A thought often makes us hotter than a fire – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I wonder how many times I doubt myself in a day? How many times I stop believing that I have made the right decision. Then something happens to remind me that it is all worth it.

Today is one of those days.  I woke up this morning after a really restless night. My mind had been running over issues from the day before, discussions that needed to be had, targets that had to be met and things to be completed.

Making sure that nothing is left undone.

Around 1:30 I realised that I could think about all of the things for the rest of the night, but that this would not be a good thing. I decided to shelve the thoughts and go back to sleep.  Amazingly I managed to fall asleep.

On my way through today I have had the time to mull over how much I was dominated by the thoughts of insecurity and uncertainty. I also spent some time in discussion with people around me.  The truth is that the adventure that I am on is challenging, but in that challenge is a huge amount of excitement.  One call or meeting can completely change the direction.

So what am I saying? if you find yourself questioning or doubting, unpack where the feelings are coming from, rise above the insecurity and look to the future.  Look for the moments in your day when you realise that the path you are on is going to be filled with all sorts of experiences, then look to extract the most from each of the experiences.

Remember your support base and more importantly remember that they are there to support and guide you and not to tear you down.  Listen to all of the advice, but apply only that which you know is helpful.

Don’t succumb to thoughts that seek to put you down……..you are worth more.

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Is there ever an excuse to not have an online personal brand or presence………….well maybe if you are nomadic recluse, hiding from prying eyes. If you are not in this category then you need to have a personal presence.

Building an online personal presence helps people to find you, understand you and find common cause.  It helps to identify what is important to you and gives people insight into how they should relate with you.  It also helps you to grow as an individual.  This is probably the strongest reason for having a presence. Personal growth can be accomplished through many avenues, but increasingly the ease of access to information means that people are spending vast amounts of time online.

Building a personal presence, is building a brand.  Successfully building a personal brand takes time and effort. Surprisingly though, many people are not aware that they are already doing this. Very few people do not already have a personal brand, whether they like it or not.  They have social media presence, they have been mentioned in articles, they are mentioned by others in status updates and finally they are dropping cookies at every site they visit.

Control

If you already have an online presence, be sure that you are in control of it.  If you are not controlling it other people may well be.  Be careful of what you do and how much of yourself you make available, but make yourself available.

If you don’t have a presence, don’t rush out an open up every account out there.  Spend some time in voyeuristic intent. This may mean that you have to open an account, but there is nothing stopping you from shutting down the channel if it does not suite your needs.  Check out all of the available channels and find the one or ones that fit your style. You may find yourself developing a personal (friends and family only channel) a business/professional channel or a hybrid of both.

Once you have selected the channel or channels understand that you need to work at them. You need to keep them updated so that when you are happened upon that people immediately find relevance.

Closing

Having an online personal brand in the most part is an enabler, it opens up channels that allow you to consume, interact and grow.  It provides the opportunity to connect with others, find common causes and enhance the world around you.  It can be abused and even hijacked by others, but if you are a regular user you will be able to limit this.

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Today marks 6 months since I decided to move into the world of entrepreneurship.  It has been a ride of note so far, not the least of which has been sorting out all of the red tape to get a company up and legal.

During this time we have had to get a company registered, an accountant appointed, a book keeper in place.  We needed three months of trading in order to get our VAT number, we needed to obtain tax clearance, get new premises, get telephones and internet sorted out oh and also round up some business!

I have realised in all of this that one of the single biggest issues facing South Africa is it’s inability to support entrepreneurship.  The requirements to get a business up and running and the cost burden on companies in terms of ensuring “compliance” is immense.

Government is in dire need of the skills to grow an entrepreneur base. It is this base of small businesses that will create employment.  You cannot think that big business is creating employment, given the focus on cost reductions.  If government does not get behind small business and find ways of helping them succeed then they are going to fail the economy at large.

South Africa will grow on the back of smaller businesses growing and being successful.  It is the role of government to support this critical part of the economy.

So happily we have sorted out all of these things (barring the VAT number) and then hopefully we can get down to the art of rustling up business.  Who knows we may just be successful at it…..

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I have been engaged in a number of conversations over the past weeks, which have challenged my meaning of the word understanding.  I am able to grasp concepts and ideas fairly quickly, well at least I think I can. What I have come to realise though is that understanding can be a very tricky thing.

My question: How many times have you said “I understand” only to find out a few minutes, hours, weeks or months later that in fact you didn’t actually understand?

Understanding should never be limited to your own views, perceptions or ideas. You need to ensure that you fully comprehend exactly what the person is saying to you. You need to deploy a check-in mentality and train yourself to ask questions.

The one thing you will realise is that people love it when you ask questions, particularly if it is around their ideas.

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So, like many other Apple fanboy’s last night, I sat and watched the live stream from Gizmodo of the apple iPhone 5 launch event.  While some of the specifications look great and are certainly a step up from the iPhone 4 (that I have). I was left wondering about whether there would truly ever be another iPhone moment.

What do I define as an iPhone moment: It is the moment the world was first introduced to the iPhone, the device I credit with creating such and explosion in smartphone technology. The iPhone created the market of smartphones as we know it (my view anyway) Sure, we had Blackberry and Nokia and the rest of them playing around in the space, but I think iPhone established the benchmark which everyone else has been refining  (or copying depending on which side of the fence you sit)

Many of yesterday’s announcements by Apple were already known to the market and to be frank, were all expected. Bigger screen, faster processor, Maps, smaller docking port – nothing surprised the audience. This is what put the seed of the title of this post into my head.

When are we going to see the next big shake-up in the mobile market? Will there be one? When will the next Steve Jobs arrive on the scene to deliver a product that everyone else aspires to have?

I think it will happen. Somewhere out there is another mobile genius working feverishly away at a product that is so cool it will blow us all away. It is going to have all sorts of sweets and goodies that we all want, but don’t know yet. Will Apple be the company to deliver it? I am not sure about this. In fact I am not sure that any of the current manufacturers will deliver it. I think that all of them, without exception, are stuck in the product refinement mode. Let’s make it bigger, smaller, faster, bigger camera, better display, longer battery life, thinner, lighter etc.

I believe the next step will come from outside the current base of manufacturers, maybe I will be proved wrong, but if last nights “event” is anything to go by, I think not.

Now, let me say this, I do want an iPhone 5 and that’s because I love the way Apple products operate, I am a fanboy afterall! So if anybody is going overseas in the next couple of days, let me know I would like to get my hands on the iPhone 5 asap.

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