Tag: Articles

The first thing you need to do in order to take the amazing idea in your head and turn it into a fully-fledged company is to raise capital, and the first piece of advice you’ll get is to create a business plan and a forecast. If that sounds like an awful lot of hard work, you're right. If you don’t even know where your next pay cheque is coming from, how can you be expected to have foresight years ahead on the performance of a company that exists only in thin air? It also sounds suspiciously like a budget -- something you thought you’d left behind in the corporate world.

The first thing you need to do in order to take the amazing idea in your head and turn it into a fully-fledged company is to raise capital, and the first piece of advice you’ll get is to create a business plan and a forecast. If that sounds like an awful lot of hard work, you're right. If you don’t even know where your next pay cheque is coming from, how can you be expected to have foresight years ahead on the performance of a company that exists only in thin air? It also sounds suspiciously like a budget -- something you thought you’d left behind in the corporate world.

Every year, whether they are successful or not, entrants in business awards programs sing the praises of just completing the process. Johanna Baker-Dowell reflects of a year of commercial self-discovery.

I used to Google hairdressers, plumbers, cafes. Now I ask my Facebook and Twitter connections who to go to, because a personal recommendation tells me a lot more than someone’s website can. SEO is doomed. In the format we know it, at least.

In the third post in this series, Nigel Malone shares the contents of another of his favourite business keynote slides, drawn from a cross-section of sources that includes some of the great business, brand and military planners of all time.

So you want to start a business but time and money are holding you back? Sebastien Eckersley-Maslin has set himself the challenge of launching a startup in seven days for less than $500. This is his introductory post in the series. The clock has started!

There are way too many people out there in business bullshitting to themselves, their staff and their customers. The simple truth is that if you run your business like its amateur hour, no matter how much you want to fool yourself and your customers into thinking that you’re smart and good at what you do, eventually you will stumble and the truth will out.

Want to take it to the next level in your company. It might be time to finance a BIMBO. Todd O’Neil explains.

I am bombarded daily by email, direct mail and print advertisements that are all promising to reveal the secrets of… well just about everything. ‘Zero budget marketing secrets’; ‘Free media exposure secrets’; ‘Sales secrets for those that hate cold calling’: the list goes on. They’re dragging us all down.

With Australia’s economy now well and truly on the rebound, the next five years are set to deliver strong growth in many sectors. And growth, of course, delivers job and investment opportunities.

Nigel Malone keeps his favourite ten keynote slides related to strategic business development – his “Ten Commandments” – close to his chest at all times. Okay, sometimes he puts them down to bathe, but they are never far from his thinking. His favourite slide number 2 is Wind and Webster’s ‘Six buying roles’ model. Developed initially in the 1970s, it was designed to explain the many buying roles within a large organisation, but is equally applicable to a family unit facing the challenge of deciding upon what to eat for dinner.

Nigel Malone keeps his favourite ten keynote slides related to strategic business development – his “Ten Commandments” – close to his chest at all times. Okay, sometimes he puts them down to bathe, but they are never far from his thinking.

If you developing a product or service that’s designed to meet a consumer’s need, here’s the reason why you can’t just be better than what currently exists. Or you can’t just be really useful. You have to be insanely, grossly, massively, obviously, simply and wonderfully useful.

The New Year is a great time to take stock and prepare your business to gear up for a new operating environment. Westpac’s Sian Lewis provides the following New Year’s resolutions to kick-start your business for the year ahead…

With a domestic marketing of 300 million customers, the United States represents an alluring yet often an elusive opportunity for foreign entrepreneurs. Phil Rogers explains why it is vital that foreigners doing business in America understand and respect US business culture -- from nuanced buying processes to seasonality, ethnicity and evolving attitudes towards selling.

People who say social media is a fad have a profound misunderstanding of the internet and the reasons why people love it so, writes Leela Cosgrove.

US President Barack Obama is hoping to pull his nation out of its economic funk by turning it into a "green machine". But he faces an uphill battle transforming his land of opportunity and hyper-consumption in the face of entrenched interests, scepticism and inertia. However, there is cause for hope. As this report from The SMH's Washington correspondent Anne Davies reveals, Californian venture capital firms are hot for clean tech.

US President Barack Obama is hoping to pull his nation out of its economic funk by turning it into a "green machine". But he faces an uphill battle transforming his land of opportunity and hyper-consumption in the face of entrenched interests, scepticism and inertia. However, there is cause for hope. As this report from The SMH's Washington correspondent Anne Davies reveals, Californian venture capital firms are hot for clean tech.

An influential personal brand is a heady and unpredictable mix. If it were a recipe, I’m convinced it would be one of those fiercely guarded family secrets dating back hundreds of years. For this reason, while many have tried, few succeed in capturing in writing the essential X-Factor elements for success. It’s a big ask, but I hope to change all of that for you, right here, right now.

Have you ever worked in a company where the boss or your manager hoards information? Unfortunately, this is not all that uncommon. The old saying goes that "Knowledge is Power", and those who are insecure in their abilities or feel threatened by those around them try to remain in control by hording information.