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Some Initial thoughts on the iPad

By brendan at 28 January, 2010, 10:08 am

Once again Apple will export California chic to the rest of the world. Certainly Apple is likely to carve out a “new” niche with style and an interface that just works with its new iPad.
The success of netbook has proven that most users don’t need much more that email, web and multimedia display. The iPad [...]

Time & Materials V’s Fixed Price billing

By brendan at 27 January, 2010, 12:11 pm

Just before Xmas I had one of my coffee/mentoring sessions with a vibrant young Victorian entrepreneur and an interesting question came up around how she should invoice her services. Although not an expert in the area of pricing models (I generally recommend Jon Manning of Sans Prix for some hard core consulting), I [...]

What would a Sales 101 course look like?

By brendan at 18 January, 2010, 6:14 pm

Something that drives me mad is that in my humble opinion, our Universities are undermining the success of Australian business. I say this because from my observation the number one skill required for success in business, regardless of profession, is the ability to sell. To sell your product, yourself as the right candidate [...]

Keeping Smart Productive People

By brendan at 18 January, 2010, 3:44 pm

So after last weeks post on looking after smart but lazy people, I got some interesting feedback from a friend who’s a Human Resources Manager in a national organisation with a couple of thousand employees in what seems like hundreds of locations. She agreed with me, but extended my idea either further with a [...]

Cherish Smart but Lazy People

By brendan at 11 January, 2010, 4:16 pm

So last time I posted, I discussed dealing with lawyers – lessons learned from my long lunches with a Barrister/Army friend.
Another interesting discussion we had was around the need for stupid or lazy people. Ian’s point of view was that in any organisation, you have people who are smart and people who are stupid. [...]

Six Lawyer Lessons Learned

By brendan at 22 December, 2009, 6:23 pm

I once spent two weeks living inside an armoured vehicle with a guy who was destined to be a lifelong friend, despite the fact he later became a lawyer, much to my disgust. The weeks we spent together were in 1989, and since then when we are in the same state, we catch up twice [...]

4 Keys to deploying Social Media

By brendan at 15 December, 2009, 5:51 pm

Last Thursday the Churchill Club ran event on using Social Media for Sponsorship and Fundraising. It was a great evening with perspectives coming from Peter Williams (CEO Deloitte Digital), Jeremy Kann (General Manager, Sales & Commercial at Australian Grand Prix Corporation) and Vicki Kyriakakas (Communications Manager at Environment Victoria).
It was quite a wide ranging [...]

3 keys to no bullshit plans

By brendan at 7 December, 2009, 2:17 pm

Pretty much on a weekly basis I get sent ideas, business plans and/or Information Memorandums for capital raising. Everyone who sends me one, tends to think its an expertly crafted, zero risk proposal to achieve a massive return with a world changing idea. I don’t. So when a couple of weeks ago, Justin [...]

Scammers, Spammers & Spivs

By brendan at 25 November, 2009, 12:13 pm

I got emailed yesterday by a journalist who wanted to know about scams and dodgy websites. Basically the questions was “is there a resource you used to understand whether something was right, wrong or just a scam?”. Well there wasn’t any particular website, but if there was it would be likely to be instantly out [...]

Upgrading to MindX

By brendan at 24 November, 2009, 2:56 pm

I had coffee with Dan Dobos last week who’s been busy launching his new business, Office Autopilot in Australia, which is a wonderful web based marketing engine that combines offline and online seamlessly – eg a an enquiry from your website automatically generates a printed card that gets sent out. As an [...]