Administration

Sweat Equity & the Bee Sting

By brendan at 17 November, 2009, 7:55 am

I staked out my spot in the shade at the skateboard park. Got out my book, biscuits and water bottle and prepared for a relaxing hour while the kids went completely berserk. It seemed like only 2 minutes later when all of a sudden there was that screaming that signifies pain, as compared to the [...]

What happens after failure….

By brendan at 27 October, 2009, 11:11 am

This is a video of a speech I did in June this year on corporate failure at AIMIA. Rather than talk about climbing back up, or just hanging on the cliff, I decided to talk about what happens when you actually fall off and your business fails. It was probably a bit too candid. Its [...]

Failure has bad PR

By brendan at 16 March, 2009, 12:02 pm

In mid February the Churchill Club ran a programme called Innovation DNA which was about making innovation a sustainable programme in Australian SME’s. One of the panellists, Wes Sonnenreich from Deloitte, mentioned that a good failure was one that was quick and cheap. Which got me thinking about failure again. My assertion has been for [...]

Cloud Money

By brendan at 5 November, 2008, 1:40 pm

In 1998 I stopped getting paid to be an Accountant. I came to the conclusion that being a scorekeeper wasn’t satisfying enough for me, I want to be kicking goals, not cheering from the sideline. I called it – Getting in touch with my inner salesman. I said “stopped getting paid” rather than “stopped working” [...]

Dark Clouds on the Horizon……

By brendan at 9 September, 2008, 12:37 pm

Last time we had a recession in Australia I was working as a branch manger with an electrical components wholesaler (and re-training to be an accountant). Our customers were generally electricians and small manufacturers of electrical components. Life was reasonably depressing and you were used to bandying about terms such as “Provision for doubtful debts”. [...]

Everyone can be in business

By admin at 3 July, 2008, 4:05 pm

About once a month I go to the movies with a mate of mine, a kind of very tame boys night out. Anyway, whilst we were having a beer after the movie he mentioned to me that he had run into a women who owns a couple of hair dressing salons in the UK. Apparently [...]

From Kitchen table to IPO – Pick up the New Skills

By admin at 18 April, 2008, 6:34 pm

Last week I talked about the selecting your Advisors when going public that came out of the Churchill Club programme “from Kitchen table to IPO”. which we ran on the 17th April. We were joined by Silvio Salom of Adacel Technologies Ltd , Leon Lau of Peoplebank Ltd and Michael Abela of Mobi Ltd . [...]

Tinkering, categorically, is allowed

By admin at 30 May, 2007, 4:20 am

In 2004, I was engaged to fix up an advertising business. They had plenty of revenue, but at the end of the financial year, the cupboard was always bare. Coming in wearing a general manager’s hat, I had a whole series of questions to ask, including “why are we using these spreadsheets to tell us [...]