Small Business Ru!es

Focus on making your initial customer service the absolute best in the market. This service will lead to incredibly loyal clients, and your business will succeed as a natural result of this. Cisco Systems is a prime example of an incredibly successfu…

With a lack of cricket being played across the world at the moment, I thought I would go back to one of my favourite cricket memories. No, not a game-winning century by Ben Stokes against Australia. Not Dennis Lillee slicing through the top-order in …

If you want clients who drive a Tesla, go out and buy a Tesla. If you want clients who focus on buying quality products, then make sure that you are a purchaser and user of quality products. To be prosperous, you need to look prosperous. Conversely, …

To be an effective businessperson, you need to check your ego at the door as you come into work. There is no prize for boosting your own ego and proving to a client you are right and they are wrong. There is a very subtle difference between giving go…

Ask me to cook a meal for 50 people, and I would have either a lot of hungry people or enough food to feed an army. Ask me to design a training program for an Olympic athlete, and I hope that person doesn’t plan on winning a medal. Ask me to cl…

Do it once and do it right. How long does it take to go back and fix a mistake compared to the time it takes to slow down and do it right in the first place? The expression was first coined in the 14th century as ‘The more hast, the worst spede…

Many businesses are currently facing their toughest ever challenge. Who ever filled in a SWOT chart for their business and placed COVID-19 in the Threats box? Similarly with planning for the future of your business, when considering internal and exte…

The well-documented argument over many years about the Australian ODI cricket team’s rotation policy normally focuses on player welfare versus keeping a player in form. For some of the best cricketers in the Australian ODI team, they may play a…

One of the most common mistakes I see in successful businesses is diversification so far away from core competencies that the business then loses its competitive advantage. A common example is when a small business wants to buy their own building. An…

John Ruskin (8 February 1819 to 20 January 1900) last set foot on this planet over 100 years ago and is best known as an art critic and social critic but is also remembered as an author, poet, and artist. His essays on art and architecture were extre…

Keeping money in your bank account to save overdraft costs is a good thing. I agree. Stretching out payments to your suppliers as long as possible keeps money in your account, so it must also be a good thing, so the argument goes. Here I disagree wit…

The Simpson Desert is 176,500 square kilometres of barren landscape. Many years ago I rode a mountain bike across this desert—not really a smart thing to do, I admit. Five days of riding from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. The last thing I wanted to ha…

Ask me to cook a meal for 50 people, and I would have either a lot of hungry people or enough food to feed an army. Ask me to design a training program for an Olympic athlete, and I hope that person doesn’t plan on winning a medal. Ask me to cl…

I was attending a conference at Hamilton Island several years ago, and a peer in the industry asked me if he and his wife could sit down with me and grill me on a few business concepts. Of course I obliged. They believed their business had plateaued….

On 23 April 1991, Gerald Ratner delivered a speech to the Institute of Directors. Almost overnight, he lost his job (along with the £650,000 salary), £500 million was wiped off the valuation of the company, and a billion-pound turnover wa…

I was delivering a seminar recently, and sitting in the front row was a well-dressed IT professional looking very smart—apart from the embroidery on his shirt—it said “Reactive Technology.” I personally thought this was a terr…

When kids compete in their first running race, every parent gives their children advice. One nugget that is inevitably handed out is “Don’t look behind you—just keep running.” It is with good reason that this advice is often g…

Marketing is not A thing you do in business. Marketing is not a job for the wacky, zany people in marketing who spell their name with a double i. Most companies think that marketing is their advertising, Web site, and, with a bit of a stretch, maybe …

Most people read this as “Opportunity is Nowhere.” Look again and you see that it also says “Opportunity is Now Here.” With no letters changed, you have two opposite meanings. It is perfect that the true message is disguised b…