Behind the Scenes at Global-Roam

When I put my hand up to see Jason Coleman (of So You Think You Can Dance Australia fame) present at this AIM event, I admit I only glossed over the event description. So I was a little surprised when I received a reminder for the “AIM Management Excellence Awards Brisbane Regional Final” awards ceremony.

With the awards as the center of the event, Jason’s presentation fell more on the side of novel entertainment than groundbreaking insight. He made an entrance with a song of the broadway variety, accompanied by a pair of dancing girls in bowler hats.

The Worst Jobs with the Best People

Jason spoke at length about his dance career, highlighting his disdain at being called “just a dancer”. One of his more relevant points was the necessity of the everyday little jobs that “sustain you”, though they may not be recognised or publicised like the “big jobs”. He described his experience working on the movie Happy Feet, in which dancers were required to spend hours on end wriggling around like penguins in uncomfortable motion capture suits, to empasise that even the worst jobs can be the most enjoyable when done with the best people. Whenever his agent identifies a potential job, he asks two questions - how much will it pay? (”it’s showbusiness“) and who else is working on it?

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As noted previously, I have challenged all employees (and a few absent shareholders might participate, as well) to select an area of value to the company and undertake (in that area) to progressively develop their capability till they reach “Guru Status”.

That’s why we found these three articles to be of great interest.

”A star is Made” by Stephen J Dubner and Steven D Levitt
New York Times.   7th May 2006
(note, Dubner and Levitt are from Freakonomics)

“Success is all in the mind” by Shelley Gare
The Australian.  24th January 2009

“A wealth of explanations for earthly riches” by Sue Halpern
AFR.  7th August 2009

For employees, there’s copies of all 3 articles saved for each in our eLibrary:
L:\Market Information\By Issue\Management

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Di Bella Coffee

Phillip Di Bella, in 2002 started a coffee business with $5000. The empire that he spawned was listed in the BRW Fast 100 three years running, which would have been four years except his accountants forgot to file the paperwork on time (d’oh). He recently turned down a $28 Million offer for Di Bella Coffee. Suffice to say Phillip knows how to do business.

I did not really know what to expect when I went to the presentation as I had no idea about any of the information listed in the previous paragraph. All I knew was that this presentation was going to be made by someone who had a successful coffee business. Coffee being essentially a commodity market in Brisbane today (think of all the coffee chains and independents around the place - Coffee Club, Zaraffas, Gloria Jeans and even McCafe), I wanted to know what it was that he had done to make his business successful. In the end I took five pages of notes, which I think is about the same amount of notes as I took in my whole time at university. While I would love to expound upon every single point taken I will take mercy on you, the reader, and only highlight the points that really stuck out.
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