Tag: sydney - Page 7

Touch down! Atlanta here I am. I've conquered the first leg of this international trip and now I am ready and able to look at what is really going on in the world of Marketing Eye.

Everything has been such a cloud of recent, and for reasons out of my control. Now, we are taking the necessary steps to reach new levels in the business, and there has been a bit of a business turnaround.

Instead of focusing just on sales of Marketing Eye contracts, we are focusing on creating better career opportunities for marketers around the globe that want to own their own business.

I'm the person who is always at the office at 7am. 

My office in Sydney is all the more special at that time of day as I look at the harbour, soak in the constant flow of trains going through and watch the cars flow to a point where they stop, as traffic becomes jammed as everyone rushes to work at the same time.

The choice to do an internship or not is really up the to the individual in Australia. In Europe and most of the US, it is compulsory.

There have always been these war stories of how interns have had to do the lamest of tasks; dropping off drycleaning, cleaning the kitchen, filing for days on end. But it's not all war stories and I can assure you that our interns at Marketing Eye do not have to do that at all.

The challenges of running a professional services firm are many. What most of my counterparts would say is that it's people that determine whether you are successful or not - and this is correct.

I must confess, I am a slow adopter of Instagram. It's not because I didn't believe that it is a good marketing medium or any less of a social media must-have than Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook - but due to the fact that there is only so many applications a person can learn well before you have a major overload and start becoming ineffective.

My business does a little B2C but to be totally honest, we are more B2B marketers than B2C.

Instagram has more than 75 million daily users, and accounts for more than 13% of all internet users. So, why did it take so long to adopt this powerful marketing medium? The truth is that many marketers are slow and lazy for that matter, and have not adopted this medium as fast as they should have and are now failing to provide clients with the right marketing mix to powerfully promote their products and services.

There are many challenges running an international marketing agency. The first being the tyranny of distance, with travel being instrumental in providing real life face-time in front of staff and clients. The second, the fact that many marketers struggle to be abreast of the latest in marketing techniques and technologies.

We have built a business on education and the training of marketers through on-the-job experiences. When someone has worked for a year at Marketing Eye, they are equipped to do any marketing job. It's something we pride ourselves on and has set us apart from the rest of the pack of small to medium sized business marketers.

When a marketing manager starts at Marketing Eye, they often feel overwhelmed. They need to learn fast and efficiently, and face-time with clients is always within weeks of starting through meetings and online communications, which require them to know everything there is to know about the client and exactly what the clients marketing expectations are.

On Sunday night, I woke up in the middle of the night and got online and booked a flight to Melbourne. I was tired and partied out. After a week in Sydney, enjoying the harbour and catching up with my friends for breakfast, lunch and dinner - I was exhausted!

Not exactly how I would like to start the new year.

Booking the flight was one of those things that had to be done yet once I pushed the button, I realised that perhaps I should have given it more thought.

The next day, after saying goodbye, I boarded my flight to Melbourne. When I landed, I breathed a sigh of relief. It was exactly what I needed after a big year.

I picked up my car and drove straight away down to Portsea to stay with one of my good friends without telling a soul. 

After my first good nights sleep in weeks, I woke up and realised that it was New Years Eve and there were things to consider. Should I attend a party or should I just stay in. In the end, I decided against a romantic night with someone I love, and decided on a quiet night in with a few friends so that I could take time out for myself and look ahead at the new year that I was about to enter. I don't know about you, but for some reason, I found that being in situation without any influence would help me start the new year in the best possible light. The hardest decision was sacrificing spending a night, with candles and conversation with the person I admire most in the world - but it had to be done.

We had a simple dinner overlooking the ocean and thought through our New Years Resolutions.

Here is what I came up with:

Theme: If nothing changes, nothing changes.

If I could have a dollar for every time I didn't trust my gut instinct, I would be a very rich woman.

Like most entrepreneurs, I have failed more times than I have succeeded and every single time I have failed I have thought back to how I could have done things differently. 9 times out of 10, it was because I didn't trust my gut instinct.

Trusting in yourself and your intuition is important, but if you are anything like me, you second guess what you think you should do and find reasons as to why you should do something a different way. It's not too indifferent from taking a risk. We are all reluctant to take risks but sometimes there is this thing inside us that tells us that we must do it - even though there a thousand reasons why we shouldn't.

Most founders and entrepreneurs have their heads stuck so far up their you know what, to actually take the time to truly learn something from the young guns in their offices.

Another gross generalization, but the reality is that too many of the Gen-Xers who have started businesses 5 years ago, are working their butts off and are not spending the time needed to lessen their load by giving the young, up-and-coming executives the chance to really make a difference.

Here's my experience. I was sharing a glass of wine with Maikayla Desjardins, a Marketing Executive at Marketing Eye Atlanta yesterday and I asked the question, "why did you leave your job in New York and come and work for me in Atlanta?"

Her first response was: "You sold me on Atlanta as this awesome place to live - but let's face it, it's not quite New York!"

Every now and then I do a promotion just to see what the response is like. Today is one of those days.