I am so often asked where I find my motivation, why do I do what I do and what is the vision I have for my life.< The truth is I'm not really certain ... Things just evolved over time ... I guess I am curious, want to have fun and grew up with the desire to do something legendary. I have great big goals for the distant future, a general idea of what the medium term will look like and a pretty good idea of what my focus will be over the next to 6 - 12 months. What surprises me most is how little some people know about themselves. They are on autopilot! Out of curiosity, I as ask them... What's your To View More >>

The eternal question of life for many people is "how do I find the energy for that"? Here I share my thoughts and what we can learn from children. One of the most common things I hear parents say of their children, as the little ones rush past, is : "OMG the energy ... If only we could bottle it" I wonder what it is that causes us to have unlimited energy as children, but as we get older our energy wanes ... or at least, should I say, that's what happens to some of us. If you look carefully you'll notice some really big differences between how children spend their time and how most adults do. They To View More >>

Well after less than a month with iPower I have moved web hosts due to their unreliability. I am sure this isn't the way they are permanently but over the last week my site was down on a number of occasions for hours, and I have lost my confidence. I am very sorry for the inconvenience caused ... grrr. One of the interesting observations is that they weren't prepared to go into detail of what the technical issue was, just each time that "it was a router and it's now fixed". I guess companies do this due to being scared of looking bad, but left with no convincing information I was forced to move To View More >>

One of the incredible blessings of working in the Queensberry Group is the wonderful people we get to spend our time with, and few are more inspiring than Peter Haythornthwaite. [flickr]photo:3099049094[/flickr] I was sitting at the kitchen table about to take a photo of this wood pigeon when I got an email from Peter commenting on my blog. Amongst other things he said "I guess a natural 'other' would be small videos of family discoveries at the beach - your area, your 'forest' area, your Titirangi - why do you live there etc." The timing made me smile as this beautiful bird perfectly symbolizes To View More >>

Danny and I are in Germany at present, Cologne (Köln) to be specific, visiting the Photokina trade fair. It's been a whirlwind tour through Europe getting here. In 5 days we travelled through Las Angeles, London, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and Cologne. What an incredible week of contrasts. The cities, especially Paris and Amsterdam, were incredible, so romantic with their old world charm and architecture, but with unfortunate modern contrasts. If Mc Donalds down the road from Notre Dame wasn't enough, how about the accommodation we have in Cologne? This is a table in the restaurant. The place To View More >>

In business there are no magic bullets, but this idea is so powerful it certainly feels like magic. I ran into an old friend yesterday, and it reminded me of a series of seminars I ran a few years ago that contained a section on how to increase profits. Especially when times are tough, it's great to be able to break things down into some simple rules that allow you to know where to focus, so I'll share this very simple but powerful idea with you now. Gross Profit is calculated on an "averaged basis" as: (Total number of clients x Average number of visits per year x Average sale x Average margin) To View More >>

 Photo by Brett Harkness I just wrote about why I love photograph albums, but the story got a little long so I've edited it. I guess the truth is we love the industry, the books and just as importantly, we love design. Queensberry's love and focus on design is a story all by itself. Let's face it, though, some albums suck ... Sorry but they do. The book is cheap and plasticky, and no consideration is given to what photos are included. A great album is so much more. I'm not trying to turn this into a shameless plug, and I know quality is subjective, but I believe we produce the world's finest To View More >>

I love Malcolm Gladwell, he is such a clever thinker and actually very entertaining for what really could be boring intellectual ideas. Please enjoy watching the following video to find out "What we can learn from spaghetti sauce" By the way, if you enjoy this video go read his books "The Tipping Point" and "Blink". If you can't be bothered reading use iTunes to download audible versions of these books to your iPod and go take the dog for a walk :-) To View More >>

In my blog description I say that I love the "simple solutions", I have to say this has to be one of the best I have seen in ages. By taking the abundant energy of children playing and using that to pump water from clean under ground water supplies Play Pumps have created a way to ease the problem of getting fresh water to villages of the world. These people are really inspiring. To View More >>

I while back I wrote a post about Malcolm Gladwell, someone I think is very interesting and also a deep thinker. In my Post I talked about one of his books called "Tipping Point", well it seems all is not good in the world and there are doubters out there ... In this article on FastCompany Duncan Watts asks "Is the Tipping Point Toast?". Great reading if you are interested in consumer marketing, and I got as much to think about from this as I got as I did Malcolm's book. http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/122/is-the-tipping-point-toast.html?partner=rss To View More >>