It’s my 53rd birthday today – and as part of my celebrations I popped in to see my hairdresser yesterday for a post-holiday scalping. I’ve written and spoken about Ross Jackson before – impressed that he had the courage to buy a Tony & Guy franchise (in Falmouth) at the age of 22 (with a
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A brief moment of e-craziness during a meeting today (I must have been wandering) when I looked at how many emails I write and send. The current answer is that I am averaging 7,000 per annum. I’m just interested to know whether that’s a lot more or less than anyone else?

She (L) is one-half of a husband and wife team. He (M) is the dentist and she has been the “practice manager” for some years – they are just about to complete the sale of the practice to two associates. When the sale is concluded and after a sabbatical year, they will be creating a
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I’m going to say something controversial. I’ve just spent 2 weeks in Greece – travel including the sophistication of Athens to the relatively primitive facilities of one of the smallest Ionian islands, Ithaca. Everywhere, the customer service has been excellent, the English either faultless or well-spoken, the prices reasonable, the quality first-class. You would expect
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In about 4 hours I’ll be leaving for a 2-week vacation and the laptop will be staying in the UK. Reflecting on the last 5 days of business activity it has been a time of deep thinking personally and careful listening to what Team CB and others have told me about their perceptions around my
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My conversations with Simon Hocken continued yesterday and there was a particular focus on the way in which I organise my time. Ever since I discovered Dan Sullivan’s “Entreprenuerial Time System”, I have planned my year’s a year in advance, taking time every August to create a wall-planner, a spreadsheet and then an Outlook calendar
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An interesting post in his own blog by my client and friend Simon Reilly over in Vancouver about the benefits of our coaching call on Tuesday. Which is ironic because yesterday I asked my good friend Simon Hocken to coach me on my business planning for the next 12 months. There is a danger that
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Call-in day on Tuesday and I decided to keep a log of the questions my clients were asking me. Here they are: How much do I invest in marketing – 5%/10%? Can you recommend a great dental web site to look at – www.bowlanedental.com I’m making progress in creating a franchise prototype – how do
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I mentioned last week that our cash flows were heading in the wrong direction. At Monday’s management meeting Bonnie presented me with an up to date “mother of all spreadsheets” (MOAS – that’s what we call it), showing a £50,000 deficit in cash flow before 31st December 2006. Given that one of my principle goals
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Over lunch at the Belfast Hilton on Wednesday, I was chatting with Sian, the young lady who had checked us in to the hotel the previous evening. I asked her what training Hilton had provided when she joined the company as a receptionist. “The first week was at a central training location in Wembley” she
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