Jacqui sent me a link to this movie this morning. It's a very cool recording created by Mark Johnson founder of Playing for Change I love how in this next movie a man describes his music in such a spiritual way, he says ...

"According to our philosophy music has been a great power. Power to bring peace and to get enlightenment. Because it is a sort of meditation... Because you need a lot of dedication in order to bring the music a great art... When there is a great art, there is always heaven. That is why we believe through music, if you practice a lot, you meditate on it, you feel nothing else than peace. So we believe, through music we can get enlightenment..."

Beautiful ... and what a awesome cause ...

My regret if I did have one would be around business projects I didn't take a leap of faith to take advantage of. I don't however believe in regret as each part of ones life is purely a "step". None of us are perfect, and often we will trip. So long as we get up and do our best to put right what we broke, everything is good. If you like, all these moments become learning's ... they weave the colour and texture into the blanket we call life. I've always been proud of coming from a very entrepreneurial family, and one that has been astute at picking trends. #1 In the early 90's after years on Compuserve I discovered the web through that service. It was slow and horrible, so I wanted direct access but that was usually only available through the universities. Any way after telling my wife that "This is going to be huge", and after months of negotiating access and developing a business model so that others could also benefit, I went back to my day job. As we all know, we call them ISP's now, and the people who didn't get comfortable got very, very rich. It's interesting to note that many people that did start ISP's in the early days were kids in Mum's garage, who didn't yet have much to lose. #2 When working at Xerox my father and I developed a piece of software called Patch Manager (I still have a copy of my proposal to Xerox). As I read the Larry Ellison book Softwar and heard about the development of the Oracle Business Suite of products, I realised the thinking behind ours had evolved similarly, and was years before it's time. Xerox went on to spend millions on an alternative option that seemed in many ways a knock-off of our original idea. Although I believe that option was completely inferior, it was picked up by many corporates around the world. My boss, however, said that I was "an Account Manager, not a software developer" and made me get back to work. Unfortunately I was young and wanted to keep him happy rather than take a risk. I wonder if we had continued would we be an SAP or Oracle today? #3 In approximately 1997 I started a website called Photojunction for our industry where "everything photographic" came together. Long before anyone even thought of social media and social networking we had a site where photographers could share links, do reviews, rate sites etc. Although limited by the technology of the time and way off what is available today, it had the potential for a real community to develop. The problem was photographers at the time didn't have computers :-) We were caught in The Dip, with lots of other work to do. With a rapidly growing export business, we closed the site down (we kept the name though!) Even in our industry the sites that have filled this space are large and by my guess very profitable. Being first is only useful if you "stay in the line". Anyway life is like that. You make choices and move on. Sometimes however making 'good choices' involves not being scared, not trying to keep everyone happy, taking risks and going for it. No regrets though. I am excited about the journey we've had despite these learnings.

I'm new to blogging and although I have seen consistent and significant growth in unique visitors, I have been keen to find tips to grow my blog quickly. I've spent my spare time over the last few weeks researching and what I have found scares me. There are lots of ways to grow visitor numbers and one of the most heavily promoted is back-links. The benefit of back links is that search engines give greater ranking to sites that have lots of back links as these links are seen as votes (endorsements) from other sites. Of course this makes sense and like everyone I will be doing my best to develop back links of my own. My concern however is how some bloggers are going about this. What I have seen is the setting up of fake websites, commercial organizations doing the same and arrangements where a group of bloggers agree to swap "Digg nominations", "Technorati Favs", "Stumbleupon Recommendations" etc. I understand the desire to build web traffic quickly, but if you use this method, at what cost?

My belief is this ...

- If you make a recommendation without knowing what you are recommending you loose credibility and risk linking yourself to people who reflect badly on you. - Quick traffic volumes don't necessarily translate to longer term volumes. - This is not building a network of friends that can support and help you. - Most of these people don't even visit your website, do you really want a recommendation from someone that doesn't know you? - To other bloggers and your readers you risk looking like a fake!

What time horizon are you working too?

If you are in this for the long term, isn't it better to put the work in and build a network of reliable links and develop your reputation as someone to be respected and listened to? In the long term I am certain this will yield dividends, especially if you hope to have your readers take advantage of recommendations you make. Please don't get me wrong, I am not saying you're a bad person or dishonest ... I also have tried this myself before I thought through what I was doing and stopped. I am just asking you to think carefully before you give away your valuable recomendations, favs and links. Good luck and enjoy your time on line. UPDATE : Here is a great post that offers lots of options for blog promotion

Did you know many people have decided what they think of a web page before it's even finished loading?  I'm convinced that when people review their own website they aren't very good at it for two reasons: 1, They're emotionally involved. It's their baby and no one wants to think they have an ugly baby. Even more so when they paid a lot of money for it. 2. They have no idea what web surfers want. Even worse, they don't really know much about their own web browsing behavior. That's because, like everyone else, we mainly tend to surf on auto-pilot. If this could be you, here's my challenge. (If you don't think you have a problem, go challenge a friend.) To get an idea of what a good website is, and to see how you “behave” as a web surfer I suggest you join Stumbleupon. You'll get a tool bar to install in your web browser which has a “stumble” button. When you click this button you will be sent to a random website. If you like it, give it a thumbs up, or a thumbs down if you don’t. You can refine your stumbles to things you're interested in. The amazing thing is web surfers give a website about 20 secs before they make that decision. Often they've left before the page has finished loading. I think you'll find that good image content and design will be a familiar theme in the sites you like. A side benefit is that Stumbleupon brings fun back to web surfing and can be highly addictive :-) NOW for the hard part of the challenge ... Apply what you learned about your own behavior, including your likes and dislikes, to a review of your own site. Be critical, be honest, and try to define what you want your site to be in the future. Finally I don't say any of this to manipulate Stumbleupon, but good design that interests a Stumbleupon visitor will appeal to all visitors, have a look at this post by Patick at piggybankpie.com and this post from socialmediatraders.com. There are some great ideas here for starters.

Why oh why do people find providing good customer service so hard? I guess probably for the same reason so many people struggle with relationships, that is that they co-exist, rather than truly throw themselves into the situation in the effort to find a real connection. Don't get me wrong, I don't believe that the customer is always right, they often aren't but in that moment they do deserve to feel significant and cared for... Often that just takes a little empathy and a smile. Why is it that when people talk about great business they can rattle of a list of companies specializing in various business functions, but when you ask who gives great service they scratch their head? When you say best at innovation, Apple ... Best at supply chain management, Walmart ... Best at lean manufacturing, Dell. Ok I know in the USA people will often say Nordstrom for great customer service, but you often get a sense that there is a pause and people have to think about it. I was at a seminar last month with Keith Cunningham (brilliant by the way) and, when talking about staffing and how to get people to be effective, he had a simple set of rules which he expected his staff to follow. Although he spoke in a more general way I think they relate perfectly to how to deliver good customer service. They are ... Do The Right Thing! What that means will vary, but basically people expect you to be trained to do the job you are employed to do, and of course there a basic rules in society that also dictate the "Right Thing". If you can't do the right thing, because maybe you don't have the experience, then Do The Best You Can. Simple, put a little effort and common sense into doing your "Best". And finally if all else fails, and this is probably where many people let themselves down, Show Them You Care. We can't always give people what they came for and sometimes we will let people down. But in that moment, show a little love, and let them know you care that they have been disappointed. It doesn't take much, and with a little education, or creative thought to find an alternative, that bad situation might just turn into the foundation for a great relationship for life.