How often are you vulnerable and feeling exposed in business when you know not everything is lined up as correctly as you believe it could be. This could be the insurance on your home boiler, the expiry date on your personal life cover or the terms and conditions on your latest contract. Is everything fit for purpose, ready to protect you should you need it? Let me give you an example recently I landed a…

OMG I’m tired – so tired from working, playing, family and everything going on around me. It’s constant, that hamster wheel of life just keeps on turning day after day, week after week and then all of a sudden another year has gone by and I hardly remember what happened. We all go through stages of sheer exhaustion both mentally and physically and just need to switch off, reboot and recharge, but then something else…

Sitting here in a hospital room killing time writing this newsletter while waiting, waiting patiently for news from the doctor to tell me everything has gone well, my daughter is comfortable and that the operation has been a success. This is the sort of waiting that we cannot control, where we have little choice but to sit still and be patient, no stress, anxiety or fussing on my part would speed up the situation. In…

How difficult is it for you to write an email or a blog post, what about an article or a piece of advertising material? We all have to create different pieces of collateral for various reasons in business and there are some that you, as with me, are more comfortable doing than others. For example a few years ago now I took an MBA while living in Australia, I still say to this day that…

Fashion faux pas’, disrespectful suits, outrageous ties, jeans and jumpers – whether you are male or female makes no difference worrying about what to wear for every activity every different situation really can play on your mind. A classic example for me is writing the newsletter – as always I take myself out and find a sanctuary where I can become immersed in my thinking and writing. That in itself is nothing of any consequence,…

There are 365 days in a year and every year those days seem to pass even faster, in more of a blur. How would you feel if you were looking at a diary that included 365 positive memories ranging from a child learning to walk, the tax return being completed on time and with lower bills, landing that new job, winning a massive contract or getting married? When we look back through old diaries it…

It’s your business – you run it, you work in it – without you to be fair there probably isn’t a business for someone else to buy. So you are the key person who makes everything happen – what happens when ‘it’ hits the fan? Something unexpected comes along and takes you down a different path… a significant part of your life is turned upside down. This is not scaremongering – it’s an honest and…

So many talks delivered in company are delivered by that person who’s good on their feet, they’ve always done it and they rarely mess up! We can all name one person if we think about it who was normally OK, blooper free and sometimes even entertaining. Where does that leave the rest of us – the mere mortals who find speaking in public more of a challenge, it’s outside of our comfort zone and clearly…

Continuous Professional Development – who would give something that is fundamental to the survival of the species such an inept and irrelevant title? It sounds like something that has come straight from an academics handbook with no consideration whatsoever as to how important it is for the individual, their career or their business. The dictionary interpretation of CPD is ‘the means by which people maintain their knowledge and skills related to their professional lives, CPD…

Of course the pure “marketeer” will always say there is a need and benefit from having them; however the other side of the argument would say it’s a waste of paper everything goes out in emails as PDFs now. I believe the tough and annoying answer here is it depends – on the purpose and the outcome that you are looking for. Recently I was handed a folder from an organisation that support businesses with…