I’ve watched with interest the controversy in recent weeks regarding Mark Zuckerberg’s continued wearing of ‘hoodies’ during the lead up to the IPO of Facebook. The question was raised – is what he chose to wear disrespectful to financial institutions? I choose to wear red in my capacity as Founding Director of RedBalloon – some would say that it has become my ‘trade mark’. (Quite frankly it makes it really easy to shop for work clothes – it is simply…
Author Archives: Naomi Simson
Coming up this week 21 May 2012
Not sure exactly where last weeks blog post on ‘Coming Up this week’ went. I was in Sydney all week and I had a highly productive week as we head towards the end of the financial year. There was my philanthropic activities – Best Buddies board meeting – Sydney Sings session (more welcome – Tuesday nights from 5.30 – 7.00) and also attending the Olympic Team Farewell dinner which is a fundraising event. In addition we had Bronwyn Sheehan –…
Customer Intimacy
Sometimes all the intention in the world – still means that a customer does not have a good interaction. The question I pose is can we please all the people all the time? I was saddened by an email I received directly from a customer this week – accusing RedBalloon of not listening….. I reviewed all his correspondence, we had clearly acknowledged each of his concerns and offered suggestions, hence I could see that the RedBalloon team member had listened….
Trust takes Time
I have teenagers – their friends are beginning to get part time jobs… I am fascinated to watch them learn and discover the world of work. The experience that they have with these businesses my well determine what ‘work’ looks like for them. Trust is paramount in every employment relationship – without it, it is really difficult to achieve great things. So imagine a young person – his first work experience job – 5 days in total he has been…
Coming up this week 7 May 2012
Last week I learned a lot – things about mobile and eCommerce. I finished reading Abundance by Diamandis and Kotler… which I found completely inspiring. We had our company meeting which was hosted by the marketing team – and they chose a ‘Thank you’ theme… letting each team know how we all contribute to our marketing effort. (It gave me a chance to talk about the upcoming book.) I did a presentation to RAMs and met the CEO, Melos Sulicich…
The state of eCommerce in Australia
I attended a eBusiness round table this week… below is a list of things that I gleaned from the presentations LoSoMo = the trend towards Local Social and Mobile The internet represents a $50b contribution to GDP in Australia (the same size as iron ore exports. 36.7% of all music sales are now done online The Google campaign with MYOB ‘Getting Aussie Businesses Online’ was considered a success – now about 50% of all Australian small businesses have an internet…
Coming up this week 30 April 2012
Last week was too busy to even write what was coming up – apart from all the great RedBalloon events and meetings, we held the inaugural mentoring weekend in the Blue Mountains. Over the 2 days and three nights we worked through the ‘Entrepreneurial Cookbook’, had one on one sessions and challenged each other to ‘what could the world look like’. I completely enjoyed getting to know – and experience the thrill of being inside other businesses. I was truly…
Luddites versus common sense
Townsville is a long way physically from where I sit at my workplace in Sydney – but when I read a news article headed ‘Comments on Women create Furor’ which appeared in the Townsville Bulletin – I thought it is not just 2000kms away – more like a century a way. “TOWNSVILLE identity Max Tomlinson is in hot water after declaring most women do not possess the drive and determination men ‘innately’ have.” There are 7 billion people on the…
Advice to Gerry – you can’t take it with you
I was chatting with a friend yesterday and we were talking about how to teach our children the value of money. I remembered a presentation I attended years ago when the woman likened money to water… it has a need to flow – there is clean money and dirty money, sometimes it get’s damned up – but spread freely and evenly allows the world to prosper. My friend said that he has set aside some money to support community programs…
Coming up this week 16 April 2012
I have really appreciated the flexibility that I have in my life when it comes to school holidays over the last two weeks. My daughter came to the office for a few days to assist me transfer all the business cards I have collected to LinkedIn invitations. During the two weeks I was able to mix and match – working at odd times to ensure I had time to be with my fast growing teenagers. It did make me lament…
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...
