A great friend of mine works for Jet Blue, a budget airline in the USA. In September they ran a sensational special offer. For a flat USD $599 passengers enjoyed unlimited travel anywhere in the Jet Blue network for the entire month. Wow, what a bargain. Most airlines wouldn’t be brave enough to make an offer like this, but I am sure the entire industry stood up and took notice when Jet Blue announced it.

Now when you think about it from JetBlue’s point of view they sold hundreds of thousands of their “All You Can Jet” tickets, generating millions of dollars in upfront revenue and they got enormous word of mouth publicity from their offer. And lets not forget the customers, those lucky enough to get the $599 tickets have a sensational deal. The perfect win/win scenario that is the stuff that legendary businesses are made of.

To make an offer like this you need to be brave and smart. I am sure that the team at Jet Blue are both. In these challenging times it is really the brave and the bold who often get the most amazing results. We need to be smart enough to think up new ideas and be brave enough to give them a go. Interestingly enough Jet Blue entered the North American market when all experts said there was no room for another budget airline. They have been consistently profitable, even in the midst of the GFC. We can all learn a lot from them and other similar brave and bold companies around the world.

Now is the time to throw out what doesn’t work and it is a time to try ideas that may be considered a little unorthodox. The best part of the modern business landscape is that if you can come up with a great idea, that is a little out of the box, and you are brave enough to give it a go, the power of social media will kick in and word of mouth marketing will spread your idea like wildfire.

Never before has there been a time that consumers are screaming for new things to buy and new ways to spend their money. Even in the midst of tough times, the new they are looking for is value. Offer this however you can and they will support you, even if it means buying more upfront to save over the long term. Another perfect example of this is Costco – the new discount supermarket in Australia. You can save a motza but you have to pay a membership fee and be prepared to buy toilet paper in lots of 100.

The lesson here is that fortune favours the brave, so be brave in your business. Be bold. If you try an idea and it doesn’t work, it’s not a failure it just means you are one step to closer to an amazing idea that generates a lot of money for your business, so keep trying.

This time of year is always pretty good. We are generally feeling relaxed and refreshed and filled with anticipation about the year ahead (this time last year many of us were filled with trepidation so anticipation is certainly a step up). Something I have done for quite some time now is to pick a theme for the year ahead. I find that it gives everything I do in the year direction and clarity as I work on improving one main aspect of my business and my life.

Now some of the themes for me over the year’s have included -

FINISH THE UNFINISHED – I spent a year tidying up lots of things that had been irritating me and taking my attention away from the important stuff I needed to be doing.

THE YEAR OF SIMPLICITY – I found that I had ended up with an overly complex business with lots of processes and procedures that weren’t really needed in a business of my size. So this was the year of simplifying everything I could. It was a good year and my brain felt much lighter at the end.

FEEL THE FEAR AND DO IT ANYWAY – This was a year when I needed to make some big changes in my life and I was feeling afraid to them. So I started the year off by embracing the fear – and going for it. It was a tough year but made easier with my new found motto (thanks Susan Jeffers – Author of Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway).

CHARGE WHAT I AM WORTH – Like many small business owners I found myself slowly going broke because of under charging – not valuing my services accordingly. So during this year I removed my emotional attachment to the outcome of getting projects (or perhaps the fear of not getting them) and I charged virtually twice what I would normally charge. Did my business go up or down? It went way up and I learnt a great lesson. Someone has to be the most expensive – it may as well be you as long as you can deliver the goods.

The point I am making here is that when we have a really strong central theme that guides us during the year we tend to achieve more. It may be a theme that focuses on fixing up problems or a theme that is all about striving forward. Develop your own theme for 2010 and put it everywhere – on the wall by your desk, on your dashboard, in your wallet or purse, in the toilet, on the fridge….. put it every where. Do this and your chances of achieving this dream will be dramatically increased.

So what is my theme for 2010 – LISTEN TO MY INTUITION. I intend to become a better listener so that I can hear my intuition loud and clear, in every single aspect of my life.

I wish you well for the coming year and I will do my utmost to give you as many ideas, tips, pieces of advice and so on to help you build the business of your dreams and the life you deserve.

Cheers,

Andrew

I was sent a link to a website called The Fun Theory (www.thefuntheory.com) the other day. It is a concept backed by Volkswagen and it shows how human behaviour can be influenced in a very positive way by making day to day tasks more fun. There are a series of short videos that support the concept - and show that all the signs, instructions and rules could be replaced by simply having some fun.

I think this principle can be applied with HUGE benefits in a business. I have been talking about this for years and I see those businesses who incorporate a healthy dose of fun into what they do striving way ahead of their competitors.

ENJOY.