ThinkBIG Business

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Grow your business Revolutionise your industry Dominate your market Build your wealth

GuErrilla Marketing

'The only theory that matters is the one that puts people first.'

-Jay Levinson

PLUS

• The new marketing view • The easy but overlooked way to lift your profits • Contractual obligations and insurance • Self-mastery before mastery of others • Why Entrepreneurs Fail

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What Does It Take To

Become Incredible?

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Two Powerful Days – LIVE with Jordan Wirsz When Jordan Wirsz was 10 years old he started his first business. By the time he was 14 he was selling airplanes and helicopters across the United States. By the age of 16 he was flying planes solo. And on his 18th birthday he received his commercial pilot’s license, all while building a successful aeronautical supplies business.

At 18, Jordan sold his company and moved to Las Vegas where he built and sold over half a dozen companies, turning over $500 million and becoming a three times best-selling author, internationally renowned expert in entrepreneurialism and human behaviour and a multi-millionaire in the process. And yet, it wasn’t always like that.

Jordan’s early childhood was one of extreme deprivation and loneliness. Left alone for days at a time when he was as young as 6, he rarely attended school and used to phone information lines just for some human companionship.

So, how did he do it? How did he start from such a challenging place in life and achieve so many incredible highs?… And he’s only 27 years old!

Jordan Wirsz, Maverick Millionaire, will be in Australia this SEPTEMBER to share with you how he overcame such early obstacles to go on to achieve all his goals, live his passion, create incredible wealth and have a whole lot of fun in the process.

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How to build wealth through your passions, turning fun into riches How to create INCREDIBLE relationships that will launch you into new levels of success in your personal life and your professional future New decision making skills that will create the life YOU want and deserve The secrets of health and energy levels that will reflect success in every area of your life.

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Jordan Wirsz discovered how to become incredible as a teenager. By the time he was 21 he was one of America’s youngest millionaires. At the 2-day Become Incredible event this serial entrepreneur and three times bestselling author shares how you can achieve success at every level and lead the incredible life you dream of.

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Our Team

Publisher Graham Maughan graham.maughan@thinkbigmagazine.com Ph: 02 9925 8012 Fax: 02 9925 8099 Subscription/ Business Development Manager Amanda Peros amanda.peros@thinkbigmagazine.com Ph: 02 9925 8005 Fax: 02 9925 8099

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National Sales Manager Paul Jackson Ph: 02 9925 8027 Fax: 02 9925 8099 paul.jackson@thinkbigmagazine.com Marketing Director Michelle Falzon Ph: 02 9925 8000 michelle.falzon@universalevents.com.au Directors Ken Wood, Karen Corban Creative Design Abigail Paul, ASourceOfJoy Graphic Design http://graphics.asourceofjoy.org Websites www.thinkbigmagazine.com www.universalevents.com.au Enquires info@thinkbigmagazine.com Mindset Media Pty Ltd ACN 129 256 300 ABN 94 129 256 300 GPO Box 519 Sydney Australia 2001 thinkBIG business ISSN: 1838-1731 Important Message—Copyright and Disclaimer thinkBIG business is owned and published by Mindset Media Pty Ltd (ACN129 256 300).

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Volume 1.1 August 2010

Contributors 34

Robert Stoneham, on behalf of IC Frith & Assoc, writes on how business owners should understand the ramifications of contractual obligations and conditions with regard to insurance coverage.

36 38

Michelle Mills MD for Serviced Offices International tells us how to create a professional image and achieve Small Business Success.

40 46 54 58 60 64 66

Damian Kay MD for Telcoinabox says for a business to 'thrive' in a constant flux of change they must become obsessed with being responsive to customers and without fail, constantly innovative.

Daniel Kovacs, who specialises in Intellectual Property Law, writes on 10 common myths, misconceptions, and mistakes on copyright.

Fran Molloy – How the champion mindset of Bill Gates shaped a global coporate empire and became one of the world's leading philanthropists.

Prof. Carl Rhodes – Professor of Organisation Studies at UTS Business writes on issues related to ethics in organisations, knowledge, and identity in organisations and popular culture.

Dr. Kim Fenton & Penny Ombler from Successful Minds tell us how the importance of a good memory cannot be underplayed.

Madam X – Creating powerful connections.

Darren Brown asks the question: "Are you getting paid?" It is essential that companies employ effective tools and tactics against debtors.

Kimberly dela Cruz Odom talks on the values of competitive advantage. www.universalevents.com.au  www.thinkbigmagazine.com

30 62

Jordan Wirsz

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is a serial entrepreneur who overcame a poverty-stricken childhood, started his first business aged 10, became one of America’s youngest millionaires by 21 and is now a multi-millionaire, as well as 3-times bestselling author and world renowned speaker…and he’s not even 30 yet!

Jordan Wirsz will be in Australia this September for his first-ever Become Incredible 2-day program.

Save more than $600 when you register here (tickets just $97): www.jordanlive.com.au

6

Kerwin Rae

Limited Complimentary Tickets

is a business and marketing specialist who regularly helps small to medium-sized businesses double, triple and in some case, quadruple their profits in less than 12 months using his powerful, low cost marketing strategies.

See Kerwin Rae LIVE this September alongside Jay Levinson, Joel Roberts and Brad Fallon at Wealth From Marketing 1-Day Event. Limited complimentary tickets (valued at $597) available at www.marketingevent.com.au

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Jay Levinson

Limited Complimentary Tickets

is a living legend. Known as the Father of Guerrilla Marketing, his books have sold more than 21 million copies and become the most widely loved marketing series in history. He is also creator of some of the world’s most successful ad campaigns and was instrumental in the early growth of businesses such as Apple, Microsoft and Oracle.

See Jay LIVE this September alongside Joel Roberts, Kerwin Rae and Brad Fallon at Wealth From Marketing 1-Day Event. Limited complimentary tickets (valued at $597) available at www.marketingevent.com.au

14 44

George Lee Sye

Limited Complimentary Guest Passes

20

Brendan Nichols is known as a “Millionaire Maker”. A best selling author and consultant, he specializes in helping small businesses increase their profits and cashflow.

Gain access to 5 Powerful Resources worth $842 which show you the hidden secrets of making more money from virtually any business.

Complimentary gift available at: www.freeresources.com.au

22

Ben Harvey

Free Audio Download

is an experienced sales person, coach and “Director of Change”. Ben has helped people fulfil their heart's desires through more than 3,500 one-on-one coaching sessions and numerous courses for individuals and organisations.

For a FREE 80-minute Sales Training Audio, valued at $97, from Ben Harvey, visit www.bustingfears. com.au—only available for a limited time.

28

Joel Roberts

Limited Complimentary Guest Passes

50

James Schramko

Special Course Offer

is an Internet Marketing Entrepreneur who has made millions online. He has the unique ability to simplify complex online strategies into easily implementable profit systems.

Visit www.internetsecretsexposed.com.au to access James Schramko’s 3-day Business Internet Formula Course.

has more than 35 years experience working at an elite level. Firstly in special operations performing such duties as protecting the President of the United States and then as business advisor to billion dollar companies such as Qantas, BHP Billiton and Boeing.

is a former prime time talk show host on KABC Radio, Los Angeles—the radio capital of the world. Today he is president of his own media and communications consulting firm where he teaches Fortune 100 firms, best-selling authors and celebrities how to present themselves to the media using the Language of Impact.

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PLUS: Only 30 spaces available to spend 3 days with Jay at his Guerrilla Marketing Intensive. Save $500 when you book by 17th August. www.marketingintensive.com.au

See George Lee Sye LIVE this August at his Million Dollar Business Mind training—14th in Sydney, 21st in Melbourne and 28th in Brisbane. Limited number of complimentary tickets (valued at $597) available at www.georgelive.com.au

Free Resources

See Joel Roberts LIVE this September alongside Jay Levinson, Kerwin Rae and Brad Fallon at Wealth From Marketing 1-Day Event. Limited complimentary tickets (valued at $597) available at www.marketingevent.com.au

Volume 1.1

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When you hear the terms wealth creation or investing most people think of property or shares. Few people would think of marketing as a wealth creation or investment tool.

The New

Marketing View ď Ž By Kerwin Rae

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W

hen you consider the word ‘investment’ it implies there will be a return—after all that’s why people invest. We want to put some money in and get our money back and then some.

Property and shares vs. marketing Most people are happy to average between 3-10% return per annum in the property market.. This does not take into account holding costs, which vary depending on how leveraged you are. To gain these modest returns, much of the time, people have hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes millions, at risk.

The same can be said for shares. You will find ‘most’ traders and share investors generally have similar returns.

Now, I am not saying don’t invest in property or shares, however, when you know what you are doing with marketing it is possible to get returns ranging from double digits to triple digits (cash on cash return) or more and, in many cases, within weeks, not months or years.

It seem crazy to me that so many people are investing thousands of dollars every month into their mortgages to make their five points per annum. If that same money was invested in learning how to become powerful marketers and that knowledge was applied to the products or services you offer, then there is the potential to accelerate your wealth creation.

I have made good money with property and shares, however where I have been able to quickly create large amounts of wealth for myself and my clients is through marketing as an investment strategy.

Finding a good balance My advice is to invest in marketing for short-term cash returns, then take your earnings and invest in property and or blue chip shares for the long term.

Marketing, for me, has been a shortterm cash flow investment strategy that produces returns I can then drop into property and watch grow over the longer term.

Marketing is a business Marketing is not just an investment strategy it is a business.

In my opinion, it is the key to wealth through business. If you look at everyone from Richard Branson to Bill Gates they have made their money because they know how to get people interested in

what they do and then sell them on it— that is the basis of good marketing.

So what is marketing?

Good marketing is like great food. Not much thinking is required. When we taste something great we simply react with an ‘oh my god that tastes amazing’. We react. Great marketing is exactly the same.

It removes the need for people to think and they respond to the offer being made.

Remember this, thinking is the enemy of marketing. The more marketing bypasses people’s need to think, the greater the chance it has to get people to respond and succeed.

Robert Cialdini, author of the best seller Influence—The Psychology of Persuasion said it best: “The best form of influence is the one that bypasses all need for thought, it taps into people’s existing habits by getting them to do what they would already do.”

How do we get people to do what they would already do?

Creating wealth through marketing comes down to understanding the following eight keys: • People. What do you already know about them or what can you find out?

• Values. What is important to the people you are targeting, what are their priorities?

• Language. What specific styles of language does your target market use?

• Problems. What is causing them pain?

What do they want to change or make go away?

• Solutions. If you had a magic wand what would they want you to do?

What do they want?

• Value. Is it compelling enough to motivate them past the tipping point to act now?

• Scarcity. Are you only making available for a certain time to certain people?

• Credibility. Is it believable and have others gone before them and got the results they’re looking for?

One of the most important things to remember when marketing any solution is something that was written in one of the greatest sales books I have ever read, Helping Clients Succeed by Mahan Khalsa. Mahan wrote, “solutions have no inherent value, solutions only derive value from the problems they solve.”

If solutions only derive value from the

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problems they solve, that means that the real tangible value is in understanding the problems. Make sure you clearly understand all the problems you solve.

Will learning how to be a great marketer guarantee me a spot in the RICH 200?

Do you know what every single one of the RICH 200 has in common? Apart from the fact they have loads of money, they all own a business that markets a solution to someone, somewhere.

So if you have aspirations to be wealthy, I mean very, very wealthy (the kind that gives you access to private jets and your own personal Island) you either must learn how to market your business better or get into business in the first place and become an expert in marketing..

Marketing is the key to wealth creation in business. Richard Branson would not be where he is today if it were not for his ability to market his businesses better than nearly all his competitors.

Where do you start?

The best place to start is exactly where you are right now. Every single successful businessperson and entrepreneur I have ever met constantly invest in themselves and in their business. There is never an end point as things are always changing.

In 2000, I invested $80k in my marketing education (that was for one program) and it was the best investment I have ever made.

Go to seminars, read books, listen to audio CDs and make sure whoever you are learning from has the results on the board. Most importantly make sure you can relate to them. Learning from someone you like can mean the difference between staying in there and making it work and quitting because even though the information may be there, they rub you the wrong way.

And remember, marketing is all about people. Unlocking your understanding of people will unlock your fortune. TBB

See Kerwin Rae LIVE this September!

Limited complimentary tickets available at www.marketingevent.com.au

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There are many theories about marketing, but for the father of guerrilla marketing, the only theory that matters is the one that puts people first. Jonathan Jackson spoke with Jay Levinson about early foundations and the incredible rise of this stand-out school of thought.

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Chicago

is the third most populous city in the United States, with over 2.8 million people living within city limits. It is a cold, dense, robust area known as a centre for business and finance and is listed as one of the world’s top ten global financial centres.

It is where Jay Levinson grew up after his father moved from Detroit when Jay was just four months old. Like all fathers, Jay’s probably desired his son to become one of the world’s leading business leaders.

That Jay actually fulfilled this destiny is contrary to the fact that in his early years, he had no interest in business at all.

In his teens, the sports mad son of a corrugated box company manager gave no indication of any clear professional direction. Jay knew he liked to write, yet content and style was still up for debate.

“My only interest was sport,” Jay says.

“Even when I went to college, I avoided the business courses and went to the writing classes.”

This interest was further developed when he was drafted into the army.

“I learnt about spying, surveillance and interrogation, but the part I enjoyed most was when I had to write a report.

That was the only part I liked.”

Today Jay is the author of the best-selling marketing series in history, Guerrilla Marketing, and the author or co-author of 58 books. His guerrilla concepts have influenced marketing so much that today his books appear in 62 languages (61 of which he doesn’t understand) and are required reading in many MBA programs worldwide.

So how could a man with little direction other than a joy for writing, become one of the world’s best read marketing experts? It seems just like any good marketer he saw a need and filled it.

Adding to the mix

Jay first had to put himself into a position

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It Is Written where he could see the opportunities.

While at college (where he studied law), he thought it would be fun to write. At this point in time, there was no desire to write books, however he “learnt that you can make money in advertising,” although finding a job wasn’t easy.

“I tried to get jobs, but didn’t get any offers,” Jay says. “So I took a course in resumè writing and learnt about advertising.”

On completion he could type 80 words per minute and was willing to sweep floors to get a leg up. It meant he scored a lot of interviews and not long after found a job as a secretary with an advertising firm in San Francisco.

The company was Weiner & Gothage and its boss Howard Gothage became one of only two of Jay’s mentors.

Howard not only taught Jay to have fun while working, he gave Jay an ultimatum: be promoted to executive

secretary or let Howard find him a job as a writer.

Six months later, Jay was copywriting.

His career snowballed from there. He found himself living most red-blooded men’s dreams, working for Hugh Hefner at Playboy. “He taught me about running a company, without needing any creative talent. Hugh’s strength was his vision and his ability to say ‘I don’t know, what do you think?’ He surrounded himself with the best people. I learnt about business there by writing letters and subscriptions.”

A job writing letters, however, would inevitably become boring and didn’t satiate Jay’s need for creativity. He no longer wanted to write in the structured Playboy style and found himself back in Chicago buffering against the cold confines of this seemingly year-long sub zero city.

Though the temperatures were chilled, Jay was hot. Advertising was his niche and he became creative director at Leo Burnett

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Advertising in Europe and the senior vice president at J Walter Thompson.

Leo Burnett was Jay’s second mentor.

“He taught me to write in what is termed as ‘searchly English’. This means that you write in a style that everybody can understand.”

Taking this advice on board, Jay worked on some of the biggest campaigns the world has seen, but it was the Marlboro campaign which taught him one of his biggest lessons.

“Marlboro is now associated with rugged individualism, however it began as a feminine cigarette,” Jay says.

“The shareholders were ready to pull out because the transformation from feminine to masculine was taking so long, but we hung in there and created one of the world’s best known brands.

“We went out with the idea to shoot pictures of unposed cowboys on a real ranch, with real horses. Then we paid Volume 1.1

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Treat your customers like family and make them feel unique. They are human and not a demographic group. $50,000 to use the music to the film Magnificent Seven.

“It took two years to work because people don’t give up their perceptions and loyalties easily. However, I learnt one of the most important lessons in marketing on this campaign: commitment makes marketing work.”

In other words stick by your guns because as Jay says, “Marketing campaigns fail because they are abandoned too soon.”

Jay spent a good part of his career on the creative teams that made household names of the Marlboro Man, The Pillsbury Doughboy, Mr Kleen and United’s ‘friendly skies’ and even though the term was yet to be coined, these campaigns took the form of guerrilla marketing.

They became household names and brands that many people wanted to be associated with. It was at this point that Jay had discovered ‘identity ads’.

“Every brand has a personality,” he says.

The father of GM

Moving away from Chicago and back to San Francisco where he wanted to be, Jay began his own consultancy and picked up clients including VO5 earning more than he did as a senior vice president. He learnt along the way that you didn’t need a structured job to earn money.

He wrote his first book, then his second, Secrets of Successful Freelancing, in part to cater to his own situation. The

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book was 43 pages and sold for US$10, but it was the way he marketed the book that brought it to attention.

“I sent a letter to a list of 10,000 freelancers, the only list available, which asked them to buy the book and if they didn’t like it they would get their money back, plus an extra dollar.”

The book sold to 3,300 people and brought his name to attention. His third book, Earning Money Without a Job, 150 Ways to Freelance, was the catalyst for his teaching post at Berkley University in California. It was here where the seeds for Guerrilla Marketing (and everything that followed) were sown.

“I was teaching a class in marketing and the students were asking if I could recommend a marketing book that would teach them new and unusual ways to make money. I looked in the Berkley and Stanford University libraries.

I looked in the big bookshops, but there was nothing that was unconventional, so I made a promise to my students to write something.”

That Guerrilla Marketing is so successful is testimony to Jay’s ability to see the market and be responsive to the needs of society—which is exactly what guerrilla marketing is all about.

Students in Jay’s class included the founders of Apple, Microsoft, Oracle and some of the biggest and best Silicon Valley giants. These students and the millions who subsequently bought

the book ensured that it reached the mandatory reading list at every major business school across the globe.

Just why Guerrilla Marketing, its offshoots and the subsequent business has been so successful is because it is simple.

Taking the principles he learnt in his advertising days, Jay wrote a book about marketing that appealed to the masses.

It espouses the principles of commitment, “Brilliant marketing is probably going to fail unless you commit to it. Start with a plan and stay with the plan. Anybody can do that. It’s the same principle that makes a marriage work (Jay has been married for over 50 years and has one daughter and three grandchildren) or gives you the stamina to run a marathon.”

Guerrilla Marketing also espouses the principles of common sense, but most importantly it is about the principles of engagement and psychology.

“Treat your customers like family and make them feel unique. They are human not a demographic group. Ask them questions about themselves and get to know specific things. They have to feel unique, so ask questions, listen and do everything you say you are going to do.”

Behaviour is the most important element in marketing. The world has changed and Jay’s books, seminars and workshops reflect this change including the onset of technology, but the fundamentals remain the same: marketing is about influencing human behaviour.

Since discovering his passion for writing, to today where he speaks about fundamental marketing principles, this most humble of sports lovers (who travels the USA in an RV out of which he works and lives), has become the most influential voice of marketing in the world.

He is not driven by money, he is driven by energy, creativity, unconventionality and imagination. These are the very facets which make his business concept so simple, yet so unique. So follow Jay’s lead and drive your imagination forward, then like the father of guerrilla marketing you may be able to do more in less time and for greater profit. TBB Jay is coming this September for his first-ever public appearance in Australia. Limited complimentary ticketas available to see Jay LIVE. Claim tickets online at: www.marketingevent.com.au

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Welcome to... business thinkBIG

M

indset Media Pty Ltd, publisher of thinkBIG Magazine welcomes you to the launch issue of thinkBIG business.

As we enter into the new fiscal year it’s a good time to look ahead to identify new opportunities and angles that are relevant to your businesses and personal development for your short and long term planning. thinkBIG business will be one of your toolkits needed to survive in business, it is a platform to bring together an exceptional mix for identifying new business opportunities, how to grow your business, revolutionise your industry, dominate your market and build your wealth together with thoughts and philosophies which create successful business people, along with delving into techniques used by successful established businesses and entrepreneurs who are willing to share their experience and strategies.

In this issue Jay Levinson the Father of Guerrilla Marketing will talk about his theory of the only thing that matters is the one that puts people first, his early foundations and the incredible rise of this stand-out school of thought. George Lee Sye’s amazing story of being left behind in freezing cold conditions in a bid to rescue plane crash victims, realising that you can never reach your full potential until you master your thinking and Kerwin Rae shares with us the new marketing view and how few people would think of marketing as a wealth creation or investment tool, together with stories on contractual obligations and insurance, buying a franchise and common myths on copyright. These are just a couple of the outstanding articles you will enjoy reading in this inaugural issue of thinkBIG business.

This September, Universal Events Australia's No. 1 Success Training Company specialising in the dissemination of leading edge information and the promotion of educational events, are bringing together the world’s number one marketing experts, including Jay Levinson to create a once in a life time event titled Wealth From Marketing. To celebrate the first issue of thinkBIG business, we are offering every reader the opportunity to attend this event for free by gifting you with two free tickets valued at $597 each, which can be found on page 32 of this issue.

Speakers at the Wealth From Marketing event will focus on revealing their proven million dollar success strategies and help you to overcome your marketing challenges, build your wealth and secure your future.

Once again I welcome you to thinkBIG business. I know you will enjoy reading this issue and every other issue.

Graham Maughan

W

elcome to thinkBIG business!

As someone who has owned their own business since they were 21, I am acutely aware of the challenges facing entrepreneurs.

Life for a small business owner can seem like a constant juggle—cashflow, recruiting, product development, sales, marketing, legals, compliance, reporting, capital expenditure, distribution. Many entrepreneurs tell me that sometimes it’s hard to remember why they started their businesses in the first place.

That’s why I am so excited to be bringing this magazine to you. For close to two decades I have been working with some of the leading business minds in the world, bringing many of them to Australia to educate business owners and entrepreneurs in the mindset and strategies for achieving wealth from business.

During that time we’ve reached hundreds of thousands of people. And now, in conjunction with our friends at thinkBIG Magazine, I am personally excited and grateful to be sharing the powerful insights from many of these inspiring business people and educators with you.

After all, as entrepreneurs and business owners, it’s our passion that keeps us going through the hard times. It’s our passion that inspires our best people to stay with us and our most profitable customers to keep coming back. It’s our passion that drives our best innovations and keeps us asking new and better questions.

Consider thinkBIG business as fuel for your passion, as well as offering a practical guide to successfully navigating the many challenges we all face as business owners and entrepreneurs.

You will notice we’ve included a number of special offers for you throughout the magazine, including complimentary tickets to many of Universal Events’ premier live trainings, audio downloads and free DVDs. These are all tools you can use to make a significant difference to your career and business, whether it be through improved marketing, more effective selling, strategic business planning or breakthroughs in your mindset.

Enjoy this first issue of thinkBIG business. I look forward to your feedback and to seeing you at one of our live events soon.

To Your Success,

Karen Corban

Founder, Universal Events

46th Presented to

Universal Events for outstanding performance in business

Brought to you by:

Principal Sponsor:

Publisher

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September 3rd, 1986 As I stood on the skid, I looked down through the mist to the treetops below. I was more nervous than I had ever been. My heart was pounding and my mouth was dry. The helicopter lurched as the pilot fought to hold it in a stable position so we could exit. As the wind buffeted it I could feel the helicopter moving sideways. The tremendous downdraft from the spinning blades above the machine made standing on the skid even more precarious.

It was only about two hours since I received the call from the Sergeant to get ready for the task. A light aircraft had disappeared the day before during a rainstorm. It had taken off from Cairns airport (in North Eastern Australia), planning to make a short journey over the range to the west of the city for a sightseeing trip to the Atherton Tablelands. Sadly it never reached its destination. At 2:52 pm on Wednesday the 3 September 1986, the wreckage of the plane had been spotted on Mount Williams from a search helicopter.

“We’re going to see if we can find any survivors.

We’ll drop in by helicopter and be out by nightfall.” The Sergeant’s plan was that he, a police photographer, the government medical officer and I would be inserted into the site. We were to check for and treat any survivors, confirm the passing of those who didn’t survive and take initial investigation photographs of the crash scene.

With such a short trip planned, I dressed in army greens and an oilskin jacket and packed one litre of water, a muesli bar and camera into a small ‘bum bag’. I had been a member of the team for about a year and had always looked forward to call-outs, even if they were only short ones. They took us away from the normal routine and added considerable variety to what I did as a special operations operative. I particularly enjoyed working with helicopters and my excitement about doing this job would have been clearly evident.

The call-out is just a distant memory.

I was now standing on the skid where I could feel the downdraft blowing my hair and tugging at my clothes. I looked at the winch operator and nodded. In response he activated the winch and I felt myself lowering. Using both hands on the skid I held myself away from the helicopter as my feet fell away to dangle freely below me. As I dropped away from the aircraft and into the canopy, it seemed to me that this was possibly the longest winch I had ever experienced. I was to find out later that the red painted part of the cable was visible to the operator, indicating that it was in the last 15m of its 75m length.

In these conditions, the helicopter was operating at its limits.

As I dropped into the dense undergrowth, I sensed that no person

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had ever set foot in this area and I was making history. I felt like Columbus must have felt as he stood on unknown lands.

The jungle was extremely dense, a condition magnified by the mist and shadow of the low-lying cloud cover.

With feet firmly on the soggy ground, I was able to remove the padded loop from underneath my arms. I watched as it returned to the top of the canopy some 50m above me. Looking around I could make out what appeared to be a part of the light aircraft about 30m to my left.

The bright white with red and blue stripes contrasted against the dark green of the wet undergrowth. Plenty of time to make a closer examination, my immediate task was to support my colleagues as they were winched into the site.

One by one they followed the same route that I had earlier. First the Sergeant, then the photographer, and then the doctor were winched through the canopy from the hovering helicopter. Once the last person had detached from the winch cable, the helicopter flew off to the east.

The loud wump wump wump of the aircraft was quickly replaced by the soft sound of the wind gusting and blowing through the tree canopy above us.

Without the aircraft it seemed eerily silent.

The doctor was a man on a mission. He wanted to spend as little time as possible on the mountain and wasted no time in confirming that there were no survivors.

What surprised me about the site was how the mangled aircraft and its victims were all located in a relatively small area.

All eight of the victims and most of the aircraft were located in an area with a radius of about 15 or 20m. Two of the victims were still seated close by the fuselage, while the other six had obviously

been thrown from their seats and away from the main part of the plane.

Some 20 minutes after leaving us, the helicopter returned. The weather had closed in even more and it was now raining. Looking up through the mist and the tree canopy, I could only just make out the grey shape of the Iroquois Helicopter as the pilot worked hard at holding it in a hover. The cable dropped and, reversing the order in which we descended into this sad and miserable place, the doctor was winched out first. As he passed the top of the canopy I could see him rotating as the downdraft increased its effect on his ride upwards. The effect of the rotor wash is circular and its effect on anything at the end of the winch cable gets stronger the closer it gets to the aircraft. To compensate a rope is usually tied to one end of any stretcher being hoisted and held by a person on the ground while it is winched upwards. The effect is minimal for a person hanging from the winch harness without any equipment, so no stabilisng rope is necessary.

While the doctor had checked the passengers of the aircraft, the photographer had taken a range of photographs to help the investigators.

His task was now to return to his lab and develop them for examination at the first opportunity. With far more enthusiasm than he held for the insertion, he waited for his turn to be extracted. He had packed his photographic equipment safely into an aluminium case and was now ready to depart with the only thing he had brought with him.

My anticipation of the harness once again appearing through the canopy was short lived. With bewilderment I watched the helicopter slowly move away from the hover point and then finally disappear

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Self-mastery

before mastery of others

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from view. The sound receded into the distance as I looked towards the Sergeant for an answer to my obvious question.

He spent the next few minutes talking into and listening to a hand held radio. “Looks like the weather is too bad for them, they can’t hold it there so they’ll come back in the morning to get us.” As the Sergeant explained the situation my bewilderment turned into disbelief. We didn’t bring anything with us. I had only the clothes I wore, a little water, some food and a camera. The Sergeant had even less. Having brought only his photographic equipment, the photographer was obviously experiencing the same thinking pattern as I; at first disbelief that the helicopter had flown off and then realisation that we were here for the night.

This became one of the most interesting nights of my life. The site was on sloping land on the side of a mountain. Dense undergrowth and rotting foliage prevented us moving very far from the crashed aircraft so we cleared a small area to the east of the wreckage. Fortunately we were able to find a single plastic tarpaulin and three blankets in the wreckage so we placed the tarp on the cleared soil as a ground sheet. This was to be our home for the next 14 hours.

Each of us had a blanket that we used as a barrier to stop the continuous rain falling directly onto us. The unfortunate thing for us was the lay of the land. The continuous rain was flowing across the top of the already soaked soil. The slope prevented us sitting down for very long before we slid downhill with the mud and slush. We had to stand most of the time. Standing in the pouring rain with sodden blankets draped over our heads, we looked like a trio of grim reapers.

I thought it could get no worse, but I was wrong. The leeches in that place were unbelievable. When we were first dropped in I did not see a single leech.

However, I did notice that all of the victims had ‘goosebumps’ on their skin, and the men appeared to have facial hair growth, but no sign of leeches. The little buggers came out at night in the hundreds just for us. They wanted blood from living bodies. Throughout the course of that night I removed countless leeches from my legs and neck and even face, as did my companions. To help pass the time I started tying them in knots to see how long they took to get out. Amazingly

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next time I do one of these jobs I would be prepared in the best way possible.

In fact, I wanted to be better prepared than any other person so I went to work thinking about some of the things I could do, carry and even learn.

Self-mastery comes first

they can undo themselves no matter how hard the knot is tied. It always intrigues me how we discover interesting little facts like this when we are forced to keep our minds occupied.

Shift happens

As you can probably imagine, we had a lot of time to think during that night.

Standing in the jungle for 14 hours in the dark and rain gives you a lot of thinking time with very few distractions.

I don’t know what prompted me, but during the night I started thinking about the passengers who had not survived the crash. Suddenly it hit me, here I was, wet, cold, hungry, tired and feeling sorry for myself. Just metres away were eight dead people, not cold, not hungry, not tired; just dead. Who was in the worst situation here, the dead passengers or me? That is when I realised that I had a choice. I could continue feeling sorry for myself, thinking about how my situation was unfair and could not get any worse, or I could recognise that I was alive and would be picked up in the morning to return home.

I could choose to acknowledge that this situation would give me the experience to ensure that in the future I was better prepared and also able to better prepare others. I would also have an interesting story to tell people.

Immediately I started to focus on the positives of the situation and as a result felt different. I started to make a mental list of what I could do to ensure that the

The most important skill you will ever develop as a leader is the ability to elicit empowering emotional states in other people and then link those states to the behaviours you wish them to engage in.

You do that; you will become a force to be reckoned with.

After ten years of special operations and working with some of the highest performing people [in their field] in the world, I am convinced of one thing… you will never reach your potential in this regard unless you first have mastery over your own thinking and emotional states; no way. Why? Because self-mastery precedes mastery of others; the ability to consciously direct your own focus and alter and shift your own emotional states is the foundation for consciously and consistently achieve the same with others.

How do you achieve that?

1. Recognise that you only have two choices in life: what actions you engage in and how you feel about things at any moment in time. When you let circumstances dictate how you feel and respond, you relinquish your power to choose.

2. Acknowledge that how you feel about anything is based entirely on what you focus on—when you shift your focus, you shift your emotional state.

3. Become increasingly more self aware of the conversations in your head and the focus of your mind.

4. Ask better questions of yourself. The questions you ask yourself guide your internal conversation and mental focus.

5. Always ask for feedback.

6. Never stop learning—the only thing that will prevent you from learning is the illusion of knowledge.

Here’s to your truly remarkable life. TBB See George Lee Sye LIVE this August—14th in Sydney, 21st in Melbourne and 28th in Brisbane.

Limited number of free tickets available: www.georgelive.com.au

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The Easy but Overlooked Way to

Lift Your Profits  By Ken Wood

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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: • 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.

• 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-themonth 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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 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).

• 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

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.

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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. TBB Ken Wood founded IT on Tap, a provider of hosted software for automating customer payment plans, marketing, sales and customer service processes in SMBs.

Download a FREE e-book on how to join MYOB to SugarCRM and use your customer sales data to target your marketing profitably: www.ITonTap.com Image courtesy svilen001, www.sxc.hu

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Five Big Ideas

To Achieve Massive Success for the ‘Revolutionary Entrepreneur’

H

i, Brendan Nichols here.

After 21 years of helping people achieve their big financial goals and dreams I have been able to clearly define the specific steps you need to take in your business to achieve success.

I thought I would share with you 5 Big Ideas for the revolutionary entrepreneur (if your reading this you may have guessed you are indeed a revolutionary entrepreneur), so here they are:

1. Focus on being the best; that way you have no competition.

For over three decades I have constantly researched every cutting edge, money making and personal development idea— travelling all over the world to India, USA, China—you name it—just to get an edge.

Muhammad Ali was asked "what would you do if you were not a boxer?"

He replied, "If I was a garbage man I would be the best garbage man in the world." If you are wildly passionate about becoming the best then you will always be looked after.

2. Get paid before you deliver any product or service.

Then you won't be playing catch up, nor

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will you be constantly struggling with cash flow issues.

3. Think BIG. A big idea will inspire you and your team and you will achieve much more than you ever could with ‘average’ goals and ideas.

4. Move FAST. People ask me how I get so much done— here it is. I come up with a concept and act on it immediately. I let the market tell me if I have a winner rather than endless speculation and meetings on whether it will work or not.

5. Always minimize the risk, but seek the maximum potential.

I see so many new businesses waste so much money on things that they don't really need or take ridiculous risks on their "good idea" without testing it. Be ruthless with unnecessary expenses.

Here's some more: 6. If you were only going to become an expert in one thing, choose direct response marketing.

It is without doubt the easiest money making device known to mankind, but

everyone overlooks it for more exotic things (such as options trading and silly money making ideas).

7. Seek to be someone of great integrity and that way you will last.

I think the reason I am still around is that I try to stay true to my commitments. Integrity gives you longevity.

I hope this helps you on the journey to wealth and success and would add one more thing. Plan business around your life otherwise it will end up consuming you.

If you want to know what abject misery looks like, sit in business class and watch the 'constant on the go' business traveller— not a lot of joy there. Your business only exists to serve you and your clients, it is there to provide you with the finances to make more of your life, not to take away the precious time you have to enjoy life.

Wishing you every success in your business, Brendan. TBB Gain access to 5 Powerful Resources from Brendan Nichols worth $842 which show you the hidden secrets of making more money from virtually any business. Complimentary gift available at: www.freeresources.com.au

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Why Ent ď Ž By Ben Harvey

O

ver the years I have had the good fortune of working with hundreds of entrepreneurs in a coaching and training capacity. During this time I noticed there was a trend with the entrepreneurs that failed. Their common weaknesses were that they didn't know how to sell nor were they willing to learn.

When looking at developing a business it is critical that you understand 80% of your success relies on your ability to sell. After all, your customer is not your customer until you have sold them something, be it an idea, a service or a product.

In business there are two main areas where a sale takes place: 1. When a customer is buying from you 2. When you are buying from a supplier In both these instances hundreds of thousands of dollars can be made or lost. Too often I see fantastic technicians in their chosen fields go down the entrepreneurial path only to find that they have no idea how to sell or negotiate, and as a result they end up flat broke.

It is extremely important to make this point clear right from the beginning, if you are not willing to learn how to sell, then do not go into business. I realise this is a bold claim and sadly far too many people out there think they can actually survive in business without mastering this skill.

These very same people make up

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trepreneurs

Fail

the 87% of all new businesses that fail to make it past the 2 year point. It has been shown in these businesses the number one reason they fail is low sales. Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, puts it quite simply, "I know of no other skill to be more important than selling" and I totally agree with him.

Here is a basic rule of thumb for all entrepreneurs:

80% of your day must be spent 'selling' Funnily enough most people spend around 10% of their day on sales and this is usually due to their fear of rejection.

In your mind right now go through the last 10 business related conversations you have had and ask yourself, "was I selling my products and services or simply telling them something about the business?"

The main difference here is whether or not you asked for their business or agreed on the next step that will take you closer to creating a relationship, a new customer and a sale.

Sales is about discovery, through questioning, where your customer's pain lies. Once you have found their wound the trick is to open it up, highlight its severity and then offer them some cream to fix it. I realise this sounds a little callous but it is important to understand that there are only two forces in the universe that make us do anything: • Craving of pleasurable feelings • Aversion to painful experiences Once you realise this basic piece of psychology then you are well on your way to helping people achieve a state

of equilibrium using your products/ services/ideas.

It is important to truly understand the chain of events that leads to a purchase so you can best facilitate an effective sales meeting.

The process is as follows: 1. Senses: information enters through the senses 2. Sensation: your mind and body respond with subtle sensations / vibrations 3. Analysis: these sensations are analysed to find their meaning 4. Feelings: based on the meaning a feeling is generated which fits into one of two main categories - pain or pleasure 5. Re-action: you react to the feeling created with either craving or aversion 6. Result: you take steps to balance out your reaction by adjusting what is coming in through the senses and this is where you decide to BUY! It is important to acknowledge that at every stage along this chain of events a sale is occurring. The more you experience the art of selling the more you begin to realise that all you are doing is transferring a vibration through the senses of your client in order to trigger a specific result.

I often use the example of a physician's consultation. When you go to visit the doctor the first thing they ask you is, "Where does it hurt?" Once they have this piece of information they proceed to apply pressure on the exact spot you mentioned. They then continue to poke

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and prod you asking the question, "Does it hurt here? And what about here?"

After this they hand you a diagnosis and a script that you are generally wholeheartedly sold on and off you go to book your operation and/or buy your medicine. Bearing in mind most medical consultations only last around 15 minutes you need to ask yourself, "why was I sold so rapidly and easily into spending even more money?" Everything you need to know about selling can be extracted from this example.

First they elicit the pain (find the wound), then apply pressure (open the wound and highlight its severity) and finally they offer you relief in the form of the operation or prescription (the cream to fix it).

When looking at developing a business it is critical that you understand 80% of your success relies on your ability to sell.

At the end of the day it is important to understand that sales is nothing more than the transference of a feeling, therefore work on becoming a good story teller. Once you have mastered this, learn how to ask relevant questions and you are well on your way to business success.

I can only hope that you now put sales and developing your sales skills at the top of your "things to do" list, as this is the only skill that will allow you to truly realise your dreams in life. TBB For a FREE 80-minute Sales Training Audio from Ben Harvey, valued at $97, visit www.bustingfears.com.au.

Only available for a limited time!

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Entrepreneurship: Are You Born With It?

Are some of our greatest entrepreneurs simply genetically programmed to do what they do?

Serial entrepreneur, Karen Corban, explores the question and gives us a personal insight into her own entrepreneurial journey.

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A

recently published article in Entrepreneur Magazine cites a study by Scott Shane, a professor of entrepreneurship at Case Western Reserve University and author of the new book Born Entrepreneurs, Born Leaders: How Your Genes Affect Your Work Life, which suggests that how entrepreneurial we are may have almost as much to do with our genetics as what we learn and experience in our lives.

He and other researchers gathered their data by studying identical twins (100% same genes) and comparing their entrepreneurial tendencies with fraternal twins (only 50% of the same genes) and found that approximately 30 to 40% of the tendency to be an entrepreneur is “innate and not taught.”

Let me start by saying, I am not a scientist, however, I am an entrepreneur.

I started my first business when I was 21 and since then, along with my partner, Ken, I’ve built a number of multi-million dollar businesses, operating in multiple countries. So, whilst I’ll leave the statistics to the scientists, this study really took me back to my roots and got me thinking about the balance of nature and nurture in my own entrepreneurial life.

Was I born with this drive to build and grow businesses? I don’t know, possibly.

I do come from a family of entrepreneurs and small business owners, so maybe it is in our genes. What I do know for sure is that from a very young age I learned many important entrepreneurial lessons sitting around my family’s dinner table.

Talk of business regularly flowed through our mealtime conversations and it was there I recall my parents teaching me the foundations and principles for much of what I have taken into my own business life—passion, negotiation, loyalty, balancing risks, identifying opportunities, managing cashflow, determination, building a team, customer service—it was all there in our daily conversations! And when I think about it, the art of business really did seem like second nature to me, even as a small child, probably because I was surrounded by people who loved being in business so much.

I can remember at the age of 15 going on buying trips to Sydney with my mother to purchase clothing for her boutique. On those trips I would watch how she negotiated with suppliers and chose stock that suited her

customers. My mother had a knack for knowing what would sell and she was a consummate sales person who instilled in me a strong customer service ethic, which is still one of my highest values in business to this day.

What I learned on those early buying trips as a teenager enabled me to make my solo buying trip to Italy at the age of 21, when I started my first business importing designer Italian clothing and I have taken those lessons with me into every business venture since then, building on them and learning from other mentors, customers, friends and colleagues along the way.

When there are challenges in business, or you want someone to brainstorm with, I suggest finding a mentor or a coach. My mother was my mentor in my first business and I have had mentors and coaches ever since. Today, my coach challenges me to grow and release anything that’s hold me back. It’s a continuous process and I don’t think any entrepreneur will tell you they have it all figured out. So, even if some of them were born with the entrepreneurial gene, we all have to keep learning and challenging ourselves.

So, back to the question… are entrepreneurs born or can they be made?

For me, as a passionate advocate for education, even though there may be evidence of an innate entrepreneurial genetic code, that is only a small part of the story.

Over the past three decades I have had the pleasure of knowing and working with many incredible entrepreneurs from a variety of backgrounds—some have come from long lines of entrepreneurs and others have

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been the first to break the cycle of poverty in their families for generations.

And, as a promoter of many of the world’s leading success trainers, I have seen the impact their teachings have had on the lives of hundreds of thousands of people from all walks of life and all genetic pre-dispositions. The capacity for people to transform their situation and breakthrough to a new level of prosperity and success in business, or in any area of their lives, is truly astounding, and in my experience, truly universal. Many of our clients are my greatest inspiration. I’ve seen so many examples of people tuning into their true purpose, finding their passions and achieving success beyond what they imagined.

That’s why I am always so inspired when I see parents bringing their teenagers to our events. It reminds me of the incredible influence an early education in business and the entrepreneurial mindset had on my life and I am excited for these young people and their futures. It’s why I started this business in the first place… to empower people with inspirational education to live a wealthy, healthy and fulfilled life… and I believe that’s a possibility for all of us, regardless of our DNA. TBB Karen Corban is founder of Universal Events. In 2010 she was named on SmartCompany’s list of Top 48 Female Entrepreneurs.

Universal Events has been named in the BRW Fast 100 as one of Australia’s fastest growing companies for the past three successive years. www.universalevents.com.au

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Chris Howard is an Internationally acclaimed lifestyle and wealth strategist, best-selling author, prominent speaker and CEO of The Academy of Wealth & Achievement. For almost two decades, Chris has researched the success strategies of the world’s greatest business, philanthropic and spiritual minds. His extensive knowledge is shared through his books, home study courses and public seminars worldwide.

As a result, Chris Howard and his Training Team have helped hundreds of thousands of people globally to create the wealth and engineer the lifestyle they truly desire.

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F

or small business, media coverage can mean big business. And no, I’m not talking about major ad buys requiring massive budgets. I’m talking about free media, guerilla campaigns that, if executed correctly, can catapult you to prominence—and keep you there—in a way that money never could.

If you think such a prospect is unrealistic, I’m here to say, “on the contrary!” And, forgive my audacity, I ought to know. I’m a former prime time talk show host in the radio capital of planet earth, Los Angeles. Now, as an international consultant and speaker, I have helped entrepreneurs large and small get their names out all over the world, including here in beautiful Down Under. So let me give you a few tips about why you should play the media game and how you can win it at very low cost.

The “why” may seem obvious, but it bears mentioning nonetheless: You want to bring your message to the masses.

The challenge in today’s world is that everyone else has the same desire and everyone else has the same technology.

Everyone is a publisher now—you can pound out your blog in a coffee shop. Everyone is a broadcaster too— your laptop is a recording studio. This “techno-democracy” is a double-edged sword: the pool of potential customers is larger than ever, but the pool of competitors is as well.

So the question, in this globalized market, is: how do you get seen and heard? How do you bring your heartfelt message—your product, your service, your creed, your cause, your concept, your candidate, your book…your whatever!—to the world that needs it?

The answer is by tapping into existing media and by creating your own. Tapping into existing media means getting shows to cover you. To do that, you need to think like media pros. They have many secrets; here’s a big one: Know how to broaden your demographics. This is critical and needs a bit of explaining. “Demographics,” as we know, is just a fancy word for populations. Shows—and their advertisers—have “target demos,” namely, the consumers they are trying to reach. These targets might be broad or narrow. Narrow is the easy part; preaching to the choir usually is. The real

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art is taking a narrow topic and getting a wide audience to care about it. There are two major reasons for doing this. First, you’d like to attract more adherents (read: customers) to your cause; and second, even the like-minded minority might not be aware of the minority media. Lest all this sound mysterious, let me hasten to illustrate: I’m a cycling freak. My wife is convinced I was born pedaling, and I never met a bike shop I didn’t like. Now suppose you’re the owner of one of those shops. In fact, suppose you have a four-store chain, with locations in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Perth. Niche marketing is pretty much a cinch. With cycling magazines, bike club newsletters, and charities publicizing annual rides, there are venues galore for reaching “the choir.”

The problem is the “choir” is small, and not everyone who loves “singing” is in it. In other words, not every rider reads Sydney Cycling or shows up on a chilly Sunday for a seaside spin.

Furthermore, not every voter is a “VeloVoter.” Some citizens, if asked, might favor more bike paths, even though they themselves aren’t cycling enthusiasts.

The question is: how do you reach them? How to you take this topic and broadly cast it (yes, you are a broadcaster now) to the general public?

The answer is simple: you relate the narrow topic to broadly held concerns.

In other words, true, not everyone out there races like a rocket, but they might be concerned with skyrocketing health costs. And they might be concerned with increasing pollution, congested highways and the rising price of gas. And they would certainly be concerned with the safety of Oz’s children, even if they don’t plan on having them, or even if their kids are grown and gone.

So now we have a niche topic being widely discussed, and you, Bike Shop Owner, are square in the middle of it.

You find yourself in metamorphosis. No longer “just” an entrepreneur, you’re now an expert, an Ambassador at Large.

Every show you’re on begets another; eventually you’re dubbed “Spokesperson for the Spokes.”

And the media aren’t the only ones to call. The city council wants your take on cost-cutting and Canberra—seeking to wean Australia off oil—asks you to serve as a Transportation Advisor.

Now I have a simple question: in addition to changing your personal life, do you think all this might affect your business?

We can let the question remain rhetorical, but I’m sure you can gather where my sentiments lie!

The strategy that I’ve just discussed— broadening your demographics—is but one of many that we all need to master in order to succeed in our competitive climate. Helping people find that success is the work that I am honored to do.

Allow me to conclude with one final thought: I travel the globe leading seminars and trainings. In Singapore and Sydney, in Los Angeles and London, people often ask me how I see today’s world, from a communications standpoint.

I answer them with a simple equation: The stakes are higher than ever before and the moment is briefer than ever before.

The first part of the formula relates to globalization. In a world where “anyone can plug and play” (I’m quoting Thomas Friedman’s book The World Is Flat) our planet is a very crowded marketplace.

Ironically, we in the west exported the technology—satellites, broadband, cell phones and computers—that allowed everyone else to compete with us.

But that’s not the only thing we brought overseas. We also exported—for better or worse—our ever-dwindling attention span. And now, like it or not, we live in a sound bite, headline, hyperlink world. So, will anyone read a long memo anymore? They will, but they may require a short memo first on why the longer one is necessary.

How you craft that memo will spell your future, but the good news is there is an idiom which will greatly enhance your chance for success. It’s the language of leaders in every field. It’s spoken by some, but available to all. It is heavily influenced by media culture, but is now utterly essential to business. I call this idiom The Language of Impact.

It’s the new literacy.

Learn it. TBB

See Joel Roberts LIVE this September!

Limited complimentary tickets available online at www.marketingevent.com.au

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The Language of

Impact ď Ž By Joel Roberts

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By Jordan Wirsz Growing a business is a balancing act. Anyone who says the contrary probably hasn't done it, or done it well. Every entrepreneur is faced with challenges in their business that range from revenue to employees, products to customer service, company culture and morale to time management and stress.

You've no doubt often heard the old adage, "don't grow too fast." But that old adage is like telling a kid in a candy store not to eye the sweets of temptation.

Growing fast is a good thing, but there are numerous mistakes that 99% of entrepreneurs make when growing a company that can lead to disaster, if not carefully avoided. Don't be ashamed if you've already made mistakes...that is simply part of growing. However, why not avoid as many mistakes as you can, and shorten the learning curve to success.

Let’s dive into the entrepreneur mindset.

One of the most common mistakes beginning (and experienced) entrepreneurs make is falling in love with their idea/product, so much so, that they have a complete disregard for whether there is a demand for it or a captive audience to market it to. Now, don't get me wrong...Being passionate about your ideas and products is a pre-requisite to great long-term success in business.

Unfortunately, it is those rose colored glasses that can lead to the ultimate demise of entrepreneurs who fail to make one thing a priority....REVENUE. Marketing is the fuel for a business.

Marketing is also the foundation of business. Without the right marketing, even the best ideas can drown. I have seen what I would consider mediocre products; sell extraordinarily well because of great marketing. Conversely, I have seen extraordinary products not sell because of flawed or lacking marketing strategies.

Entrepreneur rule #1: Do your homework on your competition, the product/service volume demand, and the best and most affective ways to market it.

Once businesses begin to gain traction, most entrepreneurs fall victim of yet another common pitfall; throwing money at problems and not fixing them

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the proper way. Entrepreneurs are the typical abstract breed of people...And I come from experience, having wasted millions of dollars personally over my two decades in business, on simply trying to fix a problem by throwing money at it.

For example, hiring employees. When business is good, things are growing, and your enterprise seems to be heading in the right direction, it is easy to fall prey to the temptation to fix every logistical issue by hiring another employee to do it. It is all too common for entrepreneurs to ignore efficiency versus volume. Even the multi-billion dollar enterprises of our time spend countless millions on making sure that their business is efficiently run.

Focus is one of the most difficult things for entrepreneurs to do. Why? Simple…Because they are passionate people with big dreams, vision, and motivation. It becomes easy to be distracted, and in many cases, attempting to grow the business into too many directions. I often use the analogy of a bush versus a tree. A bush grows with lots of branches, in lots of different directions, and is not very strong at the root. Conversely, a tree has a strong root…A trunk that is strong and sturdy.

Once that strong and sturdy foundation is built, it begins to grow more and more branches. The lack of focus on one area of a business and trying to branch out too early, (spread yourself and the business too thin) can cause catastrophic results in any good business idea.

For business growth that is sustainable long term, there is one thing every entrepreneur MUST remember: Spend your time working ON the business, not IN the business. Ask yourself the question: How much time do you spend working on the administrative details of your business, versus the things that create revenue and build a stronger foundation?

Contrary to some peoples’ beliefs, administrative work for entrepreneurs is extreme time inefficiency.

Looking at the steadfast examples of true successes, there is one element to achievement that no one can deny: Mentorship. Even the greatest businesspeople and financial moguls

have mentors, myself included. No entrepreneur has ever figured it all out on his/her own. Finding success stories and models to use as a guide, is a vital key to longevity in the business world. True, high-quality mentorship provides four (at minimum) key values.

1. Accountability 2. Objectivity 3. Strategies 4. Momentum Who wouldn’t want these four influences in their professional life? In reality, who wouldn’t want them in their PERSONAL life? Success is an art form that requires practice. Mentorship is nothing short of an incredible tool for those who seek success at the ultimate level. As a product of mentorship, I know there is no limit to the benefits that can be had from a quality, objective, and intelligent source.

Lastly, but certainly not least, is to always remember to THINK. Entrepreneurs are a smart breed of people, but as with any avocation, it is easy to forget to take time out and think about the business from a strategic and intellectual point of view. Use every resource you have, and more importantly, create your own resources. THINK BIG, and THINK SMART. TBB Jordan Wirsz will be in Australia this September for his first-ever Become Incredible 2-day program.

Save more than $600 when you register here (tickets just $97): www.jordanlive.com.au

Growing

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By Robert Stoneham

contractual obligations insurance

&

Many contractors will be familiar with the various forms of contract used in today’s business environment. It is important that business owners understand the ramifications of contractual obligations/ conditions with regard to insurance coverage and how insurance coverage may be prejudiced in the event of a claim which includes contractual liability issues.

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In most of these contracts the insurance/indemnity clauses will state words to the effect: “ABC Pty Ltd agrees to indemnify XYZ Pty Ltd…” (XYZ Pty Ltd being a principal in contract.)

There are numerous versions of these indemnity/hold harmless/assumed liability clauses contained in contracts; however, the net result is that ABC Pty Ltd has agreed (under contract) to indemnify XYZ Pty Ltd, in some instances, for ‘anything that may happen’ whether ABC is negligent or not.

Indemnity is defined as security or protection against loss or injury or a promise by a promisor to keep the promisee harmless against loss as a result of entering into a transaction with a third party.

Most liability insurance contracts (public/ product liability, broadform liability insurance, professional indemnity, etc) contain exclusion clauses that relate to contractual liability assumed by contracting parties.

Insurance companies are hesitant in providing blanket contractual liability cover under liability insurance programs because, more often than not, these indemnity clauses contain provisions that are in excess of what common law would normally require. If you agree to these types of clauses, you could be providing something well above what the law would normally require of you and you have effectively discarded any legal rights that you may have had.

It is very important that the insured parties obtain legal advice from their respective counsel with regard to contract conditions prior to the signing of those contracts. Furthermore, all contracts that you enter into should be referred to your insurance broker or insurer for vetting, again prior to their execution.

Insurers will not provide you with any legal opinion or advice; however, depending on the contract and what it actually involves, some insurers may agree to provide the contractual liability cover. Insurers may charge extra premium for this additional risk.

Another potential contractual liability issue that you need to be aware of is ‘waiver of subrogation rights’. Insurers rarely grant this; however, we have seen instances where companies have signed contracts containing this clause (plus the indemnity clause) and have not had the contract vetted by their insurance broker.

Apart from the fact that this creates breach of contract conditions, it potentially leaves the insured uninsured!

Insurers rarely agree to waiver their rights

of subrogation against potential negligent third parties. If you have agreed to these onerous conditions, you have essentially prejudiced your insurer’s rights of recovery.

Check your policy wording in the exclusions section for contractual liability.

With WorkCover launching recovering actions against negligent employers, you have to wonder who is going to pay the legal bill if you are being sued. Please consider the following scenario: • You have agreed to indemnify a third party.

• The third party causes your employee to be hurt.

• WorkCover commences legal action to recover its costs against ‘negligent parties’. In this instance, the principal that you have agreed to indemnify.

• As you have agreed to indemnify and waiver any rights of recovery (termed ‘subrogation’) against the negligent third party (remember, you weren’t negligent), you may only be indemnified (bearing in mind you have prejudiced your insurer’s rights of recovery.

• You might have a fight on your hands with regard to getting indemnity from any insurer to defend the first action) for the part that you were legally liable for. If you aren’t legally liable, then your insurer is not obliged to pay. You pay!

Common contracts encountered by business will include (but not be limited to): • construction contracts • tenancy/lease agreements • fire-fighting appliance servicing/ maintenance contracts • computer maintenance agreements • supply contracts • subcontractor agreements

Liability insurance programs require a ‘trigger’ that leads to legal liability on the insured’s part causing personal injury or property damage. If you aren’t legally liable, then your insurers may not have to indemnify you against substantial legal costs, damages awards or court-imposed penalties.

You need to obtain legal advice with all contractual matters, together with referring contract insurance and indemnity clauses to your insurance providers. If you are not being briefed on these areas, then you have to consider the effectiveness of your risk management program. TBB This article was kindly provided by IC Frith & Associates. IC Frith & Associates is an Australian owned and operated provider of financial services. www.icfrith.com.au

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As a small or home-based business owner, you are already well aware of the rewards that self-employment can provide.

What about the challenges?

Achieving Small Business SUCCESS >> By Michelle Mills << 36

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F

lexible working hours, being located in close proximity to your family, the ability to grow your business on your own terms and the opportunity to improve your work/ life balance are all advantages of self employment.

On the flip side, however, small and home-based businesses face unique challenges that larger companies do not. A survey conducted

by Serviced Offices International in late 2009 identified the most common issues faced by small and homebusiness owners included:

business, which in turn, ceases its potential for growth.

The solution is to know what you are good at and then to seek assistance by outsourcing the other areas. Such areas typically include: • Management of your telephone calls.

• Picking up and sorting your mail.

• Diary and appointment management.

• Managing routine emails.

• Marketing activities.

• A sense of isolation.

• Administration duties.

• A perceived lack of support or access to support.

• Bookkeeping and invoicing.

• A belief they must to do everything themselves.

• A sense of feeling overwhelmed by having so much to do, and often in areas where expertise lacks.

• A feeling of inferiority to the large companies, often resulting in overcompensation.

• A lack of the funds required to grow the business.

The great news is there are simple solutions for all of the above issues.

So, what are the solutions?

While image isn’t everything, it is extremely important; and particularly when it comes to small business.

Creating a professional image and a perception that your business is larger than it actually is can go a long way towards improving the success of your business.

Let’s face it. Chances are, you started your business because you were good at something specific and highly passionate about it.

However, when you start trying to be the bookkeeper, financial manager, money merchant, administration person, operations coordinator and receptionist, all you are actually doing is moving away from your passion and expertise.

The result? Your energy and time becomes drained by these other areas and you stop enjoying your

• Having the use of professional meeting facilities to meet with clients when you need to.

The easiest and most cost-effective way to enhancing your business image and improving your professional image is to outsource these areas of your business that are time-consuming and which don’t actually demand your expertise. And the best part? If you choose the right company to take on your activities, they can be turned on and off whenever you need to.

Understandably, for many small or home-based business owners, the term ‘outsourcing’ can conjure up images of expensive or inefficient outlays; but the truth is, outsourcing can be an investment that saves you significant money, time, resources and energy—all of which, when redirected more efficiently into your business, will result in improved performance and enhanced profits.

The (other) bottom line!

As a small or home-based business owner always keep the following in mind and business success will be yours: • Just because there are lots of things that need to be done, it doesn’t mean you have to do them all.

• Know that you are not alone—ask for help when you need it.

There are solutions available to help streamline your workload and allow you to focus on what you do best—so use them! TBB

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The fact of the matter...

A survey by Serviced Offices International found that: • More than 50% of home-based businesses would never tell a client they work from home, for fear of looking unprofessional.

• 100% of males surveyed said they do not like referring to their business as 'home-based,' instead using the term 'small business.'

• More than 82.5% of small or homebased business owners enjoy the flexible working.

• More than 50% of small or home-based business owners enjoy being able to juggle family requirements.

• More than 50% of small business owners enjoy the fact they can work from anywhere.

Starting small What many small business owners don't realise is that some of the most successful business people began with a home-based business; think Bill Gates and Sir Richard Branson, for example. What differentiates the Gates and the Bransons from the masses, however, is their unwavering ambition and commitment to their vision.

Golden Rule #1: Never let your own excuses or anyone else's stop you from achieving your goal.

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Thriving in Chaos

To Succeed in Business

By Damian Kay

For a business to ‘thrive’ in a constant flux of change they must become obsessed with being responsive to customers and without fail, constantly innovative.

S

o what is the recipe to a successful business operating in a world of chaos? All thriving industries are inherently chaotic because everything around us is forever changing.

The recipe for success in an organisation can therefore be broken into a number of key areas that need to be addressed to ensure we continue to prosper in the face of the chaos around us. The areas to consider include: 1. Marketing—focus on differentiation and be innovative. The aim is to be disruptive and segment your market.

A classic example of this has been Telstra’s marketing of its newest mobile network, “Next G”. We live in a 3G mobile world with faster mobile data and ever increasing mobile applications, but Telstra has successfully differentiated its 3G offering making people believe that it is even better than 3G. This is clever differentiation through marketing.

2. Sales and service—create an atmosphere of absolute obsession for customer service. Be a ‘hero’ with every customer. Listen to your sales people and use them as a source of new products and services; they are in front of potential customers every day so listen to them. Service is a

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major component of adding value and differentiation. Arguably this is the most important of the key areas.

3. Innovation—constant improvements driven by a desire to make small and noticeable enhancements to the customer experience. Innovation can be in process or product. The key here is ‘value innovation’, that is, it adds value to the customer and reduces costs for the organisation.

and listen. One of the keys to great leadership relates to point four above: employ great people who will help you steer in the right direction. The secret to managing people is to create the boundaries for them and let them do their job. Mistakes will be made but good people will learn from them.

5. Structure—the flatter the better. This will make the business more dynamic and faster to act.

7. Financial management and control—Every key area of the business should have its own management profit and loss and should be shared and presented by the people to the business every month. Be prepared to share the good with the bad, you will be surprised with the positive response.

Also ensure that your management accounts are detailed and allows great reporting and analysis of the key drivers of your business.

Too many times I see one line revenue management accounts that tell me nothing about where the business is coming from by product or service.

Match the cost of goods sold with the revenue items so you can see real margin by product.

6. Leadership—if it’s your business or you are a manager of people, start falling in love with change (thrive on chaos), share your value and vision with the business. Be consultative

The all-encompassing lesson here is to learn to love change. To master operating a business in a chaotic environment you must be prepared to embrace change and thrive on a good dose of daily chaos. TBB

4. People—people are the backbone of success. They will drive differentiation and innovation. Listen to them and take action. You can never train or involve them too much. Be open and share the financials with them. Give them a financial stake in the outcome of the business every year, for example profit share. Involve them in decisionmaking and you will be surprised at the outcome. Be prepared to pay more for truly great people, it will pay dividends.

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“The PercePTion SoluTion”

VIRTUAL OFFICE “A virtual office is a combination of different support services, providing you with the exact services required no matter where your business is.”

• Virtual Office clientele have the flexibility to match expenses with revenue fluctuations immediately, as the costs are usually variable.

• Virtual Office users have the advantage of receptionists (management of telephone calls), mail management, diary and appointment management, email management, Marketing, book keeping and invoicing, professional meeting facilities and administration duties.

• A Virtual Office user can reduce their environmental impact, as well as the personal negatives of a daily commute.

• A Virtual Office blends home and work to gain efficiencies in both. Office expenses are low, while the user’s professionalism retains the IMAGE of a traditional, high cost office.

• A Virtual Office can allow for low-cost expansion with no long term commitments.

• A Virtual Office mostly eliminates the traditional burden of health care, payroll, insurance, and rent also traditional time off (sick days, holidays, personal leaves etc • Expand hiring choices and provide a more comfortable working environment, less stress and a more balanced lifestyle while increasing productivity with time and money saved.

The new generation of entrepreneurs is embracing the Virtual Office instead of the traditional and incorporating the flexibility into their culture – Working Virtually is the future.

“our ProFeSSionAl TeAM Will Be PArT oF Your TeAM.”

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©opyri

10 common misconce

Most of us think we know a little bit ab reassured to know, are now well and tr  By Daniel Kovacs

W

hile many of us create, use and enjoy copyright materials every day, there is widespread confusion about how copyright comes into being, how ownership is obtained and what copyright does and does not protect.

Here are some of the more common myths, misconceptions and mistakes.

MYTH 1: Copyright only applies to published, printed materials (such as books) and items like films, recordings and commercial software.

In addition to protecting works of literature, music, drama and art, copyright covers many types of utilitarian materials that do not have ‘literary’ or ‘artistic’ qualities. For example, databases, business reports, diagrams, logos, spreadsheets, training materials, questionnaires and customised software may all be copyright protected. This is true even if they have not been ‘published’ in the traditional sense or broadly disseminated.

MYTH 2: Copyright only comes into force once it is ‘registered’.

Actually, in Australia there is no system for registering copyright. This stands in contrast with other types of intellectual property rights such as trademarks and patents.

Copyright protection is automatic once a work is ‘in material form’ (e.g. reduced to writing or recorded on some other

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non-transitory medium). No registration or other formality is required.

MYTH 3: There is no copyright unless copyright is claimed or the © symbol appears on a work.

Again, this is not the case. There is no requirement to place the © symbol or other copyright notice (such as Copyright 2008 ABC Pty Ltd on a work in order to enforce copyright in it. A work that does not bear these symbols may still be protected.

MYTH 4: The Web is a copyright-free zone. A common misconception is that the Internet is ‘the public domain’.

However, just because a work is in an electronic form does not mean that the owner has abandoned their copyright in it. Internet users should assume that their rights to use website materials are limited to viewing and use for private purposes, except where it is unambiguously clear from the site that wider use is permitted.

MYTH 5: Once the author of a copyright work dies, the work is no longer protected.

This is incorrect. In fact, copyright in most cases now extends for 70 years after the death of the work’s author.

MYTH 6: If I make a few changes to material, I won’t infringe copyright and won’t need to get permission.

This is a very common and dangerous

myth. Copyright is infringed where a person reproduces a substantial part of a work without the permission of the copyright owner. What is ‘substantial’ is a qualitative (not quantitative) determination that varies from case to case. (For example, in the past courts have held that four lines of a 32-line poem was a ‘substantial part’, and that a few bars of a tune, as they were a recognisable part of the song, were a substantial and therefore protectable part.)

MYTH 7: If I copy less than 10% of a work, I will not infringe copyright.

While there are specific circumstances set out in the Copyright Act where a ‘less than 10% rule applies, these are of very limited application and mostly relate to reproduction of portions of materials for private study and research purposes and not for commercial purposes.

MYTH 8: I paid for the work so I must automatically own copyright.

Businesses often engage third party contractors, such as a software developer, freelance writers, graphic artists, advertising agencies and architects to create copyright materials for them. A commonly held misconception—and one that is at the heart of many copyright disputes—is that once payment for such services has been made, copyright automatically belongs to the business that has commissioned the work.

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right:

common myths, misconceptions & mistakes

bout copyright but, as Alexander Pope (whose writings, you will be ruly out of copyright) wrote, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing”!

In fact, except in very limited circumstances, the contractor will retain copyright, unless they have transferred it to their client by written transfer. In the absence of a transfer or an agreement otherwise, the client will, generally speaking, have a licence to use the work for the limited purpose for which it was created.

MYTH 9: Employees are the owners of copyright in any works they create.

In contrast to the position with contractors, at law employees generally do not own the copyright in materials they create in the course of their employment.

Copyright in these works automatically vests in their employer, unless there is an agreement otherwise.

MYTH 10: I can do absolutely anything I want to the work, and even claim that I wrote it, if I own the copyright in a work created by another.

This assumption is false and can lead to disputes. The Copyright Act provides that a creator of a work retains so-called ‘moral rights’ in works, even if the creator transfers copyright ownership to another. Moral rights are the right to object to derogatory treatments of a work the right to be attributed as the author of a work, and the right not to have another falsely attributed as the author of a work. TBB www.thinkbigmagazine.com  www.universalevents.com.au

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Everything you need to become a successful Telco If you’re entrepreneurial and want to start a business, then start with a system built for success. We enable people to become successful telcos by providing first class products, systems, support and training. Telcoinabox enables you to do just one thing: Just add customers. We even help you create and market

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

By George Lee Sye

What is it that the most successful companies in the world do to create wealth that we can learn from as owners of small business?

Learning

From Billion Dollar Companies $1.5 billion in operating costs...

Wow. More concerning was the less than 5 percent return for the massive investment in creating the business. As I stood there talking to the leaders of that company, I could see the stress in their faces and the tension in their bodies, I could hear the frustration in their voices and I sensed their desire to solve the problem they had been pondering for ages; how to generate the profits they knew the company was potentially capable of yet had failed to deliver on all these years.

It doesn’t matter whether you run a billion dollar company or one of the 1.95 million small businesses that exist in this country, you are continually challenged to grow your business and achieve levels of

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profitability that make your time in the business worthwhile.

I’ve been working with leaders in billion dollar companies for the past decade. My role is to help them maximise the the profitability of their companies through more effective business execution methods and systems. Interestingly enough, not only do these leaders have similar challenges as owners of small business, I’ve noticed we all have similar ideals with regard to the outcomes we want to achieve.

We all want to: • Grow our businesses and see them thrive; • Generate personal wealth and financial independence; and

• Do it in such a way we have lifestyle and get to enjoy our wealth.

Are we achieving these outcomes to the level of our potential? Well...I would say probably not. Most business leaders, whether they operate small business or major companies, have an opportunity to shift to the next level of success in their given business. The opportunity also exists for owners of small business to extract the learnings and principles behind the success of big business, and map these across to their own situation.

As author and blogger, Seth Godin says, ‘small is the new big’.

There are always barriers to climb over

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Before we look at the lessons from big business, let’s take a moment to understand some of the most common barriers that prevents any business owner from experiencing the real economic potential of their business.

1. Sheer Busyness • Sheer busyness creates a time compressed, reactive environment where the capacity for growth is virtually non existent.

• The true valuation potential of a business will never be fully realised while growth limitations persist at the individual and management levels.

2. Reactive Psychology • Unconsciously people are driven to live a reactive life where they continually act in response to approaching deadlines.

• They take corrective action to fix their health, wealth and relationships when they realise they are breaking down, thereby conditioning a reactive mindset.

3. Cost Focus Before Value Focus • The obvious fall back in tight financial times is to cut costs, the cost mindset undermines the idea of value based investment (of time and money).

• Cost of time and cost of money become the primary decision criteria etched into the screens of our unconscious minds.

4. Retaining Existing Customers, Attracting the New • Globalisation brings with it increased market access, thus the ability to attract and retain customers has been hampered by increasing competition in all of our marketplaces.

• The squeeze on our customers own revenue streams and resulting survival focus drives risk averse behaviour on their part.

Catch the wave before it passes Like the most successful companies today, we all need to recognise and work with the inter-dependence of people, strategy, process and business value creation. The question remains, how do we do that?

How do we utilise this inter-dependence in such a way we are moving positively towards the level of wealth we desire?

A paradigm shift is taking place in the business world right now. There is growing recognition in the big end of town that far greater wealth can be created by following a simple four-step strategy, a strategy that we can map across to our own businesses.

STEP 1—Unleash the Potential

of People FIRST. As Richard Branson says, “people are the lifeblood of any company”. Help them learn how to become more effective [not efficient] in achieving outcomes and how to take control of every aspect of their personal and professional lives as a foundation to business execution. The strength of any business is the collective strength of its people, conversely, the limitations of a business are the limitations of its people.

STEP 2—Define and Execute Your Strategy & Business Plan.

Be very clear about how you will compete in your chosen market, what your financial targets are, what objectives must be met in order to achieve those targets, and how you will turn those objectives into key focal points that drive daily actions. With the right culture in place and a workforce of inspired and incredibly effective people, execution is a snap .... provided you actually have a system of execution. Remember this - a plan without a clear system to execute it is no plan at all.

STEP 3—Maximise Cash Flow.

You may have heard this said before— cash is king. There’s no doubt about it, cash flow is everything in keeping a business alive. The six major outcomes that contribute to cash flow are these—retain existing customers for repeat business, attract new customers, minimum cost per unit to deliver [a service or product], deliver with speed, deliver quality and create the next generation of products or services.

The way you go about achieving

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these outcomes will be defined by five functional level strategies that make up your business plan—marketing and sales, operations, finance, human resources, and research and development.

The major mistake made by many owners of small business is to rely wholly and solely on a marketing and sales strategy, and neglect to think about the rest. While marketing and sales is the vehicle that drives customer transactions, overall business success requires that it is works in conjunction with the other four functional strategies.

STEP 4—Create Business Value.

Now we get to the business end. When it comes to the crunch, your financial worth will not be determined by cash flow. Though it is clearly a major element in business success, you can be successful but not wealthy, you can have cash flow but no cash.

As all billionaire investors know, your financial worth will be based on the value of the assets you possess. A key determinant in positively valuing your business as an asset is its reportable earnings. Do not fall into the trap of not reporting earnings. With a few notable exceptions, a business with no positive earnings has no value.

I Know I've given You food for thought, so let me leave you with two final questions. Are you prepared to catch the wave and ramp up your personal wealth to the next level? Are you sufficiently inspired to do what it takes and make a shift in your thinking?

As I say to our clients, an evolution in results is always preceded by a revolution in thinking, the challenging part is allowing that revolution to take place in our own minds. TBB See George Lee Sye LIVE this August—14th in Sydney, 21st in Melbourne and 28th in Brisbane.

Limited number of complimentary tickets available online at www.georgelive.com.au Volume 1.1

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He’s the super-nerd that became the world’s richest man: and, more recently, a leading philanthropist already improving the lives of millions of the world’s poor.

What makes Bill Gates tick?

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W

hen Bill Gates became the richest guy in the world, complete with gorgeous wife, an army of devoted code-cutting minions and huge global influence, he changed the landscape for spotty teen geeks with a prodigious talent for maths and a stymied social calendar worldwide.

Suddenly, smart was cool; doing your homework and getting extra credit for your science project was a potential stepping-stone to dot-com dominance.

But although there’s no doubt that Bill Gates is a gifted thinker with extraordinary talent—it’s not his ability with maths, his strong negotiating skills or even his understanding of computers that has driven his success.

The key to what has made Bill Gates great is his self-belief, his ability to come up with a vision of what he wants to achieve and his determination to overcome any obstacles to achieve that goal. These days, Bill Gates is only the third richest guy in the world, worth about US $58 billion; something of a come-down from the heady years of 1995 to 2007, when he topped Forbes Magazine’s List of Billionaires.

And Gates is planning a strategic dive down the list, as he donates ever- increasing amounts to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, founded with wife Melinda in 2000, which is now the world’s largest transparently operated charitable foundation.

The Foundation received a heady boost when investment guru Warren Buffet, (who toppled Gates from his World’s Richest Man perch) signed a deal promising to kick in another US $1.5 billion a year.

Strategically focused on areas where it can do the most good, in typical Gates fashion, the Foundation (worth an estimated US $40 billion) divides its grants into three areas: Global Health, Global Development and local US programs.

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The Global Health Program donates an estimated US$800 million each year— almost as much as the entire annual budget of the United Nations World Health Organization, which is funded by 192 countries.

Like many successful baby-boomers, the founder of software giant, Microsoft, decided in 2006 to down-shift to a parttime role within Microsoft, though he has remained as the company’s chairman.

He’s shifting to a full-time career in philanthropy; where he will devote his genius and much-admired business acumen to some of the world’s most intractable problems.

“We picked the big diseases as our priority,” he told the Seattle Times in a 2007 interview about the Foundation’s world goals.

“Whatever it takes we’re just going to stay at it. This is what we’re about. The big five are AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, respiratory and diarrhoea.”

When Gates first discovered the impact that malaria had on world health, he was shocked to find that a $50 million grant that he made in 2001 doubled the international private donation to malaria work—while at the same time, research into baldness and erectile dysfunction were being funded to the tune of around $500 million a year.

But with the combined wealth, business connections and drive of Gates and Warren Buffett on its case, it is possible that malaria—humanity’s single biggest killer—may be eradicated as

effectively as smallpox and polio.

While his drive and his determination are inspiring, most people who read about Bill Gates’ astounding success wonder, what has made this computer nerd such a prodigious force on the world stage?

The Bill Gates story has been told so often it has become legend.

Born in Seattle to a wealthy family, he was a high-achiever at school and by 13, had discovered computers. A joint venture with a few other students (including Paul Allen) to write computer programs at the age of 14 earned the group US $20,000.

Gates dropped out of Harvard Law School to found Microsoft with Paul Allen in 1975. The pair was fascinated by the January 1975 report in ‘Popular Electronics’ magazine about the Altair 8800, one of the earliest microcomputers.

He contacted the Altair’s designers and told them he and Allen were writing a BASIC program for the Altair—although they did not own an Altair and had certainly not written a program. After the head of MITS (who produced the Altair) agreed to meet them, the pair developed a suitable program and negotiated a deal to distribute it with the microcomputer.

The rest is history—the pair’s computer company, Microsoft, brokered a deal with IBM to distribute an operating system with the new IBM microcomputer but kept the licensing rights.

John Rymer heads the California branch of market research firm Forrester

Research in California and has had a lot to do with Gates. “Gates is unique, a once-in-a-generation guy,” he told The Boston Globe in 2006.

Professor Allan Snyder heads the Centre for the Mind at the University of Sydney, where his partners include Nelson Mandela, Richard Branson and Oliver Sacks—some of the world’s greatest minds.

The Centre is focused on scientific ways to enhance creativity and to instil what Professor Snyder calls “the champion mindset.”

He points out that many high- fliers— Gates included—are university drop-outs.

This doesn’t mean that they are not great geniuses; but rather that academic success is often no indication of genius.

Professor Snyder says that child prodigies, those who excel very quickly in life, seldom become adult geniuses, who do extraordinary things, challenging how we think.

But extraordinarily successful people like Gates do share certain personal qualities, he adds—they hate being ‘just average’ or normal or one of the pack, but want to stamp something uniquely them on everything they do.

“They want to creatively differentiate themselves from other people, they don’t want to be cogs in the wheel,” he explains. These champions are also willing to challenge convention and take risks and they are creative enough to “weave known knowledge into new knowledge,” he says.

By Fran Molloy

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Success is a lousy teacher.

It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.

-bill gates

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“Great achievers have a vision that they will succeed and sometimes they even see the steps leading to their success,” says Professor Snyder.

Andrew Meikle agrees; his research into elite human performance at The Meikle Files in East Sydney, where he has analysed the factors contributing to the success of more than 4000 people, reveals some common attributes that most high achievers share.

Potency of desire is one: high achievers know what they want and have a deep desire to achieve it; they are determined and passionate about their goals.

Meikle also concurs with Professor Snyder’s research on risk-taking, adding that high achievers have the courage to take on tasks beyond their skill set and the capacity to believe in their ideas without proof.

Bill Gates was able to envision a world where there was a personal computer on every desk—and also able to imagine himself as an integral part of that vision.

From his deals with IBM in 1980 to license the copyright of the MS-DOS operating system and its successors, to his ongoing aggressive strategy to increase the Microsoft dominance Gates has been single-minded in his business operations.

Sydney-based researcher Brent D Taylor recently released a book titled “The Outsider’s Edge: The Making of Self-made Billionaires,” which looked at the characteristics of people like Bill Gates, Richard Branson and Oprah Winfrey.

All of them triumphed over early adversity in a big way, he says—and all were outsiders, who didn’t fit in at school or other social situations.

“Gates was definitely not a hit with the girls when he was growing up,” Taylor says, adding that the young Gates was compulsive about being the best.

But his real success comes from his skills as a businessman and his toughness as a negotiator, Taylor argues.

“Microsoft’s products are not revolutionary, and they are often not even the best available, but through his obsessiveness and drive Gates has pushed Microsoft to massive success,” he says. “His negotiating skills have been the key to his extreme wealth.”

And while he spent some time as the world’s least popular computer nerd, with his obsession, drive and sheer genius now applied to solving some of mankind’s most deadly health issues, it is possible that Bill Gates may have finally found the key to popularity. TBB

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7any Business Things Owner

Can Apply to Instantly T

Supercharge Profits Using The Internet  By James Schramko  50

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he Internet is changing rapidly.

One of the biggest challenges you face as a business is knowing the right things to DO so that you harness all that potential and turn it into profit. I’m going to teach you stuff I’ve done, stuff that works.

Get ready to harness the leverage The great thing about when you have properly set up your business for the internet is that you don’t need to be there all the time In other words, it can work for you 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

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There is nothing as useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

–Peter Drucker

When you compare that to the cost of a one-time newspaper advertisement you can see the compound effect of any energy you put towards enhancing your online presence.

Step 1—Get a Support Desk Setup Customer service is one of the resource intensive areas many businesses struggle with. As your business grows, so to will your support requirements. I recommend every business get a ‘helpdesk’ which can take the first line of defense for customer service. This is software you install (preferably on a separate domain name).

Your support system will automatically answer many frequently asked questions and allow you the ability to have

outsourced help. Once you set up the help desk you are now ready to scale up traffic to your business.

Step 2—Social Media Presence Love it or hate it, you need a voice on the most popular social networks. Setup a Fan page on Facebook for your business.

It has a viral effect when people join it.

This can help you build a database of clients and at the same time the perfect platform to create sales buzz.

Twitter and LinkedIn are the two other major social media platforms to pay attention too. By linking your website to these social platforms you can automate broadcasts to your target market.

For an example see the how the

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$1billion dollar online shoe store Zappos deals with social media: • http://twitter.com/zappos—1,7 million followers!

• http://www.facebook.com/#!/ zappos?v=wall—53,200 fans!

You should also consider having a dynamic element to your website such as a blog. Blogs provide the client the ability to comment and more importantly, share your content easily with social sites.

Step 3—Outsource Your Work There’s hardly anything that you can’t ask someone else to do when it comes to the Internet. In the beginning it can be tempting to want to do everything Volume 1.1

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yourself. The reality is we are not all gifted at design, graphics, publishing websites, etc.

Here are some examples of work you can have done by contractors: • You can have a content-writer who prepares and distributes content for you. You don’t have to do anything but come up with the idea. Once the content is prepared you can have them and submit that content to your website.

Step 6—Website Tune Up Go to your website and make sure it does not say “Welcome to our website”. That is

boring and ineffective. Make sure you put a compelling and related benefit instead such as: “Termites Eradicated Fast” etc…

Make sure your page title has your keyword with a benefit in it. This is the little text at the very top of the browser. If it says “home” or “Welcome” you need to slap the web designer and then get a new one!

These small tweaks will make a HUGE difference to traffic and conversions.

Step 7—Traffic

• You can employ a graphics designer, a programmer, a web designer and a search engine optimization specialist for very low rates on a per unit basis.

You can’t get too much traffic. Make sure you take advantage of thre three main types of traffic. If you miss one you are losing money.

It’s about finding people who are really good at what you need to have done, and have them do it. The rewards are far greater than what you’re going to pay them.

• Paid traffic is important because if you can make money with free traffic, then you can make more money with paid traffic. Most internet marketers only focus on just free traffic. People get obsessed with free, but that’s really no way to run a business, is it? Consider a Google Pay Per Click campaign with the help of a professional.

Step 4—Create a Range of Digital Products You don’t have to only deal in physical products or services if you don’t want to.

Adding information products such as high quality PDF reports, whitepapers, video and audio can enhance your profit with hardly any effort.

Your clients are craving ‘how to’ information and these form the perfect compliment to almost any business. You can even give some premium content away for free just to get your prospects into your database. Once they are there you can make them repeated sales offers mixed into great content.

Step 5—Research Not the sexiest topic, but it will make or break your business. Imagine if in the real world, you just bought a block of land, and you had this fantastic idea. So you built a building, and got all the staff and put the product out there and no-one buys it. So you go bankrupt.

It’s no different online. A lot of people just come in and don’t have guidelines to judge things. Doing research allows you to find out whether you’re going to win or lose before you even enter the market. If you already have a website you should do this exercise to find hidden opportunities: Get onto Google and see what’s happening right now, who’s buying and who’s selling and for how much. The whole web is driven from keywords.

Keywords are the building blocks of

52

everything. When we go to Google, we type in a keyword. What we put in, will determine what we get out. We need to know the keywords that the buyers are using, and then we need to make sure that it’s OUR STUFF that will come out.

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• Borrowed traffic is when you know someone who already has your customers and you ask them to send them to you. You can tell them that they’ve got the customers, you’ve got the product, and tell them to send over the customers. You can crosspopulate things very easily. You might have heard of what’s called a “joint venture”.

• Free Traffic is where you submit premium content on your site and away from your site pointing back top your site. Search engines and humans love this and they will bring many visitors to your website. TBB James Schramko is a leader in the Internet Marketing scene. Much of his work is undetectable on the surface hence the term "underground marketer". The connections and network of serious multi-millionaire Internet entrepreneurs James has built up over the last few years is astounding. He is able to access the highest level knowledge fast. Based in Sydney, James runs his profitable business with very few team members, zero staff. The techniques he uses are often simple yet powerful.

To access James Schramko’s 3-day Business Internet Formula Course, visit www. internetsecretsexposed.com.au. www.universalevents.com.au levents.com.au  www.thinkbigmagazine.com

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Know how to look at the market from different angles ... it may pay you big dividends!

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 From Business21C magazine & the UTS academics

I

f we want to learn

about the meaning of work and its management, popular culture is an excellent source of education, and one that tells a very different story to what we read in an MBA textbook or a popular management book, or hear in a leadership training course.

In 1975, American poet Charles Bukowski wrote in Factotum: ‘I’d get an idea. I’d spring a loan. I’d hire and fire. I’d keep whiskey in my desk drawer.

I’d have a wife with size 40 breasts and an ass that would make the paperboy on the corner come in his pants when he saw it wobble. I’d cheat on her and she’d know it and keep silent in order to live in my house with my wealth. I’d fire men just to see the look on their face. I’d fire women who didn’t deserve to be fired […] I’d build an empire upon the broken bodies and lives of helpless men, women and children—I’d shove it to them all the way. I’d show them!’

Factotum is a semi-autobiographical

novel about a man who wanders across the US from town to town, job to deadend job, bar to bar. In it, Bukowski used his poet’s sensibility to paint an extreme picture of what working life means for so many people.

At this point in the novel, Hank Chinaski, the main character, is fantasising about what it might be like to be one of the bosses for whom he works. For Chinaski, managerial ambition is about sex and power—about an aggressive masculinity that wants to dominate others in the pursuit of its own goals. Chinaski has no such ambition: for him, a job is just a means to an end.

It is a potent example of how fiction can present an alternative view of the world of work, and, like much of Bukowski’s writing, it’s about the meaninglessness of work and about alienation from it. It is a book about how ‘the job’ demands everything and repays little.

Elsewhere, Bukowski writes:

Reality Bites Charles Bukowski, Bruce Springsteen, David Brent and Homer Simpson all talk to the world of work, but their stories are nothing like the ones you’ll find in a popular management book. As Professor Carl Rhodes reports, we can learn a lot about management from popular culture.

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‘How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6.30am by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?’

Although Factotum makes for great reading, its picture of working life is not unique. Ever since Charles Dickens started writing about London’s poor, factories, offices, hospitals, law courts, police stations and a myriad other workplaces have featured heavily in popular culture. As far back as 1855, Elizabeth Gaskell was writing about industrial hardship and conflict in North and South and, in 1917, Sinclair Lewis wrote about the challenges faced by working women in The Job. There’s bureaucracy in Franz Kafka’s The Trial, factory work in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and excess in Martin Amis’ Money.

But what are all of these things telling us about work, organisations and management? Is it all as desperate as Bukowski would have us believe?

Truth in fiction Anthropologist Clifford Geertz claimed that a people’s culture is made up of the stories they tell themselves about themselves. So when we turn on our televisions or go to the movies or listen to the radio, the stories we hear both reflect and help to create the culture in which we live.

We laugh at Homer Simpson and C Montgomery Burns in The Simpsons, and at David Brent in The Office, because we see our own lives reflected in their stories.

When Homer receives the ‘First Annual Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence’, we recognise the hollowness of so many workplace programs designed to reward achievement. When David Brent spouts maxims such as: ‘Trust people and they’ll be true to you. Treat them greatly and they will show themselves to be great’, we cringe because we’ve all heard these empty platitudes before in the workplace.

Popular music—and rock, in particular— has long been built on a spirit of resistance and rebellion. You might sing along to Roy Orbison’s ‘Workin’ for the Man’ or The Easybeats rocking through ‘Friday on my Mind’. Chuck Berry sang about a poor boy dreaming of the ‘Promised Land’, escaping to California to work in one of the defencerelated industries that were pulling in labour in the postwar boom economy of the 1950s.

In the 1960s, The Animals screamed ‘We Gotta Get out of this Place’—a song that celebrated escaping the hardworking lives of those of previous generations, who had toiled in low-income, back-breaking jobs. Cilla Black sang ‘Work is a Four-Letter Word’. Bruce Springsteen affirmed in 1978’s Darkness on the Edge of Town that he still believed in the ‘Promised Land’, despite work making him feel so weak that he wanted to explode.

It’s all there, whatever your taste— Johnny Paycheck’s ‘Take this Job and Shove it’, Donna Summer’s ‘She Works Hard for the Money’, Dolly Parton’s ‘9 to 5’, The Smiths’ ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’, Fountains of Wayne’s ‘Bright Future in Sales’, or The Ramones’ ‘It’s Not My Place (In the 9 to 5 World)’. Popular musicians seem to know that the promises of work are hard to keep.

But there is one thing you will never find in popular culture: though work is everywhere in films, books and music, and on television, the organisation is never represented as an entirely positive or meaningful thing. Hit movies American Beauty, Disclosure, Fight Club, The Devil Wears Prada and Glengarry Glen Ross all suggest that people have dark and complex relationships with their work. Popular culture does not tend to play out the ambivalence, contradictions and moral dilemmas we experience as part of work, however.

Instead, it tells us the stories that make up our working culture—not the imagined culture of ‘corporate values’ or ‘vision statements’ but the culture of real life on the shop floor and around the water cooler.

5 Lessons About Management From Popular Culture 1. Beware of careers in management: chances are, people will make fun of you and won’t like you.

2. Resistance is not futile: what is futile is managers thinking they can control or eliminate it.

3. People have a complex relationship with work: don’t insult them with simplistic management programs and techniques.

4. Avoid being seduced by the corporation: it brings out the worst in people.

5. Work is not a promised land.

Utopian fantasy Next time you are cruising the corridors of the corporation, take a look at the books on the shelves in managers’ offices. You’ll notice two things. Firstly, they are generally unread.

Seldom do you see crease-lines on the spines and dog-eared page corners indicating frequent use and hours of late-night reading.

Secondly, more often than not, they are management bestsellers of the type found in airport bookshops, such as Jim Collins and Jerry Porras’ Built to Last, Tom Peters and Robert Waterman’s In Search of Excellence, Michael Hammer and James Champy’s Reengineering the Corporation and Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

While popular culture is telling us stories about the difficult and ironic relationships people have with work and management, these books tell quite a different story. Most

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Classic Picks From Popular Culture About Work and Organisations Movies • Factotum (2005), starring Matt Dillon • Office Space (1999), starring Ron Livingston • Wall Street (1987), starring Michael Douglas • Disclosure (1994), starring Demi Moore • Clerks (1994), starring Brian O’Halloran

Television • The Simpsons (1989-) • The Office (2001-2003) • The Bill (1984-) • The Wire (2002-2008) • Dilbert (1999-2000) – see also the comic strip!

Songs • ‘Workin’ for the Man’ by Roy Orbison (1962) • ‘Factory’ by Bruce Springsteen (1978) • ‘Fast Car’ by Tracy Chapman (1988) • ‘Career Opportunities’ by The Clash (1977) • ‘Friday on my Mind’ by The Easybeats (1967)

Novels & Books • Post Office by Charles Bukowksi (1971) • The Trial by Franz Kafka (1925) • The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (1906) • Money by Martin Amis (1984) • Working by Studs Terkel (1974)

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management bestsellers contain a highly utopian vision of what organisations can or should be like. The management gurus assure that if you follow their advice, your organisation can be an idyllic dreamland in which heroic managers lead entrepreneurial and motivated employees towards a shared vision.

For the vast majority of people, however, this is far from reality—not just because work can be difficult but because these books are works of fantasy. Read one and you will be told that with the right practices, habits, characteristics and attributes in place, yours, too, can be a corporation of prosperity and longevity.

In these books, the real organisation— the one you go to each day—is always considered inferior to the ideal organisation it could be.

But as Bob Dylan sang in 1965: Advertising signs that con you Into thinking you’re the one That can do what’s never been done, That can win what’s never been won, Meantime, life outside goes on All around you.

So much of what passes for management knowledge is just like those signs.

Reality is deprived of importance—better to live in the dream of an impossible utopia.

But it doesn’t seem to work: life goes on all around you; your organisation goes on all around you.

Every year, more and more ‘popular management’ books are published, each author promising to solve your problems if you just do what he or she tells you to do. But they rarely offer the solution to the problems—there is always another book chasing the market for unhappy managers. The promise of an answer eases anxiety in the short term but it is unlikely to deliver. At best, stressedout managers might get some temporary relief from the burden of their pressures.

The guru on the hill promises that you can slay your dragons but the sword is made of paper; it blows away in the wind. As that other prophet of the proletariat, Bruce Springsteen, once sang: ‘Is a dream a lie that don’t come true, or is it something worse?’

Popular culture offers a superior basis

upon which to learn about the meaning and practice of work and management than does the vapid utopianism of ‘popular management’ books. Even though the stories told through popular media channels are, for the most part, fictional, they do a much better job of tuning in to the realities of work than do the idle imaginings of the management gurus.

I would go so far as to say that many fictional representations of work in popular culture are more realistic than the utopian representations in popular management books. They may not always make you feel better but they don’t tell as many lies.

If you really want to learn about management, don’t head off to the management section of the airport bookshop. Better to turn on the TV or radio, go to the movies or read a novel.

There you will find out what is really going on, with no false promises. TBB Carl Rhodes is Professor of Organisation Studies at UTS Business. An internationally renowned scholar, Carl researches and writes on issues related to ethics in organisations, knowledge and identity in organisations, and popular culture and organisations.

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R

esearch has shown that in order to have a chance of remembering anything, the object, person or event must be: • drawn into our consciousness • encoded and stored in our brain • able to be retrieved at a later date.

MMethods

of Memory Magic

By Dr Kim Fenton & Penny Ombler

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Additionally, we have three types of memory: sensory, short term and long term.

Sensory memory is extremely short term—only a matter of seconds—and detects things that occur in your environment. It could be a loud sound or a car speeding past. With no need to store the information, those memories simply disappear. However, if you are motivated to notice something about the sound or the car, the dynamics are altered. For instance, if what you thought you heard was a gunshot, or you knew the car speeding past was driving away from a bank robbery, you would consciously register more information. The events would move into short-term memory.

Interestingly, short-term memory has a limit to both the capacity of information that can be stored and the length of time for which it can be stored. When you are learning something new and you say your brain is full, you probably aren’t exaggerating. Short-term memory is the reason you may forget the last two or three digits of a telephone number you’ve just been told. In order to remember it, you need to repeat it a number of times. If you have speed dial on your phone, you may never remember it off hand. If you do repeatedly dial that number manually, at some point, it enters your long-term memory.

Long-term memory is full of information from your short-term memory that you have chosen not to discard. Going back to the gunshot and the speeding car, if you know someone’s just robbed a bank, you may prioritise in your memory the colour of the car, the make and model and the registration number. However, if you find out later that the car that sped past you was the getaway vehicle from a bank robbery, you may have difficulty accurately describing even the colour of the car. You may not even remember a car speeding past you at all.

We prioritise information that is

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meaningful to us. This explains the human consequences of a poor memory. We have all had that experience of not being remembered by someone. Last time it happened to you, it is likely that you felt insignificant to the other person.

In a business sense, it can make it harder to build rapport and create productive professional relationships, if you are consistently forgetting details about your colleagues and customers.

So, what are some of the basic skills you can develop in order to maintain and improve your memory?

Remembering a person

Remembering numbers

Relationships are based on history. The more history you can remember about someone, the more interest they feel you have in them.

We feel special when someone remembers the details of past conversations. Remembering details of people’s lives requires interest. As the listener, you need to be present in the conversation and register what is being said.

At the same time, as the speaker, or the person wanting the details to be remembered, you need to be aware of your timing.

Sometimes you have caught your listener off guard, or in the middle of something else, and the chances of igniting interest at that time are far less. Both parties have to be in tune to the needs of the other in order for high quality communication to occur.

with some

Some other advice

your control

It is important to de-clutter your mind. Brain clutter may be blocking your ability to store new information. If you can recite the entire script from Guys and Dolls, but you can’t remember your customer’s standing order, you may need to reprioritise your brain space.

As discussed, you will also need repetition as numbers are best remembered when used over and over again.

Remembering names Forgetting someone’s name in any environment can knock a few points off your scorecard, even if they’ve only registered it in their subconscious mind. Building rapport involves a combination of subtle interactions over time and remembering a name is one of the more important in this subliminal process.

Remembering a name is a twofold process.

It’s all about the introduction and the priority.

When you are introduced to someone, ensure you accurately catch their name. This requires that you are interested to know their name and that you prioritise its place in your memory. In order to ensure accuracy, make eye contact and repeat their name back to them immediately after the introduction to begin the process of recall in your brain. So it can go something like this: “Hi, I’m Brent Michaels.” “Brett was it?”

“No, Brent.” “Hi Brent, I’m Laura Evans.”

People don’t mind correcting you if you get their name wrong immediately after hearing it. However, if you continue to call him Brett for the next year, he will possibly be too embarrassed to correct you and it will affect the rapport you are able to build with him.

Immediately following the introduction, make eye contact and use their name in the next three sentences you say. It could be: “So, Brent, which company do you work for?” Or “Brent, can I get you a drink?” Or “Are you here with a group Brent?”

Finally, always say your name when someone gives you his or hers. “Hi, I’m Laura Evans” should be met with “Hi Laura, I’m Brent Michaels”. It should never be met with “Hi”.

More people are better with faces than with names. This is because most of us are better at recognising rather than recalling. Others have to meet someone three times in order to register that they’ve met them at all. Again, it comes down to priorities. You need to decide that remembering people is a priority. The skills you use to remember a person are the same as remembering a name. If you remember their name, you are unlikely to forget their face.

Remembering a conversation

• At work functions, collect business cards.

If there is anything you want to remind yourself of about that person, you can write it on the back of the card while it’s fresh in your mind.

• Always offer your business card. It will help the person remember you. If you are not doing something you’d rather forget later, you can always benefit by being remembered yourself.

The importance of a good memory cannot be underplayed.

Yet, most of us could do improvement in the memory department.

You don’t have to accept your level of ability.

It is within to develop exceptional memory skills.

• Always make a note of what you have promised and ensure you follow through with your commitment. Forgetting to deliver on a promise will make you memorable for all the wrong reasons.

The art of recall is a skill that you continually need to practice in order to maintain sharp proficiency. Your priorities, interests and behaviour will influence your ability to remember details, as well as your likelihood of being remembered. A good memory for the details of others, and assisting them to remember you, can be of enormous benefit to both your personal and professional relationships, creating rapport and ultimately, strong and lasting connections. TBB

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Your days of being a Solopreneur or ‘me, myself and I’ thinker who fears competition or promoting other experts and companies are numbered.

Creating

Powerful Connections  By Madam X Hanging on by the fingernails to an outdated, fear-based mindset that clings precariously to the ‘old school’ dog-eatdog way of doing business is not only a waste of your precious time and resources, but a surefire way to build your business slowly. Abundance thinkers use a win-win formula that allows them to do business with their competitors and substantially increase their cashflow. Abundance thinkers replace the lonely ‘I’ attitude with a ‘Together We Can....’ attitude.

There is one ‘abundance thinking’... marketing strategy that exists today which outshines all the rest. It is the most underutilised, misunderstood, yet cost effective method guaranteed to help you generate leads, skyrocket your expert status and arguably make you money faster than you can blink. It’s the bread and butter of millionaires throughout the world and it’s more commonly referred to as Joint Venture (JV). Creating Joint Ventures and working together as a collaborative team spirit for a mutually beneficial outcome is the new evolution of business.

This is especially important if you don’t have a huge advertising budget or any budget at all. Many of the big internet gurus built up their databases by leveraging from JVs and continue to use JVs to generate free leads and to sell their products or services. Even though most of them can now afford big marketing budgets, seeking joint venture partnerships remains their number one strategy. So what does this tell you?

If nothing else, it should tell you to pay attention! For example, let’s say you

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have a great product or idea for a product but no customers, leads or database, no money to spend on advertising, or budget to buy Ads and you are completely alone. Imagine this is you, sitting alone in your home office, feeling overwhelmed wondering what the heck you should do. How would you sell products with no money, list and or credibility?

Simple, you ‘borrow’ what you don’t have. JVs allow you to ethically ‘borrow’ another person’s list or customer database and of course their trusted credibility. Basically, they recommend your product or service and you pay them a commission on sales if and when you sell.

There’s no money upfront and no risk, that’s why it’s so lucrative, easy and fun.

Even more impressive, JVs will actually save you heaps of $$$ in any economic climate because you do not become dependent on bank credit or small business loans. Your business does not have to fall into debt of any kind or seek venture capital in order to grow, explode your sales or enter into a new market.

Five tips on building your thriving JV empire 1. Get educated and do your research. If you’ve never been involved in a joint venture before, there are aspects in the joint venture process such as the profits and responsibilities each partner shares that you must know how to do. The idea is to co-operate with each other so that neither one of you feels you have been unfairly taken advantage of.

2. Clearly outline each partner’s

responsibilities. Both parties must understand what is expected of them.

This keeps everyone involved feeling secure about what their role is and clear about who receives what.

3. Ensure your JV partner offers a quality product or service. Protect the relationship and trust you have built with your database of customers by making sure that they receive real value for their money. Deal only with partners that deliver on their promises otherwise you risk potentially harming your relationship with your clients.

4. Create a win/win venture agreement that is mutually financially rewarding.

Embracing an attitude of ‘what’s in it for them first and then what’s in it for me’ will go a long way toward sustaining lucrative long-term partnerships.

5. Build a quality JV relationship based on solid ethics and mutual understanding.

Understand your JV partner’s work ethics and commitment level before entering into any agreement. Some joint ventures can continue for many years and so it is vital you trust the integrity level of your JV partner.

Ultimately, lack of cashflow is the number one reason most businesses fail. To increase your cashflow you must sell your product or service and so seeking out the right joint venture partnerships will mean the difference between ending up on ‘I’m broke and I just-get-by’ street or ‘I’m rich and forever free’ street.

The choice of course, is yours. TBB

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O

Self-Belief is an incredible concept Jordan Wirsz turned a difficult childhood to his advantage by studying the techniques of great motivators such as Tony Robbins. He speaks with Jonathan Jackson about finding the courage to transcend any limitation.

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n the inside flap of his book Become Incredible, Jordan Wirsz writes: I knew I was going to be successful when I was seven years old. I know that sounds almost comical to picture the little kid having absolute confidence that he was going to make something of himself, but it’s true.

At seven years old, that confidence seemed to have little place in Jordan’s life. His single mother worked two to three jobs a day, putting in almost 14 working hours to support her son. It meant Jordan spent most time by himself; home alone watching television.

“I would watch television, but it was an old television that required rabbit ears and plenty of fiddling with them to get a picture. I grew tired of this pretty quickly and looked around for things to keep me occupied.”

What he stumbled upon was a set of old Anthony Robbins motivation tapes. Although he was so young he didn’t quite comprehend all that was being taught, Jordan was hooked and listening.

“There was about 10 to 15% comprehension, enough to change my life,” Jordan says. “I studied neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and was applying it by the age of 10.”

In fact, despite being moved around the country, not being able to settle at school (he attended 15 schools) and being lonely to the point where he would call directory assistance just to hear a voice, Jordan was determined to blossom out of difficulty and adversity.

He backed this determination with a belief in his own personal development. For Jordan this was an extreme need to move beyond his circumstances.

“Fear can be a powerful and extraordinary emotion,” Jordan says. “Like anger, it is not always a bad emotion. It can give you direction and show you the right way to go.”

So, following the advice he’d heard on tapes, Jordan took control of his own life. His desire to fly— something he says is a psychological reaction to his circumstance – was the catalyst for coming ventures. It ties his personal development with his professional. As he says, “to be a success means being who you are.

“Aviation requires freedom and discipline. If you are not 100% dedicated and focused and you can’t master the task, you die.”

This is how Jordan lives his life: 100% dedication and focus to his task built on the creation of environmental familiarity which creates patterns. This staves off the fear of returning to the days of trying to manipulate rabbit ears to give reception to the television.

Barter & Better Jordan started in business by trading aviation models: first a glider, then a helicopter. He was bartering his way to bigger and better things and it all started with a small advertisement in a newspaper.

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of his bicycle. At the age of 14, Jordan used his experience in bartering models to successfully broker a helicopter over the internet. The deal went through for $55,000 and Jordan collected $2,500 in commission.

In the meantime, he was building himself a base of mentors who could guide him and who would talk to him.

They included a neighbour, a local police officer, an aviator and dentist. He was receiving an adult education, which was cause for problems at school where he tried hard, but failed to communicate with kids his own age.

He was home schooled and earned a degree, but didn’t see the point in going to college. Yet, to this day Jordan’s desire to learn knows no bounds. “Never stop learning,” he says. “The more I learn, the more I realise what I don’t know. And if you don’t know something it will inevitably come back to slap you in the face.”

Jordan made his first mistake, and learnt his first important lesson, after he invested the $2,500 he earned for brokering the helicopter into some dud commodities.

He took the lesson onboard and, undeterred, started Xtreme Aviation brokering helicopters, airplanes and pilot supplies. The success of the business sent him to flight school where he would also wash planes and fuel the craft.

Flying solo at age 16 was Jordan’s dream come true. He was free. He was disciplined and he was making good on the words of one of his idols, Ghandi: Live life like you are to die tomorrow. Or in Jordan’s own words: “Be willing to die for what you believe in.”

Version & Vision Jordan is no overnight success. Young as he may be, his ability to build and grow stems back to early childhood and to being a six year old listening to those old Robbins tapes that he didn’t fully understand.

So when he became a commercial pilot at age 18 flying all over the country and logging hundreds of hours, he looked back at his life and reassessed his dreams. He realised he wanted to remain an entrepreneur and fly his own corporate plane.

“To be successful, you need to see the world from an angle which the rest of the world is unfamiliar,” Jordan says.

It is this very edict by which he has lived his life and built his businesses.

As the CEO and founder of a Las

Vegas based private investment firm, Diamond Bay Investments he grew his company to multi-millions in profits by implementing the lessons he’d learnt through childhood. Jordan’s version of life has been vastly different to many who endured what he did as a child.

While a lot of children in the same boat either give up, go bad or accept their lot, Jordan’s success was created by his relentless pursuit of happiness, which unlike the world’s material possessions, can never be taken away from anyone.

He explored this in his first book.

The Maverick Millionaire is an apt description, chronicling his rags to riches rise. His second book, The Ultimate Guide to Trust Deed Investing is an educational tool for investors seeking alternative real estate investments. The recently released Become Incredible is Jordan’s vision of empowerment; a lesson in taking the bull by the horns, living your own way and reaching your goals.

In Jordan’s vision, success is not about copying. If imitation is flattery, it is not fulfilment. He says the best way to succeed is to know who you are and act on what you want—live the version of your life that is true to your own vision.

Happy Is As Happy Does Speaking with Jordan you get the impression that he is comfortable in his own skin and appreciates the success that has been afforded him. His success in investment (he sold his firm after five years at the helm), gave him the opportunity to become one of the youngest airshow pilots in America, flying the world’s best high performance aerobatic aircraft. Jordan has thrilled tens of thousands of people around the world pulling more than 10G forces and tumbling nose over tail.

He has also been featured on Fox News, NBC and its affiliates and acknowledged by the US Senate and Congress. He has won the SBA Young Entrepreneur of the Year and was Top 40 under 40 in Las Vegas business.

He has a right to be happy. However, what makes him happiest (aside from his aerobatic displays) is the ability to help others. Jordan Wirsz International Inc. is an organisation that empowers goals, ideas and confidence in anyone who asks for his help.

Jordan has changed the lives of

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thousands of people through speaking, mentoring and coaching. From A-list Hollywood celebrities to Fortune 500 executives, to addiction afflicted addicts, alcoholics, people in bad relationships and those who suffer phobias, Jordan has had a hand in their transformation.

“The more you have, the more you give,” Jordan says. “Just look at Warren Buffett and Bill Gates and how much money they give away to Foundations and charities.

“My goal is to donate $250 million to charities throughout my life. And to be able to pass on about $250 million.” To do this he needs to continue to build his own worth. His goal is to have $1.2 billion in net worth. He wants to be a billionaire.

Jordan has actively supported the Candlelighters Childhood Cancer

Jordan's Keys to Success: 1. Be passionate.

2. Never stop learning.

3. Be a risk taker and live on the edge, but at the same time don’t think you have everything figured out.

4. Listen.

Foundation, which provides children and adolescent cancer patients or survivors and their families with education and support and an orphanage in Mexico, where he built a home in three days.

Sunny Reifel, a US airways pilot with whom Jordan has flown describes Jordan as one of the most genuine people he has known.

“He is so unique, not just because he is so young and successful, but because success has followed him because he always has the best intentions.”

Wirsz says his success is based on respect and the ability to listen. These are traits he adopted young and carried through his early maturity. They are the same traits that have allowed him to become incredible and carve a path for himself that he, and he alone, has chosen. TBB Jordan Wirsz will be in Australia this September for his first-ever Become Incredible 2-day program.

Save more than $600 when you register here (tickets just $97): www.jordanlive.com.au Volume 1.1

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There is little point

By Darren Brown

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…

Not Getting

Paid?

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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

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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 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.

• 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.

Legal proceedings required?

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

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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. TBB Volume 1.1

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Every business strives for competitive advantage: how do we smash the competition, and grow market share and profitability, irrespective of how we get there.

Or do they?

Values of

Competitive Advantage  By Kimberly dela Cruz Odorn

M

anagement studies are describing collaboration or joint problem solving with suppliers, customers and competitors as the path to growth and sustainability.

Examples include Apple inviting code writers to add to and improve its iPhone and other apps; and Eli Lily, the drug maker, spinning off InnoCentive. com that charges clients (’seekers’) to broadcast scientific problems on a website where scientists (solvers) are offered cash—usually less than $100,000—for solutions; more than 50 challenges are now pending.

Oppositional or collaborative. Which is the best way forward? Are you flexible enough to do both? Within a business we can find similar challenges on style, approach and values.

Glenn is the divisional GM of a very traditional multimillion-dollar organisation. He is leading his division of scientists through the transition from excellent scientists to excellent, commercially attuned scientists.

A scientist himself, he earned his management experience and reputation by working through the ranks at wellknown and respected competitors. He has

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accepted the challenge to “commercialise” the division—to bring it into the cut and thrust of today’s business world.

A business focus makes many of his team uncomfortable after all they are scientists! They are dedicated to making the world a better place. How much they spend, how they advance their work and how they share their findings should not be reduced to commercial imperatives.

They are absolute in their traditionalism!

They understand the reason for the business emphasis but it’s such a different paradigm that they try to ignore it.

A highly respected senior scientist, Martin, is leading covert white-anting about Glenn’s ability to lead and effectively manage the division. Martin’s Machiavellian tactics have produced a handful of complaints against Glenn about favouritism he is showing Cheryl, a star scientist. Cheryl and her team create much of their work by collaborating with colleagues. Their projects are recognised by the international business community and have brought in more revenue than almost any other team. The perceived difficulty is that Cheryl is Glenn’s wife.

On the face of this, this just looks like a hairy, but not unusual management

challenge. At a deeper level these behaviours are actually a clash of values: traditional, purposeful, absolutistic, vs commercial innovation and market participation, vs aggressive undermining to preserve an old way or hide an inability to transform into a new way vs collaboration, consultation and cocreation to create anew.

It is never either/or, and always “and”.

If you desire to become a truly successful leader who creates growth, increase in market share and profit, encourages innovation and collaboration and can handle staff “behaving badly”, then you have at least two distinct challenges: 1) Can you identify the predominant underlying values driving your staff without being drawn into the drama being played out because of those values?

2) Do you know your own dominant values? Is your behaviour flexible enough to not only understand the values of your staff but also draw on their cloak of values while interacting with them so that they feel heard, understood and can therefore do their best work?

If you can do this you can effectively lead a competitive organisation for the long term in any environment. TBB

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