Brisbane website

Outrage Puppet

~ dan

outragepuppetHardly a day goes by when mainstream (or alt) press, facebook or twitter doesn’t report some event, quote or photo that promotes feeling of outrage, sufficient to stir the emotions, galvanising us to share or retweet some sound bite, MEME image or story.

Whether innocuous or deliberate, wether reported about someone important or someone that wants to be important it matter little. It’s easy to let it trigger our emotions through our basal tribal behaviour (our biology is wired for it) to protest the offence across our modern bastions of information and truth ….social media,. And in that moment there is little intrest in the full story,  in a familiar emotion clouds intellect moment. Inevitably the largely good works of public figures over many years are suddenly erased and falling on swords often ensues, ultimately to the detriment of the community. 

And as if that isn’t enough cue then the outrage against the outrage and it lives for a least a second media cycle, mean while the big issues of our time hide in the corners ….

Out of balance…and not knowing it!

~ dan
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A top down view of training partner’s (Uke) centre and zones of balance

I dusted off the Dogi the other night (it’s been a while) and paid a visit to Redlands Aikido to share some thoughts on stability (thanks for the invite Clem). Whilst I didn’t go the full toppling biomechanics. We worked on the idea that as long as the Tanden (Centre of Mass) is inside our feet (Base of Support) we are stable. Once it ventures out side this point we stand to fall, if we are lucky we catch our selves with a step…this is calling walking (a repeated practice of controlled falling).

The really interesting thing is as we explore this by moving our centre of mass around until we feel unbalanced is that we discover we start to lose our balance before we get outside the limits of our stance, and if we gently move our partner through the same thing we can feel their balance is lost slightly before they feel it. This is true for high level athletes as well…but sensitivity to it can be trained (if we are not to stiff or focused on power). The next step is putting it into technique, by moving their CoM to very precise points outside their perimeter we can help Uke find which foot they need to move to take the tumble.

Thus we find that its possible to take someones balance and not have them even be aware of it…maybe this in part explains how little old Japanese men seem to be able to chuck our westerners around with such aplomb?

New Strings

~ dan

IMG_4059.JPGI just put some Tzigane strings on my violin (rather than my usual Dominant). They are a lower tension string, which I was told would be a bit kinder to my old french violin. In so doing its supposed to bring out its tone a bit better…and how true it was!

Just goes to show that in so many things its often about getting the right match, to get the best performance.

Finding balance – with 6 lists

~ dan

 

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I’m a bit of a fan of lists and if you are too this might be of intrest.
There is nothing so satisfying of making a list and checking off the jobs as you get them done. There is a trick and an art to lists to make them work for you rather than against you, but this article isn’t about that. Its about an idea I read in 18 minutes by Peter Bregman which suggests you use lists instead to manage you life for balance. The rub of the idea is create a number lists for yourself each assigned to particular topic with an other 5% box as a catchall.
Here are my favourites Work, A work project, Career, Family, Hobbies. OK thats not quite 6 lists but you get the idea. Now fill out these lists with your todo’s and ask yourself , is it balanced? Your answer depends on your choices and you can use this list to make sure you are making time for yourself, that you are looking after your career rather than just your work. That family and hobbies are given appropriate space. of course these are just my headings, yours may be quite different but hopefully you get the idea.

 

Epilogue: I use this list strategy like any tool in the toolbox. Its not on my ‘work bench’ every day, but instead comes out for a period of time when i am aware i need to do some rebalancing – then its back in the tool box again

actually Getting Things Done

~ dan

getting things doneOne of my favourite books of all time, in the productivity space is Getting Things Done by David Allen. Its a great read and i was able to take away a few key things that enhanced my ability to get things done! Probably the most important one is his process for looking at emails which can easily become the scourge and time eater of your day, but its also really handy for the short jobs that crop up during the day. If its quick then just Do it on the spot, if its going to take a bit longer then Defer it (but make sure you capture than in some system like flagging it a list or calendar entry or just Delete it. These days with email being what it is I don’t tend to delete , I just let it run off the bottom of the screen..it’s pretty much the same thing.

One of the important things I learnt from his book is the importance of getting rid of ‘psychic baggage’, that is anything that stops you focusing on what you should be doing right now…but more on that later!

 

 

Finding your centre

~ dan

porters five forces1.jpgWhere ever you are in your business chances are you want to make it a grow a bit or a least make it a bit easier on yourself in the trenches. This is where Porters fives competitive forces can come in really handy. Just by asking yourself these 5 simple questions you can get a better idea of your competitive landscape no matter what kind of business you are running.

New Entrants: How likely are new people likely to enter your business? Are their barriers that stop them entering

Substitutes: Is their a substitute that can replace your product or service? Sometimes this is a completely new product or technology?

Customers: What is the bargaining power of your customers? Are they price sensative

Suppliers: Are you dependant on any suppliers, How much power do they have?

Your Rivals: How competitive is the industry you are in? How many other options are there

Usually at least one of these forces is dominant. Just by identifying this force and doing something about it is a key to improving your competitiveness and overall success! For example with hind sight we can see that the digital camera was a substitute that eventually did in Kodak, who ironically were the inventor of the digital camera.

Whats your most powerful force and what can you do about it? Once you know it, it’s important to let your customers and potential customer know about it!

Consumer decision making process

~ dan

Consumer-decision-making-websites-2.pngIt takes a long time for a prospect to actually make the decision to buy a product or service. There are several processes they go through, and at each step there is a funnelling, or more correctly a loss, of prospects. This is called the consumer decision making process. If you understand your customer you can help them through each of these stages by embedding information and values that will aid a successful conversion.

Depending on who you ask there are a different number of stages, but most agree on these three main ones: Awareness, Evaluation and finally Decision. One of the goals of marketing is to make sure the input (Awareness) attracts as many as possible. Also at each step as you progress through Evaluation (does this product or service suit my needs?) and Decision (I’m going to pickup the phone right now) you want to retain as many as possible.

Pretty simple in theory. Understanding these elements and incorporating them into your website and and brand are really critical!

Turing your hobby into a business

~ dan

doing what you don't like1.jpgIt’s an attractive idea isn’t it?, take something you really enjoy doing and turn it into your career. The trouble is a dream turned into reality can sometime become a nightmare. Somewhere in the process it could also takes away the very thing you love,  by taking al the fun out of it…but this need not be the case.

Your hobby and probably your passion is probably your key competitive advantage, perhaps you are already making some income out of it already. The challenge to making it viable is finding the key things people willing to pay for.  For many just thinking about turning a dollar somehow cheapens their endeavour, but it the secret of making a successful go of it.

Finding customers and developing channels (ways of reaching them) are then the vital key ingredient for sustainable. This involves doing and developing a whole new range of activities that will work hand in hand with your passion to bring it to realisation. 

The trouble for the newly converted hobbyist is that where passion fuels the business activity itself, but finding customers and reaching them through channels is well not nearly as exciting. Some of it you won’t mind, but some of it you really won’t want to do This is where discipline comes it, doing the need to do the activities that aren’t very exciting. For the activities that you don’t want to do, you cannot fuel these will passion…they need something else.. a discipline and a will to succeed!

When was your last backup?

~ dan
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Two Synology NAS systems, size and cost effective  backup solution

When was your last backup? If you answer is anything longer than an hour ago  you probably don’t have an effective backup strategy! If you can’t remember when you ast did a backup hope to it and do something about it right now.

For many a USB thumb drive or external hard drive is the strategy of choice. Unfortunately the former is all to easily lost and the latter you need to remember to do it.  Fortunately there are lots of great products around that can do backups on a schedule for you, with many now offering incremental backups. Incremental backups take a snapshot of your hard drive and record changes made every hour or so. Incremental backups are a great tool if you are doing some document intensive work and need to recover an earlier version – it can easily save you a days work.

For many home and small business Network Attached Storage (NAS) is a very affordable solution that can backup multiple computers. A good NAS system has multiple drives mirroring each other , so that in the event of drive failure you don’t use any data.

Cloud systems are recently becoming popular, because all you need to is sign up to a service (google drive, dropbox etc..), you do need a reliable data connection though, there are storage limits and data security is also an important consideration (get out your tin foil hat). How you manage data amongst a team is also important. The big plus for cloud storage is usually for a modest annual fee everything is taken care of, with no hardware to invest in. Cloud storage gets around the systemic risk of damage to the premises of your place of business.

A good NAS coupled with an external hard drive that you take home once a week is a preferred solution of many business and relatively easy to setup too.

Your websites most important visitor is not a person

~ dan

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Most web design starts with layout images and thinking about what your customer might be looking for and trying to provide that. However there is another regular visitor  thats far more important….google! Google decides if your website is going to be on the High St of the internet or in a backwater village somewhere. If google decides you website is relevant to what someone is searching for and places it prominently then and only then do you get a human visitor. This is the black art of Search Engine Optimisation or SEO. The good news is that most small (and many large) businesses don’t even think about this  so its usually not too hard to be competitive. So if your web designer doesn’t know what SEO is or thinks its just a few keywords here and there…keep moving!