While taking some time out in Fiji I returned to my backed up reading list. One on the books that I has started but failed to complete before was Josh Kaufman’s The Personal MBA. I spotted this in an airport bookshop on a different trip, then cheekily downloaded it to the kindle app on my iPad for a fraction of the shell price. Sorry traditional retail, but get over it.

When I first picked it up i was struck by how closely the themes of the book mapped to the thinking and approach of the brainmates Product Management methodology. What I have really been enjoying is the very clearly articulated thinking that chucks down many of the terms that we use and disambiguates them very effectively.

For example he has by effectively differentiated between a product and a service. His definition of a product is something (almost anything) that can repeatable deliver value without the direct involvement of person. A service on the other hand does requires a persons direct involvement to deliver value and therefore lacks scalability. I think a this is a very useful distinction. I have often been asked if software is a product or a service. Under this definition it is clearly a product as it does not require a persons time and effort as part of the the delivery process.

There are many other examples of concepts that are very familiar yet are difficult to clearly articulate. Josh has tackled this challenge and has delivered a package of neatly summarized tools to test and support any business idea against.

When I get back to Sydney, I will review my notes and create a checklist of things to consider that will make Brainmates and the training business in particular more effective for 2012.

When i first came across them i thought that they were a ridiculous idea. Yet the businesses that are investing in them suggest that there is more to it than that. Why would a business offer a such huge discounts to such a a large number of potential customers? It doesn’t seem to be a sustainable model to me, yet every day there are hundreds of people that sign up for the deals, handover their cash and presumably get a product at a great price.
The businesses offering the deals get a flood of sales at (i imagine) much lower margins than normal but they get a chance to prove themselves to a new customer.

OK, so this can work for products where the main component is a service where the margins are generally higher than for a physical product. This allows a steep discount to be applied without making a horrible loss. business that offer a deal that give them a zero or negative margin are in for a rough ride. It also requires a product that has excess inventory that would otherwise be wasted. Again this can apply to services where there are peak times and quite times. The business can require that the offer be channeled in to the quiet times to improve the overall revenue, again providing that this is not done at a loss.

The biggest problem that I see here is that the type of customers that these group voucher deal sites attract are the least loyal, price sensitive bunch around. They will hop off to the next deal without even remembering who they last bought a product from.

At the same time I want to try and make time for running again. I had a run yesterday that was harder than it should have been, but it was also the first run in a few months, on the back of a year with practically no exercise. I am hoping that these two initiatives will start me on the path to a healthier 2012.

It was quite a gutting feeling to see that happen and know that they were gone forever.

One thing that is has made me think about is what I want to do with this website. I think that it would be good to go through and get rid of a lot of the idle posts (a bit like this one) and get back to thinking about some of the issues and ideas on the internet that really interest me.

So if you are reading this then hope to see some reduction in the posts that are here something between here and eternity.

In the mean time Seth Godin raved about a micro loan project where instead of donating money to a cause that is (at least to me) quite faceless, i loan money to an individual investor to help them achieve a particular goal.

And then they pay it back, which gives me the opportunity to give again later with the same money. So I am going to pledge here that I will invest USD$50 a month to this process.

While it doesn’t payback any interest there is a different kind of return. A human return. I will get to hear how the loan has effected the lives and the family who has less than me but is doing something about it. Now that I am a father, thinking about the future of the world and setting an example in it feels rather important.

I think that this is a great idea and the longer I contribute the more value I will be able to add over time.

Imagine what $700Billion might have done for these sort of people…

From our new apartment we will be able to amble into our office in the city in just 10 minutes. We have free parking in the city! As well a gym and a swimming pool. All this comes at a cost though so there will need to be some careful budgeting ahead.

Of course the catalyst for all of this is the news of little Jack. We need a nice safe place to bring him into the world. The initial plan had been to buy a 3 bedroom place that we could be comfortable in. Unfortunately there are a lot more adventures going on in our lives that just the arrival of our first baby. I had previously referred to our business as our baby if any one asked when we were planning to start a family. Well the business is approching it’s fourth year in operation and things are gaining momentum which is very exciting but it takes a hell of a lot of effort to keep everything running smoothly.

To help keep it running smoothly, when Jack arrives in October we will be nice and close to the office, such that it is effectively an additional office space. Either of us will be able to dash back and forth from home to office, which is something that we just couldn’t do from any other suburb in Sydney. Not even our beloved Cammeray.

So tomorrow will be our last full day here. I am now really excited to be on the move since everything in the place is all packed into boxes.

On one hand this is really good news since it means that business is busy, but the flip side of that is that it is hard to find time for ourselves. This is really going to become more important very soon.

I was sad to hear that he recently passed away and was cheered up and saddened at the same time when I saw this fun picture.

see more crazy cat pics

I remember my first adventures at the keep on the borderlands (from the first basic set) , and again when my character visited the Village of Homlet. Adventure after adventure was played out with the stories that Gary either wrote or inspired with his creations.

In many respects is work can be compared to Tolkien, not because of any literary prowess but because he took us further into the Fantasy worlds that Tolkien inspired. As players of Gary’s games we did not just read the story. Instead, through our characters we donned sword, bow and magic wand and explored these worlds for ourselves. Farewell.

One New Year commitment that I like to make to myself at the beginning of each new year is to start the year with an alcohol free month. So far so good, but it is always a bit un-nerving just how difficult a habit it is to break. It is day 7 now and from previous experience I know that this is the hardest time. After next week it won’t be a problem.

Of course now that I have told you I should probably go and grab a beer.

• Keep going with the daily 100 words (or more) posts and generally get better at writing.
• Improve fitness (I have a bit more around the belly than I am happy with)
• Be the best CEO of brainmates that I can be

Let’s see how we go this year.

It would be nice though if we could get just one bright sunny day while we are on the road near the beaches. We went for a post dinner stroll along the beach here at Kingscliff and were just awed at the raw power of the vast ocean. Looking out to the horizon the sea met the storm clouds.

I took this little snap of Adrienne with my phone.

Even with the wind howling around us, it was beautiful to be out there. Just watching the news as I write this they are talking about a new 30 year weather pattern that will bring rain and storms to the coast.

Today though, we waved goodbye to the Brisbane clan and are having a quiet little rest at the Peppers resort here. Not a bad start to the new year if you ask me.

I should be able to see exactly what data is being shared and be able to limit it and control its use. Until this happens I am unlikely to signup to too many more applications on Facebook.

It is fascinating watching how the “gen y” crowd is using this and other social networking services. They are totally fearless about sharing every last detail about their lives. It makes me feel like an old fart to say so but the way that they these services is completely different to my own. They practically live in these worlds; or rather they co-exist in both the online and offline worlds.

For me though these worlds are still quite separate and the world of Facebook has taken a noticeable back seat to the rest of the non-Facebook universe.

I always find this a joyous but difficult time. It is joyous mainly because Adrienne is the living embodiment of Christmas Spirit. She delights in everything related to Christmas and more often than not brings everyone else along with her energy. Even more exciting in the past two years has been seeing this same excitement being shared with her delightful Goddaughter who is nearly four. In fact it is this little angel who has become the key focus of this time of year.

The difficulty comes from the multiple challenges of having family located all over the place and the desire to try and use the slow business environment to take a holiday of some sort. Lately (past 3-4 years) Adrienne and I have tried to escape the contortions of being everywhere and have opted to travel overseas to experience Christmas’s around the world. Well that was the plan anyway. This idea has appealed to others in the clan and instead of a quiet little escape we have ended up with a travelling Christmas family circus.

The difficulty increases for me because my side of the family no longer gets together in the same place, live in different places and don’t get excited about Christmas anymore. This year I have seen more of my family that normal, although it has been more of a drop in to my brother and dad than any sort of Christmas event. It is my mum that I miss right now. She has moved to central New South Wales, between 3-4 hours drive away (depending on traffic) which means that it is pointless to do just a day trip and even a weekend is half consumed by the driving.

Ultimately I really don’t know what to do. Christmas is complicated but we will wait and see what 2008 holds.

For anyone still reading this who doesn’t know what Facebook is I’ll provide a quick intro. It is an online social networking service that allows you to post up a picture of yourself and a simple profile. You then look for other people’s profiles that you know and then invite them to be friends. Simple… to begin with, but then the links form into networks. Within these networks information is shared and that is where it starts to get interesting…..

So now just watching my own Facebook profile I get a stream of the interesting, the creative, the playful, and (more often than not) the completely inane. It is strangely addictive, but already I have been linked to a couple of people that I have barely spoken to since leaving high school. And it felt good.

That seems to be part of the draw of these types of sites. It is not the silly little messages that appear all day, but the small smile that creeps onto my face when I read them and the tiny inspiration that I get when I see beauty in another’s photos. It is the micro emotional connections that they offer that somehow bring people together that I like.

The inspiration is to do it more in the offline world as well.

The question that I try and deal with is what to do next and get it done. I find it hard to juggle everything, but there are no choices, just more things that need to be done.

That said it is good just to be writing this. I’ll try and add something more uplifting tomorrow.

For whatever reason every time that I have been to a dentist, there has been a cavity that needs to be filled, a tooth that needs to be drilled and a needle that needs to be applied. (not necessarily in that order.)

In October, while I was overseas, I could feel a hole in one of my wisdom teeth. I knew that I couldn’t delay it any longer, but I don’t have a regular dentist. I don’t even have an irregular one. The frequency of my dental visits is almost measured in years, not months. (For accuracies sake I didn’t say decades but it wouldn’t be too much of a lie.)

Finally, over a month after my holey discovery, I defaulted to the most local dentist, just down the road. To my credit this was not a pain based decision, but I knew that pain was going to be inevitable if I didn’t do something soon.

The dental surgery was clean, new and friendly, but event the act of getting x-rays and a proper dental clean had me feeling panicky. That was the easy part.

At the end of the week the results were in….

WOW. I will be going back to the dentist for a while, but it was time to start with something. The bastard tooth that started it all. The recommendation was to pull it out and it’s buddy on the other side. My last dentist has said the same, but is never went back. Fear. It was easier to run.

On Tuesday this week it was time to stop running. I stepped up to the surgery again to have the offending teeth removed. It went well. There was NO pain. I couldn’t believe it. I practically sobbed when it was over, so great was the relief.

It is a testament to the power of fear. What else can I handle that fear had stopped me from taking on?

Obviously it is back now. Phew.