Here’s a great video from Tom Wujec about the Marshmallow Challenge; a team exercise to build a simple structure from pieces of dried spaghetti and a marshmallow. When he tried this game out on many different groups, he found some of the worst performers were Business School graduates and some of the best were Kindergarten [...]
Archive for April, 2010
Why Kindergarten children beat Business School graduates at finding solutions
Posted by John on April 27th, 2010
How to become a £1000/day consultant
Posted by John on April 26th, 2010
My last full-time job was Senior Managing Consultant at Deloitte and I quit to become an independent consultant. My plan was to charge double my daily income at Deloitte so I could take half my time off to do more creative things. In the end I quadrupled my daily income (earning over £1000/day) and only [...]
Tim Smit – creator of the Eden Project and rock ‘n’ roll entrepreneur
Posted by John on April 23rd, 2010
Tim Smit led the creation of the £130 million Eden Project. What was once a disused clay pit went on to become one of the most popular visitor attractions in the UK despite its relatively remote location in the hills behind St Austell in Cornwall. Tim is, in my terms, very much a player. He [...]
Boring, boring, boring – is that the flavour of your marketing?
Posted by John on April 22nd, 2010
I work with lots of people first making the leap into freelancing, self-employment or their own business. And I am constantly amazed that when they launch their website or brochure, they take everything that makes them different, special, interesting, and talented – everything that is most valuable about them – and strip it right out [...]
Make your life a laboratory
Posted by John on April 21st, 2010
Would you like to be recognised as a pioneer, a thought leader, a true original? Want to write a life-changing book? Want to do something more than just rehash other people’s ideas? Then it’s time to make your life a laboratory. The people who create remarkable content – Barbara Sher, Steve Pavlina, Martha Beck, Seth [...]
The power of a 2 minute YouTube video to promote your work
Posted by John on April 20th, 2010
Audrey and Sophie Boss run Beyond Chocolate a business helping women to stop dieting and overeating and finally enjoy food without guilt – and still lose weight. I quote them in How to play the fame game chapter in Screw Work Let’s Play because they’ve created a very natural and authentic style to their marketing [...]
Live Life in Perpetual Beta
Posted by John on April 19th, 2010
Melissa Pierce is definitely a Player. She is making a film called Life in Perpetual Beta about a more improvised approach to work and life - and she’s living her own message as she makes it. She started with no real experience of film making and without knowing exactly where she was going. Melissa crowdsourced the [...]
2 minute market research that’s stunningly effective
Posted by John on April 16th, 2010
Here’s an incredibly effective technique to help you win more work with a lot less effort. And it only takes a couple of minutes. Write an email to your prospect list (you do have an email list right?) asking them one simple question: What’s your single biggest challenge right now in [whatever area you help [...]
CD Baby – the $22 million business Derek Sivers built for fun
Posted by John on April 15th, 2010
Two years ago Derek Sivers sold his business CD Baby for $22 million (most of which he gave to a charitable trust to support music education). How did he start it all? With a grand mission and comprehensive business plan? Nope. He started with the simple aim of solving a problem he had himself – finding [...]
Does your business pass the sweat test?
Posted by John on April 14th, 2010
A great business supplies something that people really really want – not just something that sounds like a nice idea. And you need to talk about it in terms of what your customers want, not how it works or how you deliver it. When Sophie Boss launched her business Beyond Chocolate to help women stop [...]
