You know what will keep you from being replaced by software? Ideas. Robots can do what they’re told at vast, efficient scale but they don’t break any new ground.

They can’t come up with thoughts on how to change things for the better.

You can. But good ideas are hard to have. 

I’m no genius, and I can’t tell you exactly where ideas come from.

But I have spent a few decades being paid to come up with original ideas to make clients money. On rigid deadlines.

I can tell you what’s worked, in terms of quantity and quality of ideas.

How I nearly torpedoed one of the biggest presentations of my life with an ill-advised joke.

A nightmare cautionary tale.

(No pets? Don’t worry it’s still mainly business tips this week.)

So, the story of how we got into a startup in the fun world of veterinary parasite prevention.

Time to share our investment secrets that are not really secret and are probably wrong for you.

Fleamail info here: https://www.fleamail.com.au/ 

Or if you're an organised person who can set calendar reminders get your parasite stuff in regular packs but either way get it done. Parasite illnesses are a terrible place for your pet to end up and so easy to avoid.

JobKeeper started as a great policy to help everyone survive COVD. Then it became a snouts-in-the-trough free-for-all, as Australia’s least-needy helped themselves to free money.

Via a system designed with all the clawback governance of a cruise-ship dessert buffet.

People like Solomon Lew and Gerry Harvey are ruining things for us regular businesses with their naked greed.

This week I look at the sheer scale of the scam, and the harm it’s bringing to you and your children for decades.

Don’t think this is some class warfare thing. I’m a keen capitalist. I’m good with elite private schools and nice boats if people earn them through hard work and smart ideas.

But I’m bothered as fuck by propping them up with unnecessary lottery-wins from everyday taxpayers.

Business needs to do better than this.

Want people to like your brand and spend money with you?

Just a few words can make that difference.

So many interactions with businesses are either a torrent of corporate verbal sludge, or nauseating self-praise.

This week, we look at a few examples of how a few good words can transform products and experiences.

And how it pays off, like the appliance company whose share price rose 1500% in a decade by practising 'user empathy'.

This week is about Australian basketball star Luc Longley, a fascinating peek behind the scenes of the elite performance life.

What happens when you team a chilled-out, empathetic guy with one of the most driven sportsmen in history, Michael Jordan?

It questions some of the usual assumptions about success.

For us un-athletic, regular-size people, it raises the question: are you holding yourself back by surrounding yourself by people just the same as you?

It's a story for quiet people who always get left out of things.

Dale Carnegie's How To Win Friends and Influence People is still a consistent Top 10 business book seller today, 85 years after it came out as the Great Depression took hold of America.

It's still a great book. 

Most importantly, it teaches us a valuable point: that human nature never changes.

Despite every tech bro telling you that all the old thinking is dead.

Tech platforms change. Human nature never does.

I was really hoping I wouldn’t be doing more lockdown stories in 2021. Yet from a rough check of my reader data, that’s where about 70% of us currently are.

Our businesses are among the worst-hit. Here are a few ways I stay sane and happy most of the time.

Business is full of success theoreticians who have not done the things.

In the same way that this week every couch dad has some common sense tips for athletes on where it all went wrong in their quest for Olympic gold.

You can have all the knowledge you like and it won’t affect your success or happiness a damn bit.

You must act. This week we talk about that gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it.

The story of our biggest-ever new business pitch, and how it came down to a coin-toss choice.

If you want to get anywhere, you have to be comfortable being yourself.

Almost all the people I know who have done really well in their fields have thought: I'm going to be me, and everyone can just deal with it.

That approach will bother some people. Good. It means other people will like you more.

It's so much better than nobody caring much either way. Be something. Your business will do better and your life will be so much more more rewarding.