Nicholas Bates book “How to be Brilliant” is, unsurprisingly, simply brilliant.  A simple concept and design, but on reading the first page it immediately gives you a boost and you realise that being brilliant and achieving your goals is all about your own attitude.

New Business people today have certainly hit a tipping point of being frantically busy. Whenever you ask people how they are don’t you always hear “busy, hectic, crazy.. it’s just mad”? But are we getting any more done then we used to and are we getting the important things done?

Marketing budgets are more closely observed than ever and there are more agencies hungry for the prize with less headcount, but there is still £29.5bn being spent on marketing.  It may not be easy, but a large number of companies are achieving strong growth and success.

Productivity of employees must be a worry to management teams. There are so many potential distractions with email overload, Facebook and Twitter feeds to read, Linkedin messages to post, unnecessary meetings to go to…  Social media is a vital tool to build profile, reputation and prospects but has to be used in a focused way. We can waste not just minutes but hours discussing how freezing the weather is, and a long winded description of the journey to work and how it went wrong.  Yes we are all guilty of it, (us included!) but we have to work hard to constantly rectify.

Our time and resources are limited and we have to focus on productivity.  Time-management experts suggest checking emails first thing in the morning, at lunch time and at the end of the day – yet it is very hard to stick to. However, it is vital to free up time to get the work done that will make a real difference to growing an agency.  We need to practise some different habits and give them the priority – set your goals, work out how to achieve them and then JFDI! Of course, it’s the Just Do It part that is the hardest. How can we make it easier? What can we do differently? How do we even know what we should be doing and what are goals are?!