If you don't prioritize your life, in 2017, someone else will. #HappyNewYear.

This is a great quote adapted from the wisdom of Greg McKeown. So my question to you – as my wife and daughter sleep soundly – giving me this hour to blog is…

What are your priorities for 2017?

AND….

What are you grateful for? 

This last point I will tackle first – as it’s more important. It’s key for your happiness and the happiness of your world.

What have you been actively grateful for in your life in 2016?

Many people have said 2016 is the worst year EVER. Actually...

the “ Fuck you, 2016” sentiment is likely just acollective feeling, borne by social media, that this was “ the worst year ever”

Which makes me think perhaps some people don’t write down what they are grateful for. And many people don't have a full grasp of the technological and demo-graphical changes that are causing this psychological magnification.

I urge you in 2017 to start doing just that. The former rather than the latter.

Write down a list of what you are grateful for.

Every 5 days or so I write down a list of what I am grateful for. What has gone well that day. And what I will do the day after.

Next year I will make this part of my daily ritual.

In 2016 I did it for over 3 months after a health scare.

Today I worked out the TOP 5 things this year I am grateful for.

They were in no particular order:

1.   My Health

2.   Our Wealth

3.   The Family

4.   My work

5.   Opportunities.

In 2016… I can sum up each relatively quickly….

My Health.

Simple but key to existence. On a basic level I am here. I exist free of known disease. My back is getting better and stronger. I am overweight and I am 40. I am not fit.

But apart from that I go to the gym a few times a week now. More than ever before.

Our Wealth:

Again, not much to report. Not that we don’t have much. We have lots.

As this infographic shows if you have the basics you are already richer than 85% of the world!

But I could do with a little more (couldn’t we all.)

And so this year I am going to investigate where it all goes and save more.

I will also invest. In myself and in tech companies I believe in. Including my own.

The Family:

I am very lucky. My daughter is fully fit, funny as f%^& and always pushing my buttons and boundaries. And those of my wife. And thinking about she does the same ;)

I am not as close as I would like to be to my closest family – due to my business being set up miles away from them. But my extended family are generous to a fault in both time and energy. Plus we (as a family) have all missed a few “bullets” from the big C this year and so I am continually grateful.

My Work:

Over the last year, I have produced more workshops and training sessions than I ever have done before. I have:

-      Produced workshops to over 200 young people. Creating courses for specialised audiences. That have been some of the most rewarding courses I have ever produced.

-      Worked with some BIG household names. Training them and their partners in social media marketing, social selling and digital marketing.

-      Passed a personal milestone in money made in a day. More than I have ever made before. Making more in one, very special, week than I made in a year - 20 years ago!

My Opportunities:

I am very lucky to life in Manchester, a city growing in its influences and confidence. And I am even luckier to live near the recently created Media City. This means my opportunities are well positioned so I have been lucky enough to:

-      Been asked to work on great tech space support ideas like LAUNCH at Media City.

-      Launch my own tech startup called FFFlip.

-      Be working with the UTC at Media City with their employment engagement piece.

-      Been on national radio stations as a digital marketing / social media expert. For all the UK countries – some of them a couple of times. Even been on Radio 4 and the World service!  

-      Been asked to be on the BBC breakfast show - many times. In fact, I have now been on TV more this year than all the appearances on any channel - in my whole life before. Have even done the newspaper reviews a couple of times... 

So what are my priorities for 2017?

And what are yours? Do you have areas of your life that you would like to improve? Or master? Or perhaps you want to start something completely new and go back to being a novice to improve yourself? 

All I can do is give you mine – which might surprise you.

My Priorities:

-       Either build my brand or forget about it. As going on the BBC is lovely but it only makes sense if part of a continued strategy to be famous. 

-       Be the change I want to see in the world. It’s time to influence people by being rather than just telling. Training others is great but I need to do more.

-       Get a handle on money (not saying this year has been bad it hasn’t.) But I really want money to start working for me rather than me just work for it.

-       Start working with other people more. Going solo as a consultant is heart breaking. Handing over projects and moments is soul destroying for me. 

-       Family first, business second. It’s time to be more patient with my own ideas and failures. Making myself mentally ill for a success that is eluding me - is blinding me of seeing the very success I already have achieved. 

Which is the point of this blog on the eve of 2017. 

To see what I have achieved. What you have achieved. Not necessarily what the world has achieved.

Happy New Year. 

Please do write down a few things that you are grateful for this year.

Perfect timing, my wife has just woken up - it's time to crack open the champagne ....

Synchro-destiny, events and other people's launches.

  Deepak Chopra, a very wise man, now in his 60s, believes we can all get what we want. All we have to do is learn about what he calls Synchro-destiny …

It's a book I am reading and re-reading at the moment as I learn how to meditate (no laughing please...) 

The key to Synchro-destiny, says Deepak, is asking questions out loud without trying to find answers. This, he says, allows the Universe to provide you with what he calls “Synchro-destiny”.

Indeed. What Carl Jung called “synchronicity” and James “Celestine Prophesy” Redfield called “meaningful coincidence”, Chopra has coined “Synchro-destiny”.

All people that I loved reading and reading about - and Deepak's version for some reason is the one that has called to me the most. 

He says it’s “the key to getting you whatever you want out of life”. It’s the way the ‘Universe’ (aka God, Source, the Field) helpfully points us all in the right direction, with gentle hints and nudges.

I am wondering if I had one of them yesterday when I attended a conference in Liverpool, the games expo at the #ifb2014, on the way I bumped into a past work colleauge who was 'just thinking' about me, and then at the event I met many people that seem to be placing me onto a road.. of launching my own mobile games development company again. 

On the way home, something I had been chatted about at the conference, as something that might happen in the future - suddenly arrived in my inbox - and this is a BIG company that I have no control over.... so a lovely moment of spooky timing once again. 

To finish the night I then went to another launch party in Manchester, this time for an organisation called Nothing but Epic, where again more and more things happened that seem to be "nudging" me... 

Anyhoo... back to Synchro destiny. 

WHAT IS SYNCHRO-DESTINY?

 Synchro-destiny is when things “fall into place”; when events seem “fated”; when you feel as though the Universe is “trying to tell you something” and you “go with the flow”.

I pop here an exert from  "The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire" by Deepak Chopra. © 2003 by Deepak Chopra. Excerpted by permission of Harmony, a division of Random House, Inc.

To remind myself of the potential power of it all. 
 

"Most of us go through life a little afraid, a little nervous, a little excited. We are like children playing hide and seek, wanting to be found, yet hoping we won’t be, biting our nails with anticipation. We worry when opportunity approaches a little too closely, and hide deeper in the shadows when fear overcomes us. This is no way to go through life. People who understand the true nature of reality, those whom some traditions call enlightened, lose all sense of fear or concern. All worry disappears. 

Once you understand the way life really works—the flow of energy, information, and intelligence that directs every moment—then you begin to see the amazing potential in that moment. Mundane things just don’t bother you anymore. You become lighthearted and full of joy. You also begin to encounter more and more coincidences in your life.

When you live your life with an appreciation of coincidences and their meanings, you connect with the underlying field of infinite possibilities. This is when the magic begins. This is a state I call synchrodestiny, in which it becomes possible to achieve the spontaneous fulfillment of our every desire. Synchrodestiny requires gaining access to a place deep within yourself, while at the same time awakening to the intricate dance of coincidences out in the physical world.

When a coincidence arises, don’t ignore it. Ask yourself, What is the message here? What is the significance of this? You don’t need to go digging for the answers. Ask the question, and the answers will emerge. They may arrive as a sudden insight, a spontaneous creative experience, or they may be something very different. 

Perhaps you will meet a person who is somehow related to the coincidence that occurred. An encounter, a relationship, a chance meeting, a situation, a circumstance will immediately give you a clue to its meaning. 

 “Oh, so that’s what it was all about!” "

Next time I bump into a friend on the train I haven't seen for ages - I will think again. 

And by the by, I now know what Nothing but Epic do - it's kinda cool and fits in very nicely to my new idea - nice one Synchro Destiny. 

Read more about Synchro Destiny at http://www.beliefnet.com/Wellness/2003/10/Coincidences-Clues-From-The-Universe-By-Deepak-Chopra.aspx#Q3D1TSw0MMvdI63o.99

How could use Disruptive Innovation to advance your thinking and your career?

A really nice blog from Jeff Shuey

Jeff is an expert in the Enterprise Content Management industry. He brings over 20 years of Channel Sales, Partner Marketing and Alliance expertise to audiences around the world in speaking engagements and via his writing. 

He has worked for Microsoft, Kodak, K2 and Gimmal. Follow him on Twitter @jshuey or on LinkedIn: in/JeffShuey

The blog is all about how could use Disruptive Innovation to advance your thinking and your career?

It's quite funny as without realising it - I have been doing this for years. Now it has a name - I will double my efforts by doing it consciously, see below ... 

"First, let’s think about what Disruptive Innovation (otherwise known as DI) means.

A disruptive innovation is an innovation that helps create a newmarket and value network ~via Wikipedia

Using DI thinking can certainly impact long held business models. A few business that have been impacted by Disruptive Innovations are listed below and followed by some of the businesses that stepped in to replace them.

• Tower Records –> Napster (now Pandora, Spotify, iTunes and many others)
• Blockbuster –> Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc.
• Travel Agents / Agencies –> Expedia, Kayak, et al

In the first example the original disruptive innovator, Napster, has already been DI’d by new entrants. Which only proves the point that DI thinking is an effort that never ends. Very much like your career. You need to constantly be on the lookout for a different way to do something.

You could argue that Uber - the DI of the taxi industry is going to be DI'ed by Justaxi - the Manchester cheeky up start / start up. 

However, the same principles can be applied to your Career Development. For example:

• In education: Instead of 4 years for university –> Consider MOOC’s.
• (Which is what I did to learn about gamifaction with University of Penn) 
• Instead of climbing the corporate ladder –> Create your own ladder
• (Which is what I am going to do with my own mobile games company) 
• In lieu of solving the same old problems –> Develop new ways of thinking that focus on higher value customer needs
• (Again my plan for mobile games - that can become gifts for people....) 

First, seek to understand the business you are really in. Make no mistake… a career is a business. It’s the most important business you will ever invest your time and energy into and you’ll be doing it for a long time. So, make the most of it.

To understand your business and to think a little more sideways you should start by asking different questions, experimenting with new models, and looking for different ways to add value in ways that have not been considered.

For example, if you went to school to become an engineer:

• What are you actually creating?
• What benefit are you really delivering?
• Are there different ways you can deliver value to the customer?

These same questions can be applied to almost any career. Whether you studied accounting, drama or zoology.

Seek to Out Innovate Yourself

This may seem like an oxymoron, but when you think about it you need stay ahead of the competition. Where the competition is not necessarily the person in the cube next to you. The competition is yourself. 

You want to do more tomorrow. But, you don’t always need to work longer hours. The old cliché is true here… you want to Work Smarter, Not Harder. When you do your ability to brand yourself as an innovator will be preceded by your ability to think differently, ask tough questions and deliver stellar results."

Wise words Jeff - which is why I popped then up here... 

Do you love your customers?

At Justaxi - the taxi comparison app for Manchester - we love our customers. 

We know we do and we plan to tell them this week coming up to Valentine's day. 

We also are asking them more and more about why they might love us back. but Seth Godin here has a good point about 'loving your customers....' 

There are two ways people think about this:

• We love our customers because they pay us money. (Inherent here is customers = money = love.)
• We love our customers, and sometimes there's a transaction.

The second is very different indeed from the first.

In the first case, customers are the means to an end, profit. In the second, the organization exists to serve customers, and profit is both an enabler and a possible side effect.

It's easy to argue that without compensation, there can be no service. Taking that to an extreme, though, working to maximize the short-term value of each transaction rarely scales. If you hoard information, for example, today your prospects will simply click and find it somewhere else. 

If you seek to charge above average prices for below average products, your customers will discover this, and let the world know. In a free market with plenty of information, it's very hard to succeed merely by loving the money your customers pay you.

Which is kinda why JusTaxi exists... we want to make sure people are getting true value for money in a world of symmetric buyer seller information. Just like Daniel Pink talks about. 

I think it's fascinating to note that some of the most successful organizations of our time got there by focusing obsessively on service, viewing compensation as an afterthought or a side effect. 

As marketing gets more and more expensive, it turns out that caring for people is a useful shortcut to trust, which leads to all the other things that a growing organization seeks.

Your customers can tell.

So the question for JusTaxi is how are they doing? Are they truly loving our customers? 

And perhaps more importantly - who really are our customers in the first place. The taxi drivers, the taxi operators, the taxi firms or the people booking a taxi in Manchester? 

Treat different people differently... but how?

We are just doing some customer research at Justaxi - a mobile phone app which helps you get the best price taxi service in Manchester - and so this blog by Seth Godin is rather well timed.

He has a great point - but in a way - he doesn't have the answer.

His point is treat different people differently.

"Don't teach your students as if they are a monolithic population of learners. They learn differently, they have different goals, different skills, different backgrounds.

Don't sell to your customers as if they are a fungible commodity, a walking ATM waiting for you to punch. Six of one are not like half a dozen of the other. They tell themselves different stories, have different needs and demand something different from you.

Different voters, different donors, different employees--we have the choice to treat them as individuals. Not only do they need different things, but they offer differing amounts of value to you and to your project.

The moment your policy interferes with their uniqueness, the policy has cost you something.

We used to have no choice. There was only one set of data for the student body, one way to put things on the shelf of the local market, one opportunity to talk to the entire audience...

One of the biggest unfilled promises of the digital age is the opportunity to go beyond demographics and census data. Personalization wasn't supposed to be a cleverly veiled way to chase prospects around the web, showing them the same spammy ad for the same lame stuff as everyone else sees.

No, it is a chance to differentiate at a human scale, to use behavior as the most important clue about what people want and more important, what they need.

It's a no-brainer to treat the quarterback of the football team differently from the head of the chess club. We treat our bank's biggest investor with more care than someone who merely wants to trade in a bag of pennies. Instead of reserving this special treatment for a few outliers, though, we ought to consider what happens if we offer it to all of those we value.

The long tail of everything means that there's something for everyone--a blog to read, a charity to donate to, a skill to learn. When you send everyone the same email, demand everyone learn from the same lesson plan or try to sell everyone the same service, you've missed it.

A very long time ago, shoe salespeople realized that shoes that don't fit are difficult to sell, regardless of what you've got in stock. Today, the people you serve are coming to realize that like their shoe size, their needs are different, regardless of what your urgent agenda might be.

So.... what does this mean for an taxi comparison app like JusTaxi - in truth - I don't know. I know that it means that perhaps we aim for personalization but how we do that - is in the hands of the techies - which means.... we will have to ask nicely and tread softly.

Perhaps bringing in the Facebook and social login's will make a difference as the more we know about each customer the more we can personalise the offer. But how much can you personalize the best price on a taxi in Manchester?  

20 business lessons you don’t want to learn the hard way but you probably will.

Inspired by an old colleague of mine - this is a post stolen from someone else (i.e. found on Forbes)

It's all about failure and lists 20 things you shouldn't have to learn the hard way. Ironically, I 'learned' a few of things when working with the colleague who inspired me - especially number 9 and 13.

A lot of the other ones, like the first one, I learned all by myself - the hard way.

I keep it here to remind myself - especially about number 20 - enjoy :) 

1.       You can’t do everything on your own. Building a team is essential because there are only so many hours one person can devote to a business. Exactly when you reach that limit depends on your other obligations. If you’re a young single person, you might be able to do everything for a year or two. But if you have a family, your dedication will eventually hurt those relationships. Build a team that can carry on when you’re not around.

2.      You may think your product is perfect, but your clients won’t. Listen to user feedback: Your opinion may not be the best one. The key takeaway here is “release your product early and release it often.” You won’t know if you have a great product until it’s in the field and users are beating it up. It’s like some of the contestants on American Idol. They think they’re talented, and their friends and family think so, too, but when they get on a bigger stage, their flaws become obvious.

3.      Do one thing really well. Entrepreneurs try to be everything to everyone, but it’s hard to be the store that sells bait and baby toys and vintage Beatles albums. Specialize, and you can charge for what you do provide. That said, if there is a skill or service that would make your core product better, provide it.

4.      Get paid before you hand over a project to a client. This is especially important if you provide a service. Once you turn over that contract or website or design project, you won’t have much bargaining power. When I was a graphic designer, I watermarked all my projects and hosted websites on a private domain until the bill was paid.

5.      Undercharging is not sustainable. You think, “I don’t need to charge $150 an hour, I can charge $70 and make way more than I was making as an employee!” But you might find out a short time later that your “great” rate is unsustainable. By the time you pay taxes, employees, business licenses, insurance, etc., that $150/hour is looking more realistic. Compete on quality, expertise and your niche focus (see #3) instead of price. When competing on price alone, the clients who are price-shopping will always leave for the person or company that undercuts you.

6.      Patience and flexibility help you survive the lean times. ShortStack started out as a side project at my web and graphic design studio. We weren’t a software development studio, but when a client asked us for a software product, we didn’t say no. We were patient, scaled slowly — partly out of necessity — and it allowed me to build with company without debt.

7.      Build for your actual market. All of my software-building experience so far has been in answer to a demand. It is purely opportunistic. If you’re an app developer and you think “Wow, I think xx industry could use xx,” you might be disappointed. Put another way: I would never start a restaurant without having worked in one…for a long time!

8.     Never enter a partnership without a buy/sell agreement. No matter how well you think you know someone, you just don’t know when he or she will want to retire or do something else. Even if it’s on amicable terms, know how you can get rid of one another when it’s time for one of you to move on.

9.      Be grateful. Appreciate loyal customers who show you there is a demand for what you do. There is no dollar amount you can put on brand advocates. Good will translates to loyal customers.

10.  Look after those who look after you.  ShortStack, who wrote this piece over referral’s  but it’s very much under the radar. They want people to recommend the product because they like it, not because they’ll say anything for a dollar. If they notice someone said nice things about them publicly, they might send them a t-shirt as a thank you. If they do it again and again, they might say, “Hey, you should become a referrer and earn a percentage of the business you send our way.”

11.   It’s not a sale until it’s paid for. This sounds obvious, but I’ve known small business owners who get very excited about orders and/or meetings with prospective clients. But until the money for those products or services is in the bank, it doesn’t count.

12.  You’ll make more money being “wrong” than proving you are right. Rather than fight with an unhappy customer and say, “You’re using it incorrectly,” or “You don’t know enough CSS to use our product,” we just refund their money. In the long run, these people consume so much of the support team’s time and energy that it’s more cost effective this way. They’re not our ideal client, and that’s OK.

13.  People don’t leave companies — they leave management. This lesson goes for both employees and customers. A manager will lose staff if the employees think they’re not being listened to or valued. Customers will stop using your products or services if they are dissatisfied with them. The quality and reliability of your products and services is a reflection of management.

14.  The way you present your business should be a reflection of your audience. If you have serious clients, be serious. If you have hip, fun-loving clients, have a sense of humor. You have to find your niche and build your content to suit them. For example Constant Contact and MailChimp do essentially the same thing, but their marketing content reflects very different client bases. (Ed. Something we have to think about more at Justaxi - a mobile app which helps people get the best taxi price... we have many competitors but hopefully not for the new market we are aiming at with our new marketing.)

15.   Agree on scope in advance. Have a clear contract before work begins. Once a project goes beyond the documented plan, charge for it. If you agreed to build a website with 10 pages, but soon the site is 20 pages, the client should pay you for them. If your contract makes that clear at the outset, it is easier to control scope creep.

16.  If your company sells a variety of products, make sure you know how to use/operate every single one of them. It might sound like a tall order — depending on how many products your company sells — but learning to use what your company sells will help you look at things with fresh eyes.

17.   When you think you’ve tested your product enough, test it some more. Never release a product until it has been tested and tested and tested by people who don’t work for you. 

 

18.  Understand how social media networks work. When Twitter was first available for businesses, I’d see people use it like an ad in a newspaper. If you go on a channel and use it the wrong way, it could do more long-term harm than good.

19.  Save up. You can operate at a loss for a number of years but you can only run out of cash once. Have a rainy day fund that has at least two or three months’ operating costs in it. And have a line of credit available, even if you don’t plan to use it. Having a CPA look at your books once a quarter is also a must. (Ed. I do it daily for JusTaxi - but we are a mobile app so it might be different for everyone else.)

20. Always let the CFO pay for drinks. Cheers!

 The last one I managed to do just before I left my last client - but it was over Christmas so I cheated a little ;)