If you're not scared are you making progress....

I saw this video this evening and it reminds me of one of my daily goals which is to push my boundaries every day, to do something that is a little more scary, a little more difficult than I really want to do because it is only when you push the boundaries that you learn and when you learn you make progress.





wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.




What a great feeling it must be to have that feeling of falling and then stretch out your arms and fly ( I think these guys are still falling just a little bit more slowly!)


I used to dream a lot of falling and then flying, sounds like entrepreneurship in a nutshell, sometimes you need to fall a long way before you fly.


Freud said that the content of all dreams is wish fulfillment, perhaps if I dream of falling and flying again I should immediately proceed to Norway!


But I prefer Walt Disney who said "all of our dreams can come through if we have the courage to pursue them."


Best of luck with your pursuits

I firmly believe that we are a product of three things

1. The people we associate with

2. The books we read (or education we get through other sources).

3. Environment

The current economic enironment could be quite depressing particularly if we listen to the journalists. But when it comes to journalism "if it bleeds it leads", the worse the story the bigger the headline.

But be aware that by definition recession is an assesment of what happened in a previous quarter (or a previouos two quarters to be precise)... a recession is defined as a reduction of a country's gross domestic product (GDP) for at least two quarters.

You can only look at the previous quarter after it is passed. So you could be in a quarter of unprecedented economic growth when everyone is talking about recession which in fact refers to the two previous quarters.

We do not have to define our selves by what happened in the past and it is our choice to do so or not to do so......we can choose to look for new opportunities, better opportunities right now or we can choose to go with the flow and participate in the mass depression (psychological not economic).

Personally I am looking for new opportunities and better opportunities.

But I am not burying my head in the sand, my businesses have had to adjust, credit control has become a major issue as or course has cashflow.

Perhaps now is time to read more and associate with better people in an attempt to reduce the negative influences of the current environment and to that end following are

10 Great Quotes From 10 Great Business People

1. Jim Rohn : “Formal education will make you a living; self education will make you a fortune.”


2. Henry Ford : “Paying attention to simple little things that most men neglect makes a few men rich.”


3. Walt Disney : “All our dreams can come true - if we have the courage to pursue them.”


4. Peter Drucker : “Business has only two functions - marketing and innovation.”


5. Edwin H. Stuart :“Men who do things without being told draw the most wages.”


6. Vincent Lombardi : “Winning is a habit. Unfortunately so is losing”


7. J. Paul Getty : “To succeed in business, to reach the top, an individual must know all it is possible to know about that business.”


8. Sam Walton : “High expectations are the key to everything.”


9. Steve Jobs : “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”


10. Warren Buffett :“I like to go for cinches. I like to shoot fish in a barrel. But I like to do it after the water has run out.”

Thank you to Prevential for these great quotes.

3 Essential New Year Resolutions to Help Businesses Beat Recession

I came across an excellent press release by Henry Baker called "3 Essential New Year Resolutions to Help Businesses Beat Recession"

In it Henry describes how in times of Recession (ouch I used the R word-more on that in my next post) we must look to attract more affluent customers. He describes how in the past a cup of coffee was just a cup of coffee and now it comes with more bells and whistles than a mercedes, americano, latte, skinny latte, vanilla, caramel, syrup, douoble shot, foam, cinnamon sprinkles.......

This goes some way to explaining the $2.50 price tag on a cup of coffee costing 25c to make.

The profit on the double shot of coffee far exceeds the profit on the coffee itself. The deisgner handbag costing $3,000 does not in fact cost 200 times more to manufacture than the similar looking but non diesigner handbag sold for $15.

But of course this is not the full story when we go to Starbucks we do so not just for the coffee, we go for the "experience". Starbucks describes itself as being the ‘third-place of
business’ – home, office, Starbucks in between.

If you walked up to someone about to buy a bag of ground coffee at the store and tried to sell them just a cup for $2.50, they would tell you it was too expensive when the bag of coffee costs $3.00.

But, if you are at the coffeehouse, you are going to pay for the experience.

Henry concludes that in difficult recessionary times we must

1. separate price from what we sell
2. deliberately look for affluent customers and
3. serve them with an experience

In my view three great aims for any business not just in difficult times but all the time. I particularly like 3, because ultimately we buy on emotion, we return to stores / businesses where we have a good emotional experience.

This was brought home to me again over the past week.

We use an online recruitment board called salesjobs.ie as a part of our recruitment process when we recruit.

We find it excellent if used correctly (refreshing the ads, browsing the online cvs, e mailing potential candidates etc. etc. and of course systemising this and doing it every day), but back to the point, Emma the sales consulatant from Sales Jobs called me on a number of occasions over the past few months to ask if we had any recruitment coming up, very pleasantly, not pushy (she clearly understands the concept that the customer will buy when the customer is ready to buy not when she is ready to sell), she built that relationship brick by brick step by step and when we were ready to recruit the first e mail I sent was to Emma who called me immediately to process the sale.

She had built an emotional bond with me, my previous experiences buying from salesjobs has always been good and so I returned for more of the same.

Keep smiling it works..........

Silvan Tomkins and Paul Ekman worked together studying personality and human expressions.

They became experts in microexpressions. These are the instantaneous or short lived expressions that give away our true feelings. Our subconscious is good at picking up these microexpressions and you can see them on slow motion video, and if you know what you are looking for, with practice you can become expert at picking them up.

No hope for me - I am an emotional wasteland but back to the point of the story.

Whilst trying to emulate the facial expressions for sadness, they both noted that their moods had significantly deteriorated. Deciding to examine the effect more closely they began to wonder if your mood is sad your facial expression follows but did it work the other way around. Was there some type of bio-feedback mechanism that worked the other way too.

They set up a study that ultimately showed it did, so if you had a sad hang dog expression your mood changed accordingly and similary for other expressions like smiling and laughing. Putting a smile on your face elevates your mood.

I have often heard the recommendation that before you make a telephone call smile because it comes across in the phone conversation.

So there is a scientific basis for it, put a smile on your face and your mood will follow.

On the basis of this discovery I now walk through the office with a cheesy grin on my face at all times, whilst it has done wonders for my own mood and general outlook on life it has also convinced my staff of my complete and total lunancy.

What you gain on the swings you lose on the roundabouts I guess.

Milton said "the mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell or a hell of heaven".

Isn't it great to know that the simple act of smiling, even in the face of adversity or difficult situations will lift your mood and don't things seem easier to deal with when you are in an elevated happy mood rather than down in the dumps and stressed.

Try it and see - it may just work for you. Try the short video below, I challenge you not to laugh, - how good does it feel and the world seems just a bit better doesn' it!



Paul Ekman ultimately developed the Facial Action Coding System and in the Diogenes Project developed a system that could accurately predict lying by examining peoples facial expressions

Take the first step

Lao Tzu said "that a journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step", or for the pedantic amongst us " a journey of a thousand leagues begins beneath ones feet"







Sometimes that first step seems gargantuan.

The majority of people never take that first step, you know the excuses

• I cannot because,
• what if,
• what will people think

A million excuses but if you are one of the few who take that first step, the journey never seems as hard or as long.

Best of all the pride you feel at the end of the journey or even half way through as you look back cannot be beaten.

Take that first step

ps. take a second one too and then one after that and so on. Even small steps in the right direction will get you there.

Lesson of the day! (for me)

Yet again I discoverd today that doing the tough stuff is in fact not so tough.

I, for one, am guilty of making mountains out of molehills, overanalysing possibilities and over preparing plans to deal with the endless possible consequences. The result - "paralysis by analysis" and procrastination.

Perhaps I am particularly hard to teach but I constantly have to relearn the lesson of

1. Pick the issue that needs to be dealt with.


2. Decide on a plan of action.


3. Schedule the issue into my day.


4. Address the issue and get it resolved.

Scheduling has generally made me much more effecient - vastly more so than preparing a general todo list. With my todo list, it was always overfull (impossible to get done in one day anyway) and of course you tend to focus on the tasks you like and enjoy leaving the others at the bottom of the list to carry over into the next day - the result (for me) nagging guilt and dis-satisfaction.

Scheduling and addressing the less pleasant tasks and doing them:

• Leaves you feeling fulfilled having completed the task.


• You frequently find that the task was not as hard or time consuming as you first thought.


• You often discover that the task was not that unpleasant anyway.


• Most importantly you learn how to deal with the particular issue and from learning comes growth and an ability to deal with the issue better the next time.

What now for investment?

Unfortunatley, many of us have now discovered the risks of investing in stocks, bonds, contracts for difference and all sorts of other financial products dreamed up by financiers and bankers.

Here in Ireland the banking horror stories seem to come one upon the other.

Anglo Irish Bank, the third largest in the state, has just been Nationalised, as it has been reported in the papers that its previously respected CEO and Chairman, Sean Fitzpatrick, had successfully hidden up to €130 million in personal loans from the banks auditors, the financial regulators and even some of his fellow board members by "bed and breakfasting" his loan with another financial institution whenever the inspectors came to have a look at the books!

Warren Buffett is quoted as saying "It's not until the tide goes out that you know who is swimming without trunks" and it is now apparent that many of the the banks and finace houses have been swimming nude!

Intrest rates have fallen to historical lows with the bank of England rate now at rates not seen since Winston Churchill was in power.

Those with money in the banks are receiving so little interest that they are actually losing money annually comapred to inflation and it seems impossible to make a good stock pick in the current climate.

Commodity prices have fallen in line with decreasing demand from the largest of the world's economies and now with decreasing demand from the emerging economies.

Land and house prices are falling.

But.....land is real, commodities are real, these are tangible assets. Although price and demand for commodities may fall in the short term, increasing world population and conicident increases in demand for commodities will make them a solid long term bet.

When it comes to land - guess what - they just ain't making any more of it....need I say more.