Australia Day 2018
It is Australia day down under. A day we celebrate…… what? The landing at Sydney Cove of the first fleet of convicts and their equally corrupted gaolers?, The invasion that ended a way of life that had existed for how many thousands of years? The beginning...
Is Amazon Go the supermarket of the future?
Amazon has been experimenting since December 2016 with a concept store 'Amazon Go" in Seattle. It has been a 'Beta' store, open only to Amazon employees, as they set about solving the obvious wrinkles in an environment with no cashiers, and no self-serve cashier...
How do you measure the scalability of your business?
Almost every business I know seeks to grow, as there is a recognition that growth brings benefits beyond simply the size of revenues and profits. It brings credibility, attracts good employees, enables negotiation from a stronger position, and much more....
A brand is a red highlighter in your brain.
Brands have a number of useful commercial purposes. They can build margins, gain distribution, provide a base for expansion, and a whole lot more, but that is all from the perspective of the brand owner. From the opposite perspective, that of the customer,...
Your network is the second most valuable asset you have
Networking in this modern age has been digitised, so it is made easier, but is it more effective? Probably not, when most of the time the so called Networking' is little more than an opportunity for a sales pitch. Over my time, the most value that has...
11 trends that will influence success in 2018
This is not really a set of predictions, those are around at this time of the year aplenty. Rather it is a mix of the things I am thinking about, the trends I see underlaying the performance of both the public and private sectors, and the performance of...
Einstein’s formula to calculate business value
Our world is being broken into bits, powered by algorithms, few things appear to be immune to the pervasive intrusion. One that has been largely immune is strategy development, a subjective hold-out in a world of programmatic automation. Einstein told us...
18 ways to make the most of your large investment in trade shows.
Years ago as GM Marketing of the Dairy Farmers Co-Op, I had a significant chunk of my marketing budgets taken by the involvement Dairy Farmers had in the Sydney Royal Easter Show, and associated conference sessions. This was an institutional investment,...
Reflections on my 2017 observations.
Each year for the past few, I have looked at my prognostications for the coming year and given myself a score. It is now 2018, so time to do it all again, before I rub the crystals to see what might be coming down the track this year. As a lead in,...
Understanding your break even point.
Understanding the break even point in a business is a crucial but often overlooked piece of the financial puzzle. It is particularly important in a manufacturing business where there are both overheads to just keep the doors open, and the marginal...