Author Archives: thatconsultantbloke

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About thatconsultantbloke

Based in North Wiltshire UK I try to have fun whilst making things happen. I spent almost 40 years climbing the corporate ladder before getting bored with being too far from the action. Now I use my experiences of that time, the good and the bad, to keep the bills paid and have fun helping clients turn strategy into positive results.

Networlding Masterclass: 7 Steps that successful networkers know and you need to find out

When and Where

Thursday 10 March 2011

0900 to 1700

Village Hotel Swindon
Shaw Ridge Leisure Park
Whitehill Way,
SN5 7DW  Swindon
United Kingdom

Why you should attend

You will discover why:

  • attracting followers is a fallacy that leads to your time being wasted and your productivity suffering
  • your true network, when you discover it, improves your net worth
  • you will never need to go to a boring, valueless networking function ever again

You will learn how you can:

  • stand out from 3 billion people who will trade/be active on the internet by 2020
  • cut your marketing and sales costs by as much as 50%
  • harness the true power of social networking most people will never discover

Who should attend?

If you are an adviser, accountant, board member, SME business owner, consultant, educator, entrepreneur, executive, intrapreneur, lawyer, leaders, manager, not-for-profit leaders, practice leader, politician, though leader, social entrepreneur, speaker, team leader or trainer – you will gain massively from being part of a networlding group.

Click on the link below for more details and to book your place. Early booking discounts are available.

Swindon Networlding

For SME business owners, non-profit organisations, the WHO is always the final challenge when it comes to finding key influencers and customer groups (or fund givers for non-profits).  Limited marketing budget is the reason many SMEs choose to attending networking events in the hope of chancing on a sale. Why rely on chance? As a community of Networlders, we create a Thoughtful Social Networking experience, both in person and online, to help you to build:

  • better business faster (business growth or a thriving non-profit organisation)
  • better collaboration for innovative ventures (better, faster, stronger)
  • better career faster (career growth)
  • better personal lives faster (personal growth)

Networlding helps you to cultivate advocates for your brand

  • Create great content
  • Get talked about
  • Build a tribe
  • Become a trusted resource for your customers
  • Make it easy for people to find, try and buy from you
  • Make your brand understood, relevant, credible and remarkable
  • Make meaning and create an insanely great customer experience


Networlding is a proven methodology that helps you to grow your network relationships and identify connections and key influencers that matter.

Assuming you are clear about the WHAT, WHY, WHEN and HOW of your goals … you should have a list of WHO’S WHO that you feel can help you (your primary connections).  We are not talking about who you would pay to help you.  We are talking about advocates that will tell others how remarkable you are.

What they say about Networlding

“I have always found myself frustrated with business networking over the years and never really sure why. I have give of myself and done my best. Often coming away with massive numbers of contacts, but this has rarely turned into solid business. Today I think I found out why.  With Networlding you learn from the ground up how to present yourself according to your values and most importantly how to find and keep hold of those precious contacts that suit those values; the ones who will bring you real and valuable future relationships. The ones who care about you not just crash and burn business. In short how to find the other ones like you! What a revelation. Kwai certainly know his stuff and can demonstrate this with personal success too.

And it was obvious I was not alone when the revelation came. Every single person in that room was not only convinced but was by the end of a single day passionate about making each other’s lives better. I have never seen that in any networking group of any kind and I have done them all.  So if you are frustrated with the vapidity of the 50 people in one room but need more than meeting the same six to twenty people over and over again. Can I suggest you consider changing your approach entirely. Don’t be a networker, be a networlder. Take the training day, like I did and work out just where you might have been wrong all these years!” – Jeremy Cobb, Owner of want2change and hypnoslim

“Like all other sectors, charities can benefit from thoughtful social networking.   Kwai’s networlding masterclass is a lovely way of beginning to get your head around the potential for your charity and how you might move forward in good company.  I am thinking through how best we can develop from it.  Thank you.” – Dr Rhetta Moran, Matron, RAPAR

“Superb day! Much of it very different to what I do now.  I see it will enable me to reach so many more people.  Many thanks.” – Roger Jackson. Business For Breakfast Knutsford.

“A must do. Very thought-provoking.” – Ken Lee. BusinessLink Northwest Skills Advisor

“Very interesting and well presented event which promoted great exchanges.” – Eileen Coldrick.  Owner at http://www.worksmartvpa.com

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Filed under business life

Empire of the Clouds – Book Review

I’ve really enjoyed this book. I’m about 10 years younger than the author, but remember most of the aircraft he describes very well and many of the test pilots were my heros too.

One or two review have criticised the author’s style, but I found that his conversation way of writing contributed a lot to the pleasure I’ve had over the last couple of days as I’ve avidly read it. Altogether a wonderful tale of an era when aircraft were going through radical change. Yes, there were mistakes and incompetence and our industry did suffer from political weathercocking, but it was a time that produced some spectacular and beautiful aircraft, some of which were truly world beaters.

Empire of the Clouds: When Britain’s Aircraft Ruled the World

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Filed under Books & Reading, cars planes and trains

Actor Leslie Nielsen has died aged 84

Sad news this morning. I was always a fan from the Forbidden Planet days, but feel that his Airplane role defined a whole new genre.

I got a lot of pleasure from his films and TV work and am sad to hear he has departed this life.

RIP

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Filed under america, obituaries

Over a year of weekly column writing

It is more than a year since I started writing my weekly column on the Monday Musings blog, and almost a year since I started to make it a 600 word column to try and get some further discipline into my writing.

Others have to be the judge of success, but Monday Musings has been picked up by a professional journal and gets a mention on their web site and in the magazine, so I have acheived something in the way of producing a worthwhile output every week.

When I first blogged about 18 months or so ago I had no concept of finding myself with half a dozen blogs, nor of them generating any revenue, let alone to have written over 275 blog entries. All I wanted was to practice my writing and see where it all led.

Monday Musing number 54 gets published at 0600 UK time next Monday. I hope that I can be celebrating the 100th musing somtime next Autumn.

Thanks for following my words. I hope that they have helped, amused or inspired.

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Filed under about me, writing

The joys of motoring #6

So there I was, heading off up the M5 in Jennifer Jaguar with plenty of time to get round Brum and to my seminar around the M42/M6 interchange when the warning signs told me that the M5 was closed between junctions 6 and 5. Oh, well. Off at J8 and across via Pershore, Evesham and Stratford upon Avon and pick up the route again from that side.

Why is it that some idiot has failed to manage to drive along a piece of road where we’re all going the same way without driving into something? I know that I’ve asked  this before, but I do get the feeling that some people have to take their brains out before they get behind the wheel.

Despite my having left with time in hand I got to where I was going an hour later than planned. Not too bad under the circumstances, but I reckon I could have shaved another 15 minutes off that if it wasn’t for two other pieces of brainless activity (or non activity actually) on the part of my fellow car peddlers.

Firstly, why is it that so many people arrive at a roundabout and then stop and look to see if anyone is coming? Look as you are getting there and you can see whether or not you need to stop. If there’s no need to stop, then don’t.

Then there is the traffic light brigade, the worst example of which this morning was in Evesham. I’m eight cars back in the queue at a red light. The lights change. What seemed like three days later the person at the front woke up and moved off. A couple of the others followed fairly promptly, but the rest had to think about it. The bloke in front of me must have had to get the manual out to see which pedals did what as the one in front of him had almost got through the lights before he moved. And then the inevitable; he’s 30 feet from the lights and they start to change. All of a sudden he’s realised what the pedal on the right does and he goes for it, and is undeterred as the lights go red just before he gets there. Through he goes as I coast to a halt at the line.

So thanks to all you people who each wasted a few more seconds of my life again today, and thanks also to whoever caused the problem on the M5. I only missed 40 minutes of the seminar that I’d paid £400 (plus VAT) for because I know my way around and could find a different way. One of my fellow delegates wasn’t sure enough to try a diversion and missed three hours of the seminar.

The joys of motoring?

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Filed under cars planes and trains, random rants

I say No Thanks to Berlin Time.

I have been reading of Rebecca Harris MP (Conservative, Castle Point) and her private member’s bill proposal to have the UK switch to Central European Time, or Berlin Time as some folks would have it, presumably to raise the spectre of Johnny Foreigner, here in the form of the Hun, taking over the country.

Xenophobia aside, for me this is plainly ridiculous and I see no point in it whatsoever. Yes it just shifts the day, but I go to work in the dark for a lot of the year anyway; I’m an early riser. Lighter evenings would result and that would be pleasant and no more, but the hard facts that are being touted are largely untrue: Last time we tried this road deaths went up, not down.

Ms Harris may be sincere, but I believe that she is misguided. Surely she could have found something more sensible to spend a private members bill on? Or has she just picked something controversial to make a name for herself?

Join me in lobbying against this daft idea. There are plenty of websites and polls opposing it.

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Filed under business life, random rants

Police helicopter to move – more fun with the media?

“Police helipcopter to move” screams the headline on the placard!

Goodness gracious! What could this mean? Has it been on static display outside Police HQ all of these years? Have they finally found the budget for enough fuel to fly it? Are they going to take it away on a truck?

The thing has been in regular movement since they got it. It has been flying around where I live for years, so has the local rag only just got wind of this or could it be another example of sloppy standards in journalism?

The latter of course. Yes, I know roughly what they mean in that there are ongoing issues about the shared service with Wiltshire NHS, but why should I have to interpret a simple headline? Surely accuracy would be better? “New base for Police helicopter”, for example, says it all.

Please stop dumbing down. We need better standards if we are to get this country back on its feet. The media are in the front line along with teachers and, first and foremost, parents.

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Filed under cars planes and trains, fun stuff, random rants

Hopefully my last NHS encounter for a while

This time last week I was back at my local NHS hospital waiting to go into theatre for another general anisthetic and what, I hope, will be my last encounter with the NHS for a while. At least the surgical branch that is; I shall still have to battle with the local doctor’s end for the foreseeable future.

One week on I can report what seems like a complete success. For the first time in a year I can hear properly and am no longer suffering from the disorienation and balance problems that one good ear and one useless one had been causing. Listening to music on my headphones has been restored to the pleasure that it once was, and visits to supermarkets and similar places of high ambient noise are no longer such an aural trial.

I have a great empathy with those who have these problems on a permanent basis, but am very glad that, for me, I’m back to what represents normal for a man of 58.

My encounters with the NHS at this level have been good. Only the ridiculous issue of the hospital and my doctor not being able to see the same information even though they are part of the same local body has clouded things (it has meant that I have had to go through the same tests twice on several occasions which is a stupid waste). Poor process aside, as for the people that I have had to deal with, I cannot fault them. They are a fine crew and but, now that they have restored me to my former glory, and therefore for purely selfish reasons, I do hope that I have seen the last of them for some time to come.

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Filed under about me

An investment for Wayne’s extra pay packet

If he wants to spend about fifty pence of his new wages can I recommend that he potters off to a second hand book or charity shop and finds himself a copy of Nobby Stiles’ autobiography?

Read it and learn Wayne. Other times, other ways maybe, but you could use a lesson in humility. If you want to see your club ambitious for trophies, then show some leadership and do your bit instead of behaving the way you have recently.

If you want trophies then they will come from the team playing as a team, not because of you alone. You have a huge talent, so get fit , say sorry and get out there and play for your mates.

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Filed under random rants

Florida’s next govenor

Jeb Bush came from a political family (you may have heard of his Dad and his brother, both of whom served, albeit with widely different standards). He seemed like a good administrator and I got the impression that my adopted second home state prospered with him in the chair.

Charlie Crist came over as a good man and a rare politicion in that he always seemed more intrested in getting the job done than in self promotion.

Sure maybe both had some grey areas in their administrations, but what prospects does FL have to come? The candidates appear to offer a choice between a crook and an incompetant. As for the furore over the recent televised debate where one party clearly did break the rules of the debate and then was silly, or poorly advised,  enough to lie about what she had done (did she not know, or was she not told, that the episode was filmed and was being broadcast ad nauseum?).

Pretty stupid, but her opponent’s outrage was pathetic. Come on people, what about the real issues?

If this is the best that came be offered, Florida could be in for a rough time whichever way the vote goes.

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Filed under america, random rants