I was at the Ernst Young Entrepreneur of the Year National Awards last night….and now I have a new business idea… bottled energy. If could harness the excitement in the room. The positive energy…makes you believe that you can do anything. The stories of these finalists…. none of them have had an easy ride. But all of them stay absolutely true to their vision – and they never give up. It is clear – the leadership is about the future,…
Monthly Archives: November 2008
Psychological Recession
I don’t know about you but I’m pretty confused… some days all the news reports are great ‘Australia is robust and will weather the storm’ other days it is all gloom and doom. The reality is that no one really knows – how deep, how far and for how long. The only thing we know is that our financial systems are about to change – forever. The way financial institutions historically have incentivized people with massive bonuses for structuring and…
Better than Cash…
We’ve seen the results at RedBalloon – according to our recent Hewitt Employee Engagement score card – the 97% we received is far above the Australian average of 54%. Like any growing business – we don’t have cash to splash… it is not cash that has caused this phenomena. We practice what we preach here, but when I read a recent Globoforce report…. and they were saying the same thing. A simple authentic ‘Thank you’ can deliver more to your…
When your back is against the wall… it’s time to innovate.
As I accepted the NSW Telstra Business Womens award for innovation presented by Nokia- I took to the podium to share where I thought innovation comes from. I shared that GoDo.com.au – the technology that we built to aggregate activity suppliers, which then we deliver via major tourism websites such as Virgin Blue, Webjet, and Lonely Planet to customers. This was the innovation that we entered as part of the awards. Briefly I spoke of ‘Love Loath Lists’ and how…
Speechless.
It is not often that I am short for words. I love to talk and I rarely (if ever) get nervous or flustered when speaking to large groups. Today lunch time was a whole new experience. I was a finalist in the NSW Telstra Business Womens Awards in two categories, Business Owner and also Innovation. At the briefing for finalists the night before – I heard from past winners how important it was to prepare a couple of speeches in…
The Christmas Crunch
I was rushing to a meeting yesterday in the Sydney CBD – and I was waiting at the pedestrian lights to cross the road. Three people in suits and in their mid thirties were having an animated conversation – they had just left the building on our right. Person One said “We should be paid overtime for the amount of work we are asked to do.” Person Two responded “That’s what our Christmas bonus is for – to cover all…
The ‘let’s go for it’ gene.
The whole concept of Entrepreneurship is interesting. Why does one person risk it all to do something differently – whilst another dreams but never acts, and yet another person could think of nothing worse than running their own show. I have just come back from an Entrepreneur Organization (EO) conference in Singapore. The buzz in the room was electric and exciting. Each talking on top of each other about the opportunities that could arise as a result of a slow…
Five Steps to employee engagement in tougher times
I was asked to respond to this question following the Australian HR awards a few weeks ago. I thought I would share my ideas further. "We have a limited budget around rewards and incentives, and want to maximise this as much as we can in order to improve employee engagement. How much do we really need to spend per employee to get maximum engagement?" It’s not the size of the prize it’s what you do with it that makes the…
Imagine running a business based on fun - that's what I decided to try when I left a very serious corporate career in marketing to set up RedBalloon...
Advertising has its place…
If you’ve heard me speak – you know I am quite open about why I believe our business continues to grow rapidly… even though advertising has not been part of the marketing mix. We just completed some brand research with Nielsen and found that there is a 32% unprompted brand recall for RedBalloon… which is pretty amazing given that when I ask audiences what advertising they have seen – very few hands go up. (My marketing manager hates me asking…