The world mourns the passing of Nelson Mandela

I woke this morning to learn that Nelson Mandela had died in his Houghton home at the age of 95.

I felt a hammer blow to my life.  Why should that be? I live a long, long way away here in Australia.

In  late 1986, I too began my Long Walk to Freedom.

I grew up in South Africa as the 3rd son of an immigrant English family. I did not know it at the time but it was a privileged upbringing. My father worked hard to build our future and to build the future of South Africans as an entrepreneur and as pioneer building new industries. I knew very little about what was happening in the country other than what the newspapers told us and the radio made us believe. There was no TV until 1975.  I was too young to know about Sharpeville but I do remember the outrage at the Park Station bombings and the headlines around the Rivonia trial in 1963 and 1964.

At the age of 18, I was conscripted into the South African Defence Force to complete 12 months of National Service, a full 10 years after the Park Station bombing and the end of the Rivonia trial. My role was to become a defender of the homeland as a soldier. It was tough being an Englishman in an Afrikaner army - the bullying bothers me to this day still. In that time I spent 3 months on operational duty on the Angola-South West Africa (now Namibia) border. Our role was more a role of "hearts and minds' with the local inhabitants than anything else as there was no insurgency activity in our sector at the time. I was lucky to leave the border zone before the South African invasion of Angola to intervene in their civil war later in 1975. The words of the song go "I was only 19" - I celebrated by 19th birthday in that zone. That was not the end of military service for me - I was required to continue doing camps for a further 720 days over the next 10 years. I did about half of those in training roles and in guard camp roles. For the most part, I kept deferring them by studying, first full time and then part time (though attendance at lectures was a requirement to win deferments).

I really started to notice what was going on during my time at the University of Cape Town - in 1976 the world we knew erupted with the riots in Soweto on June 16. The state of unease kept boiling and I do recall the day the South African Police broke up demonstrations on the UCT campus in 1978. I recall the strike by students in 1980 - I was working as a graduate assistant and was required to work - I seem to think the police were on campus those days too.  As each year went by, the pressure of life under the apartheid government seemed to build and the willingness to impose ever increasing levels of repression just seemed to grow. First we had to listen to John Vorster berating us and then it was the turn of PW Botha, wagging his finger while he did the same. As a lawyer, it was tough to see our freedoms being eroded every day - I can only imagine how it felt to be in the majority.  Come late 1986, it was becoming clear to me that my role as a solider was being changed from defender of borders to policeman in the townships.

What choices did I have? Do the camps. Keep studying. Refuse the camps. Leave.

As a lawyer I could not switch roles to repress a people whose rights were being repressed. I had already compiled 4 qualifications - studying was over. My friend Peter had already served 3 sentences in prison for refusing to do his camps - ten years in jail by the time he was 30. Not exactly top of one's ideal choices. I came home from work one day and told my then-wife that I had booked my flight out. I had already (in 1978) surrendered my South African citizenship in the offices of an officious Mr Viljoen in the Department of Home Affairs and prevailed upon him to grant me a return visa so I could leave.  I remember that meeting well - he says, "I can tear up your British passport every day" and I said, "I can walk to the British Embassy and get another one, every day". On February 13, 1987 I departed Jan Smuts airport headed to a new world with no job and GBP1,500 in my pocket. My 3 month deployment as a solider in Soweto to suppress the riots which were a daily happening was due to begin on February 14. My wife would sell the house and follow later. She would hand over my military gear at the headquarters of the Rand Light Infantry in Johannesburg. "Where is he?" "I do not know. All I know is he has gone" "Fine, sign here".

Little did I know was that the first meetings between the African National Congress and the Government had taken place in Lusaka, Zambia about the time I was booking that flight. Little did I know that talks about talks became talks and the journey to the momentous election of 1994 had begun as South Africa too began its walk to freedom.

I have been lucky to have been back to work in post-apartheid South Africa and to continue my contribution to building and rebuilding the country. It has been a revelation to see the changes in the society to a more tolerant society (especially among younger people).

Why then Nelson Mandela's passing hit me like a hammer blow this morning?  Was it the reflections of decisions made and opportunities missed? Was it the nagging doubt about the true legacy he has left in the country? Was it the fear for my friends and family who still live there? My life has been deeply touched by the changes in the country - Tim Chadwick dead in an accident in 1975 on operational service; Leroy Mbili studying by candlelight while I lived in luxury; Gen Holdridge (my mother-in-law) murdered in her house in Cape Town at the age of 93 in 2006; David Rattray (a school friend and a man of Africa) murdered on Australia Day, 2007 in Zululand;  Beresford Jobling (my best friend at school and my soul mate and a man rooted in Africa as a descendant of a British soldier and a Voortrekker leader) murdered on his farm outside Pretoria in 2012 followed in weeks by the murders of Anne and Shawn, friends of friends. There is a dark foreboding in Africa that lurks always.

I hope only that South Africans remember this day and forever the legacy of Nelson Mandela - a legacy of forgiveness and reconciliation, a legacy of courage and fortitude, a legacy of smiling and compassion and a legacy of the amazing power of the extended African family - everyone is your brother.

I salute you and I pray for your countrymen with a heavy heart.

Greatness comes from Choice - Be Ready - Guest blog

In my last blog, I did something new - I featured a guest blog from Don Maruska and Jay Perry about their new book, Take Charge of Your Talent.  This time I have a chance to do the same thing again - a guest blog about an exciting new book. As last time, I will preface the guest blog with a little more of my story. 

You will recall that a core part of my journey as a management consultant was with McKinsey & Company in London followed by the building of Mitchell Madison Group (MMG) to compete with McKinsey. I also told you that my time at McKinsey was not the easiest time in the world and that MMG was a totally different story.  A big part of that MMG difference is that we were building our own firm and like good entrepreneurs were able to do things our competitors just could not and did not do. We were "out of the box" most of the time. It was an amazing time and we did some pretty amazing things. 

This introduction to my guest blog is not about that part of the story - it is about my story. McKinsey & Company is a remarkable collection of the best brains the world can muster. Getting in was a big deal. Getting a designation as an Engagement Manager was a big deal. Getting a designation as a Senior Engagement Manager was also a big deal as it showed that one was able to manage more than one team at a time and also manage more than one client relationship. The horrible truth is I was asked to leave - after six years the collective view was that I was never going to be successful as a McKinsey Partner or Principal. That decision was something of a shock to me as I thought I was tracking well and had certainly outlasted the average tenure of around three years. 

My journey at Mitchell Madison Group seemed to be quite different. I also spent 6 years and had great success as a founding Partner. We were very busy building our business and did not think too hard about what we were each contributing to the story. There is no doubt that I was doing something quite different - perhaps because I too needed to be free of the shackles of McKinsey & Co. 

There are a number of things that stand out for me. 

1. I never had trouble staffing my teams and for a London-based business I had teams working in Switzerland, in Greece, in South Africa, in France and Spain and Germany. 
2. We ran a mentor program and I was always in demand to be a mentor, especially by our female consultants. 
3. I had a few clients make big project awards conditional upon me dedicating a significant slice of time to the projects and were happy to pay the very high per diems.
4.  I was asked to run the European sales effort, and I will be the first to admit that sales is not my strength. 

Reading my guest's book brought it home to me. As a leader, I had followers. People followed me because I put them first - "put yourself in the other person's shoes or sit on their side of the desk", I used to say. I was always searching out a better way - my mantra is "the day you stop learning is the day you start dying". I was never afraid to take action. "Bring me opportunities not problems", I would say.   My guest blogger's book crystallised for me why I had success at Mitchell Madison Group and not at McKinsey & Co. McKinsey were preoccupied with the 10% of leadership skill that lies above the waterline and at MMG we allowed our people to grow the 90% of leadership character below the waterline. We grew some great leaders.

My guest blogger may not be a stranger to you. He began writing about a decade ago when he teamed up with Ken Blanchard to write The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do. In 2011 he released The Secret of Teams outlining the key principles that enable some teams to outperform the all the rest. Great Leaders Grow: Becoming a Leader for Life came next in 2011. I bring you Mark Miller, a speaker on leadership around the world and a chicken seller of note having led teams in Chick-fil-A for over 35 years, which has steadily grown to become the second largest quick-service chicken restaurant chain in the United States, with over 1,700 locations in 39 states and Washington, D.C.

Mark has launched his new book The Heart of Leadership: Becoming a Leader People Want to Follow this week.Thanks for sharing your blog with my readers and I start with one of my favourite lines from the book:

 THE HEART OF LEADERSHIP: HUNGER FOR WISDOM

I believe there are five core leadership character traits that set leaders apart from those they lead. Unlike more common character traits like integrity, honesty and loyalty, the traits I’m referring to are what enable a leader to lead. They shape who the leader is as a person and also drive their day-to-day actions. Today, let’s go a little deeper on one of those traits - Hunger for Wisdom.

The best leaders are wise – some are wise beyond their years. Wisdom is the intangible ingredient that enables leaders to make good decisions in challenging or uncertain circumstances.

As you know, for a leader, the way forward is often unclear. Rarely do leaders have all the facts or complete mastery of the subject when a decision needs to be made. In other situations, a leader must choose between conflicting priorities or between multiple, good options. Wisdom allows a leader to consistently make good choices.

How can you and I grow in wisdom? Here are four ideas…

Embrace our Need for Wisdom. Arrogance and pride derail the career of many leaders. If we lose sight of our need for wisdom, we are doomed as a leader. As Toynbee discovered when studying the rise and fall of civilizations, one of the factors that repeatedly triggered demise was the application of yesterday’s answers to today’s questions. The same is true for organizations. This behavior is fueled by leaders who feel they’ve already got all the wisdom they need.

Seek Feedback and Counsel. When we seek feedback and the advice of others, we are on the path to wisdom. However, we need to understand the difference between the two – feedback is about the past; counsel is about the future. Both are critical. When we seek counsel, we are borrowing the wisdom of someone else.

Learn by Observing Others. Leaders pay attention. They are observant. We often see things others don’t. My theory is it’s because we’re looking for things others aren’t. One of those things leaders are constantly looking for is ideas that work – or don’t. Truett Cathy taught me this. He said, “We don’t have to make all the mistakes ourselves, we can learn from the mistakes of others.” That’s one way to grow in wisdom.

Commit to Life-long Learning. The more I learn, the more I know how little I know. This is the ideal posture to grow in wisdom. The realization of our personal limits opens our hearts and minds to new possibilities. Possibilities fuel options. Options contribute to better decisions. A spirit of curiosity, combined with the humility required for learning, are the embers from which the fires of wisdom can ignite.

One of my favorite TV commercials these days is the “Most Interesting Man in the World” series from Dos Equis. I love the tag line: “Stay thirsty, my friends.” My encouragement to you is similar: Stay hungry my friends…hungry for wisdom!

 Hungry for wisdom and ready to take action:

• Listen to Mark in his free webinar about the Heart of Leadership
• Get The Heart of Leadership from Amazon 
• Check out Mark's blog at GreatLeadersServe.Org
• Assess your own leadership right now

Take Charge of Your Talent - a Challenge - Guest Blog

Today's blog is a little different from what normally happens around here.

It starts with a little more about my story. My story is unremarkable. My grandfather was a coal miner who became a colliery manager - unheard of in the North of England in the 1950's. Miners used to spit on him in the streets. My father chose to break the mould in the same way and become a professional and qualified as an accountant. He took charge and applied his prodigious talent with numbers to accounting and business. All I did was follow along the same lines as a professional - I completed degrees an business and law with a view to becoming a lawyer. When I finished university I had 4 job offers - one with Unilever, one with Ford Motor Company, one with a law firm and one with Price Waterhouse in a new management consulting division. 3 quite different choices (Ford equals Unilever as big corporate, travel a lot, defined career path, etc). I made the choice to join a new industry of management consulting - my guess at the time in South Africa we were probably less than 50 people doing that - I was one of only 7 in my team.

That was an inspired choice to start working in a new industry which is nothing more than a talent industry. The first partner I worked for, Alan Tapnack (now a banker in London), understood that well and set me free to develop new consulting approaches to provide to our clients - I became a guru in financial modelling long before the PC or Microsoft Excel.  Events in South Africa in the mid 1980's were not comfortable and I felt I had to make a choice between continuing to do military service for a regime I did not believe in or go to prison - I took my talent and put it on an aeroplane to London.

That talent took me into McKinsey & Company where one of the partners had identified that Information technology was a key issue that McKinsey had to tackle. My time at McKinsey & Co was incredibly difficult because, for the most part, they did not value my talent as a Specialist Industry Functional Consultant in IT.  The tide did change when they hired back an experienced McKinsey Manager to drive the IT Consulting model - Sir Richard Heygate saved my career by giving me scope to exploit my talent and to not force-fit it into the McKinsey way.

In 1994, I moved on from McKinsey - ultimately I did not fit in their model and it was time for me to Take Charge of My Talent. I joined a bunch of like-minded ex-McKinsey consultants and started Mitchell Madison Group as a direct competitor to McKinsey & Co specialising in the Financial Services Industry. Over the next 6 years we ran a rocket ship that grew to the size that McKinsey had done in 50 years. What was the biggest success we had, you may ask?  It was not only about clients. We waged an amazing competitive war on talent in recruiting the brightest people we could find. These young people had to be prepared to take charge of their own talent because we also took away the shackles of the role expectations that tied McKinsey down. For example, Alex Mahon, now CEO of Shine Group, moved from Business Analayst to Associate to Engagement Manager in 18 months - a journey that would have taken 6 years minimum at McKinsey.  MMG was a success because we all took charge of our own talent. Now my success as a consultant came from one other thing that I was really good at - I coached middle managers inside my client organisations to do the same thing.

My guests today run the same mantra. One of them is a former McKinsey colleague. They have a mission to change the world by getting people to take charge of their talent. This is not a "beat the drum" and get the motivational juices going approach. It is a clearly articulated process with clear steps and clear roles to harness a few insights about one's hopes and aspirations and the obstacles getting in the way and building your own path to your own success. ENJOY (and buy the book)

A clear process to take charge

Don Maruska and Jay Perry are Master Certified Coaches who help people take advantage of business and personal challenges in unique and powerful ways. 

Putting the Keys to Talent Development in Your Hands  

It’s time for a revolution in talent development. For generations, organizations have managed talent development. They’ve figured out who the HiPo’s (high potentials) are and focused resources on them. “Trickle down” talent development has shortchanged the rest and created a huge class of PoPo’s (passed over and pissed off). In short, scarcity thinking has limited what people and organizations think is possible.

Further, we hear leaders talk about driving down corporate objectives through talent development as if people were cattle. Well, hello! Most people don’t want to be told what to do. Even those who say they do often resist direction.

It’s little surprise that over 71% of American workers responding to a Gallup poll report that they are “not engaged” in work or “actively disengaged.” What’s worse is that high levels of disengagement have persisted for more than decade, in both good economies and bad. In short, there’s systemic problem with how organizations engage their talent. Our own surveys of thousands of people reveal that even high performers in excellent organizations have 30% to 40% of their talent untapped. It’s time for a change.

Let talent bubble up. Shift from “trickle down” to “bubble up” talent development. That’s right; it’s putting the keys to talent development in the hands of the people who have the talent. This tracks a fundamental cultural shift of people taking charge of many aspects of their lives, from booking their own airplane reservations to buying and selling stocks. People want to be in charge of what’s important to them, when they have the tools to do it. So, how can “bubble up” talent development work for both employees and their organizations?

Catalyze employee self-motivation. The first key engages the fundamental source of motivation: employee self-motivation. Instead of viewing managers as “cattle drivers,” think of them as “catalysts” who act to accelerate thinking and precipitate results without taking initiative and responsibility away from team members. This shifts from a command-control culture to a take-charge culture. The latest insights from neuroscience and psychology provide guidance on how to accomplish this successfully. We’ve found that a carefully structured conversation that keeps the participant in his or better thinking and in charge of the choices proves useful for 90% or more of the participants and “very useful” and even “major breakthroughs” in 20% to 30% of the situations. The great benefit is that employees don’t have to wait for a supervisor or manager. They can follow the steps and enjoy the value of a 45-minute Talent Catalyst Conversation with one another. Thus, all team members with an interest in their talent and a willingness to be generous listeners for one another can participate. This breaks down the barriers to access.

Accelerate through obstacles. The second key transforms how team members think about obstacles. Indeed, as with sailboats that head up into the wind and travel faster than the wind itself, team members can leverage tools to turn obstacles into springboards for success. Such tools include accessing inner qualities (for example, curiosity, generosity, and assertiveness), mashing up the untapped resources before them to create more out of what’s available to them, and “speed planning” that sketches out talent action plans in less than 15 minutes to gain results quickly.

Multiply the payoffs for yourself and others. The third key invites team members to translate their knowledge and skills into enduring career assets. They transform the ideas in their heads into tangible value. For example, a staff member who wanted to become a supervisor documented guidelines for giving performance feedback. She showed concretely what she learned from best practices as well as her own experience in both mock situations and project settings. These became the proof points for her brand: “candid, constructive feedback that brings out the best in you.” As a result, she landed the supervisory job and provided a valuable, tangible asset to the organization for first-time supervisors.

Opportunities abound to unlock the talent within today’s workforce. The keys are at hand. The perfect moment is now.

Take charge of your talent NOW

• Watch the webinar at http://mymark.mx/TakeChargeWebinar - no opt in required
• Click www.TakeChargeofYourTalent.com for more information
• Buy the book fro Amazon  “Take Charge of Your Talent: Three Keys to Thriving in YourCareer, Organization, and Life” 

The time is now. I took charge and it changed my life. the consultants of MMG took charge and they built a great firm and changed their lives. We owe it to ourselves

Another Winter Passes By

You would think that with all the Internet Marketing training that I have sat through over the last 18 months that I would at least write blog pages more often.  It just seems that life is so full that nothing gets done and life is so empty that nothing wants to get done.  When I last wrote I was getting ready to cycle from Darwin to Perth as part of Cycle Around Australia 2013 and that was the true focus at the time.  Well here goes with what has been happening:

• I used the opportunity of the bike ride to raise funds for charity. I chose to use some new (to me) Internet Marketing tools to work out how they work and to identify what is the best method for collecting for a charity. What did I do?  I collated all my email addresses into an autoresponder (I use Getresponse) mailing series and sent out a mailing newsletter to around 1,000 people from my email lists. First thing learned was that around 100 emails were not current. Second thing was a very high click rate to my donation page (around 30 percent) and a nice flow of donations. I also ran a Facebook event promoting the start of my ride and posting the link. That drew a little traffic and some donations. I also posted a link to my growing Twitter following and got some clicks but no donations. I did a follow up mailing to the people on the list who had not donated and achieved the same click through rate and about the same level of donations. LESSON: raising funds from charity is best done with people you know and mail more than once. 

Click throughs from mailings

• I joined the Cycle Around Australia group in Darwin at the end of May. They had already ridden from Melbourne to Cairns and from Cairns to Darwin. Preparations were a little haphazard but somehow on the appointed start time on June 1, I was ready to ride with 17other riders - some I had ridden with before and some were new to me. Was so good to get back on the road and starting off on familiar territory on the road from Darwin to Katherine though the first 3 days into teh wind were a little tough and my lack of training showed up. The ride from Katherine to Broome into the Kimberley was new to me - it is simply the best section of riding I have done across Australia. the road basically runs from one big river system to the next and the next - easy downwind riding (though we had some long days) and amazing scenery as the rivers carve their way through the gorges. I wrote a journal as I normally do and you can find it on Crazyguyonbike here 

• I cut short my ride from Broome to Perth - something about "a road travelled twice" was getting to me. The dynamics of the group had changed quite dramatically with fewer riders and I had a bunch of things at home that needed attention. Truth is I was just not enjoying the ride as much as I would have liked. So I departed the ride at Coral Bay after riding about 3,400 kms (a little over 2,000 miles) - I had achieved key objectives of getting fit and losing some weight and gained a few new friends along the way. And my contribution to the charity fund raising to modify bicycles for disabled children will make a difference to 4 or 5 young children. There is still a chance to make a donation by heading over to http://bit.ly/FreedomWheels - this page will be taken down in October - so get in fast. I must say I did learn a lot about the value of supporting a charity and the processes for doing so using Internet Marketing techniques.  The link itself is a clue - it is free link shortener - what I like is I can choose the text and it gives me tracking data. [I have since built my own]

• You may be wondering what did I do with the extra time I gained. I cannot say with hand on heart that I used the time well. I did get the tax department off my back for my superannuation accounts and got one year's backlog out of the way. I am still a little behind. I have ridden my bike a little bit and some of that weight has crept back on - but not too badly. I had planned to go to South Africa to see my mother (who is now 89) but that has not happened. I had hoped to make some more progress in my Internet Marketing and Business Coaching businesses. Truth is I have been struggling with some sever bouts of depression and spending way too much time staring into space pretending to be busy.  I have so many things that need doing and do not really know where to start. This is a long story to do with the failures of the past; some challenges in my relationship; the fact I do not see my children often enough and the way I feel about life in Australia.

• I did take the opportunity to travel to Thailand to attend the Fusion HQ Dojo in Chiang Mai. Fusion HQ is a software platform designed specifically for building internet marketing businesses. The dojo was as its name implies was a working training session - there were a variety of presenters (mostly now living in Chiang Mai) covering a range of topics in internet marketing and a number of hands on workshops for using the software. The software is simply amazing as it has built in all the tools one needs for a good internet business (except for shopping cart for a catalogue business) whether it be membership sites; affiliate marketing; sales funnels; email funnels; split testing - simply amazing. In due course I will be building my businesses on this platform and moving away from Wordpress and Weebly sites - a tool that everything in one place makes a lot more sense to me even if it is more costly to purchase. Head to http://mymark.mx/FusionHQ to have a look see.  The main thing I got out of the conference is a clear picture of how my Business Coaching can help other aspirant entrpepreneurs. We all face similar challenges in starting a business - and it gets harder as we get older.  The challenges have to do with Strategic Focus - they have to do with Process Design -they have to do with Scalability. The promise of making millions or even hundreds of thousands do not flow that way - they take a solid business approach and business structure.  More to come via http://MarkCarringtonBusinessCoach.com

• Many of you will not know that I lived in Bangkok for a while. I really fell in love with Thailand and even found a way to deal with the assault on the senses that is Bangkok. Chiang Mai is an altogether different feeling - it has a serenity which one does not normally associate with Thailand. It starts with the airport being only 10 minutes from town. It continues with traffic that is just a little more ordered - not ordered like a Western city but not as scary. The city is laid on on a big plain with mountains standing about 1,000 metres high ringing the plain in the distance. It was not as hot as Bangkok and not as humid - and I was there in summer time. The city is less busy and the mountains provide an escape. 

• Markets took a little of a back seat while I was doing my bike ride. In the intervening period we have seen some interesting developments. The Australian Dollar took its tumble and my positions on that move worked well. Interest rates broke out of the long compressed trading range pretty much across the world - thus far my positioning for that is working well though in Japanese Goverment Bonds I am struggling - the problem is one cannot buy contracts far ahead enough in time to cope with short term volatility.  In US stocks I have done well - the forced rotation into longer positions helped and the indexes have all obliged by moving higher. There has been the heralded debate about the fed taper and the big step down from that position in September. For now my portfolio is leaning toward more European exposure including European banks; exposure to shipping stocks; short interest rates and reduced exposure to emerging markets. For the most part part doing well. In FX trading I have stripped down my strategy to end of day trade ideas and focusing on the currency trends I see in my longer term portfolios - long GBP and short AUD and occasional forays to JPY longs.  And my robots continue to turn over 2 to 3 percent a month which is more can be said of my outsourced FX portfolio - it is not doing well.  The image below covers one of my accounts to the end of August - more like that and I will be a happy bunny - more than doubled since October 2012 [note: they do not all look like this but it does show the value of asymmetric trades using long dated options

• Moving forward what is the plan. More progress on my Business Coaching business (I am already helping someone build out his business in a challenging niche - his business is now much more focused and his materials fit his target market better). My mentor David Cavanagh will be helping with that. Have just started migrating my Twitter (and other social media) business - with over 100,000 Twitter followers across 3 profiles (https://twitter.com/go4forexprofits; https://twitter.com/markscarrington, https://twitter.com/stratocharge) it is time to take the business to a next level.  Coming out of Chiang Mai too is a programme to write the next book and to publish an Apple newstand magazine on Cycle Touring - more about those developments later. And markets - more of the same - searching for asymmetric trades across the world and making it hard for Mr Market to take away the gains.

Till next time - stay safe and be happy

and ignore this whacky code - it is for Bing webmaster tools
c73f922e2dda8e251062de777245b2d542d1e35d4b6cf7e26f

Happy May Day to all

When I lived in England, May Day was for me the heralding of a new season. It was so easy to be caught out by the emergence of the crocuses and daffodils in February and March and those few sunny days about then too to think that SPRING was on its way. May Day with the extra daylight after the clocks moved - it was the beginning of a new season..  It feels a little that way here. I set out in my last post to stay sane and to stay safe. I also wrote down a bunch of things that I was going to do. It feels a little like some new beginnings: 

• Well I can report that I am safe. My hand is healing and the medical reports were that it did not require any intervention. Good news from that medical visit is that the plate that was inserted in my left arm (following a cycling accident in Switzerland in 2010) does not need to come out. The surgeon in Luzernkantonspital had intimated that it should come out in 2 years. Typical male - took me nearly 3 years to get that tested out. I did also see my doctor briefly to get the referral and will see her for a proper check up in May
• I have spent some more time working on my Industry Rockstar profile as a Business Coach. So far I have written a first draft of the proposition and have created a Facebook Fan page. I found a great way to get the focus to doing the writing. I spent time with a friend building out his business ideas. I wrote up my draft so that he could copy the outline for his business - love the concept of WIN-WIN or Two-for-One. I also embarked on the 30 day Facebook Fan Page Challenge run by Sue Worthington. Like all the things I do I have not really followed up on the challenge  but I do have over 30 likes on my page from the challenge and I can get the insights and choose my own vanity URL.



Facebook Fanpage



• I did start to do some cycling training. I moved my flights to Darwin a little earlier so that I can start Cycle Around Australia 2013 leg third leg from Darwin instead of Katherine. I had been holding back from changing the flights because I was not really sure that I was actually going to be in a position to do the ride. My hand does not feel strong enough to allow me to ride on the roads - so I have installed the cycle trainer. That was a bit of fun as my small wheeled bike did not fit and I had to retrieve my original road bike from storage. The last time I broke my hand in 2006, I trained while watching the Commonwealth Games broadcast from Melbourne. This time I have been catching up on the training videos for the Steven Essa Webinar Magic program, I bought some time ago. As I will be using webinars for my Business Coaching efforts, it is great use of time = Two-for-One again. And for anyone wanting to explore the power of webinars to get 10 times the conversion rates compared to normal channels, Steven Essa is your man.  Thanks Steve for being a great entertainer while you teach. So my fitness is improving. My weight has not really moved  yet and blood pressure seems OK.
• Cycle Around Australia 2013 has completed leg 1 from Melbourne to Cairns with 15 riders. It all seems to have worked well with riders enjoying the peacefulness of the Great Inland Way. 18 riders departed Cairns on April 29 headed for Darwin on The Gulf Ride. the tail end of Cyclone Zane has given them two wet days to start but day 3 is looking good. The blog for leg 1 is Melbourne to Cairns and for leg 2 is Cairns to Darwin. Kathy updates these pages every day or two - bookmark them to keep track of what the riders are up to. We are still actively looking for riders for legs 4 and 5 - Broome to Perth and Perth to Melbourne. I have ridden both of those legs before and can vouch that they are great rides. Have a look at http://www.cycleacrossoz.com.au and see if you dare. Our charity effort is coming along - you will see from the blog page that we have raised $800 - without any real big marketing effort. We have also collected close to $500 in the collecting tins the riders have with them. Our chosen charity is the TADVIC Freedom Wheels campaign. TADVIC’s highly skilled and innovative team of therapists, engineers and volunteers help children with disabilities to enjoy mobility and a form of recreation previously unavailable to them.  If your philanthropy budget allows, head to our My Cause page to make a donation. And my other contribution is I keep the websites running and our Page 1 ranking in Google remains for "cycle Australia". Quite happy with that.

• The markets have consumed a lot of my time - probably more than I would like and more than I need. The FX Markets continue to be difficult as the devaluation of the Yen has stumbled at the magical round number of 100 JPY to the US Dollar. My FX trading activity remains challenged - I lost 1.5% in my direct portfolio during April (a few bad trades in week one and a few in week 4). I am a lot more focused on the strategies I use and that is helping. I have paid the price of having too many strategies in my armoury. My robot is a much simpler person than me and it managed close to 4% in April (and it too had a bad week in week 4), And my outsourced portfolio managed 2.2% in April after a horror start. FX Options trading is working a little better with new positions added on JPY pairs and a few more short on the Australian Dollar. The prime focus during the days has been trading breakouts on ASX listed stocks and long dated options on the US market at night. With options volatility at pretty low levels there is no shortage of opportunity to position well. With my trip coming up during June and July, I have spent a lot of time in the last week or so extending expiries on short term positions to the time I get back from Perth. That has been fun - new skills learned and not fully mastered (2 nights ago rolled 3 contracts incorrectly and had to retrace at some cost)
• Internet Marketing activity has been sporadic and not as focused as one needs. I have joined in a new mobile apps network marketing programme called Rippln. Like all MLM's it is grabbing its share of attention and detractors. What one cannot argue about is the impact they have made in getting 300,000 members signed up in two weeks. The basic idea is to build a platform so that members can benefit when mobile apps are shared rather than handing the cash to Apple or Google through their App Stores. If you want to join in my ripple just click on the image and collect your invite code. What I can say is my network has produced a reasonable number of members as I learn how to market.

 

 

The next few weeks has to be about FOCUS on getting fit - as we ride typically over 100 kms every day and it will be hot, I need to get out on the bike for several hours at a time. A few things will have to slide. I will pick one Internet Marketing initiative and get it going well enough so that it can run solo while I am travelling - in 3 weeks that should be a good target.

 

• 

2013 Q1 Passes By

Daylight Savings ended this weekend in Sydney  I wrote last around Valentine's Day and was not a very happy camper then.  Well I can safely say that the two months that have passed have not been filled with great stuff. Well maybe that is more a picture of the way things stand right now - first piece is typing this with a broken right hand does not help. That is part of a long sad story which is probably best left to the halls of silence. All I will say it has been a re-run of an old movie - 7 years ago almost to the day I broke my right hand when all the emotional turbulence boiled over - that was the start of a journey out of a 25 year marriage which has brought me to where I am now. The lesson my counsellor used to hammer into me - we do not have to re-run the old movies. It is in our hands to change the endings of the movies as they play. It is a crazy man who lets a movie run the same way. I must be the crazy man - it is happening all over again. CRAZY MAN

So in no particular order, this is what has been going on:

• Travelled to South Africa at the beginning to March - you will recall that my mother (aged 88) had taken a fall and was in rehab mode. My sister had spent a few weeks with. We arranged for a live-in carer to cover the time before I could make a trip. That worked well so that by the time I arrived there she was mobile again and cleared by the doctor to drive her car. In fact I did not have to do very much at all other than get on top of her financial matters and do the filing. I did  take a pilgrimage out to the Magaliesberg mountains to the north of Johannesburg to pay tribute to my friend, Beresford Jobling, who died there last August (http://breatheyourdreams.blogspot.com.au/ for a tribute I wrote)

• Followed that up with a trip to Pattaya Thailand to attend David Cavanagh's Best Coaching Programme. I had been lucky to win that trip during the Jeff and Kane Industry Rockstar Intensive course I had done at the end of January. While I fancy myself as a bit of an IT geek and quite able to find most of the things I need to build my Internet Marketing businesses this struck me as a way to turbocharge my progress. The training program was brilliant in content but especially in the group of attendees. Pretty well all of have been through a Jeff and Kane event - so a bit of self-selection produced a group of people ready to make go of the things they were learning. The content was jam packed with practical hints on things to explore; tools to use; products to sell; traffic methods to apply. I signed up for the next level program to further accelerate my Internet Marketing efforts - and to leverage the outsourcing models that David applies in his business. The video below was based on stuff learned in his course - a first attempt for me at filming and editing a video - and a subject I love - airlines and flying. There is a lot of stuff to follow in this whole area. If you ever get a chnce to do one of David's courses - do it. It will pay for itself in weeks if you take action.

 

• Spent a weekend in Thailand after the course - Lorraine flew up and we spent a few days together. We rambled around Pattaya a bit. The highlight of that was that we were having dinner with a few members of the group at one of the seafood restaurants on the pier. It had been a bit of a challenge to get everyone to agree to a spot but I knew where I wanted to be. We sit down at a table and I hear a voice over my shoulder "that explains why you did not respond to my e-mail". The last time I had been at the restaurant was with my friend of 18 years from Basel Switzerland. We had spent a week celebrating his 50th birthday and playing some golf. And there were Daniele and Heinz. Another lesson learned - when the universe sends signs, FOLLOW them. Got to spend a night in Bangkok - that was nice to reconnect with that city - great to revisit some old haunts and to remind ourselves how hot hot it gets.
• Markets have been interesting to say the least. The period of retracement and consolidation that started in January has persisted. The events in Cyprus put a big spoiler into what was proving to be a nice run-up in European Equities. At least I felt I was well positioned when I took off on my travels - and it seems to be holding out fine. The beauty about the markets right now is that everyone is so scared that Options Volatility is quite low - hence cheap to get into position. The FX markets have shown similar results to January - so in March my robot outperformed my own account which outperformed my outsourced account. All of this was put in the shade by the massive action announced by the Bank of Japan last week. I am pleased to say I was positioned for that and even managed to get some FX trades on to add to the long dated options I have running. Looking good so far. Now we need to worry a little about the politicians in Europe and the President of North Korea. They can between them very easily make a mess. And then there is a new outbreak of bird flu in China. Still waiting though for the markets to work out that investing in fixed interest at yields lower than inflation is not CLEVER
• And the big cycling news is that Cycle Around Australia 2013 kicked off with an on time departure from Melbourne on March 23. day 17 in and all seem to be doing well. The blog can be found here http://melbourne2cairns2013.blogspot.com.au. The riders are supporting a charity for this ride. The charity (TADVIC) provides modified bicycles for disabled children - a worthy cause. Have a look at the video I made for the cause - a first attempt too with a new piece of video editing software I do not understand. Head here to make a donation http://bit.ly/YxEHlc

What next:

• Focus on building my Industry Rockstar profile as a Business Coach. This is going to be a webinar driven business and the focus is going to be Internet Marketing Business and building an Internet Marketing Engine. 
• Start driving some serious traffic efforts leveraging the software tools I have already amassed - Facebook Formulas;  D4U Twitter (that is going well); SocialSpeed; Spiders Web; Traffic Amplifier; and more.
• Build my own brand presence - probably will drive two Mark Carrington Business Coach and Mark Carrington Affiliate Marketer. 
• Keep on finding good market opportunities for the investment markets.
• I do need to get on the bicycle to do some training as I am currently scheduled to depart Katherine for Broome on June 4th. Lorraine has had to withdraw from supporting that leg of the ride - that means I will most likely ride from Darwin 4 days earlier. The tricky part is I have a broken hand - will have to do the first 3 weeks of training on a cycle trainer. Will be watching tons of webinars in that time.

Above all I need to stay sane and stay safe. I do not feel either of those right now - hence one broken hand.

Heading to Valentine's Day

It is hard to believe that January has gone and we are well into February. Been a while too since my last post and I am struggling to find a positive spin to what is going on. Here goes in no particular order:

• Had a great training ride for Cycle Around Australia 2013. We drove down from Sydney to Bairnsdale for the start. Its a long drive made a little longer by ignoring the GPS not far out of Cooma. the price was a ride down the Bonang highway which has a sign near the start saying winding road for 105 kms. Was a great road but a hard drive. Was great to meet a few new faces and the long time friends in the campsite. Cycled from Bairnsdale towards Omeo - would have been a great ride but for the heat with 48C on the road. I surrendered to the sag wagon at 104kms some 14 kms short of target and one big hill not ridden. Happy with that as it was my first ride over 100 kms in over a year. Next day was hoto too and very windy and I could only make 25kms of the road up to Mt Hotham. We stayed in a ski lodge there - unique in the summer. Ride down to Bright the next day was great - mostly downhill and some great descending opportunities. Great weekend. On the ride itself, it is all systems go with 15 riders signed up and fully paid to depart Melbourne on March 23. Blog can be found at Melbourne to Cairns. We will be supporting Freedom Wheels programme as our charity - it provides modified bikes to help disabled kids to get riding. Our cause link can be found at Freedom Wheels
• At home life has a few twists and turns, some good and some bad. My mother (aged 88) had a fall which she chose not to tell us about. All was well for a few days and then one morning (the day I called her) she could not walk. My sister-in-law organized for her to go to hospital where she stayed for a few days. My sister flew out from UK to stay with her. Now we are exploring options for in house care while we wait for an opening in a nearby retirement village. We shall see what transpires - all a bit worrying but thank heavens for family. 
• My soon-to-be-18 daughter headed off to Canberra this weekend to commence her university life at Australian National University. She has decided to enroll for a PPE program (Politics, Philosophy and Economics) - the first time it is offered and a small programme with only 30 spaces. While she does not live at home with me it is a bit of a wrench.  Also good to see her brother sign up to drive her down there - as part of his learner driver training. By all reports she has settled in and met a few new people which she is happy with.
• It has been a week since finishing the Industry Rockstar Intensive course run by Jeff & Kane I signed up for a few months ago. This was a 4 day training session designed for consultants and coaches to ramp their businesses up into more of a speaker platform driven business - essentially to go from a 1 to 1 client model to a 1 to many coaching model. And once one gets the one to many model working with strong demand, one can increase the rates charged for one to one coaching and consulting. I must say I was a little skeptical as the model seemed very focused on the consultant model - and I spent 25 years doing that and was not keen to go back to it. The selling grind of that business just killed me. What became clear during the sessions (we did a lot of group coaching) was that I have a huge reservoir of experience and a unique ability to help other people solve their challenges. It was great to be able to help and enjoy people grow in my hands. I came out of there with a lot more focus and will apply that to my own internet businesses. I was lucky enough to win 3 training programmes - one on strategy ; one on marketing and one on technology delivery - and I bought into the Industry Rockstar Trainers course. This has produced some bi timetable pressures - that might be a good thing. The course is definitely worth it and if you get a chance to go to a preview event you will be doing well.
• I came out of that training quite motivated and more focused.  Instead of getting to work on that I slid back into doing what I have been doing for ages. And I am back to wrestling with the depression demons on and off - they have been building since coming back from the training ride. Have found it very difficult to focus. I did set up to do two tasks last week one of which was to set up the charity pages for the Cycle Around Australia website. Got that done. The other one did not happen. Did not do any riding either. Relationship pressures are not helping as Lorraine and I struggle to undo the old behaviours we exhibit. Big lesson - new relationship means time to leave old behaviours at the door. the black dog can growl at them.
• And then there are the markets. Have spent a lot of time on these - my personal portfolio has now been transferred across. Only took 3 and a half months. It would have been faster in  the old postal days. January was interesting - we were expecting some consolidation on the JPY pairs and on the EUR and many people got caught when the consolidation did not happen. For example of the 4 FX portfolios I have. My active one lost 3.5%; my outsourced one lost 4.1%; my robot one gained 4.3% and my FX options almost doubled. It tells me quite firmly that I am better off working out macro trends and positioning myself for those. And stock markets went up in the big rally - well positioned for all of that. For the next few months the focus is on positioning for the great rotation as investors discover that yields are lower than inflation.

Focus and Depression

Another week goes by and another Monday rolls around. It is all a big struggle - everything is telling me to Focus and the vast range of things that need doing scream out STOP because you do not know where to start.  Then when the small things do not work out, the black dog that crouches in the shadows is just waiting and growling and saying "told you so. You are a loser!!"

So it is time to get back to one thing at a time to work out a winning way that brightens up the dark corners and encourages the black dog to sneak back into the shadows a little further out of reach.

So in the spirit of making life even less focused, I spent a whole afternoon with friends, Dean and Yvonne mapping out a strategy for launching Dean's new book, The Nine Human essences for Business Success.

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Dean has self-published the book and now wishes to get it published on Kindle and run a full scale online launch. Here I am thinking I can help with this launch. It creates a forcing device to keep me pushing forward on leveraging the tools I have bought and the things I have learned. And after all this is why I signed up to join The Number One Book Club. Step One - work out how to publish to Kindle. As it happens this does not look like a major task - take the basic Word document; convert to HTML; add in the right Headings for SEO purposes and work out how and what to hyperlink. There are a few technical things to worry about - document needs to be less than 50Mb in size and graphics are size constrained and tables do not work. The marketing programme is all about building an audience and establishing Dean as the authority in his field. Well he ought to be as he has been preparing this text for over 15 years.  Still waiting to hear back from Dean and Yvonne but it is radio silent.

The email focus saga continues - piece by piece I am pegging away at getting rid of emails though an Inbox which has 1,215 unread emails does not look like a focused Inbox. I had written a stack of rules in Outlook to streamline the inbox into a series of other folders. This was not really working for me as I use more than one device to access email (PC; iPad and Android Phone). So today I have been migrating rulkes across to my mail provider. I buy in a service from Fastmail.Fm to manage my emails rather than using free service from Hotmail or Gmail. The service is relatively inexpensive; provides me a lot of data storage and a range of supporting features which I use for Domain Name forwarding for example. The best feature is the wide array of aliasing that is possible. I can set up an alias account from any domain name I own and send and receive emails from there - no need to do that in the domain registrar. Today I discover a nice set of filtering rules to add to Fastmail's spam filter. before long my Inbox will be more streamlined - and I can then process emails I want to read in my time.

Day's getting short before the training ride for Cycle Around Australia 2013. Have been doing some training - a little less than I had hoped on account of some tough weather interventions (excuses really). Have equipped teh bike with new brake blocks and tyres. Tyres ordered on Wednesday last week were ready in Sydney for delivery on Friday from BicycleHero.com in Seoul = awesome delivery and free shipping for orders over $100. One more day to prepare and it is onto the road to drive to Bairnsdale, Victoria = things to do

Last item - markets have been my area of focusing too - been itchy with some massive profits on JPY trades as the new Japanese government takes action to protect their export economy. Just waiting = good news when the trades are positive. Keeps up this way I will have paid for my extensive training programme at Trading Pursuits and recovered a good slice of my investment in FX Trading - turning a corner (though this is always a dangerous game to call before the big boys have finished their part of the play.

Email Marketing pet hates

I had promised myself that I would start 2013 with a whole lot more FOCUS and some more active blogging. Cannot really say that is what I have achieved but hang - it is only January 9 and the year is but a puppy.

Step one is underway. I had over 2,000 unread emails in my Inbox collected over the December period

Followed some key advice to reduce the amount of emails one could be tempted to read. I am steadily taking myself off mailing lists, left, right and centre. I have also been writing some rules into Outlook to filter emails into buckets for processing later or for deletion. Thinking I need to create these rules at the mail server end so that I do not see them on any device that I can access. Would be great if I could copy rules from Outlook to my mail server. I am guessing I may be able to. Setting up some email management principles along the way that I will build into my outbound email activities. My pet HATES for email marketing are the following and the PENALTY will be as follows:

Immediate consignment to SPAM and DELETION folder

• No Unsubscribe opportunity on the email - immediate consigment to SPAM and DELETION folder and I mean Immediate

 Unsubscribe

• Using different names even though they come from the same place/person. 
• Subject line all in Capitals
• Subject line that does not match the content
• Passing off as email from Facebook; Twitter; LinkedIn; Clickback
• Email addressed to Hey You - I have a name or you can just politely write Dear Sir or Colleague or Customer or Friend or something simple like that
• Email with no genuine and usable content - add some value to an already cluttered life

Three strikes and you are out

• An unreasonable amount of emails. This is a vexed question as clearly some people are offering incredible value for each email and they are worth reading. I was led to believe that 1 a day is a good benchmark. For example Gary L has sent over 200 emails since November 14 - that is more than 3 a day
• Emails for which the subject matter does not fit the original basis for me agreeing to receive your emails. If I have subscribed to your newsletter on FX trading, I may not be interested in Wordpress themes
• Emails from Support area that are not Support emails but selling emails.
• Emails where the hyperlinks do not wrap and have to be cut and pasted to be usable
• Email about a product I have already purchased - I will ask for a refund of purchase if you keep doing it.

Feel free to add your pet peeves to the list- when i have a good list, I will publish some principles of good practice

PS I have done a few more things on my list of Focus. Most importantly the Cycle Tourist has been seen on the bicycle building up some leg strength for an upcoming mountain ride next week