I had one of those unpleasant customer experiences. One of our GSM sim cards has failed. So I walked into the Telstra dealer who does all out business. I explained that the card failed, want a replacement and hope we don’t have to pay for it. Not a chance said he, $33.00 would appear on…

We sent out a letter (or email) to customers who signed up for our mailing list in last year’s warehouse sale. The only way onto the list was to be a customer last year. There were about 70 names on it as we didn’t start collecting addresses until late in the sale. The letter offered…

Good to see Bruce Whiting get good coverage in today’s Enterprise section of the Sydney Morning Herald . It’s a pity I can’t find a link to that section on the SMH site. Bruce is MD of The Mint Group; and co-author with John Burley of Money Secrets of the Rich among other talents. I’ve…

I was chatting on IRC with Sim’ and we were commenting how great a browser Mozilla Firebird is. Now I discover it’s renamed and the latest version is out. Say hi to Mozilla Firefox 0.8 We don’t run IE unless absolutley necessary. I find that Internet Banking for the 4 banks I regularly use is…

There is tremendous power in saying “no”. I get calls at work from telemarketers selling everything from telecommunications to charity fund raisers. Charity calls are easy. I politely advise them that I already support the charities of my choice by direct and indirect methods. I then thank them for the call and wish them good…

I sometimes meet readers face-to-face at an event or function. Many of them ask why I keep this journal on-line, especially the more difficult or personal aspects of my life. I don’t share about every aspect of my life, currently I don’t blog on the details of the legal skirmishes of the succession wars. I…

Hello gang. I have returned from a great chillout over the holidays. Re-energized and excited about the year ahead. I will still have a couple of days off this week, but I thought I’d give you a roadmap. Firstly WordPress 1.0 was released on 2 Jan 2004, we’ll be upgrading this week. That means the…

My business has zero cashflow in January. That means I hoard cash from Christmas until February. That makes for a rather stressful time. As I am also attempting to migrate our accounts and stock system to . an Open Source ERP+CRM program. That’s Enterprise Resource Planning and Customer Relationship Management for you non-jargon types (NigelW,…

Seasons greetings to all. I have been working on the next fortune – only it is nothing I can share until everything clicks. Hopefully I’ll blog about it afterwards. Between now and 5 Jan 2004 I hope to do nothing related to business or investing. Well except for some reading, planning and thinking. The aim…

As expected, the traffic to the warehouse sale has dropped off over the last six weeks. Two weeks ago, I asked our advertising sales rep at Fairfax Community Newspapers to radically change the look of our ads. We really liked the first design they produced for us, but it was time for a change. We…