2011 was a heck of a roller coaster ride for me, and I’m going to spend a few minutes reflecting on my personal and commercial experiences this year and forecast my plans for 2012.

Personal

I have grown closer than ever with my beautiful wife. Even though my workload has increased this year, we manage to spend more time together, and we have more fun than ever before! Kell is the number one focus of my life, and I have never and will never lose sight of that fact.

I spent a month mid-year visiting the USA, Mexico, Cuba and Peru with some of my very best mates, and I have a greater appreciation for the virtue of friendship than I have ever had before. I have greater clarity around the definition of a friend; which ensures that I spend my time with high quality people that bring value to my life and to their own lives.

Unfortunately, I lost one of my truly great mates in the most tragic of circumstances. His passing continues to have a profound impact on the attitude I try to bring to my life each day, and it has opened my eyes to an important social issue that I was relatively uninformed about previously.

Business

This time, one year ago Vortilla Digital did not exist. There was no business, no staff, no clients, no name, nothing more than a vague plan for 2011 and a fairly bold projection of the market potential.

10 months after our launch – after a lot of hard work – Vortilla Digital has become one of Australia’s leading mobile app development companies with blue-chip clients including;

• Australian Federal Government
• Ambulance Victoria
• Goodyear & Dunlop Tyres Ltd
• Life Saving Victoria
• Hyundai Australia Ltd
• Henley Homes Ltd
• Drummond Golf Pty Ltd
• Nulon Oils
• Kidney Health Australia
• and many more…

In addition to these clients, we have also established business partnerships with;

• Scott Pendlebury
• The Shane Warne Foundation
• A couple more to come very soon… just pending contract signings!

Recently, we have also developed an amazing physical product to launch in early 2012; which I feel has the potential to become a commonly recognised brand by end of 2012. I promise to work tirelessly throughout 2012 to ensure that it achieves its full potential.

I would like to personally thank my whole team at Vortilla Digital for all of their hard work throughout this past year. It takes courage and faith to be involved in a start-up, and I am truly grateful that our team were able to share my vision for what we would become… I just never dreamed that it would happen so quickly!

What does 2012 hold?

In 2012 I am looking forward to working even more closely with The Shane Warne Foundation to raise funds for seriously ill and under privileged Australian children. The team at The Shane Warne Foundation, led by Jason Warne are so passionate about their work that it is completely infectious, and I can’t wait to help out again next year.

At Vortilla Digital, we will continue doing high quality work for our clients.

We will also establish ourselves within the retail sector of at least two unrelated industries with soon to be released products. I feel that this is an important way to future-proof our business against changes in technology and ensure greater sustainability for our business than we currently have by simply selling a software development service.

My wife and I are hoping to spend a month in Europe mid-year, which we are both very excited about. Seeing the Greek Islands would certainly be a big tick from my bucket list, and I think Kell plans to book us for a donkey ride through Malta… which should be… ummm… interesting!

Thanks to anybody that felt it worthwhile to endure my utterly self-indulgent summation of the past year. I suppose turning 30 this year has made me a little more reflective than I normally would be. Rest assured, I will now return my focus to the tasks ahead of me.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas, and that you all choose to make 2012 your best year yet!

If we were all able to put egos and greed aside, I think this situation is a no-brainer.

In a nutshell, the AVERAGE NBA player currently earns around $5.5m per year. This new collective bargaining agreement would have seen the AVERAGE NBA player earning around $8.5m per year by 2021 – with incremental increases along the way.

Now, I just need to know, how much does someone really need to be paid in order to have the privilege of living the dream they – and every other child – dreamed from the day they were old enough to dream.

Is being granted the opportunity to live your dream, really such a burden that you need more than $8.5m per year to live it? Come on.

I am objective enough to understand that the players have financial commitments, for which they expected a greater pay rise – via a greater share of the total BRI (Basketball Related Income) – but considering the current global economic situation, the players are displaying an extraordinary amount of greed.

In short, the theory says that for a business to be truly able to measure it’s success, it must look at more than just it’s traditional (financial) bottom line, and make a contribution to the environment and society as a whole.

I strongly believe in the merits of the theory and very recently I have started implementing strategies for achieving triple bottom line success into our iPhone app development business and our air conditioning business.

We are very proud to be working with the Department of Health and Ageing in Canberra, to create an iPhone application for their Drug Awareness Campaign. Amongst our team, we all feel strongly about our responsibility to use our skills and resources to help ‘at risk’ individuals avoid using drugs, and avoid putting themselves in situations where drugs may be present.

After some analysis of our current business practices, we also realised that our air conditioning business could – and should – be doing more to assist the environment. In short we have implemented measures that will significantly reduce the amount of wastage, and chosen to only stock the most energy efficient air conditioning units.

We expect these decisions to have a minimal negative effect on our financial bottom line, and the additional ‘good’ we do will certainly offset any small losses.

No website listed (click to enlarge)

The marketer would have expected that customers would visit their website, and if they had a well designed site, they would have attempted to capture the email details of each visitor to enable ongoing email marketing.

How times have changed!

Now we want our customers to find us on Facebook. But why?

1. Most internet users spend more time on Facebook than they do anywhere else on the internet.
2. We don’t have to ask for something as intrusive as a traditional ‘opt-in’, where we ask for a name, email and/or phone number.
3. We can communicate as regularly as we like and we know that our communication WILL BE READ as it will appear in the news feed of our customers… unlike the thousands of unread emails that must be sent to get one person to open it.

Don’t all go out and destroy your websites just yet… but keep in mind that a combination of social media with traditional online marketing will get you better results.

Oh, and don’t forget that internet users are real people… so the ‘Real World’, offline or analogue marketing techniques that have worked just fine for hundreds of years… still work!

One of my most naturally talented sales staff had failed to meet his performance target for three straight weeks. This team member had not approached me for help or advice, he had been spending less time in the office and more time working from home – as my staff are entitled to do.

“He’s not interested in doing the hard work necessary to achieve results” I thought of my problem. The solution to my problem seemed obvious, but thankfully I confided in one of my business mentors before I took the action I thought to be appropriate.

I was promptly told to stop blaming other people for the problems that I had created within my business, and to take some responsibility.

“MY FAULT? How the hell is is my fault that he’s a lazy shit?” I responded.

“Why is he being lazy?” I was asked. “Why would somebody go to the effort of starting a new job and then all of a sudden decide to be lazy and stop giving it 100%?”. I couldn’t answer these questions, which in itself highlighted a major deficiency in my managerial skills.

The more I thought about it, of course it was my fault!

I chose to hire this guy. I chose to give him the level of support, training and attention he has received. So it was up to me to help solve his problems… not up to him to help solve mine.

I arranged a meeting with the staff member in question and told him that for the next 30 minutes, we were going to work together to solve any problems that he had which were causing him to be unhappy at work.

“What is preventing you from being happy and successful in this role? What can I do to help solve your problems?”

It turns out, that he needed some structural sales training and some more documentation to take to his sales meetings – but that is not the point. The point is that I took an active interest in solving his problems, rather than expecting him to be able to solve mine.

By solving his problems mine were quickly solved too, as he achieved 200% of his target this week, and more importantly enjoyed his week much more and felt a sense of ownership over his role.

Next time you feel upset about something, ask yourself…

“Whose fault is it?”

and then

“Who is in a position to fix it?”