Derek Sivers did a talk at TED about this crazy dancing guy and what we can learn from him in terms of leadership, and more importantly about the importance of the first few followers. "If you want a movement, a leader needs the guts to stand alone and look ridiculous". What you really need however is the first few followers, you need to nurture these people as they indicate to the masses that following is ok. Because they help to establish momentum, we need to love and embrace our followers as equals. In the video watch a movement happen in under 3 minutes as Derek dissects some lessons ... BTW This video was shared by the very inspiring Brian Johnson of Philosophers Notes fame. I would thoroughly recommend them for those interested in this sort of thing

People with dirty jobs are happier

In this movie Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs does two things, first he talks about a day he worked on a farm and amongst other things docks lambs. I saw this show and couldn't believe he did what he did. I thought it was inhumane and as it turns out initially he did too, but in an entertaining fashion he talks through his learning and explains. The second thing he does is he makes the point that in his opinion people with Dirty Jobs are happier. He puts forward a strong case that following the advice "Follow Your Passion" might be bad advice. For some it will just lead to a life of disappointment and I therefore guess unhapiness. Certainly there are lots of very happy people picking fruit, waiting tables etc so that they can collect just enough money to do what they really love such as surfing in the evening and snow boarding all winter. That's not to suggest these are "dirty jobs", just examples of jobs I no longer want to do to earn an income. They don't meet my needs but do work perfectly for many and therefore support Mikes point.

It's an interesting observation and ...

maybe it's a crazy addiction but I however am someone that has chosen to persue my dreams through work. Not just in what I do day to day, but also through what I am able to do with the reasources and network of people that result from my efforts. I care deeply about What I do, How I do it and more importantly Who I do it With. Work for me has become one of the ways I express myself, I see our company as a reflection of me. When things are going well, I find it easy to feel good about myself. When the stress kicks in for a prolonged period of time I need to remind myself that "it's just a game", yet sometimes it can get me down. I guess that's his point. If you take it personally, and if you don't keep the self judgement under control it is going to be hard to be happy. Life is always easier when we keep things simple ... when we stay present and we design our lives around what makes us smile. So why is it so easy to build up a story which starts with "I'll be happy when ..." especially when it comes to our work?

If I've learnt nothing else from the Fire Service it is this...

You only have THIS MOMENT ... Yesterday is gone, tomorrow is still a dream and sadly some people wont even have this afternoon. 'Follow Your Passion' is fantastic advice, but there are so many ways to do this, not just at work. Great family, friends, laughter, work, sports, hobbies. What ever you do life is to short not to enjoy it!

Well today, has been a pretty exciting day. Apple launched their latest professional photography software, Aperture 3, and for me it was particularly special as we (Queensberry) were involved in our own small way. After approximately a year of working with Apple, including a trip to Cupertino in October, today's announcement shared information on how professional photographers could buy our wedding albums through Aperture. Using a cleverly developed plugin our clients can now use their favourite image tool to order albums from us. It's not just exciting because we're working with Apple, but I've been an Apple fan boy since I was literally a boy of maybe 9 or 10 years old, when Dad brought our first Apple IIe. I have only owned Macs etc since, our companies run almost exclusively on their gear and our own software is largely developed on Mac workstations. I'm obviously proud. Quoting their website, it's not only great to be included in an elite group of "some of the world’s finest bookmakers" but I get to work closely with a company I have admired for decades. The team there are an awesome group of really nice people, and I congratulate them on the success of a great product. Thanks Apple. :-)

I'm a believer in education, I really am, and my children's eduction is very important to me. I've pursued high-level tertiary education myself, and I regularly attend business and personal development courses. But I'm also a believer in determination, passion and experience. A huge believer in fact, and sitting next to a guy in the Wool business one evening  after speaking at an Icehouse event, I was reminded of why...

His story went something like this:

He was sacked from his first job packing shelves at K-Mart when he was young. I believe he left school early as he suffered with dyslexia and to add insult to injury, as he walked from his job that day, his boss told he would never amount to anything. That comment ignited a fire in his belly. He so badly wanted to prove the world wrong. He now owns and runs a company in the wool industry turning over tens of millions of dollars each year. The key to his success wasn't some fancy education - it was something thats hard to teach - it was pure determination, passion and drive to achieve his dreams. I truely believe some people are born with it. Born with such determination and passion that it'd be hard for them to fail - like Gary van Ner Chuk. I blogged about him a couple of days ago and posted a video in which he explains how school wasn't really for him. His constant 'F' grades told him that. But get this. During the weekends he was down at the mall earning over $2k selling base ball cards each week, and dispite what the education system said about him, he's gone on to become famous and build a company  turning well over $60m a year. A lot of people fail in the 'system', but one of the things I've learnt over my career in is that there's no substitute for determination and passion. Someone who's clear about their dreams and has the drive to achieve them, will almost always outsmart someone with only an education. I've also learnt as a father that I'll only influence my children if I have their attention and respect. More important than my children's education is that they learn to focus, to be strong in themselves, to form their own opinions and believe they can do anything. Their self esteem is precious to me. Unfortunately those values aren't always treasured in the education system, but I am certain it will do a lot more for you over the long term than any single university degree. Do you agree? What are your thoughts?

Hi everyone. I have been asked a lot recently about my website, especially who hosts it and about the fact that I have it monitored 24/7 for uptime and reliability. Basically late last year I had lots of issues with uptime of my blog, so moved to Host Gator. They have been amazing. The server is quick, but the support has been even better. Even while a hurricane battered their data and call centre the support tickets continued to be answered. Below is a link to their site if you're interested, trust me they are cool and about 10 of my friends host with them now, they consistently rate high on "Best ISP" lists, and I love that they have an environment policy and plan. As I said in an earlier post I really love how they present themselves giving a sense of size, combined with the promise of support from the owner ... You can even chose for your support ticket to go to CEO Brent Oxley if you're not satisfied with the help you're getting. Anyway setup was easy, registration and getting started took less than 20 minutes, just like it should be. It might seem weird that despite them being so good I would therefore want to monitor my site. Well to me it's about piece of mind, I mean I might even mess up. InternetSupervision.com monitor my site every hour automatically 24/7 and another 20+ services our companies run from FTP, SMTP, HTTP, DNS etc. It is so cool, despite these services being on various servers around the word, I know pretty well as soon as one goes down. Like last night, a local fault in a fibre cable had us hidden from the world for a few hours. When this happened I knew almost immediately, so could log a fault, and was advised as soon as service returned both times via email and SMS message. I believe even the smallest site should consider such a service. Offerings start from Free, but a few services with SMS notification will cost only a couple of dollars a month ... that's less than a cup of coffee to sleep soundly at night. Remember ... whether you like it or not, a downed website reflects on YOU.