TIME IS THE CURRENCY OF LIFE

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other peoples thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voices. And most of all, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition."

So says Stephen Jobs, the founder of Apple Computers:

This is the man whose drive gave us the iPod and whose philosophy I have followed since becoming an Apple Mac fanatic from the mid 1980's when the original Mac, with its 9" screen and "massive" 2 mb hard drive, started the personal computer revolution. How many of us have the courage to do what he intimated?

How many of us merely follow along, content in the knowledge that someone else is doing it right when we ourselves may be able to follow, as Jobs says, our heart and intuition and do it ourselves?

In small business, every day is a day of warfare as we battle Big Business, technological advances, and the daily pressure of getting more in than we let out. Yet, if we can only take the blinkers off and be game enough to back ourselves even a modicum more than we had in the past, the changes may be not only significant but also magnificent.

Apart from their operating simplicity, one of the reasons I am a Mac lover is that, even as I sit here writing this email bulletin, I am reminded by my computer (a MacBook Pro G5) that yes, there is another way to tackle issues and problems, and that by sometimes thinking outside the square we can make quantum leaps.

Probably no better example exists than Apple itself. All but down for the count six or seven years ago, with shares at about the $14 mark (they are now well over $100) in the face of competition not only from Windows based computers (Apple has around 7% of the world computer market) in the hardware market but also from Microsoft itself in the software end (Apple's system is now Unix based in the main), how easy would have it to have been to simply roll over, accept defeat, and disappear into the annals of technological history.

Back comes the arrival of Apple's founder Stephen Jobs after a series of dud Corporate Chairmen, and the man was as true as the words I used to introduce this Bulletin.

The lesson for us as small business people?

Firstly, establish in your own mind just what the heck it is you are seeking. Secondly, lead your people (note I said "people," NOT human resources!!) down that path and encourage them to do just what Stephen Jobs said.

In real estate, the business I am in, some things are moving faster and faster (such as technology, office and Corporate dynamics etc); and in others, the basics don't change (auction business development).

In the world of auctions, there are ample opportunities to supply and create. Call it what you will, the "razzle dazzle" of showbusiness, but unless these are underlain by a good knowledge of the basics of the business, your efforts will flounder through frustration and a lack of success.

Take off those blinkers, learn those basics, and start to back yourselves with your presentations.

The results might astound you!

Carpe diem

Tony