Overview
From a very serious corporate career in marketing to creating a business based on fun RedBalloon, this is my journey. In this blog I share what it takes to be an entrepreneur and what I have learned - warts and all. I am also the author of I want what she is having which chronicles the first five years of building of a fast growing business.
Very proud to be awarded National Telstra Business Womens Award for 2008 in the Nokia Innovation Catogory
RedBalloon Team Blog
Monthly Archives: June 2009
Employee engagement in the time of pay freezes.
You can't pick up a paper or business publication without reading about job losses and pay freezes…
British Airways has asked it's employees to go without pay for a month… Telstra has frozen it's top execs' pay. 51% of privately held businesses have frozen salaries. 44% of Telco's have pay freezes and 33% of IT companies. [...]
Posted in Lessons Learned Leave a comment
Standing out by being yourself
I wrote a blog back in 2006 about 'The Story of Johnny the Bagger'. A simple tale about being ourselves when we are with our customers - and how easy it can be to add value to them. It is great to be reminded that it is the simple things that can make the biggest [...]
Posted in Lessons Learned 1 Comment
The best job in Australia..interested?
People often ask me whether as Chief Experience Officer I get to try all the experiences. It is not actually physically possible because we have more than 2500 experiences now listed… and we publish up to 50 new every month. That would be more than one a day.
There is one role that does get to [...]
Posted in Input Please 1 Comment
The end is nigh? and other happy thoughts
I ponder how best to say 'thanks for playing' as the financial year draws to a close. Leadership teams are frantically putting the finishing touches on the strategic plan for the year to come, employees and managers are getting ready for performance reviews, the sales and marketing bods are giving one last big push to [...]
Posted in Reward & Recognition Leave a comment
Four top future trends
Just listening to Richard Watson of nowandnext.com – the Futurologist who wrote Future Files.
First of all I like a bloke who will make up words to suit the occasion (see some of them below). Secondly who will poke fun about his own profession and thirdly who, when asked what is the future of industrial [...]
Posted in Lessons Learned Leave a comment
It’s time to plan for an exciting year.
It's planning and review season at RedBalloon - everything seems to happen at this time of year. And this year it will be tougher to produce the operational plan when we still don't know how the economy will impact us.
I'd like to think that the planning process is more than a bunch of 'guesstimates'. I've [...]
Posted in General Leave a comment
Are we being un-Australian about the GFC?
Every couple of months RedBalloon sends a survey to it's customers on how employees are feeling about a particular workplace issue. We've dubbed it the Pleasure Survey. This time we wanted to put aside all the doom and gloom in the news and ask workers of all ages their view of the GFC
Well our [...]
Posted in Interesting Numbers Leave a comment
Why do women need their own awards anyway.
Last year I was (and the RedBalloon team) honored being named winner National Telstra Business Womens Awards - Innovation - at the event I committed to be a great ambassador for the awards 'and do them proud'. (speech below). So now it is time to nominate those women who you see who are up to [...]
Which traits get you ‘ahead’ in business
The interview for Marie Claire asked such a variety of questions..the answers might be of interest.
What one trait has helped you most in business?
Knowing what I stand for, my values and those of the people around me…. People can copy what you do but they cannot copy who you are or the relationships you [...]
Posted in Articles Leave a comment
A bit of emotion brings values to life.