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
Author Archives: naomisimson
Good Old Fashioned Giggle
I often have a good giggle with audiences, when I'm presenting, about what it was like working ‘last century’. The funny thing is that in just a decade, many of the practices seem completely archaic.. how did we cope? We had telephones that you would dial, and then wait after each number you dialled for [...]
Posted in Lessons Learned Tagged Business Growth, Entrepreneurial Journey, Female Entrepreneur, productivity Leave a comment
Recognition Every Day… (RED)
At RedBalloon we talk about recognition all the time, not only what we do at work, but what we are learning from our clients. Matt the RedBalloon head of corporate has put 52 recognition ideas into a handy little business card size piece. It is really quite fun – filled with great suggestions of how [...]
Conflict is not all bad.
People sometimes think that being a part of a best place to work means that it is party time all the time. That’s not the case. Sure we work hard and play hard, but really what we do is challenge each other to greatness. We know that to be challenged can also be truly rewarding.
It [...]
Looking for inspiration
Facing a blank page and a lack of creativity and on deadline for a blog… I always ask myself the question what is going on for me now? Is it interesting for anyone else? What am I learning, discovering, being inspired by that could assist others?
The reality is that at the moment the number one [...]
Posted in Input Please Tagged Entrepreneurial Journey, Female Entrepreneur, Professional Speaker Leave a comment
I have a ’stimulus-response’ addiction… you might too
Andrew May poses the question ‘What does the perfect week look like?’. Is it an 8 day week, if you had an extra day what would you do with it? Apparently 63% of Australian workers are sleep deprived... (not me since I got my new sleep cycle app for my iphone). It is much harder [...]
Posted in Lessons Learned, Uncategorized Tagged Female Entrepreneur, Managers at work, productivity, Work life balance Leave a comment
What does disengagement look like
Thank you to Bruce Morton of Talent2 for this very illustrative image of disengagement. Loved it. Gallup tells us that it takes six engaged employees to fix up the mess made by disengaged staff. In some instances it is clearly more.
Zip up your purpose
RedBalloon was acknowledged by Hewitt as one of only five employers to be accredited best places to work in 2009 - I have had interesting discussions with the people from Hewitt. They have shared much of the research outcomes with us. I like hearing about the theory about why we have achieved such a high [...]
Better out than in.
I was chatting with a friend this morning who said that he had three of his team resign in the last week. He asked ‘That’s not good is it?’
On the surface we look at the cost of replacing them and all the history and experience that they depart with, and of course we say - [...]
Teaching an Old Dog new tricks.