Do me a favour, I want you to figure out the answer to the sum: 4 + 7? You’ve got the answer? That’s great, keep hold of it. Most of you might have performed the addition in your head – the way that we learn to do small sums at the lowest level of primary

Shouldn’t we all pursue a lifetime of excellence? American writer on business practises, Tom Peters, certainly thinks so. Following on from his 1982 international best seller ‘In Search of Excellence’ comes ‘The Excellence Dividend’. Tom sees it as a kinda sequel, and the underlying message is still the same, we must seek excellence to survive.

What’s tough love in business context? Think of Sir Alex Ferguson (which is hard for me as I’m a Liverpool fan) who personified it for me. Ferguson managed Manchester United for an amazing 26 years, residing over the clubs most successful period, and recognised by many as the best football manager ever. Under his stewardship

Most would see the ancient Roman military as one of the most dominant military forces in history… With an unparalleled force of over 300,000, the Romans laid siege to the Mediterranean, effectively taking over the entire basin. With their territory stretching far into Spain, the British Isles and Egypt and having conquered dominant players like

Patrick Bet-David has an amazing story… Aged 10 his parents fled Iran for the U.S. as refugees during the Iranian revolution. Growing up in a foreign country was tough, and with Patrick never obtaining a college degree, he joined the U.S. military, serving in the 101st Airborne. On leaving the army he went on to

When I was in my late teens, I was small and skinny, a stiff breeze would have knocked me over… Although I couldn’t do much about being small (still am), I could do something about being skinny. So, I joined the local gym. I was in awe of the perfectly toned bodies lifting heavy weights

The less your business depends on you, the more valuable it’s likely to be… And there’s likely to be no exit opportunity if the business relies on you to operate. Microsoft are a company that breeds intrapreneurs, giving their team autonomy to help the company grow, and who are rewarded based upon Microsoft’s financial success.

Is it the end of traditional marketing? Carlos Gil certainly thinks so, as explained in his 2020 book ‘The End of Marketing’. It’s an interesting read, with a core message of creating personal brands to market your organisation across social media platforms. Gil believes not only is traditional marketing dead, brand-marketing is also on the

The podcasting experience might just be the next big wave in business… Funnily enough, podcasting got its name from the iPod – the first mobile platform where ‘audio-blogs’ could be downloaded and listened to. Journalist Ben Hammersly coined the term ‘podcast’ back in 2004 and since around that time- when podcasts were made available on

Whilst delivering we dropped in to see how our mental health charity partner Shiva Trust, were getting on with the latest 1,000 tree planting. We found Anand and the team planting trees knee deep in mud, during a Rossendalian downpour. Anand told me: “These 2 paddocks had our pigs in them, but we’re moving them