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 ....

Very wise words.... An Inconvenient Truth About Silicon Valley and Donald Trump

Probably the cleverest thing I have read about Trump so here it is... Not written by me. 

My own thoughts on Trump are not safe to write down....

An Inconvenient Truth About Silicon Valley and Donald Trump

The President-elect’s disruptive platform sounds awfully familiar to the valley’s leaders

I’ve come to believe that Donald Trump makes Silicon Valley’s founders uncomfortable precisely because they all have so much in common. Hear me out. They consider themselves the ultimate disruptors. Trump won the presidency (if not the popular vote) on the promise of being anti-establishment, and changing everything. This ethos has long defined the valley; it’s the idea from which tech’s founders take their sense of identity — and one that still reverberates through garages, startup accelerators, and shared office spaces from Palo Alto to San Francisco. Everything can always be reimagined so that it’s better than it is right now, and the best way to do it is to ignore the current constraints and systems and dream up new ones.

The problem, however, is that many of the valley’s most disruptive ideas have transformed into massive companies that have established themselves in our culture and economy as mainstream. Techies may think of themselves as disruptors, but they’ve emerged as the titans of industry — the kind of established power brokers that don’t take well to the chaos that comes with new disruption. And Trump? He is disruption embodied. Trump reminds them of the gap between their roots, and their current status. (Check out today’s piece on Uber in a Trump era.)

Often, when people set out to take down the establishment, they succeed in creating a more elite and calcified version of it. It’s classic. Earlier this week, I published a story about Peter Thiel’s eponymous fellowship program, which pays young people to forego college in favor of entrepreneurship. Intended to be a meritocratic way to help smart teens learn about entrepreneurship without going into debt, the Thiel Fellowship has become a prestigious entitlement bestowed on already successful young men (and just a few women), many of whom look and sound remarkably similar to Thiel himself. He set out to take down higher education— to prove that a pedigree didn’t have to matter. Instead, he just created an even more elite pedigree, bestowed to an even narrower cast of already established entrepreneurs.

In many ways, the fellowship’s trajectory reflects the recent history of Silicon Valley. Its charter members were renegades and contrarians — people who took issue with the status quo, and who had radical ideas about how to change the future. But their success in pushing those ideas forward came with a price: Those ideas moved the founders who had them from fringe to mainstream. In the United States and the beyond, everyone got a personal computer. Then an AOL account. Then Facebook. Then a smartphone, and on and on. And as technology crossed from nerdland to the center of our economy, the companies that introduced it grew from innovative tiny startups to the titans that now threaten nearly every industry. 

Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are five of the seven largest companies in the world. (Berkshire Hathaway and ExxonMobil are the other two.) In other words, the disruptors have become the establishment.

Which brings me back to Peter Thiel. He has become the de facto ambassador to the valley. He has grown up to become a member of the new establishment, without abandoning his roots. He is a self-made billionaire, having benefitted from the valley’s rise; he wrote Mark Zuckerberg his very first check for Facebook. But he’s also the kind of freethinking contrarian who positions himself as antiestablishment. 

He is always willing to bet against the status quo, to take a swing at the institution. I wrote about the fellowship in part because I wanted to understand Thiel better by learning about the people with whom he surrounds himself. In doing so, I re-read Zero to One, the best-selling book he wrote with Blake Masters on building startups. Even those people who take issue with Peter personally will often step back and acknowledge that it’s a very smart look at what makes valley companies successful.

 My favorite thought that he introduces is one that embraces the power of humans. He writes: 

“Other animals are instinctively driven to build things like dams or honeycombs, but we are the only ones that can invest in new things and better ways of making them.”

In classic Silicon Valley fashion, Thiel made a contrarian bet that the ideas Trump espoused — primarily, that many Americans weren’t being served by the current establishment, and a massive disruption could unleash the change they needed — would be embraced. 

He was right. The danger is that Thiel’s stab at remaking the administration under Trump will turn out as misguided as his attempt to build a program to replace college — instead of introducing the change that will make all of American great again, it will simply make a lot of rich white men (and a few women) even richer and more entrenched than they already are.

VERY VERY WISE WORDS INDEED. 

And sadly probably what's going to happen. The rich will get very quickly richer.

And for a more balanced and even clevererererer view - which is still kinda surprisingly pro trump - check this out. 

What's Next? A BIG scary question for all of us.

Lots of people have asked me "What’s next?" for me? After my working, on a secondment from my agency, at PeoplePlus.

At PeoplePlus, we worked on the Nu-traxx project, which helped lots of young people in Manchester start their own businesses. This was really successful and amazingly rewarding. But...

What is next for me?

It’s a great question.

Do I continue with my agency, Great Marketing Works, training people and organisations like O2? And consulting for startups and established companies?

Or do I move into something new?

I can tell you in the first instance that I am planning to work part time as a consultant for The Landing. Helping them with their new offer LAUNCH.

As this new venture is something I believe in. A place and space different to what is out there at the moment in Manchester. It’s something that is needed in our growing UK tech ecosystem.

A new playground for growing tech businesses.

A place where they have world class infrastructure, unrivaled technology, and an ecosystem second to none, with the like of the BBC. As well as a plan to double in size in the next ten years.
It really would be foolish of me not to work with them, even part time.

As reported in Manchester Evening News, at LAUNCH I will:

“lead The Landing’s direct engagement work with businesses based in the north west on a part-time basis, with an emphasis on scale-ups and fast growing SMEs within the health tech, VR and IoT sectors.”

These are all sectors I think have amazing potential.

Not just for Manchester but for the world as a whole.

In addition, as reported in the Insider, LAUNCH are:

“developing a range of business membership options which will allow external companies access to its world-class technology and labs.”

The role with my love of technology, startups and changing the world is a dream come true. PLUS I also get to work with Jon Corner. Which is something I have wanted to do for years….

However, should I do this JOB forever?

This is something that we all have to answer at some point. Should you stay where you are, in your career for a long time. Modern research says we SHOULD change the companies that employ us every 3 years. Which seems like a lot in a career but it's what we have done with my agency. We kept clients for between 3 - 5 years.

But at my age – 40 - is it really wise to start entirely again?

I have no answer for this.

I only have a couple of questions. One’s which we all might need to think about at some point in our lives.

What would you do if you did something for 8 years but felt it was stagnating?

You see for 8 years (almost to the day) I have had a marketing training and consultancy agency. We have specialised in digital marketing and start up marketing. Training up companies and individuals, as well as taking on part time roles and projects in different organisations.

The work has been great. I have been able to employ myself. To employ others. To work with some amazing people and for some great companies.Each company and role has taught me something different – and each one has got me to where I am now.

I have been able to work on some great projects all which pushed the technology boundaries at the time. Many of which are now common place like online webinars with NCGE years before people did them.

Online video courses with Your Marketing Trainer. Augmented Reality, half a decade before it became fashionable, with GoAugmented. We created branded mobile games for business to business campaigns before many others dared. Increased employee engagement with gamification before people in the UK even knew the term.

We have been at the forefront of lots of these, with lots of people.

And I thank our daring clients who have allowed us to succeed with them.

But in the end – what do we have to show for it?

As a sub contractor of mine brilliantly put it with Great Marketing Works…

“Our clients at Great Marketing Works win awards - so we don’t have to.” 

But after 8 years of workshops and training (and clients) and helping people succeed. What do we have?

What does anyone really have with an agency – especially a small one like ours?

We have over 30 different workshops in marketing. But most of these are redone each three months as digital marketing changes daily. So what do we really have?

• A reputation for doing fun and memorable training events? Yes.
• Maybe a brand people kinda recognise? Maybe.
• Myself getting more famous? Hardly. 
• Even though it is nice to be asked to go on the BBC once or twice.

Is it really worth doing such a startup? Is it worth the networking and the hours? The freebies and the hustle? The low sales cycles and sleeplessness worrying about invoices betting paid.

You know after 8 years. I don’t know.

Dan Norris, author of The 7 Day Startup: You Don’t Learn Until You Launch, felt the same thing so he sold his agency. Perhaps I should have done the same?

I haven’t but I can change my company. So from now on – I will only work with people and for people that create something worth doing. We did this with Barclays with The Escalator - which has now grown to become RISE – a global startups ecosystem.

We want the same success for LAUNCH. We want to create a new playground for growing tech businesses. With unrivaled technology and an ecosystem to be proud of for Media City. Full of tech, startups, scaleups and investors.

We will create something very special. Something that I can believe in.

Something I can stand for. But after that?

What should I do?

What I do know is that I can choose to make a difference. And the difference is to be building an asset instead of building a job. As Duct Tape Marketing author tells us..

“Building an asset takes investing in you, in others, in creating things that didn’t exist before, in following through on audacious ideas. Building an asset almost always means letting go of your current thinking, finding ways to think bigger and surrounding yourself with people that lift you rather than hold you back.”

Maybe LAUNCH will be this community.

A community made of people testing, building and proving tech ideas and businesses. Not just for startups but for scale ups and for established businesses that want to grow.

That’s our goal. Perhaps that's your goal too? If so sign up today.  

My question to you is...

What would you do? 

A hierarchy of value when everything functions and what that means for your #startup

This Blog from Seth Godin again hits the nail on the head. 

With such certainty and precision that I have to pop it down here. 

His point is a great one - that a business decides by action or by non action where it is on the ladder. 

It's like a customer version of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. 

See below for a lovely modern take on this...

But Seth's point is more serious... and really apt considering it was Apple's annual launch day. 

A company that through it's marketing and design has changed the conversation and ecosystem around telecomms more than any other. See his point on smartphones later on. 

The reason I include it here is his point about freelancers 

"Most freelancers have been so beaten down in the quest to make a go of it, they stop at function and take what they can get."

Which in some way is a trap I am falling into. My training company Great Marketing Works didn't do that - we had connection and style. 

Perhaps my freelancing as a consultant does as well? We have some great gigs coming up. 

BUT.... with FFFlip - The fast, fun, photo montage maker for the event professional.  

I want to have the audacity to redefine 'function' (see his end conclusion...) 

I hope for your startup you decide to do the same - or at least do something with style.... 

Here's to doing that and here's to Seth Godin's A hierarchy of value when everything functions

When two things offer simply the same appropriate level of function, we'll choose the cheap one.

But if one offers more connection than the other, it is worth more. 

This hotel over that one. Where is the tribe, do people like me do things like this, who's there, will they miss me, do I trust them, have I been here before...

If two items offer connection, but one offers the approval and sexiness that style brings, some of us will pay extra for that. After all, style promises ever more connection.

And at the top of the hierarchy is our quest for scarcity, desire and the hotness of now. 

In a market like smartphones, it's pretty clear that it's really difficult to offer more function than the other guy. And the quality of connection, the very attribute that fuels the smartphone, was surrendered to the app makers a long time ago. Which leaves the sexiness of a drop-dead case and the urgency of the latest model.

What do you and your team offer? Where are you in the hierarchy?

Most freelancers have been so beaten down in the quest to make a go of it, they stop at function and take what they can get. Some businesses (small and large) find the patience and guts to offer connection or even style. And every once in awhile, an idea and an organization come along that promise to share the elusive hot that sits atop the pyramid.

So, buy a Harley, not because it can move you from here to there cheaper, but because it comes with a tribe. And buy that Nars lipstick because of the way it makes you feel. And get on line for that new gadget, because, hey, there's a line.

And then, someone finds the audacity to redefine 'function' and the whole thing begins again.

Dan Sodergren on the BBC: Review of the Papers August 16th Part 2: Pokem...

My Borrowed Thoughts For The Day: Perhaps #FFFlip (and your #startup too) should foc...

My Borrowed Thoughts For The Day: Perhaps #FFFlip (and your #startup too) should foc...: As my daughter plays happily in her bedroom, I put this blog from Seth Godin  here to remind me - in all the excitement of my new business i...

Perhaps #FFFlip (and your #startup too) should focus on raising money from your customers rather than from investors....

As my daughter plays happily in her bedroom, I put this blog from Seth Godin here to remind me - in all the excitement of my new business idea (FFFlip) that I need to concentrate on creating value rather than just securing investment. 

Seth as ever, makes a really good point. 

One which many of my startup clients need to listen to as well. 

As he says:

"Focus to raise money from your customers. To delight more customers often enough that they happily pay you for what you can do for them. And then repeat. And again."

Perhaps making FFFlip more about creating revenue from customers rather than creating customers from investment is the better strategy. 

Anyhoo, here is the blog.... 

The struggle to raise money

When your small business is struggling, the thought of raising money feels like a life preserver.

That possible infusion of cash is a beacon of hope, the thing you can work on tirelessly. It's the one thing that appears as though it will make everything better.

Careful. It's often a detour, a distraction that won't pan out at the very same time it takes your eye off the real issues.

The problem starts with this: Few people will tell you to stop trying to raise money. They'll encourage you to polish your business plan, make more pitches, add more rigor, dream bigger. 

Add to this that it's essentially impossible to build a 1000x company, but those are the ones that get all the hype and the ones that investors crave. So you're comparing yourself to something that's quite elusive.

And finally, as you get deeper and deeper into the quest, there are individuals and institutions that will happily take advantage of you, requiring you to personally guarantee debt, to give up control, to turn your dream project into something you never envisioned.

The reason for this money trap is that so many small-business owners confuse raising money for expenses with raising money to build an asset. This is worth understanding.

If you can say, "I will spend this money on X, and X will make Y happen, and Y will pay off handsomely," then a professional investor ought to be open to hearing that story.

But the things to spend money on are a significant real estate presence, machines, patents, a permanent, expensive brand. The entrepreneur who spends this money does it with enthusiasm, because she's buying things that are going to grow in value, fast. 

This is the painting contractor who realizes that a high-powered industrial paint booth will make him the only guy in town who can do a certain kind of job. Or the fast food impresario who asserts that opening ten restaurants in one town in one year will give her the footprint to be more efficient and profitable.

But that's not the way most small business folks are wired.

We're wired to delight our customers, charge for what we do, and then spend some of that money to do it again.

If that sounds like you, pretend that it's not even possible to raise money from investors. Take the option off the table (where it isn't, really).

Instead, spend that energy and that passion and that focus to raise money from your customers. To delight more customers often enough that they happily pay you for what you can do for them. And then repeat. And again.

It's not a life preserver. Not at all. It's a stepwise path, a ramp from here to there, a process with no guru, no miracle, no signing bonus. It's merely the work.

The thing you signed up for in the first place."

So the question I have now for FFFlip as we make the tech spec for her and start the build is WHERE IS THE WOW?

As The Next Web rightly puts it - every great app needs a wow.  

The Old Man and the Starfish: It ALL makes a difference....

For the last little while I have been working with PeoplePlus on a project called My-Biz.

What is My-Biz?

MyBiz has been created to help the next generation in Manchester start up their own business. We don’t just offer advice and guidance; we offer practical skills development, hands on training and a network of tailored support.

MyBiz is the first of its kind in the Greater Manchester area, formed by the combined experience of the private and public sectors. The service is a collaboration between PeoplePlus, a training and employment support provider, Nu-Traxx and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority

Whilst on secondment from my agency, I am doing the startup and enterprise training for them. Hopefully helping as many young people, in Manchester, aged between 18 - 24 who are not in work and want to start their own business.

In just over 6 months we have helped more than 200 young people with 1-2-1 help and started many of them on a journey of discovery around starting their own business. It's something I am really quite proud of.

However, we can help many, many more. 

And today someone asked me why I bothered helping them at all - considering the millions of other young people unemployed or underemployed.

Literally - they asked me that... 

My answer was this story below. 

Which I hope my daughter Mia will read when she is able. 

More importantly, I hope she takes the story to her heart and makes a difference to the world....

The Old Man and the Starfish
Author: Unknown

There was a young man walking down a deserted beach just before dawn. In the distance he saw a frail old man. As he approached the old man, he saw him picking up stranded starfish and throwing them back into the sea.

The young man gazed in wonder as the old man again and again threw the small starfish from the sand to the water. He asked, “Old man, why do you spend so much energy doing what seems to be a waste of time?”

The old man explained that the stranded starfish would die if left in the morning sun. ” But there must be thousands of beached and millions of starfish!” exclaimed the young man. 

“How can you make any difference?”

The old man looked down at the small starfish in his hand and as he threw it into the safety of the sea, he said, 

“I made a difference to this one.”

Worth thinking about...