I love drawing and outlining at my white board or in my note book because I connect emotionally with my thoughts so much more powerfully and with more clarity than if I use my computer alone. In this video Milton Glaser talks about drawing while he is drawing, and makes an observation of art schools where drawing has been removed from the curriculum to allow time to learn software. It seems increasingly that students now have the creative tools, but not the emotional connection with their craft.

MILTON GLASER DRAWS & LECTURES from C. Coy on Vimeo.

'How did you become so wealthy?' is a question I've asked plenty of people in my life. But the answer I got from a very successful colleague of mine when I worked at Xerox wasn't about a product, or a service, or a sales  or marketing strategy. It was about a belief that underpinned everything he did. His answer was this. "I got rich by making other people rich... I add value to peoples lives." He took it upon himself every day, to go out and add value to peoples lives - whether it was his clients', or his customers' or his friends'. Now you're not necessarily going make people rich simply by adding value to them, but by believing you can add value in a way specific to your industry, the wealth in whatever form it may be, will follow. Let me use Queensberry as an example. We add value to our customers by doing three things: 1) Helping our clients make more money - by differentiation 2) Saving our clients time - by offering to do their post-production work or providing tools so they can do things more easily 3) Giving our clients with a better experience than anyone else If our clients don't feel like we deliver on at least one of those areas - we may as well not exist and we wouldn't be flourishing if you didn't add value to your customer's lives in some way.

You need to express your care in a way people will value

I wrote a while ago about how I demonstrate my love for my wife Sonya by turning her light off for her each night. I do this because I know that she likes me doing it. The same principle applies in business. It's our job to understand how our clients like to be loved and what makes them tick. Then we can go the extra mile and add value in a way they didn't even know we could. At Queensberry, we know it's simply not enough to just add value to our clients' (Photographers) lives as they are not the end user. Their Brides and Grooms are the ones turning the pages of our albums, cherishing the memories and emotionally connecting with the story they tell. It's our goal to add value to them also by providing a treasure that they can remember their day by and hand down through the generations. If we do it right, we might even provide Brides and Groom's with an experience better than they had on the day. Their album is a reflection of the detail, the emotion, the love, the family, the venue... most of which is often just a blur. We're adding value to our clients, by also adding value to theirs.

Be clear how you add value to your clients

The challenge is to do it in an authentic, respectful and in way that honors people, and real value is only really provided when it's perceived as of value from the other persons perspective. When a Bride and Groom cries when they open their album for the first time, or when our product helps a photographer up-sell to their clients, or when we can help a photographer spend more time with their family by doing some of their work for them - we've added value to their life in a way that no marketing or sales strategy could ever achieve. Cheers, Stephen.

Take a few minutes, sit down, switch off, listen and think as you watch this ... share it with your kids and consider your own life ... deeply cool. From the YouTube Video "For complete lyrics, audio and video clip please visit PersianDNA™ Website at http://www.persiandna.com/4u.htm Wear Sunscreen is the common name of an essay, (actually called "Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young") written by Mary Schmich and published in the Chicago Tribune as a column in 1997. The most popular and well-known form of the essay is the successful music single released in 1999, accredited to Baz Luhrmann."

An awesome presentation and Q and A with Gary Vay Ner Chuk. In this he talks very powerfully about "Working the Room", His Strategy, And about how the internet is about getting eyeballs. To use his term he is pretty Potty Mouth. But don't get put off by that, he is authentic, deep and extremely passionate. Awesome and thank you Gary.

Yesterday I let you know that I was going to take the "31 Days To A Better Blog" challenge and I am getting more and more excited.

Day 1

The task for today was to write an "elevator pitch for my blog". This was something that had been on my mind for a while, as I felt I didn't have a strong focus around what I wrote. I genuinely think I could go "toe to toe" and hold my own in a discussion on most of the issues I write about, but I wasn't providing any depth of information. We have deep experience and knowledge in HR, IT, Marketing, Relationships, Leadership, Strategy etc but I didn't want to be an "expert blog" on any one topic as that would be boring for me. I wanted to be a generalist, and share experiences and hopefully inspire. I want to start conversations.

So here is my pitch

Tui's voice is a blog by Stephen Baugh, a successful entrepreneur who, with his family, runs two significant international companies based in the photographic and wedding industries. This blog covers an entrepreneur's journey through business and technology with tips, observations and strategy blended with a little self reflection and fun. This blog covers a breadth of issues with either a human or business perspective. He shares experiences as assistance and inspiration to others.

Why "an entrepreneurs journey"?

Great cultures like the New Zealand Maori have passed their traditions, their rules, their inspiration, their culture down through generations in the form of stories and song. I am not going to start singing anytime soon, but I think that is what I am about, in fact I think that's what our business, Queensberry, is about. We tell stories. Our family jokes that when I was brought home as a child it was to a boat yard, to a house built from car cases. Hardly what you could call luxury: we were emotionally wealthy but financially poor. Today we run two reasonably large companies that trade globally as if we were local in each market and live a very different life from the one living in a car case. I don't tell the story of my journey to brag, I don't tell it to say we are better than anyone else, or even that we know better. We are a fairly humble family so I tell these stories so that hopefully they will assist, and even better that they will inspire.

We've seen it all

As a family running a business together we've seen it all. We've had to deal with difficult family stresses where you wonder if you will get through, in fact we had to meet in restaurants because you can't fight in restaurants. Fortunately we are past that now. We have developed all our own IT infrastructure and now have one that works 24/7 and rivals the world's best. We manufacture, we employ, we've built a software company and we design albums that have been presented to to Kings and Queens. So this blog is simply my story, it isn't a corporate site, it's not polished and some days it will be a little hit and miss, but I do love telling stories and hope you will enjoy them too.

Please join me

If you care to subscribe to my RSS feed or ideally by email I will over then next few months share a couple of things I know you will enjoy. The first is I am going to finish my series "Business Lessons of a Fire Fighter". I am a Senior Fire Fighter (volunteer) in the New Zealand Fire Service and have had some amazing insights into business through my days on duty. Some past ones have included "Trust" and "Have Courage or Die" Secondly I am going to do a series called "Queensberry Rules". This series will share our business philosophy in a way that is powerfully simple. You wouldn't want to miss it.

Finally ...

Finally we live in a world that needs leaders, new leaders, strong leaders, people that care about business, the environment and education. I believe I am one of those leaders. The power and value of what I have in my head through years of experience is multiplied if shared. You are my friends and if you get one little piece of value from it, my time will be of value. Thanks again. Please let me know your thoughts. Is my pitch strong enough, is something missing, how could it be better? What stories do you want to hear? And of course thank you.