The world is suffering, groaning with crime, pain, sickness and all manner of evil pressing in on us all more and more every day. Fights lead to murder. Sickness leads to Dying. Conflict leads to War. Financial woes to Depression. Earthquakes and Hurricanes. How bloomin’ depressing trying to find domething that’s pure, or perfect!

The search for perfection is obviously futile, but there is a very big exception to all this trouble . . . Read more »

Just as continued insistence on demanding perfection is a sign of immaturity, increasing our capacity to accommodate things less than perfect is a sign of maturity. We were all born to seek perfection, but some people take it too far and won’t be happy until they’ve got it or found perfection.

To all you perfectionists, respectfully, “You’re either stupid or deluded”, and I’ll tell you why . . . Read more »

I tell a story every now and then about pressure and soap - yes the white stuff that comes in a cake and sits on the bathroom hand-basin. The stuff that you gotta teach boys to use behind their ears (if you ever can!).

People don’t like being forced into something they don’t want to do. The more the pressure, the more the resistance. The more the force, the further the rebellion. In parenting its the same. The tighter the controls, the bigger the rebellion and its the same with a lot of things - staff, customers, dispute resolution, mediation and Search Engines (believe it or not).

It’s like soap . . . Read more »

I love creating things - new relationships, working with limited resources to be faster, better, more effective or efficient at doing all sorts of exciting things, especially in business.

While others see beauty in a tree and want to save it from the timber merchants, I see fireword, carving, construction timber and unlimited possibilities to create something. While others may see road or building construction as a nuisance, I love the focussed energy it brings. I’m excited by mankind’s progress and the improved efficiency and opportunity that the new road or building will bring to the world. Read more »

I love it when I know the where I’m going - in business, on holiday or in a relationship. It’s like things feel under control when we have a plan and I know what it is. Those around me draw confidence from my vision, passion and sense of purpose - most of the time. Read more »

I love the one about the guy who gets a phone call from his doctor. “I’ve got good news and bad news” the doctor says. “Which one do you want first”. “Give me the bad news first” the guy replies. The Doc says, “Well you’ve only got 24 hours to live!” “Awe common Doc - you call that good news?! What could be worse than that?” the guy asks. “Well I got the test results yesterday!” replies the Doc. Ouch!

I slipped a mate of mine an email recently checking out how he was getting on. Just a little note along the lines of, “Hey Ray, haven’t heard from you in a while. How’s things”. The short story . . . he’s dead. Darn. I hate it when that happens. The long story . . . Read more »

I love a little Pacific Island phrase I learned in a kid’s song* at Teacher Training College, “fai fai lemu” or in Palagi it translates as “take it easy“.

For a guy who loves to hit things hard, like as in 100%, 100% of the time, its interesting and sobering to see others suffer as a result of hitting things too hard. I want to scream out to them - “Easy does it” to save their own bacon . . . Read more »

I hate preachers that know it all, and have an answer for everything. Along with about a few hundred million uneducated pagans from the back-blocks of Zimbabwe, I’m probably the world’s most Un-Theological Genius. I find the arrogant religious zealots especially obnoxious, in that they seem to have definitive answers and rules for everything. It has the effect like putting my brain into neutral and red-lining the motor - a truckload of noise, no progress and a lot of broken bits to pick up if it carries on too long . . . Read more »

I hate getting spun a yarn. You know, when people look you in the eyes and lie to you? I used to tell porkies every now and then but it just got so bloomin’ hard trying to keep up with it that I gave up, and I’ve been straight straightish now for something like 30 years, not like some other people I know . . . Read more »

I hate getting pushed around. It doesn’t matter who tries to do it - the media, school teacher, the government - if they try to mess with me it gets my back up. It creates some interesting challenges in trying to work out how to cope with the external pressure . . . Read more »

I hate getting things wrong. The sun certainly APPEARS to move from East to West and the earth APPEARS to be flat , so I do understand why the early people interpreted the facts the way they did and got it wrong.

Sometimes, not everything seems as it really is . . . Read more »

It’s a real bummer when things go wrong and some other dude does the dirty on you.

Some people say I’m a sucker because I trust people too much. Most of the time they’re right and when things go wrong, it’s a big call to let it go. Sometimes we just have to.

A while ago the key technician for Go Kiwi Internet screwed something up big-time . . . Read more »

I hated my younger sister for working out that Santa Claus’ shopping list was written in our mother’s handwriting. She got it and I didn’t. Darn! I was embarrassed big-time because I should have sussed it out before her - after all I was older than her, so I should have been smarter than her. She got out with the guys, long before I stumbled into any form of relationship with a girl. She had a higher EQ than me. No problem though - only give it a couple of decades for me to catch up . . . Read more »

Theological pride is not limited to the Scribes and the Pharisees from two thousand years ago. It’s alive and well thank you, all around me. Read more »

VICTUS IN AMBITUS has run from 1 January 2008 to 30 May 2008, exactly five months.

I have published three times a week, and the total content exceeds 50,000 words, in some 75 Posts. The core content will be available in an easy-to-read PDF and book format shortly. In the meantime, the raw text can be viewed here. Please drop me a note [E-Mail me: dennis AT dennis.co.nz] if you wish to get a copy when it becomes available.

I am taking time-out for the next few months to work on other writing projects - Lipstick on a Pig and the Internet UNMASKED!! book series.

Thank you for your support.

Women are like Elephants in that they never forget. OK, I know that that’s a generalisation. As a guy, I like and appreciate women in lots of different ways, but there’s something abou tthe fairer sex gender that drives me nuts. Why on earth do they have to live in the past so much. Just listen to them will you? “She said . . . He said . . . We did this . . . then we did that . . .” and the list goes on and on about what has already HAPPENED!

Now just so we don’t get off on a tangent here, men are a pain too, except that if women might tend to live in the past, men live more in the future. “I’m gonna this . . . I’m gonnna that. I’m gonna get me a [whatever] . . . or I’m gonna do [whatever]”. This guy thing, the dreaming thing, is all very well but it can get you into trouble if you’re not careful. Read more »

There’s more to business than money and there’s more to life than work. I’m a sucker for work though, bordering on being classified a work-a-holic by those who like to label others.

It’s not because I have an addiction to work, it’s because I love what I do. My work is creative, challenging, interesting and it gives me a great sense of satisfaction when things come together. The trick is to get the balance right, and find meaning and purpose from who we are - not what we do. Read more »

When cooking something up - maybe a story, a business deal, a winter soup or whatever, most of the time it’s got to be 100% good or the whole thing breaks down and evil results. A teenager who was arguing along the lines that “just a little bit” of naughty stuff would be OK, was stopped in their tracks by their father who got them to bake a cake. Just as they were about to share it with their friends and eat it were advised that he slipped “just a little bit” of dog poo into the mixture before they cooked it.

Hmmm - a good point about letting go of morality “just a little”. I’ve got an algebraic formula about this one percent thingamajig . . . Read more »

The Greeks used to leave one particular stone out of every building that they built, just so that they didn’t insult the “gods” by building something perfect themselves. From memory it was located at the base and behind the pediment (That’s the triangular roof façade at the front of their buildings) and was therefore not visible to the public. Very clever - perfection, but deliberately not quite so.

I reckon there might be a bit of Greek in me somewhere back yonder, because as a big picture guy, I’m constantly challenged to complete the minor details and finish a job. The last 1% however is more important than you’d think and can be pretty dangerous if not taken note of. Read more »

It’s a trap, this ANTI thing. Anti-whaling, Anti-abortion, Anti-gays, Anti-homophobes, and the list goes on an on. Competing political parties can score political points and label you without policy of your own, if you are just “anti” too often.

The trouble with being anti something is two-fold. First you become less able to BE something in your own right as your focus is on trying not to be what you hate. Secondly you can fall into what I call the Anti-Trap - actually becoming that which you tried to avoid, despite your best efforts not to. Read more »

Fear and Pain can be like two pillars that hold up a plethora of negative behaviour. All destructive behaviour such as addictions, anger, anti-social behaviour and more can always be traced back to one or both of these two causes.

Remove or minimise the fear, or pain, and the house of cards will come tumbling down to enable new thought patterns and healthy behaviour to flourish. While this is easier said than done, there is one simple key to the process . . . Read more »

I’ve observed that all negative behaviour, such as habits and addictions; all things unhealthy, hurtful or damaging to self; anti-social and destructive activities are always grounded in one or both of two nasty little beasts, FEAR and PAIN.

These two little “puppies” really are like pillars in a Roman Temple - they hold the whole thing up. One or the other always rears its ugly little head if you dig deep enough. Knowing your enemy really helps us to target the attack. Sometimes they’re really difficult to identify, but when they’ve been fingered correctly, a great relief is possible. The first aim of counselling should be to identify the cause of the condition. Read more »

It always hurts when someone criticises you. I don’t believe that anyone is immune to hurt from criticism. The little ditty “Sticks and stones will hurt my bones, but names will never harm me!” is a lie. Unkind or harsh words can kill the spirit, stunt our growth and trigger all kinds of ugly stuff, especially when the criticism comes from those close to us.

I don’t believe for one minute that the likes of Helen Clark or Hillary Clinton is totally impervious to criticism like she makes out. I think that those in higher places learn to act, to put on a mask, to deal with criticism, knowing that the price for power is that they just have to take it. Read more »

A few hundred years ago an English religious dude by the name of Charles Colton penned the words “Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.” Sometimes yes, but jealousy can also show its ugly face too once you’ve been around a while.

Being an entrepreneur is sometimes pretty lonely, as you have to lead from the front, take the flak, set the vision and make it all happen. Not everybody appreciates your own commitment to your vision and sometimes its just bl***y bloomin’ hard work. So it’s kinda nice when somebody flatters you even if it is with a backhanded compliment. Read more »

The discipline of Usability, particularly in website development, puts massive efforts into research to develop user-friendly websites - websites that work well.

The essence of Good Design is that one design can achieve a given purpose better than another “Lesser “Design. It is assumed of course that there is a designer. Read more »

In the last decade or two, the Intelligent Design (ID) movement has really made great strides in developing the idea that there really has to be a Designer behind what we see in nature. A leader in this area has been Michael Behe, particularly with his arguments around what he calls “irreducible complexity”.

This is the idea that random acts of gradual change, whether by mutation or otherwise cannot account for living beings, or sub-components of life, that require the simultaneous creation of more than one component in order to perform a required function. Read more »

Except for straightforward phone calling, you would be hard done by to find a dumber piece of design than a cell phone. For a guy who’s into efficiency, trying to TXT is more than a painful process - it’s a dead cert frustration creator. Predictive texting doesn’t work for me because it doesn’t have half the words I want to use. Pressing the “7″ key four times to get an “s” just doesn’t turn me on, sorry.

I communicate well through typing. I always have. I seem to be able to gather my thoughts so much better in writing than in talk, but the only emotional connection I get when using the little sucker cell phone is watching my blood pressure rise the more I try to use it. Read more »

Sometimes anger really gets you going. I don’t mean to bashing someone with a hammer, I mean the deep determination to wrestle with an issue or a problem until we can get to the bottom of it.

A key thought in this angry state is often to ask questions. Why is this happening to me? Why did they do this? What can I do about it? What is the cause? How do I do things differently?

I’ve noticed that some of my best business decisions have come after a time of processing anger. Read more »

Let’s face it. We all get angry at times. Some $@*%^$! cuts us off while driving. A staff member or partner rips you off. You get burnt because of someone else’s fire. Some things make you see red - don’t they?

Stuff that makes my blood boil is like when the Rainbow Warrier happens. What total arrogance. The French quite rightly cop our indignation - mine was bordering on rage, especially when they played political games and passed the blame upward, sideways and out, to a paradise Island. Yup that triggered one unholy reaction in me that still seethes away every time I hear the words France or French.

We all know what it can do to us but dealing with anger is not as simple as saying just don’t get angry. It doesn’t work like that. Read more »

There’s a story about a donkey that’s been going around the Internet for quite a while. No doubt some dude knows where it comes from and it was probably in a parchment written by Norman Vincent Peale in 1642 in a monastery in Northern Poland, or something like that.

I first heard it years ago, but its a good one to draw out the idea of just getting on with life, no matter what happens to you.

It goes like this: Read more »

There are different ways to respond when a business idea fails. There’s a big difference between saying “We were wrong” and abandoning the idea, and saying “We didn’t quite get it right” and modifying your business strategy to make it work.

When we developed the Internet UNMASKED!! events, we did so on the basis that we had run very successful training events throughout the country before, on a half-day, no-charge model. Moving to a full day and paid model didn’t work as well as we’d hoped. Instead of throwing in the towel, and packing a sad over it, we pushed through, tweaked the offering and just got smarter. Read more »

We’ve all got a limited amount of it - time, that is. There seems to be increasing pressure on us to squeeze everything into the time that we have. To work harder, faster and do more.

I work hard, and I play hard. I’ve squeezed more into my time on earth thus far than many other people would have. I had 17 jobs and what seemed like a dozen “careers” before I turned 27. Salesman, professional musician, teacher, painter, entrepreneur, fishing trip and hire operator, fishing nets, just to name a few before I settled into IT sales in the early 80s.

I’m lucky in that I seem to be hard-wired to work, and my body responds well to an active mind that says “go for it”. I’m also equally lucky that I sleep well, so I can get up and “go for it” the next day. As business people, we usually measure the results of our time with how much money we earned . . . Read more »

It’s a mistake to think that our understanding of scientific principles is complete. Throughout history, previously established facts have been dis-proven and tweaked to give us new understanding of our world.

The flat-earth concept and the idea that the earth is central to the movement of the stars were both rejected in the light of new learning. One of the interesting suggestions that Tom Beardon talks about is the idea that time has mass. Playing with time is not just science fiction. . . Read more »

I work hard. I put in long hours and enjoy it, but I only do some things well. For the rest, I need others to help me out. These workers, producers and managers do the little things that “drive me nuts”.

We need different people to do different things, or we will self-destruct. Earlier this year a high-profile client of mine went bust, for a second time. The guy is a real character, a very very talented technician with drive, energy, vision and good old Kiwi “can-do attitude”. He took on the big guys internationally and showed them up big-time but the way I saw it, he got it all wrong because he didn’t recognise and appreciate the “differences”. Read more »

People are all different. Thank goodness for that! Some of us are out the front trail blazing, others are supporters and workers, helping to make it happen and yet others are just takers - the ones who just get along with the free ride. Sure, it’s not nice to talk about these guys, but it’s true.

The FREE LUNCH people are the ones who just look after themself. They are the ones always looking for someone else to do their work. Always looking for the handout. The ones that blame others and don’t take responsibility for what they do, let alone who they are.

I’ve noticed a lot more honest accountability in business over the last 15 years or so . . . Read more »

There’s a massive difference between an entrepreneur, a technician and a manager. I’m the former and I employ the latter two. It works well. Really well actually.

The differences between an eagle and a flightless bird are obvious. A lot of us would like to be an eagle that got the great view, and best pick of the prey, but are actually the flightless ones scratching around for a grub or two. But John Benfield puts it nicely:

“Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.”

Read more »

We all do it to some extent, but I seem to spend a lot of time judging and analysing other people. Some of this tendency I put down to paternal training, some of it takes the attention away from myself, and some of it is just, let’s face it, is probably just arrogance.

Getting it right when it comes to judging others is blinking jolly hard, but its something successful leaders do well. As I’ve become more comfortable with my own identity I’ve got better at this, but I’ve always been jealous of those natural judges of character. Read more »

We all want to get it right, and there’s nothing better than making a good judgement call on the share market, at the TAB, or in business. When we get it right, the money just rolls in.

Choosing the right partner in business or the right product is also a good feeling. There’s something so rewarding about getting it right. It’s good when you make a judgement call on someone else and get it right. Knowing that a particular client is a jerk going to cause your staff trouble, can save your business a lot of time and money. Assessing a product or service and picking a good one can even justify our presence in a job.
Read more »

That’s the active tense version. Put it in the passive, and it comes out more like “It wasn’t my fault!” The other variants of this delightful little thought are things like “Don’t blame me!” or “He made me do it!” I don’t hear. “It’s my fault - I’ll sort it out” too often.

Based on my assessment of human nature (i.e. that we’re all maybe just a little bit rotten at heart) I calculate that I’ve caused pain for others [calculating . . . ] 497,273,325 times so far in my life, and counting. Not a pleasant thought, especially when those closest to me remind me of this propensity to, well, screw up.

Read more »

A gas station owner down the road from me, recently got pinged for hiking the price of petrol by a few cents a litre. He claims that he had a sign on the counter (explaining the surcharge) that might have got turned around by accident. Yeah right!

Look, I don’t know whether he did it deliberately or not, and the last people on earth that I would trust to tell me the full story is a TV news article, but it sounds a little too sneaky for me. I think the guy probably just got caught out. Now he’s gotta pay the price - one big momma fine. If he’s a crook, then “Good job!”, I say.

I come across sleaseballs, liars and cheats in business all the time, and way more now than when I first started in business. My father had a drawer in a filing cabinet in his office. He called it “Idiots and Optimists”.
Read more »

When you are born to be a wheeler-and-dealer, it really hurts to have to pay the full retail price for something.

A natural trader-from-hell trader-at-heart, I am always looking for a deal; a way to trade something that I have, or that I can create, for something that I need or want. This approach to business opens amazing doors of opportunity as people suddenly move from trying to sell you something, to working with you to achieve more from the transaction.

But there’s also a downside to this approach . . . You don’t always get the best. Read more »

We’ve all got out own - style, that is. Hair, personality, speech, thinking, clothes, car and ways of living.

What’s good for me is definitely not good for the gander - believe me. Whenever I try to slip into the shoes of my teenagers, I wipe out big-time. “Dad, you’ve got no style!” I hear. Wrong. I’ve got lots of style, but it just isn’t theirs! I watch the power of peer pressure and cringe at the way that things seem to gravitate to the lowest common denominator. Reminds me of a sign on a church billboard that my father saw once. “ALL LIQUIDS FIND THE LOWEST LEVEL. ALCOHOL TAKES YOU WITH IT”. Clever. True. Sad. Read more »

“You gotta experience the bad in order to appreciate the good, Dad” my daughter tells me. Smart kid.

A while back I went out of town for a few days and the chlorine levels in my pool dropped. The result was no chlorine, a nice warm summer, plenty of sunshine and . . . a green pool. Darn! I hate it when that happens. A gazillion chemicals later and finally a few days later it looked like something you’d want to swim in. Now we go outside and look at a nice blue pool with a little more appreciation. If we never had a rainy day, we wouldn’t appreciate the sunny ones. Read more »

Money is like sex and air. It’s no big deal really, until we don’t have enough of it. I’ve spent years scratching around trying to pay the bills and get ahead financially. Sometimes I’m loaded and other times I’m as broke as! It seems like some people really know how to make good money and others don’t. I’m sort of in between, with the capacity to do well at making it but the practice not always keeping up with capacity.

Just like there are three states of water (solid, liquid and gas), there are three states of money.

Read more »

People with power will use it. A shame those with power aren’t always nice benevolent model citizens, though. Power and money are real killers. It’s not that they are wrong in and of themselves, its just that these two brothers in arms seem to be able to represent the ultimate in evil on earth. From where I sit, power and money, going hand in hand control the world.They say that money is the root of all evil. Nope. It’s the LOVE of money that gets at the heart of the issue. Money is morally neutral. Just like technology, oxygen or gravity is. It’s what we do with it that really counts, and that is where the stack of cards all falls down. I’ve spent a lot of time researching the influence of the Illuminati in the last few years . . . Read more »

The game of politics has kept me entralled since I was 17 years old, when Robert Muldoon was presented as the miracle money-man - billed as the answer to New Zealand’s economic woes. Oh how cruel it was when his spin got unspun a year or so into his reign, and his marketing machine “let its slip show”.

Or how about the conscience votes in some political parties, when (blow me down) previously disparate opinions all seem to have “like minds” at the right time and vote the way she the General wants them to. It reminds me of another General - of the Rambukka variety - and the way he ran the show too - a conscience vote means that everyone knew what his conscience said and towed the party line! Read more »

While some people never seem to get off the starting blocks when it comes to this thinking thing, others of us have brains that seem to work in overdrive.

Mine generally works at around about 110% of its capacity during the working day, and seems to slow down just a little bit during sleeping hours. I know my brain is still doing its thing during the night because I’m forever waking up with great ideas, or new understanding of things, so that means that the silly thing hasn’t stopped thinking even though I’m “out-theJoe”. Read more »

The problem with having a brain is that we have to use it. Don’t laugh - it can actually be a serious problem for some of us sometimes. No, really - not like that - I’m serious!

As a teenager, trying to work everything out, I got exhausted trying to figure it all out. Why this? Why that? Why did things happen that just weren’t fair, or right, or proper (well according to the Gospel of Dennis, anyway). I still struggle with injustice but have learned to expect it in life, rather than get upset about it. And there were many times I would hate the fact that I had a brain and I just wanted to stop having to THINK! Read more »

According to my calculations, loving truth is relatively uncommon, but everyone loves love. I mean how could we possibly find it within ourselves to reject that “lovely” warm fuzzy feeling we call love?

While there are different types of love. I love a good pork roast and snowboarding and being creative, but those types of love are not the same type of love that I have for my wife. Even that type of love changes in nature as my feelings toward her go up and down. Read more »

There are a few things I love. Love is one of them and truth is another.

There’s something so beautiful, refreshing, and clean about ferreting out the truth and getting to the bottom of a situation. Whenever children tell a porkie, their demeanour changes. Their hands cover their mouths in embarrassment, and they try to keep their distance so they don’t get caught out. Futile of course but just the way things are.

After a big heart-to-heart getting it all out into the open, a little discipline (yes, of course - I know, I know, only the verbal kind is accepted now thanks Sue Bradford!) and the child runs off as free-spirited as a bird. So refreshing. So pure. So very right! Read more »

We select our insurance company based on both the premium, and the probability of getting paid. The last thing we want is a dodgy underwriter, so we usually do our homework (or pay a broker to do that for us). No insurance company is credible that doesn’t have a written contract, doesn’t explain the contract up-front, doesn’t guarantee its payout process and has no track record.

Insurance is all about risk management - making sure that we’re covered in the event of adversity. Investing our life’s labours into something like a house or other asset without insurance risks the possibility of total loss.

No one in their right mind would do this. Sure, you could get away with it if you are lucky, I mean not everybody gets robbed, has a fire or loses their biggest asset, but it’s high-risk living.

Our asset planning advisors structure our finances in a way that balances risk with reward, with insurance a strong part of the equation, but there’s another risk/reward equation that I see people screw-up all the time. Read more »

Risk management is thinking through the question ahead of time, “What would happen if . . .?”

Coming from the computer business, for years I’ve recommend clients consider the three biggies with data security:

• Computer failure
• Fire and
• Theft

They’d ask, “How often should I back up?” The answer was always, “As often as you cannot afford to lose the data”.

Nobody does proper computer backups - until they lose some critical data that is! In the 20 years or so of computers, I’ve had some close calls.

Read more »

When I lived in the Thames/Coromandel district, I built a boat and lived on it for a few seasons.

I bought the hull in an unfinished state, and was told when I got it that a fisherman in the West Coast designed it. It was a nice little bilge keeler - a sixteen-foot cabin boat that floated like a little cork. I actually had to put quite a bit of ballast in to stabilise it.

I bought the hull in Mt Eden, shipped it down and finished it off over a year or so at the Thames marina. It was crazy the number of hours I put into it, but eventually I had my pride and joy, ready to launch. I named it the “Spirit of Wisdom”.

Read more »

When we dig deeper, we find that things are not always as they seem.

Wisdom is the art of seeing things from a bigger perspective than others. If the majority believes that the mass media have our best interests at heart and want to give us the truth, then wisdom requires us to test this. Asking questions like “Do they distort the news, and if so how and why?” is the digging deeper that gives us wisdom. Read more »

I love wisdom - it’s cool. It sounds like such a desirable attribute to have - although in some ways it seems such an airy fairy “out there” concept! But wisdom is simply viewing a given situation through bigger eyes than our own.

As an example of this, imagine that a mother knows that a child can hurt itself playing so cautions them against rough play and issues the caution - that’s wisdom. But if the child is playing on the road, then a father may caution them against rough play and to avoid the dangerous environment - that’s now digging a little deeper and demonstrates greater wisdom. Read more »

For all of us still here on earth, every morning we wake up and find out that it’s never finished, I mean this living thing. I’m thankful for that of course because it gives me another challenge and more opportunity to do something.

But try as I might to conceptualise a finished website (that’s my business), a blog, a new business venture, relationship or achievement, life just keeps on going. Read more »

Ever had a love-hate relationship with a business monopoly?

The thing about Microsoft or Telecom and the others is that while we know they are making a killing off us, we still use them because they’re giving us the goods. In the days of Windows 3.11, there were alternatives to Microsoft. Most of the time they were better than M$ but they didn’t have the marketing nous, and would all end up being orphans. So I advised all our clients to buy M$ products and “go with the flow”. We knew that the software was buggy but that the fix would come out in the next patch. We knew that it was over-priced. We knew that we would get stung on continual forced upgrades and so on, yet this was good advice because sure enough M$ did end up owning the market and the others faded away. Read more »

There’s a whole bunch of turkeys out there.

“Your call may be recorded for quality control purposes”. Do they really think that we’re that thick? You are really recording the phone call so that you have a record in case of dispute or trouble in the future. We know it and you know that we know it, but you still do it.

“Your call is important to us. You are caller number 13, please hold. One little lady owner - never been raced, rallied, or rolled!” Yeah right, YEAH RIGHT! Read more »

Timing is everything.

Hit the ball half a second too late and you’ll foul or you’re out. Turn the corner at just the wrong time and you’re over the cliff - with a bust-up car. Arriving at the terminal 30 seconds after the train, plane or bus has left just isn’t cool. Hesitate for 1/1000 of a second when your wife asks, “Do you love me?“ or “Do you like my new hair-cut?” and you’re dead. Read more »

Attempting to conceptualise reality without using a benchmark is foolishness. We can see this when dreamers, optimists and sometimes real fools sink their time into products and services that the Dragons in the Dragon’s Den reject.

We see it also when the deluded try to convince you that condoms work (OK, sure, they sometimes do), or that elements of the US Government didn’t know about or weren’t involved in 911 (OK, some of them possibly didn’t), or that abortion is harmless (shall we ask the aborted child about that one?), or that Evolution is fact (yeah right! - so are Aliens), or that the Illuminati are a figment of our imagination (I mean after all, surely the super-rich couldn’t really be involved in some sort of evil could they? could they?), or that the Government has our best interests at heart, or that there is no such thing as Intelligent Design. Ouch, those are all such touchy topics!

But think for a moment about how we establish reality . . . Read more »

The value of using a consultant in business is that they can bring fresh perspective to a situation.

Measuring your market, knowing how your staff are feeling, visualising the future, assessing your strengths and weaknesses (both at a personal and business level) is only as good as the quality of information that we have access to. An external source can reflect their perceptions back to us, using their experiences to help us better see reality.
Read more »

The way to catch a fish depends on the type of fish you want.

There’s no sense trying to catch a trout with a net. Snapper don’t chase live bait, and a flounder doesn’t take to squid bait. Even if we get the fishing method right there are still different flys to try for the trout, different nets for different fish and different baits for the hook. Even if you know that the snapper are there, you still try different baits like squid and Trevelly until you work out which one they’re biting on at that time. Read more »

There are different ways of getting a feed out of the ocean. Hook, spear or net, to name a few.

When I ran a fishing trip and boat hire business in Coromandel, I would quite often sling a flounder net out from the base of the wharf. Old-man Alger, the father of a mate of mine Ivan Alger, had a green mullet boat moored in the corner for years. I’d grab either his dinghy or one of mine and sling the net out in a semicircle at high tide, then walk out at half tide to pull it in. If I didn’t land a dozen or two flounder, it was a pretty poor catch. A good catch might be four or five dozen fish. Read more »

In my early twenties I set up a fishing trip and boat hire business in Coromandel. I would do up the old clinkers I found in the mangroves, hire them out and take people fishing. I did it for three years and loved it. There’s no real money in boats until you’re into seven figure plus turnover, but it was a great lifestyle nevertheless.

My little business “Coromandel Adventure Holidays”, started when I was living on a little cabin-boat I built, and someone offered me gasoline money when I took them out fishing. I thought that was cool, getting paid to fish so went into the fishing trip business! Read more »

I learnt a big lesson in my first year as a salesman for a large office equipment company. The environment was a fairly aggressive one (commission only sales seems to do that to a business). It was pretty much a dog-eat-dog atmosphere with everyone egging everyone else to meet sales targets, crunch a deal and go for it. Some of the ethics left a little to be desired [understatement]. Come to think of it, I can’t recall any ethics, really.

Anyway, it takes a strong man to bring ethical standards into such an environment and to be able to moderate his behaviour by a value system outside of his immediate environment. In those days, I found myself erring more on the side of more sales rather than ethical caution [OK, another understatement]. Read more »

Getting a good business partner, colleague, staff member or supplier on board is a good feeling. One plus one can actually equal three, or four, or more as we work together on a project.

But things don’t go to plan all the time. Bugger Bother! Keeping a relationship alive long term is a real challenge and over the years I’ve observed a pattern of pressure points to watch out for. Other people have mentioned some of these things in different contexts but I see these things challenging all relationships - friendships, marriage, business partnerships, employment and so on. Read more »

Ask most people what the essence of doing business is and most will settle on the goal of making money. No argument with that. No profit means no business. But digging deeper and we hit the real jackpot when we recognise that business is all about relationships - making them and keeping them.

Building relationships with our customers is only a part of this. Count also staff, bankers, suppliers, partners and so on. Anyone in business knows that a good relationship with the bank manager means a lot when your back is against the wall. Read more »

In my early 20s I suffered a pretty severe relationship trauma, and the circumstances surrounding it led to a prophecy. Now I’m not really much into “hocus-pocus” stuff but every now and then, things have happened that if I am honest, I have to ascribe to God.

This prophecy was one of those times. A bunch of Christians were praying for those of us in need and the words of one of them directed at me “Your sadness will turn into joy” sort of seemed to ring true. So in my typical analytical approach to things I said to myself “OK Cool! Seeing as the trauma was over a relationship gone bad, I now expect that if God is good to his word, I’ll one day end up with a good relationship. I can’t wait!” Read more »

A friend recently came to me for help in promoting his business. It’s cool when that happens - it makes me feel like I might have something to offer.

I don’t have all the answers but I have been around long enough to know that I know enough to know that I know that I know enough to know that I don’t know it all (you get the picture).

This was the third time that he had sought answers from me for ways to promote his business. His desire was to work with me to find speaking opportunities, ways to cross-pollinate and leverage our various business contacts. Normally I’m into this sort of thing like a rat up a drainpipe with real enthusiasm! I love maximising opportunity and working collaboratively, but for some reason it had never quite seemed “right” and I couldn’t see how we could make it really work. Read more »

Last year I purchased a web development company that was in decline. Unfortunately after we purchased it we found a few more skeletons in the closet than we had first anticipated and for a while things were looking rather challenging.

When we undertake to buy something (a business, a car, or whatever) we obviously aim to get the best value we can. This is natural. After all why would we want to pay more than we had to, or end up with a “lemon” if we could avoid this with a bit of due diligence. So for a while I was only moderately pleased with the purchase. Read more »

I hate Religion. It really, really sux. Fortunately I’m not alone in this, and I’ve got some notable company that agrees with me, and with a vengence.

Jesus held back His greatest verbal condemnation for the Religious leaders of the time. It’s not a popular message, the wrath of God, because we all naturally want to have things our way and none of us really like being pushed around by anybody, including God. Read more »

Understanding that the word translated “Go” in the Great Commission (Go into all the earth and make disciples etc) is continuous, present tense in the original text changes the generally accepted meaning.

Instead of implying that we should uproot ourselves, turn ourselves into a “Missionary” and then head off to distant shore to change the world, Jesus in fact is telling us to do nothing other than what He did himself. He mixed with ordinary people and did ordinary things in a godly way. Read more »

I’m an entrepreneur. I love being creative in business. It’s not money that drives me; it is the deep satisfaction I have by pulling together lots of different factors, like people resources, physical and financial resources, ideas, concepts and opportunities, and being creative with them all. I love it. One day, I’ll hopefully get something right and make some money from it!

But in becoming a Christian at the age of 20, I found myself in a church culture that seemed to hold missionaries in very high regard. They got prayed for regularly and given money, kudos and favour. That’s all very well for them . . . Read more »

I’ve observed a distinct difference between people who just have action or even people who combine action with skill, or people with both of these plus passion, and those who really seem to know their calling, or destiny.

What I call “the belly-button experience” is a little something that happens when our hands, heart, mind and spirit combine for a particular cause. It’s like the difference in business between “Michael Hill - Shoes” and “Michael Hill - Jeweller”. One sings - the other doesn’t. Read more »

As we mature, our focus moves from doing things (our Hands), to thinking about things (our Head), to dealing with our feelings (our Heart).

It has been said that the longest distance in the world is between a man’s head and his heart, implying that getting in touch with our feelings is a challenge. It is, particularly for a guy. Despite any claims from the fairer gender to the contrary, it’s not that we do not feel - we do. Often the depth of our passion is amazing, but it is our capacity to recognise those feelings for what they are, that is the challenge. Read more »

Having first established our capacity to produce (the Hands part of this series), the next natural process is to focus our energy into the Head - our thinking, cognitive part of the body.

At school we used to be encouraged to develop thinking skills. HOW do we best do things? WHY do we do them? The mind is an amazing machine, once single cell capable of memory, processing and computing tasks greater than the sum total of all global artificial intelligence. Read more »

Let’s bring a little slice of heaven to earth.From our earliest years, our energy focus is on the physical. We put our energy into growing, to feeding, learning to walk and talk and “DO” things. Our parents put their energy into showing us how to interact with the physical world. Mum is excited when we start to walk. Dad is proud when we can ride a bike, drive a car, touch-type, build a house, and so on. Read more »

The sale of TradeMe for a gazillion dollars created a flurry of requests to web developers nationwide. All of us (web developers) were inundated with people wanting to jump on the bandwagon, and create clones, copies, and competitive auction sites to do just the same as TradeMe did.

Copying anothers success story is futile as the circumstances, resources and reasons for the success of another business will not be present in a mimicked situation. Not even TradeMe would be able to recreate their success given a repeat opportunity because the market, their people, the unique circumstances that they grew from will never be the same. We can never reproduce the same business success by cloning another. Read more »

Aiming to be the best is a noble goal.

In business being the best in our market segment usually brings us success in due course – certainly all things being equal.

Mediocrity abounds in New Zealand, so putting just that little more effort, thought or passion into your business reaps rewards. My father said to me in 1974, “You don’t have to be THAT good to be better than the rest”, when I was just starting my working career, and this is just as true too in 2008 as it was then. Assuming that he had learnt this from his working career, this then is valid advice for New Zealand business for almost 60 years! Read more »

While a business can still succeed without these attributes, if it is FIRST to market, the BEST in its niche or is DIFFERENT from the others it has a distinct advantage.

Being the first to market with a particular idea, product or service is something that can never be taken away from a business. Almost 10 years since its inception, Go Kiwi Internet uses the phrase one of “New Zealand’s original web developers” in its marketing – the company is one of only a handful of web developers still trading that was established before the turn of the century 2000. Read more »

The personal blog of Dennis A Smith . . . will be fully functional once the elves have finished their work in the backroom.