengths do not include a talent with outdoor architecture, you may want to rethink your decision.

Be aware there is another side. We all have weaknesses and fears, and your business will also carry these. Do not despair! The reality is a business opportunity will never be a perfect fit.

The key is to plan for your weaknesses. None of us are good at everything. Inevitably you will find that you fill in the ‘gaps’ through a number of sources. One of those should be your franchisor.

Many good franchisors provide excellent systems that allow you not to worry about IT, reporting, accounting or workflow. Many of the administrative and operational activities are handled by your franchisor as part of the royalty/management fees.

Over the years, we have found that by developing great systems and providing all the back office operations we allow our franchisees to focus on what they are good at, which is growing their business.

As your business is an extension of you, make sure that the opportunity you choose is a match between your strengths and what you enjoy doing. Utilise your strengths and compensate for your weaknesses. Once you feel confident about what you are looking for, go find a few businesses that meet your needs, support you financially and, more importantly, make you happy doing what you want to do. TB www.thinkbigmagazine.com

ADVERTISEMENT

The dictionary definition of self-image is the “the idea, conception or mental image one has of oneself.” What you think of yourself inside has a tendency to reflect on the outside. It goes without saying then, that a person’s selfimage starts from their thoughts about how they view themselves.

Self-image

Can Determine Your Success or Failure?

M

ore than any other factor, selfimage directly affects a person’s success or failure in the business world.

Self-image influences how you look, behave, and relate to others. The self-image (self confidence) sets the boundaries of human accomplishment.

It is the key to your personality, to your behaviour and to your character. It literally determines whether you are heading towards success and creating the life of your dreams or creating something undesirable. My research over the past 15 years has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that any person that is successful in any field has either consciously or unconsciously created a successful selfimage in their particular area.

Factors that affect your self-image There are many things that play a role in shaping your self-image. Your level of attractiveness, academic achievements, social skills, family relationships, background and upbringing, just to mention a few. Although you can’t

change some of these, you can develop and improve upon many of them.

When you meet someone, what you look like and how you present yourself is all they have to go by. It illustrates how you feel about yourself, how much you value or respect yourself. It shows whether you are an interesting person or not and whether you are someone they want to deal with.

Your self-image determines how you deal with every situation and circumstance in your life. A person with a successful self-image in business will find solutions, new opportunities and attract ideas and people to help them accomplish their goals. The person with negative selfimage will only attract and experience failing opportunities, important deals falling over and unexpected situations that validate their negative self-image. So if you want to be successful in business or any area of your life, make sure your self-image matches what you are trying to create. This is vitally important.

How important is self-image when it comes to online success?

Much of what we do in business is now done online, so how you portray yourself via your website, networking sites (such as Facebook) and company emails is very important. The leading recruitment officers tell me that when a client applies for a position, one of the first things they do is go to the applicant’s networking sites (like Facebook) and see what sort of person they are really dealing with and if they are really suitable for the position.

If business success is what you are after, it is vitally important to portray yourself in an ideal way online.

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BUSINESS:

C L A R I T Y

Be Organised & Successful

in 2010

Andrew Vincent was the creator and producer of the Channel 9 television series Your Business Success. yourbusinesssuccess.com.au

Your Business Success recently ran a survey with small business owners and discovered that over 90% of them don’t keep a record of the day to day running of their business, or use a diary system to track appointments or tasks they want done.

Someone once said to me: “If it isn’t written down it doesn’t exist.”

I

t is amazing how many people commit everything to memory or at best scraps of paper or Post-it-Notes which are to be found somewhere between the office wall, the desk, top drawer, wallet, purse, handbag and glove box of the car.

As a result, only a fraction of tasks are completed on time, if at all.

So, would you like to have a competitive edge over 90% of all other business owners and work colleagues?

The Your Business Success ‘crash course in time management’ can help.

Over the years I have completed numerous time management courses and read a number of books on the topic. Although I always started

out with good intentions, ultimately I felt failure when it came to successfully implementing all the great ideas I was presented.

In 2003, I was reading Richard Branson’s autobiography, Losing My Virginity. I was fascinated by how he came up with so many great ideas and successfully started so many businesses in so many different industries.

He wrote: My most essential possession is a standardsized school notebook, which can be brought at any stationery shop on any high street across the country. I carry this everywhere and write down all the comments that are made to me by Virgin staff and anyone else I meet. I make notes of all telephone conversations and all meetings, and I draft out letters and lists of telephone calls to make...the discipline of writing everything down ensures that I have listened to people carefully.

This process seemed so simple that I decided to give it a try. I have now written book 14. I have a complete record of my business since January 2003, nearly 3,360 pages kept in chronological order. I know there are more comprehensive time management systems available but as a basic starting point I know this works and I have taught it to over 70 business owners in the past six months alone with great results.

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www.thinkbigmagazine.com

1. How to be organised

and succeed in 2010

3. Completing your To Do list—

get number 1 done

• Buy a simple A4 spiral bound notebook and commit to recording everything in it.

This is one of the most important steps and requires discipline.

The secret to success isn’t about getting everything done; it’s about getting the most important things done. You may find that your To Do list can become a bit daunting, so what you need to do each day is decide on what is Number One on the list and be satisfied that you got that done before you went to bed that night.

If you can get the most important task completed every day, five days per week, 50 weeks per year that means you have completed 250 of the most important tasks each year. This will put you way ahead of the competition and ensure you achieve the goals you set out at the start of the year.

• Review all meeting notes and create a To Do list for the week for outstanding items.

4. You don’t have to do it all—

learn to delegate

• Start a new page for each goal, new meeting or topic. Always write the name of the topic, goal, company or person you are meeting with at the top of the page and date it.

• At the end of each meeting write an action plan of what you and others have to do and set deadlines.

2. Weekly review

• Use a highlighter to cross out the pages where all items are completed so you know you don’t have to read them again.

Over time, when you go back through your notebook you will only look at the pages that aren’t crossed out.

Review your To Do list, decide on what you want to do or only you can do, and delegate the rest.

5. Use a diary to track deadlines Success is not only about doing things, it is also about making sure others get

things done. If you choose to delegate tasks then use a paper based diary, Outlook, or even your mobile phone to make a note of the date/time when the person you delegated a task to is meant to have it completed. You will be amazed how things start to get done when people know you will be following them up. A little prompt or two before the deadline always helps as well.

How to find things later on?

I have found the majority of issues are taken care of over a two or three months timespan and I believe that most people roughly remember which week/month they were discussed. By keeping things in chronological order it doesn’t take long to find them.

You can go further than this, as all the time management courses will tell you. But if you can commit to at least starting with Richard Branson’s simple idea of just writing everything into a simple A4 notebook and using a diary, you will be well and truly on the path to success. TB

Categories to which we can lend our expertise include: Promote your business the ‘write’ way Wot wood happen to your busyness if words went oot like this?

Everything you send out into the big wide world is a reflection of how you do business. That’s why all representative material, including company letters, media kits, press releases and sales brochures, must reflect a professionalism that is second to none.

At J²Media we offer a range of media solutions to cater for all your company needs. We understand that good presentation equates to success.

We provide expertise in writing, copywriting, editing, marketing and media management.

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• Marketing materials (brochures, media kits etc…)

• Web copy • Press releases • Business reports • Magazine and book editing • Copywriting • Ghost writing And more…

Find out how we can equip your business with the ‘write’ stuff.

Jonathan Jackson: 0413 713 744 email: jjackson@j2media.com.au or Jonathan Green: 0403 068 217 email: jgreen@j2media.com.au

Volume 3.1

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W

Australian investment

expert Justin Beeton takes a look at the most successful

investor of all time,

Warren Buffett, and explains how you

too can replicate the

consistent high returns the ‘Oracle of Omaha’ has achieved for over half a century.

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Warren Buffet

is arguably the greatest investor of all time. Without a doubt he certainly has the best long term track record in creating massive wealth for himself and the shareholders of his investment holding company, Berkshire Hathaway.

According to Forbes magazine, as at July 2008 Buffett was the world’s richest man with a whopping $62 billion.

Currently Buffett sits in second place behind Bill Gates.

Buffett is the CEO, chairman, and chief investment manager of Berkshire Hathaway, but does not have any quirky products as Bill Gates does, nor was he born into wealth like James Packer.

Buffett simply understands a few simple investment principles.

Warren Buffett’s investment principles If there is one thing I have learnt about Buffett in the last 15 years studying his genius is that Buffett buys businesses, he does not buy sectors, ideas or fads.

Buffett’s principles: 1. Buy outstanding companies with a proven management team—“If a business does well, the share price eventually follows.”

2. Buy below intrinsic value—“When you buy below intrinsic value you have a margin of safety as well as a high profit opportunity.”

3. Adopt a focused investment philosophy—“If you believe the share price will increase, then why not have a large investment in that company.”

King

The Returns of the

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Buffett’s principles are simple and what he describes as ‘merely common sense’ yet most who have attempted to replicate his success have failed. “There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult,” Buffett says.

The reason that the majority of investors fail to replicate Buffett’s consistent long term returns is that overlaying all of his investment principles is his patience and discipline to stick with what he knows. He never deviates away from his investment formula even when faced with short term market volatility.

Another reason Buffett has continually provided high returns to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway is because he is the world’s most successful investor, Buffett receives more opportunities than all other professional fund managers and the terms of which those opportunities are offered or negotiated are always skewed in Buffett’s favour.

Buffett is a big believer in exploiting freak conditions that lead to even great companies being sold cheaply.

In 2009 Buffett stated, “We have a lot of cash and we are now seeing things that give us the opportunity to use that cash sensibly.”

Be greedy In October 2008, at the height of the American banking crisis, when the majority were fleeing the banking system in a frenzied panic, Buffett injected $5 billion into US investment bank Goldman Sachs.

“When all others are being fearful, be greedy,” Buffett says.

He did not buy ordinary shares that all others were offered but Perpetual Preference shares that provided Goldman Sachs did not go completely broke, meant his entire $5 billion investment was protected.

Yet Buffett has the right to convert these units to ordinary shares at any time over a five year period at a price of $115 per share. Which means shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway can enjoy all the upside profit potential if Goldman Sachs share price trades above $115 per share, yet are without the risk of losing capital if the price falls (provided the company stays in business).

Buffett also negotiated for Berkshire Hathaway to be paid 10% per annum in interest on the $5 billion investment. Currently Goldman Sachs share price is trading at $170 meaning Buffett is sitting on a paper profit of almost $US3 billion accumulated in just over 12 months.

Buffet says, “Great investment opportunities come around when excellent companies are surrounded by unusual circumstances that cause the share price to be undervalued.”

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Extraordinary performance Since the share market lows reached in early 2009 many of Berkshire Hathaway holdings have recorded what can only be described as extraordinary performance (Goldman Sachs +60%, American express + 325%, Wells Fargo +265%, Coca-Cola + 49%, H&R Block +59%, Moody Corp+70%, Washington Post +52%) yet Berkshire Hathaway shares have significantly underperformed the market. What this means according to my analysis is that the best opportunity in the globe which meets Warren Buffett’s investment principles perfectly is his company itself—Berkshire Hathaway.

Berkshire Hathaway has a proven track record of providing returns to shareholders (27.7% annual returns since 1977), solid management team (Buffett himself), and according to the current book value is trading below intrinsic value.

• Proven management team • Trading below intrinsic value • Consistently provided high long term returns to shareholders

To invest or not to invest If you would like to gain access to the same deals as Buffett does, and to replicate the consistent high returns Buffett achieved then there is no need to reinvent the wheel, all you need to do is simply buy shares in Berkshire Hathaway.

Now here lies the problem. One A class share in Berkshire Hathaway will set you back $99,000 at the time of writing. As you need US dollars you will also face an additional risk of currency fluctuations.

There is also the obvious fact Buffett is pretty old being almost 80, so what will happen to the share price of Berkshire Hathaway when he does eventually pass away?

These are all questions Australian investors must consider when analysing whether to invest in Berkshire Hathaway.

Warren Buffett has been the world’s most successful investor, his investment principles have created the foundation to ensure he has consistently provided extraordinary returns to shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway for over 50 years. These principles are still relevant today and throughout 2008 and 2009 gave Buffett the opportunity to again wave his magic wand. TB Justin Beeton is the managing director of the highly regarded stockbroking firm JB Global. www.jbglobal.com.au

Facts

Warren Buffett

• Berkshire Hathaway has averaged an annual return of 27.7% since 1977.

• $10,000 invested with Warren Buffett back in 1956 would be worth over $300 million today.

• Buffett is known as the Oracle of Omaha.

• Buffett was born on 30th August 1930.

• Buffett’s first job was as a newspaper delivery boy.

• At the age of 13 he filed his first tax return claiming a $35 deduction for his bicycle.

• Buffett’s annual salary is just $US100,000.

• Buffett is the world largest philanthropist dedicating the majority of his wealth to charity once he passes.

• Buffett and Bill Gates are bridge partners.

• Buffett lives in the same house he purchased in the 1960s.

• Buffett’s favourite meal is a burger washed down with cherry coke.

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47

BUSINESS:

PAY M E N T

P L A N S

The Easy but Overlooked Way to

Lift Your Profits

Ken Wood is the founder and Chief Tap Turner at I.T. on Tap. itontap.com

When entrepreneurs seek to boost their sales revenue and improve their customer retention, one simple yet powerful strategy is often overlooked: offering customer payment plans.

T

he large corporate space figured this out some time ago, and in fact you can see them using this approach in many of your own experiences as a consumer:

• It’s likely that your electricity company, Internet service provider and other utilities are set up to charge their bills to your credit card each month.

• When you are shopping for a new car, it’s certain that every manufacturer has ensured that their dealers have a monthly finance option available. Without finance, only a fraction as many cars would be sold each year.

• Your gym is debiting your card for their monthly membership fee. Even if you don’t make it to the gym for some time, odds are you won’t cancel your membership to save $70 per month.

• If you’re renting the house you live in, then it’s very likely that you’re paying by automatic monthly debit to your bank account.

• Your insurance company would much prefer that you use the pay-by-the-month option, if you aren’t already. They know that sending you a bill for the annual renewal will prompt you to shop around and quite likely switch companies, so instead they process a smaller automatic debit each month to keep inertia on their side.

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• Of course one of the oldest forms of payment plans is still popular today: the ‘lay by’ programs offered by retail stores generate around $2 billon in sales per year.

The examples of payment plans above all work because they offer one or both of these two key benefits to the customers using them: • Convenience from automation: We’ve all become so busy that saving even a few minutes per month on paying bills is a relief. In fact it’s become a must-have, a

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feature that consumers expect and demand from companies in the categories above.

• Easier budgeting: Most of us find it easier to manage our money when expenses are a regular, predictable amount each month. Many people find it extremely difficult to plan and save up to pay cash for a large purchase.

Clearly offering payment plans can generate extra revenue for your business if you’re selling consumer products. If you operate in a B2B niche, then you may not have considered the fact that many businesses want the same two benefits as consumers do. The only difference is in terminology: the business world refers to the two points above as ‘labour savings’ and ‘cash flow management’ respectively.

Are you making full use of payment plans in your business? There is every reason to do so—the technology has become affordable for any size business and the benefits are compelling: • Increased sales of large ticket items (which often have the highest profit margins).

• Lock in ongoing, repeat business that you would otherwise have to compete for (be the easy, default supplier for future needs).

• Improved customer retention (as in the pay-by-the month insurance example).

• Reduced labour costs in your accounts department (automatic debits replace people chasing unpaid invoices). www.thinkbigmagazine.com

Clearly offering payment plans can generate extra revenue for your business if you’re selling consumer products...You’ll quickly start to see opportunities when you focus on making it easy and convenient for customers to buy from you—and then keep buying from you.

• Smoother cash flow in your business— especially important if your product has seasonal or other dips in sales at certain times of year.

What types of payment plans can you offer in your business? You’ll quickly start to see opportunities when you focus on making it easy and convenient for customers to buy from you—and then keep buying from you.

Depending on your business, some options could be: • Automate payment of your regular invoices by debiting your customers’

credit cards—taking a lesson from your Internet service provider. This works best when customers buy from you regularly and the value of each invoice is small (less than about $200 for consumers or less than $1,000 for businesses).

• Selling equipment? Provide a prepayment option for regular servicing, for example: schedule a technician to visit every quarter (if that’s what is required) and set up a payment plan charging one third of the fee each month. A busy plant manager will appreciate the set-and-forget, hassle free service—especially if you ‘sweeten the deal’, by absorbing the cost of any unplanned service calls that are required in spite of your regular maintenance work.

• Perhaps you can add an ongoing supply of consumables to follow a capital purchase, such as a subscription to supply chemicals after you’ve installed a new swimming pool. You will know how quickly the supplies of chemicals will be used if the pool is being properly treated, so you can organise to replenish them at the right time.

Adding the right payment plan strategy to your business is one of the fastest and easiest ways to lift profitability—without having to change anything else. With a bit of thought, you’ll quickly start coming up with ideas that complement your products and will be on your way to realising the potential of this powerful idea. TB Volume 3.1

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W E A L T H :

TRADING

PSYCHOLOGY

(PART

1)

Master

How to Your Day Trading Psychology Lachlan Elsworth is managing director of Traders International Australia and New Zealand. tradersinternational.com

What does it take to become a successful Day Trader and take advantage of the billions of dollars that are available in the markets every day? Lachlan Elsworth discusses trading psychology with thinkBIG. thinkBIG: Most people think that trading is complex and difficult to understand. How does a new trader step toward a sound psychology?

LE: For new traders who are committed to their success, live mentoring in the market is the secret to a great start and a great psychology.

Trading well as a novice is about getting your hand held from your first live trade. This mentoring must continue until a new trader has developed the independence and they are a semi-professional trader in their own right.

Gone are the days where smart traders should ‘go it alone’. I would suggest that 90% of new traders fail at trading because they adopt the lone-wolf mentality, choosing to compete in the market, instead of getting live ‘in the market’ mentoring from the word go.

TB: Once the foundation is set, what keeps a new trader on the path to a great psychology?

LE: Great question! There are many opinions regarding trading psychology, however I agree with all those that love simplicity. New traders need to be smart about what they are doing. They need to avoid the temptation to be dazzled by the abundance of trading opportunities, and instead stay focused on three key psychology building blocks.

Building block one: Refine your scope. New traders will tend to want to take a successful strategy and apply it to the entire market. Don’t do this. To build a great psychology, identify an already profitable strategy, analyse the results achieved live in the market and then stick to the strategy. It is best to trade just one thing, say FOREX (Currency), and trade it in the same time slot each day. Be boring. Avoid the temptation to

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switch markets and strategies and indicators in search of that 100% return in a day. Discipline regarding the strategy that you use, what you trade and when you trade it, breeds consistency of trading behaviour and this breeds confidence and a good trading psychology.

Building block two: Keep your trading simple. Many new traders are attracted to hype and complexity and this must be avoided at all cost. Complexity may appear attractive at first, but for most people complex trading is hard to master and may eventually destroy your trading confidence. Ensure that the strategy you have been mentored in is easily understood and the key points that initiate a trade are easy to identify.

To test your own understanding of the strategy you use, label a chart and explain what you do to a complete non-trader. This practice will reinforce your understanding of the strategy you use and strengthen your belief in your own ability to trade that strategy. Both are excellent techniques to help you develop a great trading psychology.

Building block three: Set a realistic expectation. Experienced trading educators will tell you up front that trading is not a get rich quick scheme. In fact, trading should be a ‘get rich slowly and learn how to keep it’ scheme. Many people, me included, have been sold trading platforms and schemes on the pretence of amazing [and unrealistic] performance. When the performance inevitably does not come, we second guess our own abilities and this destroys our confidence in our ability to trade and our trading psychology. TB www.thinkbigmagazine.com

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W E A L T H :

P R O P E R T Y

Prepare For Another Property Boom Jaime McIntyre is founder of 21st Century Group of Companies.

21stcenturyacademy.com

According to an HIA spokesperson, Australia’s projected population of 35 million by 2050, means we will need an extra 70,000 homes a year to cater for demand.

C

urrently in Australia there is a substantial gap between housing supply and demand; our builders just can’t build enough properties to keep up. Unfortunately, the Global Credit Crisis has simply caused this gap to widen, with many developers unable to obtain finance to complete existing developments or start new ones.

Thus the gap is set to widen with obvious consequences for house prices, rent and affordability.

In Sydney, rent will rise the fastest at 7.1% annual growth from 2010 to 2012, followed

by Melbourne 5.6%, Brisbane 5.0%, Adelaide 3.4%, and Perth 3.2%. According to BIS Shrapnel the average across Australia will be a 5.8% rise. This is largely due to the continuing increased demand from high immigration and the economic recovery which the Construction Industry is unable to meet.

For property investors this is very good news, boosting yields and leading to further price increases.

With interest rates still low, albeit slowly rising, investing in residential real estate in Australia is a very good option.

Despite the obvious long-term pressures on house prices, there are still a few so called commentators who delight in trying to talk people out of property investing, believing the market will still crash.

As predicted by myself and others, it wouldn’t happen and didn’t.

Shares crashed by up to 80%, however property remained flat. Some suburbs saw a small drop, but they have largely recovered and are on the rise again.

The larger drops were restricted mainly to the top end, particularly in suburbs like Mosman in Sydney, however even this suburb

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has seen some significant price rises of late.

Despite this, some experts still claim that Australian Property, based on the US and UK markets, will crash. I feel their analysis is deeply flawed.

I’m not saying property will be all smooth sailing, but I’m strongly suggesting the fundamentals do not suggest a property crash of significant proportions.

Personally I think many of the so called property naysayers also have ulterior agendas.

I mean who would have liked to have bought more real estate 15 years ago in Australia? Of course, we all would have.

But that’s hindsight.

To become wealthy we have to have courage and show foresight.

My advice...

Get educated, have courage, ignore those naysayers with agendas or bias, make intelligent decisions and above all, take action.

It’s what you do today that will determine your results in 5, 10, or 15 years from now.

Taking action even if you paid too much for a property at the time, still means you’re better off than not investing. Add some basic due diligence and you’ll be even further in front.

My millionaire mentor always said: “Jamie the key in life is not to be cynical and never take a risk, nor to be too gullible and fall for anything, but to have a healthy dose of scepticism and remain open-minded so you do your due diligence and take intelligent action, rather than being paralysed by fear, or doing something you’d later regret.”

People fail because they are either too cynical or too gullible. Tread the path down the middle where it’s less crowded. TB www.thinkbigmagazine.com

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W E A L T H :

S T O C K S

Time to

Aussie Rob has just released a brand new Covered Call training DVD called Aussie Rob’s Share Renting DVD that teaches step-bystep how to write Covered Calls. lifestyletrader.com.au/ products

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Rough Things Up G’day Folks, Aussie Rob here ... It’s time to rough up ya stocks a bit and start making some serious profits. No more pussyfooting around by being gentle with the stock that you’re holding. It’s time to get serious and put your stock to work. Stocks are made for using and abusing, not for tucking away in a neat little portfolio.

B

y roughing up your stocks a little each month, you could be extracting an extra 3%, 5% or maybe even more outta your stock portfolio each and every month with very little extra work. If you’re ready for a little rough play, roll up ya sleeves as I teach ya step-by-step how to do it.

We gotta start gentle as we get a bit sentimental here...

So, Aunt Mabel left you with 1,000 shares of stock when she passed away a few years ago and you have kept them because, “Well, they don’t really owe me anything ‘cause Aunt Mabel gave ‘em to me.”

Can you relate to this? You’re among many others who have been bequeathed stock and kept it because of the sentimental value.

You kinda feel guilty selling it because it was Aunt Mabel’s. After all, she was your favourite aunt, wasn’t she!

Well, take a look at this:

Imagine your portfolio consisting of: companies 1, 2, 3 and 4 with 1,000 shares each. And let’s assume all of the stocks in your portfolio are good Blue Chip stocks that old school investors bought and held.

What can you do with this stuff? After all, if you leave it in your account for 20 years, like so many of the old school do, then really, all of it is just ‘stuff’ because it’s not doing anything for you. All that is happening is every good year, the value of your portfolio goes up and every bad year, it goes down.

Surely, there’s something else you can do with this portfolio to generate some income, isn’t there? Sure there is, you can rent it and

get an ongoing residual income from it.

If this story sounds like you, then you’ll be kicking yourself when I show you what you have been missing out on. Don’t kick yourself too hard. You didn’t know what to do before now, but, in a minute you will know what to do.

Just as man has evolved from apes, or so some people believe, the evolution of trading stocks is evolving too. In the dark ages, traders used to buy and hold stocks just like you’re doing right now with Aunt Mabel’s stock. Now, more and more traders from the ‘new school’ are breaking tradition by trading smarter and getting their stocks to work for them instead of them working for their stocks.

Let’s take a look at the sample portfolio that we mentioned previously: • Company 1 is now trading at about $40 so your 1,000 shares are worth about $40,000.

• Company 2 is now trading at about $120 so your 1,000 shares are worth about $120,000.

• Company 3 is now trading at about $58 so your 1,000 shares are worth about $58,000.

• Company 4 is now trading at about $48 so your 1,000 shares are worth about $48,000.

That’s a grand total of just more than $266,000 but what is it doing for you? It’s just stuff until you put it to work. So what are we gunna do?

We’re gunna rent the stocks. That’s right; we’re gunna sell covered calls against them.

The objective here is that we don’t want www.thinkbigmagazine.com

to get called out so we have to sell ‘outof-the-money’ calls. Here’s an example of what we could do assuming it is December: • Company 1: Sell the Jan ‘09 $45 calls for $0.25 – brings in $250 • Company 2: Sell the Jan ‘09 $130 calls for $1 – brings in $1,000 • Company 3: Sell the Jan ‘09 $65 calls for $0.20 – brings in $200 • Company 4: Sell the Jan ‘09 $55 calls for $0.20 – brings in $200 Total Rent: $1,650 Now we’re talking! We’ve now put Aunt Mabel’s stock to work and we made $1,650 for doing what? How hard was that? Too easy, eh! It’s another ‘nobrainer’ that can make us an ongoing residual income month after month. It’s no different to owning real estate and renting it out. If Aunt Mabel left you her home, you wouldn’t just leave it empty, would you? Of course you wouldn’t.

You’d rent it out and you’d enjoy the rental income each and every month.

Notice how we wrote ‘out-of-themoney’ calls since the objective was to earn rental income and not to get called out because we don’t want to lose the stock. But what if the stock rose sharply and you did get called out? Let’s take Company 1 for example. The person who ‘called you out’ would have to pay you $45 for each share. You would then simply buy the shares back.

Called Out is when your stock is taken from you if it closes above the option strike price at the option’s expiration date. In this example, we used the $45 strike price so if the stock closes above $45, your stock would be taken, however, you would be paid $45 for each share. You see, by selling a $45 call, you’re selling someone the right but not the obligation to buy the stock from you at $45. If the stock was say, $46 at the option’s expiration, the option holder would exercise their option to buy the stock from you at $45 because it is $1

under the market value. On the flip side, if the stock closed at $44, the option holder wouldn’t exercise their option to buy the stock from you at $45 because they could buy it at market at $44. The option holder has the ‘right’ but not the ‘obligation’.

Alternatively, as the stock rose close to the strike price of the call, you could buy back the call you sold and then sell another one that is further ‘out of the money’. This repair strategy can actually make you more money as you’re trading the Bell Curve. As time passes, the sold calls lose time value so you should be able to buy them back cheaper than what you originally sold them for. You’ll be paying extra for the intrinsic value component of the option as the value of the stock has risen, but you’ll make it back and then some, when you sell the next strike out. Imagine, a trade going wrong that ends up making you more money... How sweet is that?

So there you have it folks, you now know how to put Aunt Mabel’s stock to work. Imagine bringing in an additional $1,650 or more, six times a year? That’s almost $10,000 a year for doing what?

Nothing. If you did it 12 times a year, you’d bring in you’d bring in around $20,000 extra.

Can you do it 12 times a year? You sure can. Just like renting out a house and having a tenant pay you every month.

When you paper trade for a while and really get to know your stock, you’ll be able to do a lot better than the example I gave you as better timing produces better results. By trading the Bell Curve, you’ll send your extra profits through the roof.

You’ll be amazed at just how much you can make by selling calls against the stock you already own. There are a lot of stocks out there that can generate more than 5% per month! Don’t forget that this is an additional 5% you would not have been getting before.

What if you margined your stock and bought more? You’d then effectively

be earning an extra 10% per month in addition to whatever capital gains you earned if the stock increased in value. If you can do that for a year, you’ll double the value of your portfolio.

What if you can only do half of that?

Or a quarter? It’s all a bonus just for using and abusing your stock. Don’t ya think it’s worth ‘roughing up’ your portfolio a little for an extra 10 or 20 grand a year?

So there you have it folks, another strategy for making a few extra bucks by writing covered calls.

Good luck… TB To learn more about renting shares and to receive my FREE DVD information package, please go to www.rentyourshares.com. Check out www.LifestyleTrader.com for more great trading information.

If Aunt Mabel left you her home, you wouldn’t just leave it empty, would you? Of course you wouldn’t.

You’d rent it out and you’d enjoy the rental income each and every month. www.thinkbigmagazine.com

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W E A L T H :

FINANCIAL

FEASIBILITY

(STEP

3)

Seven Stages Of Property Development Carly Crutchfield At the age of 28, Carly Crutchfield is a self made millionaire, the CEO of several national companies, has been involved in developments through-out Australia, New Zealand and America with a value of more than $200 million dollars and is currently undergoing several projects in NSW and QLD. ccorp.com.au

You have learned how to find a development site, how to analyse that site and also how to do a quick calculation to find out if it’s worth researching further. Now, it is time to learn Step 3: how to conduct a full financial feasibility to make sure the site is profitable.

What is feasibility?

Full financial feasibility allows you to see the potential profit or loss of your development site. It shows you whether a development is financially feasible, if it is gong to be adequately profitable and whether it is worth researching further. Obviously it’s not worth developing a site if it isn’t going to make you any money.

Professional feasibility software helps work out every single cost in the development process, i.e. construction, GST, borrowing costs, interest to be paid, consultant costs and how much profit in both percentage and dollars.

This is the stage where you get down to the nitty gritty costs.

Golden rule number one:

Always get three quotes For almost every single cost incurred in property development, that cost is negotiable. Here’s an example: Builders—To confirm how much each dwelling will cost to build (each unit, house etc that is being built).

Architects—To confirm what you can get on the site and to maximise the usage of the land.

Quantity surveyors—To give a rough estimate of costs for building and construction.

Engineers—Responsible for all the internal workings of the dwellings and to ensure that each dwelling complies with safety standards such as fire regulations.

Interest and finance establishment fees— Also negotiable.

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Land purchase price—You can only pay for the land what will still leave you with enough profit.

These can all be negotiated, but what most people don’t realise is that good negotiating can often be the difference between a development being feasible or not.

Shop around and obtain at least three quotes, bearing in mind that the cheapest is not always the best; ensure that you are not rushing into accepting the first price you find. In fact this should actually be a golden rule of life and is not exclusive to property development.

The main two prices that are negotiable in property development—and make the biggest difference to profits—are construction costs and land purchase price. These can always be negotiated.

What type of information

is included in a feasibility?

You will need to enter details of the development into your feasibility such as: • Time to complete • Retail value (what the end houses or units will sell for) • Expenditure—list of costs such as construction costs, consultant costs, council costs etc • Contingency Costs • Finance Costs By entering all costs—right down to interest rate and finance establishment fee—into a feasibility you will be able to see how much www.thinkbigmagazine.com

profit there is in a development. It is always important to include contingency costs to allow for any unforeseen circumstances because costs will blow out along the way and you need to be prepared to prevent them from cutting into your profits.

The banks will always look for at least a 20% profit margin before they will consider funding, so this must be the minimum profit that you aim for. Also, for the site to be worth your time and effort, this is the least you should aim to achieve from any development you wish to take on. If initially your feasibility only comes out with a 12% to 15% profit, then with some negotiating on costs you may be able to bring this up to 20%. However, we recommend you aim for higher than 20% profit to be safe and cover any hidden and contingency costs.

The current market

& the projected sales It is important to be aware of the current situation in the property market. For example, if you are building 20 threebedroom townhouses, you will need to project a figure at which you think you can sell these. It is absolutely essential that this figure is well researched and realistic or else it has the potential to throw your whole development off track.

You do not base this on last year’s figures, you do not base it on the current trend, you base it on what similar properties in that area are selling for right now. Obtain actual comparable recent sales of similar properties in the area. If you base it on a rising trend and properties cease to rise in price then your profit figure will be wrong. If you base it on too long ago then again, you’re figures will be wrong.

By basing it on today’s actual sale prices, you are greatly reducing risk.

more expensive to build than a twobedroom apartment in Blacktown.

A larger site will present different costs to build per unit, i.e., if you are building six units then they may be $180k per unit to build, but if you were building 60 units then they may $160k per unit to build.

Larger sites can also work out to be cheaper due to buying power. However due to extra amenities and services needed, the prices may be driven up.

Such costs include: • Lifts—generally needed in any buildings higher than three levels • Basement parking • Large Garden area • Pathways • Driveway Costs will vary per development.

However, they can be similar and you will get to know ballpark figures for certain suburbs and styles.

Raw or DA approved There are many more costs involved in a raw site than a DA approved site.

Developing a raw site means starting

from scratch e.g. the cost of a DA can be anywhere from $10,000-$500,000 depending on the size of the site.

Remember the importance

of a true end sales figure Generally the only income that you will receive from a development is the income you will receive from the sales of the dwellings once complete.

Remember: Don’t be overly generous in calculating your income.

Be realistic and base it on current comparable sales. The only person you will be fooling is yourself.

The completed feasibility study Once you have completed your feasibility study you need to make it look professional with all the information you have just gathered. The more professional the better, this pack has to show confidence, competence and profitability.

It also needs to be realistic. Banks will use this feasibility study as one of the items to base your application for finance on and a few figures on the back on an envelope isn’t going to cut it.

Remember you should only proceed with sites that have a margin on development cost of over 20%.

Now you have a profitable site and you’re ready to get the development process underway. I will go into more detail on step 4 in the next issue: Financing, where I will be showing you how to go about financing your development and how to get started. TB Log onto www.cdevelop.com.au/ feasibility to download free feasibility software and to find out more on the courses that we offer on property development. Call 02 9371 4799 or email info@ccorp.com.au for more information.

Costs Costs will greatly vary per development. If you are going to build, construction costs will be your largest costs by far; these costs can differ from suburb to suburb.

Building in an inland suburb is usually cheaper than building on a beachfront suburb, and there are many varying factors such as the soil type or land slope that would result in you getting different quotes. For example, a two-bedroom apartment in Bondi is going to be a lot www.thinkbigmagazine.com

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ADVERTORIAL

E-Commerce To Get Smarter

• By Diana Scott Once the exclusive domain of the internet savvy, transacting on-line has now become part of every day life for most of us—regardless of our alphabetical generation.

Forty-something’s order groceries on-line and have them delivered to their door.

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Frequent flyers have stopped queuing up at check-in terminals. They pay for their flight, select their seat and print out boarding passes—all with just a few clicks on the keyboard.

Pizza lovers can order and track the delivery of their dinner while catching up with friends on Facebook.

And anyone can sell anything (even Madonna look-alike toast burns) by advertising on e-bay—a site that boasts over 53 million customers.

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This e-commerce revolution has not been lost on major retailers. Big brand names like Myers and K-mart and Harvey Norman are selling on-line. They have to if they want to stay in the game.

They know that the key to smarter business is on-line.

Like the traditional ways of shopping before it, on-line business has also become very competitive. Customers now know that they will get a better deal ‘on-the-net’ than they would by visiting the store. It makes sense. There are no electricity bills, no staff sicknesses to pay for, no thefts to factor in. And the customers are loving it.

But there is a down side.

With plethora of on-line shopping options, traders are facing the inevitable challenge of cut-through marketing. Who can put their virtual discount hand up the highest to attract customers? And how low in the discount stakes can they go?

How do they attract customers to their site and, just as importantly, how do they create an on-line shopping experience that will continue to bring those customers back?

After seven years of development, relatively new kid on the block, Dubli.com may be leading the way. This customer driven on-line shopping portal has incorporated the multi-billion dollar Costco retail model with the fun of a reverse style auction concept.

Launched in the US in July, 2008 and due to launch in Australia and New Zealand in March, 2010, DubLi. com boasts three separate shopping experiences. The products they sell are all new and from major suppliers like Apple,

Nintendo and American Express. That’s where the similarity to other on-line shopping sites ends however.

The starting price of the products on offer are guaranteed to be the lowest internet price available. Then, by purchasing DubLi credits (similar to the Costco membership program) and using a unique reverse auction function, DubLi. com customers drive the price of products down rather than up.

An intriguing concept and if the on-line testimonials are anything to go by, the savings can be staggering.

The lowest unique bid component of the site uses the same ‘timed’ concept as e-bay, but again the products for sale are new and it’s the lowest price that secures the product.

Incorporating over a thousand brand name merchants into the shopping mall component of the site also adds some serious credibility to the total offering.

In what could be an e-commerce first, DubLi.com are also harnessing the power of social networking by allowing what they call business associates, to purchase their own DubLi shopping portal. Like a franchise, business associates are able to market their site to customers— globally—and share in a percentage of the transactions. Using both on and offline social networking, advocates, and as a consequence, customers, accumulate at a viral rate.

Rewarding people to market an on-line shopping portal could very well be the next e-commerce business model.

And if everyone wins—the company, the customer and the business owner, then this model could be a smart move. TB www.thinkbigmagazine.com

What do fast-growth companies do that you aren’t doing - yet?

Would you like to grow your revenue and make your business outrageously profitable without working yourself into the ground?

Dear Entrepreneur, We both know that starting and running a small business can be a long, hard slog at times.

Perhaps, like me, you’ve done more than a few 80 hours weeks since you started this journey. And perhaps we’ve both told ourselves, “that’s just what it takes to get a business of the ground and grow it into something truly successful.”

That’s true...up to a point. Few market-dominating, industryleading, wealthy businesses have ever been started without a lot of sweat and hard work by the founder.

But you can only do so much, and there comes a point early on where the business needs to grow beyond your own efforts. At that point you face a choice, with two options in front of you: 1. Leverage through people: you can grow by hiring a lot of employees, and deal with the challenges of recruiting and managing a much larger team—and the much larger wages bill that comes with it.

2. Invest in systems: you can automate your business as much as possible, drive up your revenue per employee and profit margins together, creating a truly scalable business with the foundations for much more growth in the process.

We’ve taken the automated software systems that we created for Universal Events, and made them available to other entreprenurial businesses for an affordable monthly subscription through I.T. on Tap. To date, several dozen entrepreneurs have used our systems for online marketing, sales, operations, and admin to transform their established offline businesses into automated revenue machines.

If you’re ready, we’d like to offer the same to you.

• If your business has 4-45 employees • If you think you could bring in a lot more customers by executing the right Internet marketing strategies • If you’d like to cap or reduce labour costs in your business while still growing revenue rapidly ...then you’ll want to take a closer look at I.T. on Tap—the diagram below will give you an overview.

Of course in time you’ll probably do both, but here’s a secret that most entrepreneurs don’t learn until much too late: Put good systems into your business early—long before you probably think you’re ready—and you’ll set yourself up for shorter working hours, a lot less stress and a ton more profit.

My wife Karen and I have had one of our businesses, Universal Events, ranked on the BRW Magazine Fast 100 list for the 3rd year in a row this year. It’s been one of the 100 fastest-growing companies in Australia in 2007, 2008 and 2009. At one stage that business grew 16 times in only 3 years—that was a wild ride and not always fun either!

Let me tell you that at times it was tough holding the business together while it expanded so fast. We had challenges with hiring and training people quickly, maintaining customer service standards and staying sane while we did it.

The key to making it work for us was an early investment in systems.

Right at the start of our growth, while the company was still only 5 people, we experimented with technologies, we started leveraging the Internet, we spent a fortune with programmers and we made the business highly automated. Revenue per employee (a muchoverlooked metric in my book) increased 2.7 times.

Now you can automate your business in the same way...but without making the mistakes along the way that we did and without spending anywhere as much money to get the same result.

www.thinkbigmagazine.com

Contact us and join a free webinar to learn more, have a noobligation discussion about your business, or try us out with a 30 day free trial.

Talk to you soon!

Ken Wood Chief Tap Turner I.T. on Tap

www.ITonTap.com • 02 9925 8007 • info@itontap.com

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W E A L T H :

P O S I T I V I T Y

5 Ways to

Robert Kirby is the Director of Energetics Institute in Paddington NSW and an Integrative BodyMind Psychotherapist and Executive Coach. energeticsinstitute.com.au

Guarantee Success Most successful businesses have awareness around the five ways to guarantee success, but for businesses that fail the ‘Five Ways’ are their blind spots.

S

o what are the five ways and why is it so important to make sure that these ‘ways’ are part of your business plan? The five ways are broken into embodiment, passionate energy outflow, unique difference, rapid communication lines, change your mind—change your life.

Embodiment All of our qualities—both excellent and destructive are embedded in our mind and body. Neuroscientists now believe we become addicted to negative emotions and beliefs.

They are unconscious. In Integrative BodyMind Psychotherapy we call this embodied character. You might also call it areas of unconscious incompetence. What are your blind spots? If you don’t make them conscious your business will fail.

Passionate energy outflow Successful entrepreneurs and leaders are on fire with their vision. It means that (at least in the area of business) their life energy is free to flow outward. This passion is felt by everyone they meet. Many people with brilliant ideas never manifest them. They don’t connect powerfully with others because their outflow is blocked. In many instances they are suffering from suppression. Once they know this they can do something about it.

No matter how controlled or self-conscious one is, once they confront their embodied suppression they can create powerful outflow.

Unique difference Above and beyond the concept of unique selling proposition (USP), your unique difference is what your business or organisation embodies that is a profound benefit to the buyer. Write down 25 unique ways your business surpasses or is different from your competitors. This must include the unique qualities of yourself and key team members who impact the end user. Take the most important 20% (or five ways) and weave them in to your unique difference in a one page

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summary. Then outflow this to the market and invite them to indulge in your excellence.

Rapid communication lines Place your unique difference onto the internet. Find as many communication lines as possible and get your outflow moving rapidly. Accelerate your communication lines with everyone. Write articles and get them published. Get press releases out every week.

Be persistent. Get things moving quickly today and everyday. Look for opportunities to give free talks, or even paid talks as often as possible. Think of creative ways to increase your database including co-promoting with other businesses. Send at least one excellent newsletter per month. Once a day, ask yourself: How can I increase the quality and quantity of my outflow?

Change your mind— change your life Neuroscientists concluded that neurotransmitters and neuropeptides in the cells of the brain and body carry old belief systems that constrict success. Quantum physicists have concluded that although we

have unlimited possibilities, most people choose the same reality again and again throughout their lives.

The reason for this is that everyone’s reality is unique to them. What’s easy for one person is a struggle for another. It’s not related to intelligence or education. It’s directly connected to their subjective view of the world. Positive thinking helps but it does not change one’s unique view of the world and themselves.

Unconscious secret The secret to lasting change is to transform wrong conclusions and postulates. Wrong Conclusions (Pierrakos) are made by all of us as children. If your parents struggled financially and said you had to work very hard to make money you may have concluded that ‘money doesn’t come easily’ or ‘I will have to work hard to survive’. Since the conclusions are deeply unconscious you are not in touch with them.

Accordingly, as an adult, when your investments or career goes flat and you feel powerless in the physical universe you will postulate (Hubbard) ‘my dreams are too good to be true’ or ‘my goals never manifest’. Does that remind you of anyone? TB

thinkBIG Le a ders Business Mindset Wealth

Reach all the thinkBIG readership for only $42.50 per week Now your business can be part of thinkBIG Magazine Australia’s number one personal development publication with a national distribution and a subscription circulation of 42,000 together with an online circulation of 140,000 What is included: *1 business directory advertisement in each issue of thinkBIG Magazine, *Your logo in www.thinkbigmagazine.com website directory, 45 words company profile, live url link to your site and contact details.

Interested? then email Amanda at amanda.peros@thinkbigmagazine.com www.thinkbigmagazine.com

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Skills You Need To Thrive In the New Economy

Adriana Bracks, PhD, interviews Ron Lee, ‘The Corporate Ninja’, about personal empowerment, life skills and financial success.

Adriana Bracks (AB): Ron, what are the three skills you need to thrive in this new economy?

Ron Lee (RL): The first is Personal Empowerment; the sources are in Eastern-Western Philosophies, Universal Laws, Practical Metaphysics and Martial Arts.

The second skill is Selling in Today’s Environment, which is entirely different to the ways that we were taught a few years ago.

The third is the ability to present on your feet in front of one person up to an audience of thousands. I can teach most people to present more effectively than most professional speakers.

AB: Why is this last skill so important?

RL: Every part of business involves communication and selling, from the CEO at the AGM to a sales assistant on the shop floor, to speaking about your business at a networking event. Skills in public speaking will improve your effectiveness in other communication areas and in all aspects of your life.

AB: Why did you decide to become a public speaker?

RL: Our greatest perceived voids create our greatest values. I am basically very shy, so public speaking filled that void and communication and extroversion became a value.

The process was catalysed in 1986 when I was watching a television program called Star Search with my partner. I said, “Those comedians are hopeless; even I could do better than that.” With a challenging look, she said, “Then why don’t you?”

After writing down a few concepts that had been sitting in my brain for a while, I auditioned and ended up on the show eleven days later.

Despite competing against a four-time winner, I won and appeared on the next four shows. The manager of The Sydney Comedy Store was one of the judges on that first episode and asked if I would perform on upcoming Friday and Saturday nights.

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AB: What are the essential qualities of a great speaker?

RL: The most important qualities are: • Passion—a speaker must be passionate about the subject to affect an audience.

• Purpose—some people might call this ‘altruism’, but a speaker needs to have a sense of ‘greater good’.

• Knowledge and certainty—knowledge + certainty = credibility.

• Storytelling—if a speaker can paint the word pictures, the audience join you on the journey.

• Presence—a speaker must connect with the audience, which requires concentration, focus and the ability to be in, and hold, ‘the moment’.

• Value—the speaker must be able to inspire, provide knowledge, information and insight.

AB: You have a unique approach. How did you develop your own speaking style?

RL: My speaking style evolved as I became more comfortable with myself and seeing the benefits that clients experience. The most effective way of developing an original speaking style is to reach deeply into your own essence. Work out who and what you are and learn how to express your unique sense of humour. Conversely, I’ve seen many presenters, consciously or unconsciously, trying to emulate speakers they admire. I heard an Australian aspiring speaker talking with a southern American drawl after a Zig Ziglar seminar, and there are more Tony Robbins imitations than can be considered healthy.

AB: How important is humour to your messages and how can people become funnier?

RL: In the speaking industry, when someone asks, “should I include humour in my presentations?” the answer is usually, “only if you want to be paid.” My reply is, “only if you want to be asked back.”

Humour is integral to my presentations. Steady Eddie, who turned Cerebral Palsy into a comedic art form describes what it’s like to have his condition. “I won a breakdancing competition at the local pub, and I was only walking to the bar.” The message is to create humour around the way in which you might be perceived. It’s possible to be a good story-teller and hold an audience without being funny, but audiences will remember a speaker more if they’re laughing.

AB: Is it more important to educate or entertain?

RL: It’s a balance of both. If you don’t entertain, keep them interested, they won’t benefit. Alternatively, you could be a boring speaker with high content, but the message might not penetrate unless you’re counting on some sort of subliminal influence while the audience is falling asleep.

AB: How are you qualified to claim that your students will ‘present more effectively than most professional speakers’? www.thinkbigmagazine.com

Ron Lee’s presentations focus on strategic Implementation of the philosophies and practices mentioned above.

His workshops focus on empowerment, life balance, sales, teams, presentation, speaking and comedy to a performing arts standard. CSP is the highest internationally-recognised speaker designation, with less than 7% of registered speakers attaining this level.

Ron is the author of What Shintaro Taught Me—Zen & The Art of Success.

“This great book shows you how to combine the dual powers of the insights and ideas of East and West to achieve at higher levels than you ever dreamed possible.”

—Brian Tracy, author of Goals!

“If you are ready to courageously breakthrough all barriers, live a purposefully inspired life and tap into the Zen powers of inner poise, presence, silence and clarity then What Shintaro Taught Me is waiting for your mind and body to become awakened and spontaneously active.”

—Dr. John F. Demartini, bestselling author of The Breakthrough Experience–A Revolutionary New Approach to Personal Transformation

Web site: www.corporate-ninja.com

RL: I’ve been a full-time professional speaker for twenty years and have the ‘CSP’ designation. There are 11 professional speaking associations globally, and the CSP is acknowledged as the highest qualification. I was on the assessment panel to decide who gets the CSP in Australia. Also, I trained at the National Institute of Dramatic Art, have performed stand-up comedy, and numerous students have performed at professional comedy venues. TB Volume 3.1

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T H O U G H T

L E A D E R S H I P

• Reviews by Daniel G Taylor

Remembering Perfection • by Jessica McGregor Johnson Too often we rush around, caught up in the busyness of life and the spiritual gets pushed aside in favour of the pressing.

Would you like to know why success must include the spiritual?

In Remembering Perfection, Jessica McGregor Johnson answers that question as she provides simple practices to make room for the spiritual in everyday live. These practices include gratitude, compassion, authenticity, understanding reality, unconditional love and intuition.

While the words she uses are old, Johnson brings freshness to them. You can apply these principles whatever your spiritual tradition, or even if you don’t have one.

An idea I took from the book is to offer the outcome of each task up to God; and this is a powerful release, after all, we never control the outcome, only the effort we put into the pursuit, which doesn’t guarantee the result.

With her beautiful, gentle prose and clear ideas, this is a treasure for anyone’s success library or an excellent gift choice, especially for women with spiritual (not necessarily religious) beliefs.

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The Art of Happiness in a Troubled World • by His Holiness, The Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler Everywhere he travels, The Dalai Lama starts his talks pointing out we are all the same. Would you like to know how this insight leads to increased happiness?

Despite the ease of staying in touch with more people than ever, people’s unhappiness increases because we’re losing our connection to each other; real time, face-to-face contact.

The book is written with Howard C. Cutler retelling conversations he has had with The Dalai Lama, which Cutler then uses scientific research to support.

It’s when we see that we are all human beings that we can focus on what we have in common and then deepen our connections to others. What chances have you missed to spend time with someone—whether seconds or hours— and make him or her feel great? What chances have you seized?

Any character-based work like this, where you’re working to improve yourself, is tough to make happen, but the rewards are worthwhile—for your own happiness and that of others.

The China Study • by T. Colin Campbell, PhD and Thomas M. Campbell II Take a look in a mirror. Do you want to get your body looking as good on the inside as it does on the outside? (OK, maybe the outside needs work too?)

The son of a dairy farmer, T. Colin Campbell grew up on a diet of beef and dairy—after all that’s healthy, isn’t it? He thought so, until he spent decades doing experimental research on diet and health.

Some counties in China have much lower rates of diseases that are common in the West, and he wanted to know why.

His findings: “Eat a whole foods, plant-based diet, while minimising the consumption of refined foods, added salt and added fats.” He asks readers to go plant-based for one-month. I lasted nine days before headaches, tiredness, and the constant struggle of finding plant-based recipes put me off until the New Year.

If you’re going to go vegan—and your body will love you for it—then plan before you leap.

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Get Your Money Where Your Mouth Is • by David R. Portney The only true Unique Selling Proposition—one that can’t be copied—is your expertise. Would you like to know how to establish yourself as the expert?

David R. Portney has been a speaker for over 20 years and this is his fourth book on speaking. In this comprehensive, easy-to-understand guide to using seminars and public speaking to promote your business, Portney looks at why any business will benefit from using public speaking as a marketing tool, and he then shows how to make your talks powerful.

His “30 Day Fast Start Guide to Seminar Success” is an excellent checklist for preparing an event. My mastermind group had a low turnout at a recent seminar. Some of our mistakes were ‘silly’, we could have got more people using common knowledge, but other mistakes were ‘diamonds’, the kind you only make when you take action. As an expert, you stop chasing customers and instead they chase you to stuff profits into your pockets.

iMinds Would you like to know the fastest and easiest way to be the best in your field?

Outlearn your competition through your depth of knowledge (what you know about your field) and its breadth (what you know about everything else).

iMinds are eight-minute audios (available from iTunes or audible. com/iminds) in 12 categories: Ideas & Concepts; Politics, Law & Business; The Arts; History, People & Places; Medicine & Inventions; Sports & Action; Crime; War & Conflict; Pop Culture; Science & Nature; Culture & Religion; Mystery & Conspiracy.

Think … for Dummies, enough to get you started on a subject and work out if you want to learn more.

Because of their convenience, I listened to the audios as I cooked. I learned about culture jamming. A few weeks later I saw a documentary about some culture jammers—and even though the term was left out of the film—I knew why they did what they did and how the phenomenon started. With iMinds, you can learn a new subject and up your understanding of the world.

101 Ways to Sell More of Anything to Anyone • by Andrew Griffiths If you’re in business, you’re in sales.

Would you like to learn 121 tips to become a better salesperson?

Andrew Griffiths is one of Australia’s top small business gurus with his 101 Ways series on the elements of successful businesses. In 101 Ways to Sell More, he shows that you need to work on who you are and what you want before you go out and sell. The book’s full of the expected topics, including how to prepare presentations and how to handle specific sales situations.

I put his ideas to work in my sales process for selling writing projects to large companies. Before, I’d grab the company’s name and number and call them, reasoning that if I made enough calls, I’d eventually get a sale. Now I fill out a dossier on the company before I call, which takes time and means I’m making fewer calls. But my preparation gives me confidence and my prospects notice this.

Anyone in sales needs this book in their library.

Request your copy of the SPECIAL REPORT “Success Trends 2010” from daniel@danielgtaylor.com.

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&

Marty Wilson, stand up comic and author, is currently interviewing leading business pe series What I Wish I Knew about Business. Here he speaks with Naomi Simson, CEO first volume What I Wish I Knew about Leadership.

Stand Deliv W

When the enormous red door at RedBalloon’s offices in Pyrmont, Sydney opens, I am welcomed by both Kate, Naomi Simson’s EA and X, the dog who is always joyfully panting around the office. Naomi’s desk is in one corner of a huge room that is buzzing with energy. A giant readout hangs in the middle of the room—which can only be counting the current number of RedBalloon customers. It clicks over as we walk upstairs to a (slightly) quieter area for a chat. I can always tell when someone only has a short time to talk so I plough straight in by asking Naomi if she’d ever deliberately chosen a leadership style.

For the last five years RedBalloon has been listed in BRW’s fast lists and been the #1 website on Hitwise. Naomi won the 2008 national Telstra Business Women Awards – Innovation, and was a finalist in the 2009 Veuve Clicquot Business Woman of the Year Awards, but she is particularly proud of being voted by her team as one of the top ten Great Places to Work in Australia as well as Hewitt ranking RedBalloon with a 97% employee engagement score.

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‘Mum, shut UP about our values.’

“No.” she says “I’m always just Naomi Simson—even at home—which drives my kids mad. She rolls her eyes and impersonates a pouting kid ‘Mum, shut UP about our values’. Naomi laughs and continues. ”In the last couple or years I’ve become really clear in what my role as Chief Experience Officer means. It’s about making sure everyone has a clear understanding of where we’re headed, and engaging people in our vision—which is to ‘change gifting in Australia forever’.”

Even though this is a RedBalloon tagline, Naomi doesn’t say it like it’s a catchphrase, but like it’s something on her to-do list for the day.

So, I’m always looking for what unites people, what causes people to head in the one direction,” she continues.

“Which is different to a manager who

has to nurture the uniqueness of the individual for the good of the whole.”

I ask Naomi if her leadership has changed over time. She looks around, whispers, “I do less work,” and then bursts out laughing. No one around us even looks up; it’s a good sign no one is surprised to see their CEO laughing out loud.

Especially now my role has become much more about being the public face of the company: speaking, writing my blog or whatever. I don’t do much handson work anymore and that’s a really, really big change because over the years I’ve done every single job in this business except cutting code for the website. I’ve blown balloons, assembled packs, and designed… But now I realise that there are people who are much, much better than me at all these things.” www.thinkbigmagazine.com

eople for his upcoming of RedBalloon, for the

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All things come to those who persist.

Naomi pauses, maybe considering the question seriously for the first time. “I’ve learned to relax a lot. I’ve learned that another Christmas is always coming.

Even on Christmas day, next Christmas is coming. I used to be “Arrgghh. Gotta get everything done, but now know I’m much more likely to say to myself (deep breath), ‘We’re building the business strategically, there will be another Christmas, and another, and another…’ I don’t believe ‘All things come to those who wait’.

Waiting doesn’t really resonate with me.

It should be: ‘All things come to those who persist’.

What engages Gen Y

is what engages us all As RedBalloon has won awards for being one of Australia’s top ten places to work, I feel obliged to ask Naomi about one of the hot topics: leading those cheeky, upstart, selfish youngsters: Gen Y.

She practically scoffs and says, “We have some really young kids and we don’t find it an issue. I believe what engages Gen Y is what engages us all – you just need a big enough ‘Why?’ Why are we all here? How do we each contribute? How do we make a difference to the planet? It doesn’t matter how old people are, they want to know their energy and efforts have been towards something greater

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than they could have done on their own.

They want to feel a part of something and belong.

If you realise you’re part of their journey not their destination, and enter into a nurturing relationship with them, they give it back in bucket loads.

Twitter is the greatest equaliser

in history In terms of leadership Naomi sees social media turning leadership on its head.

Twitter is the greatest equaliser in history,” she enthuses. “Everybody now has a voice. Never before have individuals had a voice that can instantly unite and change governments, policy or public opinion.

I ask her for an example and she immediately raises the movie Bruno.

“It got amazing publicity,” Naomi says.

“Everyone thought it was going to be incredibly funny, then people went to see it and within 24 hours twitter had spoken and the movie was dead.”

You don’t have to be an ars…e

to achieve what you want.

“We all have our own voice now, so we can—and will—demand greater transparency from all leadership,” Naomi says.

So leaders of the past who could lead by fear—like Caesar or Machiavelli— could only do it because they could keep people in the dark, ill informed, in control. This century, leaders will come not from control, but from authenticity and transparency. You have to walk the talk or you will be found out. Which is incredibly exciting.”

I’ve learned that another Christmas is always coming. Even on Christmas day, next Christmas is coming.

This is in such contrast to many leaders of the past who have a pigheaded ‘I have all the answers’ attitude that I find totally uninspiring. Humbleness is the greatest quality of a leader. The ability to listen, have empathy and understanding and yet have a clear vision.

You don’t have to be an ars…e to achieve what you want.

I ask Naomi what advice she would give young people of today who want to learn to be leaders?

She says that leadership is definitely something you have to learn. “You’ve got to practice, so get involved on a committee or volunteer in some way.

I was always involved with university groups, on sub-committees. In a volunteer organisation, everyone comes together and no one is really the boss.

So volunteer and get involved in not-forprofit and be involved with things outside your own world.

Look for mentors who will be really,

really straight with you The other thing Naomi advises is to look for mentors who are good at leading but will also be really straight with you.

That’s one thing Gen Y don’t have a handle on, because now you go to a kid’s party and every kid has to get a prize or they get upset. Young people today need to understand that life isn’t fair. This is important: Life…is…not…fair. We make our own life. So find a leadership mentor who will be totally straight with you.”

To wrap I ask the overarching question I ask everyone in the What I Wish I Knew books: “If you could go back and give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be?

Naomi pauses for a second or two and then says: “We all have leadership in us, so don’t pretend you’re not a leader.

Leadership just means you stand up and become accountable for what you say is important. The sooner you work out your purpose in life, the easier leadership will become for you.

“If you really follow your dream, leadership will come from that.” TB Marty Wilson is a Stand Up Comic, Keynote Speaker and author of the best-selling What I Wish I Knew book series that asks, “If you could go back and give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be?”

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Inspiring Stories Welcome to inspiring stories. Each month we’ll take a look at people from around the globe whose acts of bravery, courage, skill, determination and even scientific breakthrough have changed and inspired the lives of others.

No disability can stop him

CHRISTMAS SPIRIT Christmas in England was brutally cold, but one Southampton taxi driver went beyond his call of duty to help save lives.

Abdirashid Issa abandoned his car in huge tailbacks and trekked through a blizzard for four miles in freezing temperatures to deliver vital emergency blood supplies to a hospital.

Mr Issa, was on an emergency assignment to take blood from Southampton General Hospital and deliver it to hospitals in Winchester and Basingstoke for doctors to treat emergency patients on operating tables.

When a thick blanket of snow turned a oneand-a-half hour round trip into a five hour-plus one way trip.

The married father of three, who moved to England from Somalia six years ago with his wife Iasha, set off with the blood at 5pm and did not reach Basingstoke until 11pm.

He said: “It was very important. It said ‘urgent blood’ and if someone needed it I had to make sacrifices because they might be dying. “I could have stayed in my heated car but I had to do it.”

Mr Issa abandoned his car near to a roundabout just off the M3 exit and set off on foot with the blood, wading through thick snow and ice to follow the signs to the hospital A&E department four miles away to hand the blood supply to doctors at midnight. 

A Chinese man, who had half of his body amputated after being run over by a truck, is amazing surgeons with his extraordinary recovery.

During the past two years, 37-year-old, Peng Shuilin has undergone a gruelling string of operations at Bujie Hospital in Shenzhen, southern China.

Peng is just 2 feet 7 inches tall, but has a heart bigger than a political junket. Peng travels around China in a wheelchair and lectures on recovering from disability.

In an incredible and

inspirational move for other amputees, this survivor has also launched his own cutprice supermarket called the Half ManHalf Price Store.

Bujie Hospital vice president Lin Liu explained, “We’ve just given him a check up and he is fitter than most men his age. He

MORE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT

Christmas always seems to bring out the best in people as was the case in Philadelphia, USA, when a mystery couple, who didn’t leave their names or numbers, walked into a restaurant, finished their meal and then set off a chain reaction of generosity that lasted for hours.

The Aramingo Diner in the Port Richmond section of Philadelphia set the seen for the generosity.

“It was magical. I had tears in my eyes because it never happened before. I’ve been here for 10 years, and I’ve never seen anything like that,” said Lynn Willard, a waitress.

The couple started the chain reaction by paying double: for their

is amazing and the only person in the world to survive having so much of his body amputated.”

He added: “He had good care but his secret is his cheerfulness—nothing ever gets him down.”

Surgeons have painstakingly re-routed nearly every major organ or system inside Peng’s body. 

own meal and for the tab of another table of diners at the restaurant.

“I could not believe it. And it continued and continued — it was very nice,” said Willard.

“They asked us not to say anything until they left, say, ‘Merry Christmas, that person picked up your check.’”

The pay it forward trend occurred for another five hours and proved how a small gesture of kindness can create some magic. 

Editor’s note: If you know anyone who has provided inspiration or hope to others in life changing ways, we’d like to hear about them. Send a brief letter about the person you would like to nominate and why you think they deserve to be mentioned in Inspiring Stories to: jonathan.jackson@thinkbigmagazine.com.au www.thinkbigmagazine.com

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UNIVERSAL EVENTS

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“Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) – Practitioners Training” Melbourne February 17-23 Melbourne April 17-23 Melbourne May 17-21 “Public Speaking and Trainers Training” Melbourne February 25-28 Melbourne March 18-21 “Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) Master Practitioners Training” Melbourne May 10-14 For more information and dates on upcoming events and locations:

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THE BUSINESS COMMANDOS “The Business Commandos Boot Camp” Brisbane February 26-28 Sydney March 5-7 Perth March 19-21 Melbourne March 26-28 For more information and dates on upcoming events and locations: www.TheBusinessCommandosBootcamp.com

MBE EDUCATION “Building Wealth Through Business” Sydney February 13 Melbourne February 27 “M&A Workshop with Domenic Carosa” Sydney February 20 For more information and dates on upcoming events and locations:

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“Property Entrepreneurs Conference” Sydney May 1-2 Melbourne May 15-16 Brisbane May 29-30 www.TGRProperty.com.au For more information and dates on upcoming events and locations:

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“CProperty – Property Investment Strategies” Adelaide March 4 Brisbane March 18 Sydney April 22 Brisbane May 4 Adelaide May 5 Melbourne May 6 “Property Development Workshop” Adelaide March 27 Brisbane April 17 “Take Off Seminar - Life Seminars for Kids” Adelaide March 27 Brisbane April 17 For more information and dates on upcoming events and locations:

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TRADERS INTERNATIONAL “Live Trading Workshop” Melbourne February 10 Sydney February 17 Adelaide February 24 Perth February 25 Melbourne March 3 Mooloolaba March 3 Gold Coast March10 Wellington March 12 Auckland March 15 Sydney March 17 Perth March 24 Townsville March 31 For more information and dates on upcoming events and locations:

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MASSLAND “Three Day Property Options Workshop” Gold Coast April 30–May 2 For more information and dates on upcoming events and locations:

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or many years I have witnessed firsthand the struggle that disabled people face every day just to make ends meet. Simply put, it is not fair that people in wheelchairs, for whatever reason, face life on a disabled pension. I continue to hear stories about disabled people being refused employment opportunities simply due to their disability. It is time that something was done to empower these amazing people.

In March 2010, Traders International Australia/ New Zealand will be launching the Traders International Disabled Trading Scholarship. This scholarship is intended to educate and empower a select few disabled people to trade the amazing Day Trading opportunity Traders International is trading already. The live trading rooms and the multi-award winning education package will be used as the foundation for the scholarship program. This will be a dynamic and exciting trading opportunity for the scholarship winners.

Traders International is currently seeking endorsement of this scholarship program from a large television or radio network within Australia and New Zealand. To register your endorsement interest, please contact me by email (support@tradersinternational.com). Together, we can and will make a massive difference to these wonderful people!

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Lachlan Elsworth, Managing Director, Traders International Australia and New Zealand

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