When Anthony Quigley took a job with an unknown company in 1992 called Microsoft, did he have any idea the career path ahead?
This is a really interesting conversation on the Win Happy podcast with Anthony about the evolution of digital, entrepreneurship, seizing opportunities, taking risks and some insights into his ventures including the (DMI) Digital Marketing Institute, the Code Institute and his latest venture the Corporate Governance Institute.
He was involved in the huge launch of ‘Windows 95‘, the first big attempt to make PCs more user friendly and from there was involved in many startups, experiencing the usual rollercoaster ride that many of us have experienced.
Anthony saw the early opportunities and provided simple solutions to help companies get on the internet (can you imagine!) with products such as “internet in a box”, providing them with the hardware and software to help people to get online for the first time complete with email addresses!
He ran a successful company that offered the earliest version of “digital agency” services and responding to a shortage of qualified people to do the actual work, he started a training company with the objective of finding talent for their own business – the very successful training business, Digital Marketing Institute emerged this shortage of staff!
Anthony says “everyone has to be a salesman”, he talks about risk and cash flow challenges with startups, he discusses the shortage of IT talent and the very practical role of the Code Institute to address skill shortages that our universities can’t satisfy, and he discusses his changed approach when starting a new business – think of the end goal first he says.
We were having the usual conversation except the only sticking point was that they wanted a full day session with their group and I was trying to discourage this.
I find that if you stay at training too long then people get tired and what they learn in the morning they end up forgetting in the afternoon. It’s best if they get a chance to slowly digest, process and try it out for themselves.
I normally suggest half day sessions, when everyone stays fresh and then allowing a week in between so that everyone can practice and then come back to progress further.
“It must be on the one day because we have the hotel booked” she said.
It was only then that the penny dropped and I understood why she wanted it on the same day.
This threw me as I hadn’t been faced with this in a long time and I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about it.
Ok, lets do it ..
As it turned out there was a mix up with the hotel booking on their end and the training was cancelled (after all that !!) and while I was disappointed a big part of me was delighted!
I wasn’t looking forward to the prospect and disruption of it.
Travelling and delivering training sessions in person was part and parcel of the last 10 years (pre Covid), but the truth of it is that I have been doing this from the comfort of my little home office (converted bedroom) for the last 16 months and it works really well.
It’s convenient for me and participants, I’ve tweaked my delivery for online and it works really well, it’s cost effective and it also means they get a fresh “Greg” who isn’t after driving for a few hours and all that goes with it.
The big conversation that I was having with myself was “how inconvenient and pointless” that travelling/in person/ hotel experience would be compared to the very convenient way that I have replaced it with, and with no negative impact on the learning experience.
However, I do love the face to face in person training and as a social creature I love the energy you get back from a “live” group and the special learning dynamic that can happen. This will always have it’s place but only when necessary.
I know my simple example of this in person training session will be replicated very soon with so many of those things we have all been doing in the course of our work while working from home.
People have had to take on board new work habits which are now deeply embedded and there are parts about these that are very convenient as well as being cost and life effective and they won’t want to give them up too easily.
We can all talk about hybrid but this could be a very slow and long road back to the office and we need to be really careful to preserve what is working because it is possible to get the job done and ….
At the end of a long work day we could be found trudging from the office weighed down by the usual stresses, challenges and issues, on the way to retrieving the car from the car park and heading home.
And there she would be, and regardless of the day that you have had it immediately would get better.
She was beautiful, inside and out.
When you would bump into Natasha at anytime you were 100% guaranteed to get a warm, friendly greeting, full of enthusiasm and positivity and she would always leave you with a hug and a feeling like your whole world had brightened up, at least for a while.
Of course she was a great business woman and of course she was a really lovely person, but that gift of making everyone that she met feel immediately better was really special and something that will be a huge loss.
Natasha, you were loved by many and will be missed by so many more and a sincere thanks for making me feel so good every time that we met.
Our thoughts and prayers are with her husband Wayne, her two boys, her dad Tony and the many friends, colleagues and students who all had the benefit of some of her precious time on this earth. Her greatest legacy is that her kindness and brightness will no doubt live on in all those she interacted with, even if just for a moment.
I’m sure we have all been away on holidays in a special place and you pass an auctioneers window and gaze at the houses for sale and think “what if“?
While it’s a nice dream, quickly after 60 seconds you rationalise and the dream is gone.
For me that place would definitely be Siena in Italy, and while I have had this idea for a while I can think quickly for a bunch of very logical and rational reasons why it just couldn’t work …maybe when I retire (isn’t that the easy way of dodging the thought? )
If Covid has taught us anything, it is that you can get your work done from anywhere, hasn’t it? Of course, there are other reasons why I can’t and it doesn’t take me long to list them in my head.
Ciara O’Toole, our very special friend and her husband gazed at that window in Lake Como and decided “lets do it“!!
She was just married, without a word of Italian, a house in Dublin with a big mortgage and a great career as a marketer…crazy idea Ciara!
What I love about her is her adventurous spirit, that ability to “go for it” without a strong safety net and hey, let’s see what happens!
In Ciara’s case lots happened, including a few nasty bumps and wonderful experiences but it has been and continues to be a great adventure!
Did I tell you she learnt how to fly a sea plane and wrote a book about the experience?
If you get a chance at all you might read her book “Going Solo on Lake Como” and maybe tune into the episode of the Win Happy podcast with this intelligent, funny, adventurer, marketeer, entrepreneur, author and pilot who tells her incredible story that is full of many twists and turns!
Let’s celebrate those who say “Let’s do it”, and maybe think about that being you next time you look at that window.
I was reading an interview in the Irish Times weekend Magazine with the singer/songwriter and guitarist of the Foo Fighters. Dave Grohl where he was chatting about their new album, ‘Medicine at Midnight‘.
The band are a few decades into their career and Dave had also been the drummer with Nirvana, and just 25 years old when that band finished due to the death of Kirk Cobain. I wonder did he play that famous gig in Sir Henry’s in Cork – were you there?
The Foo Fighters are a huge band and they have a big following and with each new album there must be a pressure to stick to the “winning formula” and style that has earned them so many loyal fans, or do they refresh, reinvent, reinvigorate and go down new paths, that could be quite risky musically and commercially.
In the interview Dave says “You have to feel comfortable and confident enough to push out to the edges a little bit every time you do it – otherwise it’s just not fun, it’s just not exciting”
My question for you is – is this just the privilege of musicians, writers and artists to think like this?
Is it just these types of people that can have that luxury of “pushing what they do out to the edges” just because life gets boring and less fun, or can that thinking apply to all of us?
This life of ours isn’t a rehearsal. and we do owe it to ourselves to “push out to the edges” – of course we have to pay the bills, but we can also refresh, reinvent, reinvigorate and explore some new paths.
I was chatting to Brendan, my son who is in the middle of his 14 day “luxury” stay at the ‘Holiday Inn’ in Auckland in New Zealand as part of their two week mandatory quarantine period.
The one thing that really struck me from that conversation was him describing the very surprising sense of overwhelming relief of being away from Ireland, from being away from restrictions, from being away from constant thoughts about hand sanitising, keeping our distance, mask wearing, not hugging, walking past our favourite establishments which are all closed, inevitably chatting about it with everyone and listening to the incessant dark news feed, and living each day under a very dark Covid cloud.
He thought he was managing the whole thing fine, getting on with things as we all do BUT … it has been non stop and it has been creeping into all of us incrementally in a way that we I’m not sure that we will fully appreciate until it’s all well and truly behind us.
In tandem with this conversation, I was reading a very interesting piece in the New York Times by Melissa Kirsch about the huge role that art plays in our lives.
She wrote about “how we are all waiting for things to open up so we can resume what we think of as normal life” and the fact that this simple idea suddenly feels daunting.
She wrote about “the promise of going to a play, hearing live music or standing awed before a painting that much more exciting to anticipate“
We have been missing so much, it is hurting in ways that we haven’t been able to fully process and the sooner we get back to all of those simple pleasures we can start to heal and living again.
I’m imagining a fantastic meal with friends in The White Horse in Ballincollig, before heading upstairs to their beautiful, intimate and very special venue to watch a gig. Maybe it’s THE 4 Of US, Mark Geary, John Spillane, Jack O’Rourke, David Syme, the White Horse Guitar Club or Allman Brown. Whoever it is I’m imagining being back there, standing at the bar chatting to the barman and waiting for another feast of music to top up my soul.
Maybe it was something that I specifically said in my email about a bad nights sleep or maybe there was just a hint in the some of my other content, that I was under a little bit of a cloud yesterday?
Whatever it was, like all good friends he sensed that my mood wasn’t quite what it should be.
Within minutes my phone rang and it was him.
We chatted about work, about football about Covid and about families and of course he did ask me why I was a bit off colour and not sleeping. He did get it out of me that this was getting close to Dad’s anniversary, and at this time three years ago we were watching him gradually fade away, day after day and the sad memories were weighing heavily on me.
As always, a problem shared is a problem halved and we also got the chance to talk about how he was feeling – his dad sadly passed towards the end of last year.
I am so grateful to my friend for taking time out of his busy day to reach out – it took away the cloud.
So today, and all days, pay close attention to those you love and your colleagues to what they are saying and how they are saying it, and if you can make the time, reach out.
He must have been there all along, doing exactly the same thing as me, day in day out for months, but it took the leaves to fall from the trees and the evenings to get shorter for me to notice him.
Late in the afternoon, just like me he switches on the light in the upstairs bedroom or “lockdown office” and I spotted him for the first time.
He is working from his house, upstairs in one of the bedrooms in the housing estate opposite me.
When we walk the dogs in the morning and in the evening you can see all of the neighbouring “offices” , the many people at work early in the morning and late in the evening at their new workplaces in bedrooms and on kitchen tables.
It’s as if many of the city centre offices have moved out to the houses in the suburbs with the exception that we can’t take a breather and walk around the corner to the coffee shop or head to the canteen for a cuppa with a work colleague. Instead we just walk down the stairs, put the kettle on, say hello to the dog (if you have a dog!) and come back to the desk.
I don’t miss the commuting time and I certainly don’t miss the costs associated with that, but I do think there is a quiet grind to this extended period of working from home that is probably chipping away at us, in ways that we don’t even realise.
For all of the time saved commuting and the brutal efficiency of meeting the team and clients on Zoom, for some reason I don’t seem to be more productive and when Friday comes I am fairly wiped out.
I read with interest the new proposal by government about remote working which has just been published, ‘Making Remote Work’, Ireland’s National Remote Work Strategy. The Strategy’s stated objective is to ensure that remote working is a permanent feature in the Irish workplace in a way that maximises economic, social and environmental benefits.
Somehow the word “remote” is quite a negative one and it’s literal meaning might resonate with too many of us at the moment.
I know that I don’t want to return to the way it was before, but I’m not sure what exactly I will evolve to.
I don’t know my work neighbour in the window across the way, but maybe some day I will wave and we just might have a coffee at the wall!
Before I do this post about a form of planning for the year ahead, I wanted to write briefly about the attitude “choices” that we can bring to different situations and how this can affect our outlook and our outcomes.
My dad sadly passed away around this time three years ago, so it is naturally an emotionally challenging time of the year for the family and in particular for my mum.
We had her over for dinner on St. Stephen’s Day and a conversation started around the table about Christmas gifts. Mum started to tell us stories about her and dad when they were living in New York in the late fifties and when they were invited to dinner at that time by friends and relatives.
It turns out that the practical presents such as socks and gloves, which would have been the norm in the Ireland they had left, weren’t quite the norm in an abundant, booming New York!
Mum was nearly choking with the laughter as she recalled her and dad nearly running from a relatives house contemplating them opening the meagre gifts they had bought them after seeing what had been bought for them.
We laughed with her and loved her stories – despite the sad time of year, she always sees the positive and instead of being down, we toasted dad and she told us even more stories about their time in the States. He was with us in a nice way.
So..
I had a great year because..
For the last few years I have been doing this simple little exercise at the start of the year to help me get focused around things that are important both personally and professionally.
I have found it to be really useful and it has made a big difference, and as I look back at last year (even despite Covid) I can see the things that I have achieved as a result of this focus. In Fuzion we also ask all of the team to do this – it is really important to us that everyone in the team achieves their own personal and career goals.
Making plans and actually achieving them is always challenging and at the start of the year we find ourselves at the beginning of that loop all over again making promises that often will never materialise!
A few years ago I was inspired by a book about goal setting in a different way called “The Art of Possibility” by Benjamin and Rosamund Zander (a really interesting motivational book by the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and his wife who is an executive coach).
Benjamin Zander, the conductor has the task every year of bringing out the very best from a large group of very talented musicians for his orchestra.
His approach is rooted in the power of visualisation – the simple idea behind this is that if you visualise what you want to achieve then there is a much better chance of it actually happening (disbelievers ….stop reading now !!)
Taking this approach, you can apply it by doing some simple visualisation about the year ahead and tapping into all of Your Possibilities.
Take a quiet few moments so you can concentrate with a blank sheet of paper and a pen and do some visualisation – Take a few deep breaths and relax and close your eyes.
Now imagine the last working day of this year, just before you head out the door to do some last minute shopping and enjoy a well-earned rest. You are feeling really satisfied as you reflect on your fantastic achievements during the year. Some of these were personal things and some of these were professional things – you are feeling great because you have achieved them.
Now open your eyes and start writing:
I had a great year because ….
Now off you go – list the things that will make this year a great one for you.
Take your time and be as specific as you can including all of those business and personal goals that will give you that huge sense of satisfaction on that last working day of the year.
This is the starting point – when you are ready you need to study this list and start figuring out how you can go about making this list come to life.
Put your piece of paper in a safe place so that you can refer to it throughout the year to make sure your list of possibilities stays on track.
Enjoy realising all of your possibilities..
Happy New Year
This clip of Benjamin Zander is really motivational and well worth watching.
I’m been really feeling down all day having made a decision to cancel two different restaurant bookings that we had made with friends because of the rising Covid case numbers and the fact that mum is coming for dinner on St.Stephen’s Day.
Yes, it’s the right thing to do..
It’s more than frustrating as since the 6 week lockdown period we managed to get out just once and now it looks like we are heading into another lockdown at the start of the new year.
I know Ireland is in relatively good shape and I am very lucky and yes, “boo hoo” to me with having to cancel a restaurant booking!! Others have had REAL hardship this year and some haven’t seen family in a long time – it’s been tough.
I’m feeling down because we are missing out on friends, I’m down for the restaurants that have to take cancellations on the chin and the crap year they have had, I’m down for the pubs and the entertainment industry that were wiped out this year, I’m down for those who are sick because of Covid and what about those who have sadly passed this year because of the disease.
More than being down, I’m feeling really angry that the “6 week sacrifice” that we all made and in particular the many businesses that were forced to shut again was fairly worthless because of some poor decision making that left us with high case numbers at the end of that period.
We ignored the opportunity to extend the school’s midterm break at the beginning of lockdown and even when schools had reported cases there was some strange determination to ignore it – this got so ludicrous that some schools with an “outbreak” that wanted to close were instructed to stay open!!
We had takeaway pints being allowed throughout the 6 weeks – what level of stupidity was this?
And as for people coming into the country ..
Instead of being down I think we now need to start getting angry because this could and should have been avoided.
Tony Holohan (Chief Medical Officer in Ireland) and co are blue in the face from telling us all to be careful, wash hands, avoid travelling, stop visiting, reduce contacts, but I swear to god …
..we’ll do all of that, but that must come hand in hand with doing the other sensible things as well
At that time (in September) he suggested that if Ireland did the right things we could be celebrating with friends and family on Christmas day. We didn’t – instead we did a one legged lockdown that has us practically back to square one within a fortnight.
As I said, I’m angry..
In my view the only way to avoid us being in this perpetual yo yo situation until late next year is to do something different, the proven things that have worked in other countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, South Korea and even a place such as the Isle of Man.
The very clever people from the Independent Scientific Advocacy Group (ISAG) have carefully laid out a plan to get us “Back To Normal” for St.Patrick’s Day , which is a real solution to this crisis.
It is sensible, it will protect the health of everyone pre vaccine, it will save lives, it will start to restore mental health issues, it will have all of our businesses operating to their maximum potential under the circumstances, it will save the country a fortune and it will have our health service making up ground on all the other medical procedures that have been delayed.
Click here to read more – it will require a final lockdown (unfortunately we are there again), but then a real strategy to get us “Back To Normal” that works with some basic other things that will shut the back door as well as the front door and provide a real path to normality…
Proper Suppression
Travel Quarantine
Northern Ireland cooperation
Effective Test and Trace
Region by Region approach
Support for those isolated
International Cooperation (that’s one I have added – we can open up with other countries who take the same approach)
Let’s make sure that most of 2021 isn’t as bad as 2020 – we know what to do.
Greg Canty Fuzion Blog 