Berklee Dreams
Up and coming Auckland based musician Samantha Jones is heading to Berklee College of Music in Boston, USA to continue her music studies.
Contact her to buy tickets for her 2pm or 7:30pm concerts May 21st, 2011 to help her raise much needed funds.
Supporting acts include Rose Howcroft, Prolepsis, Oslo Brown and a dance crew.
Samantha had limited time, huge study pressure and a demanding practice schedule. Snatching a few hours to produce a well rehearsed photographic shoot gave us the crucial material required to produce a brand for Sam. This included organising hair, makeup, clothing and props.
The DLE formatted ticket has a two fold requirement: a tear-off ticket portion for the concerts with the remainder providing front and back introductions and contact details that the supporter keeps. Design, print management and strategic decision making all done by Lifepod.

When purchasing a business that someone has been working on for years, It surprises me that people rely on ‘goodwill’ to be the true gauge of a business’ worth. The purchaser of that business needs to be smarter than that. Customers come and go. They have no real paper value if they have no reason to keep coming back to the business. The real value sits within the intrinsic systems, retained knowledge of the remaining staff, plant and equipment as well as future booked orders from customers for services and products.
Another important measurement for a business’ success or value is its financial balance sheet. They are a story to behold, because cash is king! If we rely on fancy accounting practices and tax efficiencies to ensure the books are showing a profit of sorts, then we’re really in the poop! Retained Earnings describe the percentage of net earnings not paid out as dividends to the owners of the company. Retained Earnings are ‘retained’ by the company to be reinvested into its core business (or to pay debt). It is recorded under shareholders' equity on the balance sheet. In most cases, companies retain their earnings in order to invest them into areas where the company can create growth opportunities, such as buying new machinery or spending the money on more research and development. Small business owners usually have a business that funds their personal lives (their families, the supermarket trips, school fees, the need for vehicles so the business pays for it, etc, etc). You can track the history of a company via its balance sheet. if the owners have stripped it of its cash since its inception, seriously, the company will have limited value because chances are they haven’t made enough (or any) investment and may or may not be able to stand up to market forces, competition or customer demands. Tread carefully.
Having said this, that could make for an excellent opportunity to ‘grab a bargain’ if you ascertain that the market sector they occupy has plenty of ‘upside’ and the business has plenty of ‘upside’ (opportunity). You could either take over the management yourself, bring in new management or include the existing owner in some way.
I’m not putting down Small to Medium enterprises. The local fish ‘n’ chip shop, the corner dairy, the hair salon, the butcher, baker, candlestick maker. Don’t mess with it - we all use them, they support their families and the economy as a whole. Its when a business needs to grow beyond those finite grass roots that a paradigm shift has to occur within the business owner’s head.
Growing the business demands the creation of an entity beyond oneself, and frankly in my opinion, it should be done properly so it lasts!

Develop long lasting business plans with short term successes.

• Hurdles face us in all areas of life, a daily reminder of our humanity that seems to place a void or vacuum between ourselves and our dreams. Our minds can manufacture entire worlds, yet we are confounded by the simplest of trials.
• A hurdle will appear sooner or later (sooner than later) and in a fledgling business, multiple hurdles appear on a daily basis and it can feel like progress is stymied by them, frustrating your efforts to achieve growth, establish systems, good and proper business plans and a sense of normality in your own life.
• Progress can be made:
• Every time you overcome a hurdle, make sure the events surrounding it are well documented, reducing the possibility of its reoccurrence.
• If you’re self-employed and you don’t see a future involving extra people or contractors, reduce the intricacy of your business activity and limit the variables and ‘free-radicals’ that catch you off guard, sapping your energy and enthusiasm.
• Small or large enterprises can benefit from systemising - simplifying - processes or parts of processes.
• Hurdles: (any business challenge) can be the make or break of you and your business. A cloud can in fact have a silver lining - easier to write that on paper than achievable, I know. Ask for help; don’t be too proud - there’s too much at stake.
• Leverage your business problems:
• From the outset, capturing the events surrounding these problems literally translates into business experience and added value, increasing the overall return on your investment of time and funds. Having difficulties or problems is not a sign of weakness. Every person and business has them. Its failing to recognise and address these difficulties and problems that is the sign of weakness. Whether its in the form of a paper based folder named “SOP Manual” sitting on the shelf, or an integrated marketing and business solution or a proprietary built software management engine; facing and overcoming problems and hurdles have lead to some of the most innovative business processes that support all our daily lives in so many ways, we’ve forgotten where they originated from. Take the time to view your difficulties from a different angle... “To do a common thing uncommonly well brings success.” Henry J. Heinz

10,000 Crows and Six O’clock Minarets
Kolkata, India
6:00pm
I have never in all my days seen so many crazed birds. It feels like we’re in the Alfred Hitchcock movie called “The Birds”. Almost every single tree has at least 3 or 4 large, scrawly birds nests with a couple of crows hanging out of them. I can hear sparrows, but all I can see are crows – lots and lots of big black crows. NZ has a huge number of bird varieties, but locating their nests is so much harder. Here, they’re everywhere.
It’s hotter than hot: Liquid heat! We’ve just arrived back from a successful day of renovations at Freeset, need a shower and we will set out to a restaurant we found that cooks up ‘mean meals!’ Two of us, all we could eat, Rs440 ($NZ13.00) while of course we had to step over the half a dozen beggars to get in the door and a handful of homeless. Yes, you read me correctly and It totally messes with our heads!
Then there are the dogs. dozens and dozens of them, all sleeping, right in the middle of the footpaths, occasionally wagging their tails, but never ever menacing. All of them are completely docile and uninterested in all the passersby. I’m guessing they are trying to copy the humans; “if i lie here, right here, in the way of everyone, then maybe I’ll get a scrap of something too.”
The people living on the street fall into two camps from what I can see. There are the truly destitute; those who beg: Either by force from childhood, or as a result of ruination from drugs, or they are a refugee from Bangladesh. Seriously, you have to make a decision every minute of the day as you walk to and fro, with a little girl ever so gently tapping on my drink bottle with her hand out looking up at Corbin and me. If you have to stand in the same spot for more than a few minutes like we were doing with our American counterparts to cross the road, it seems like an age when someone like this is quietly standing way inside your comfort zone space.
Did we give her anything...?
Add to this are the homeless. They don’t tend to beg you for money or anything. They’re busy trying to organise themselves with what possessions they have left. Maybe they lost a job, or got themselves into a situation and have nowhere to live so they just live on the street.
One couple we spoke with send their children to pre-school, the mother has a job and the father is waiting to find a new one since he lost his existing job in telesales because the authorities shut down the company he was working at for. The monsoon isn’t far away. I have no idea what they are going to do. Its ok when it rains once or twice in a fortnight around here, but when knee deep water arrives in a month....
He and his wife believe strongly in the Lord Jesus. The wife is an attractive, well kept lady who greets us everyday we walk past her on the way to the train station.
Right outside BMS’ front gate on the footpath, like most roads in Kolkata, the roadside is covered in stalls selling food. Add to this the beggars, the dogs, the constant barrage of crows and the homeless with myriads of professional office workers who are beautifully clothed, walking around all of this to work and the never ending honking and tooting of every form of vehicle ever invented... and you have Kolkata...!