by cameron | Oct 19, 2006 | Podcast
Today’s edition is my last podcast from Australia – at least for a while. My guests are Richard Giles and Tony Goodson.
If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you don’t miss future episodes by subscribing to our feed.
Don’t forget to check out the TPN Forums and please complete our current survey.
The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me†by The Napoleon Blown Aparts. Thanks to our sponsors Wardy IT!
by cameron | Oct 14, 2006 | Melbourne, Uncategorized
My Torrent of the Week this week is The Rolling Stone Magazines 500 Greatest Songs Of All Time. Lots of tracks in here I have never even heard of before. Lots I already have too but it doesn’t hurt to have them collected together into a single playlist.
Had a surreal morning today. Was in the city at 8.30am having my photo taken by Julian Kingma, one of Australia’s top celebrity photographers. We shot some stuff in Hosier Lane and some more behind Federation Square. I asked Julian what the favourite photo he’d ever taken was and he said this one of the late Rene Rivkin which he won the 1997 Melbourne Press Club Quill Award. We talked about the some of the people he’s met, including Jamie Oliver, who he shot recently at the opening of Melbourne’s Fifteen restaurant and says is a really nice bloke, and Samuel L. Jackson. What an interesting line of work. For the record (for you, Scott Sherman), Julian prefers shooting on non-digital cameras, although today he was using a Nikon D100.
by cameron | Oct 13, 2006 | Uncategorized
Hugh Martin reports "The Australian Press Council has just released The State of the News Print Media in Australia Report 2006…… I can’t help but think there’s a lot of wishful thinking going on in this report. The authors are by and large working editors, with a couple of academics thrown in for good measure."
I haven’t read the report yet but this graph above (click on it to bring up the full size version) pretty much tells the true story. Look at the graph on the right. Look at the decline in circulation since 1999. Now grab a ruler and extend that line downwards. If you are so inclined, make the decline exponential.
Face it, my friends in the newspaper business. Things are changing faster than many of you care to admit. I know Hugh isn’t one of those. Neither is Mark Jones at the AFR. Don’t forget to buy a copy today to read about Telstra v Tom Reynolds.
by cameron | Oct 10, 2006 | Melbourne, Podcast, Uncategorized
Thanks to everyone out there who remembered by birthday today and sent me emails, IMs, called me, etc. It was quite overwhelming. Who the hell ARE all you people anyway? I got happy birthday emails from people I don’t even know. That’s weird. Especially when celebrating birthdays is something you try to avoid. Anyway, I appreciate it.
36…. when I moved from Bundaberg to Melbourne in January 1988, age 17, with a couple of hundred bucks I’d saved up from picking rockmelons over the summer on my girlfriend’s father’s farm, I promised myself I’d be a millionaire by age 25. The plan was – spend three years working out how the world works, then five years to execute "the plan". I had a high school education and was incredibly naive. I remember, after a week in Melbourne, wondering where you bought coat hangers from. I did my weekly shopping at the local 7 Eleven because I thought it was a supermarket. I lived on bread and tomato sauce for a week because I had no money.
Anyway, I didn’t hit the millionaire at 25 goal. At 25 I think I was making about $40,000 a year making corporate videos. So I reset the goal to 30. When I was 27 I landed a job at Microsoft when their share price was climbing. My hiring manager told me I’d be a millionaire in 4 years.
When I was 29 I started my first internet business – it was called Golflounge and we were going to create an online system for booking a round of golf on every golf course in Australia. We even raised $3 million on the back of a napkin. This was about… March 2000. Then Ballmer busted up Bubble 1.0 and we said "hmmm no thanks" to the money. I turned 30 six months later. I was working at Microsoft, making six figure income, traveling around the world, and miserable as hell. Oh and their share price was in a nosedive it STILL hasn’t recovered from. I went into a three-year depression. And I reset the millionaire goal to 35.
One year I turned 35. I was running The Podcast Network. I missed my goal again but at least this time I felt like I was doing something with my life. Finally. And you know? The "millionaire" goal suddenly seemed less important. So I didn’t reset it for 40. My focus had changed from being rich to being useful. I realized along the way that what I wanted wasn’t to be a "millionaire" anyway. What I wanted, what that represented, was freedom. The freedom to do what I wanted, with people I liked, when and where I wanted, and not to have to answer to a boss I didn’t respect.
And you know what? That’s my life today. Okay – I’ll admit, I’d like to have more liquidity. That would take some of the pressure off. But it’s a minor point. I feel like my life has meaning today. I am doing something I totally believe in, it’s a lot of fun, and I’m working with a terrific bunch of people who I respect and admire and am proud to be associated with. I’ve got a loving and supportive family.
I remember being at DEMO in the US last year and hearing several people on stage say "Find something you love to do and success will follow." I’m starting to understand that.
Forget about owning the next GooTube. Forget about being a millionaire for a second. Find something you love to do and you are passionate about and you believe in. Hopefully it will also be something that can impact positively on people’s lives. Then go do it.
That’s my wish for you on my birthday.
by cameron | Oct 3, 2006 | Melbourne, Melbourne's Leaders, Podcast
Today I’m kicking off a new series of shows that I’m calling ‘Melbourne’s Top Dogs’. I’m going to approach Melbourne’s leading business people and government leaders and try to discover a little bit about what makes them tick.
This first interview is with Mr Geoff Lord.
A quick bio:
After a business education at Melbourne universities, Geoff Lord joined Ford in the 1960s and moved to Elders in the 1970s, where he became a key lieutenant to John Elliott. In 1985, he formed Elders Resources and built it to a market capitalisation of $1.5 billion by acquiring assets such as forestry businesses in New Zealand. He is currently chairman of the Australian soccer club Melbourne Victory, Chairman of UXC Limited, Australia’s largest technology solutions company, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of his private investment vehicle Belgravia Group, and also sits on the board of many other companies.
If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you don’t miss future episodes by subscribing to our feed.
The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me†by The Napoleon Blown Aparts. Thanks to our sponsors Wardy IT and Direct TV!
