The World Is Your Focus Group Now

Think about every conversation you overheard today. It may have been on the train, in the coffee queue, or while you waited in the hair salon. You know, the one where the guy on his mobile explained loudly that his taxi hadn’t turned up. Or when forty something Sarah confided how stressed out she was…

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Being The Best

When I was a kid growing up in Dublin we always sat on the top deck of the bus on a Saturday evening coming home from a day in the city. As we passed Christchurch Cathedral we pressed our noses to the window and looked out at the long queue which snaked half way down…

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The Art Of Giving People What They Really Want

The group fitness instructor at our local gym is exceptionally good at giving people what they really want. During a tough early morning Pump® session he doesn’t talk about resting heart rate or thermogenisis. Duane punctuates those last thirty seconds of effort by telling us that this is how we’ll get Michelle Obama arms. So…

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How To Standout

Care more. Do what you say you’re going to do. Stand in other people’s shoes. Solve problems. Fix what’s broken. Change how people feel. Create what you want to see in the world. Don’t wait for an invitation. Think beyond what’s possible. Get over your fear. Act. Rinse and repeat. Image by EIO.

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How Coffee Became As Seductive As Diamonds

I have no idea how this happened, but twenty five years ago when my husband and I were choosing my engagement ring on student budgets, I found myself inside a tiny strategically lit room with a £20,000 ring on my finger. £20,000 was enough to buy a house in Dublin in those days. Fast forward…

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Well-Designed Moments Build Brands

That moment when the airline tells you that lost luggage is just a fact of life, or the sales assistant can’t exchange a faulty shirt on the spot because of company policy is a crack in the foundation of the brand. In that moment you begin to disconnect and feel like you don’t belong. Every…

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When The Facts Are No Longer Enough

The window on analysis is shrinking. People are moving so fast now that they don’t have time to think. They’re scanning, swiping, clicking, liking, tweeting and moving on at full velocity. They’re making decisions based on feelings not facts. Often choosing not because of what they think, but because of how something makes them feel.…

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The Last Thing You Should Rely On Is Your Resume

Your resume is not so much a testament to what you’ve done, it’s a timeline of where you’ve done it. The world doesn’t need to take your resume’s word for anything, it can find out more about you in three clicks of a mouse than you can tell in twenty perfect bound pages. When I…

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Lessons From The $100 Startup + Win A Copy

Sometimes you get to the end of a book and struggle to remember a key message from it. Although The $100 Startup is written for people who aspire to live a life like the author Chris Guillebeau, (who still in his early thirties, has visited more than 175 countries and never had a boss), there…

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Begin With The Possibilities, Not The Limitations

When you’re scoping things out. When you’re strategising, or planning how to get from here to where you want to be, you often start by asking the wrong questions. You put your first focus in the wrong place. You start by thinking about what went wrong last time. By telling yourself what you can’t do…

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