One of the best ways to lift your all-round business performance is to develop a constant awareness that other people are not you.

It’s so valuable across lots of essential areas: management, sales, marketing, advising clients, and more.

The more you understand people, the better you get.

Yet so much business behaviour is driven by the idea that everyone thinks the same as you.

The path to success comes from embracing the differences between you, your staff and your customers.

Salespeople get an unfair amount of stick for all the usual stereotypes.

I’ve had a window into their world for the last few weeks, thanks to my own stubborn pig-headedness, and frankly salespeople earn whatever they’re paid and more.

The other episode I refer to here: The worst customer service line I've heard in my life.

Be afraid. That's all.

There's a lot spoke about personal brands and most of it is bullshit.

Here's a simple way to build a personal brand that will serve you well for the rest of your working life.

I very rarely lose it in phone conversations. But this was straight-up the most obnoxious thing I've ever heard from a customer service rep.

From an organisation I've personally spent about $50K a year with more than a decade.

Hear the line, and find out why I am a time management guru's worst nightmare.

Plus a motto: don’t be like Alan Joyce, soon to be ex-Qantas CEO.

* No get rich quick schemes here, this is a long game.

A dirty habit that some bosses have is forcing their workforce into casual employment.

The fact that it’s bad for those staff is no concern at all to some bosses. Which is why I’m writing on why it’s also bad for businesses.

If your business involves any contact between customers and your people, permanently-employed people will outperform casuals almost every time.

People who feel valued outperform people who don’t. Here's the how and why of making more profit in the long term.

The tax office stuff I refer to is here: https://www.ato.gov.au/business/employee-or-contractor/how-to-work-it-out--employee-or-contractor/

A question to ask when you communicate with clients is: does this thing I'm saying imply they’re complete idiots?

This week, a look at one of those things that lot of companies do.

How it's an opportunity for your smaller, nicer business.

And one essential question to ask your customers that'll transform your business over time.

We all know that gender diversity is good for your business.

It's much easier in some industries, not so much when you're in a traditionally male sector where there's lots of heavy lifting, nightmarish hours and other factors that discourage many women.

But we've made some inroads on that lately and have increased our number of female frontline tech people.

Learn how that happened in this week's episode. Which makes more sense if you look at the photo I'm talking about, it's here https://ianwhitworth.net/the-long-road-to-gender-balance-in-blokey-industries/

I’m on quite the high right now. More on that later in the story, but over to

Do you want your people to work as a motivated team, or as a detached collection of individuals?

And do you want them to be happy?

Here's a basic thing we did that really delivered on the staff morale front.