There’s a joke around a lot of the coastal cities here where real estate has gone through the roof. “When you’re looking at buying, you just remove the “one” at the front.” So instead of $1,300,000, you just “see” it as $300,000. Then you can swallow the number and move forward. You remove the “million.”...

Personal story, personal energy (positive personal power) and personal brand is becoming essential to survive (or thrive) in small business. For the last half century, the main programs in the culture have been working to digitise society. We are already seeing this in everything from the shift towards online learning, news feed reliance, social distancing...

I remember in my first year of engineering they absolutely blasted us with a physics mid-year exam. I think 85% of the year failed that test. My thoughts at the time were that this was a wake up call to say “hey, this is different from high school, you need to pay more attention.” The...

What was a peak moment for you this week? In your work or relationships, when did things feel just right? Who were you with? What kind of work was it? How were you engaging? Chances are there were a set of circumstances or conditions. And while we probably wouldn’t recreate the same exact setting, we...

There are a ton of different approaches to goals. But one thing remains true in all of them: finding the courage to write down what you want to achieve, and then even share it with someone else, is not going to make it less likely to happen. It’s common to avoid talking about goals, money,...

If you’re a head designer or developer at Apple, and you regularly use the MacBook, you’ll notice that the keyboard and trackpad craps out on a lot of them, and that this is a pretty important part of the product. If you own a café, and periodically enjoy a double espresso, you’re going to notice...

When I was young we lived on a boat for extended periods. In our first trip from NZ to Fiji, we learned the art of “anchoring” a big boat, with a family, by hand (we didn’t have an electric windless at the time), in lots of wind. Once the wind is up, if the boat...

For most small service businesses or freelancers, this is rarely the case. Far more often, you need to be clearer around your unique value proposition, your brand, authority in the niche and capacity and ability to find the amazing clients that are a fit. If you get stuck in the “too expensive” narrative very often,...