Paper planes

I have been making lots and lots of paper planes.

My middle son got a paper plane kit for his birthday. Well it’s probably a complete exaggeration to call it a kit – it’s actually just 40 pieces of same-sized coloured paper and a how-to-make-paper-planes booklet.

But it is brilliant.

You see, somehow I had managed to get to this point in my life without mastering the how-to turn-paper-rectangle-into-flying-object skill. And this is despite six years of trying. Seriously my boys had even taken to asking God for a mother who could make a paper plane that did anything other than plummet like a stone.

God is off the hook now. One birthday present, a few simple instructions and a diagram later and I am mistress of the skies. My planes fly fast, travel long distance, sky dive and (applause please) loop the loop.

My nibble is this: there are things which you feel you should just have been born knowing how to do. But if you didn’t inherit the know-how gene don’t waste time – just get help.

And I have another nibble too: isn’t the paper plane kit a great example of a simple idea elegantly executed?

The only issue I have now is that my son wants his present back…

What Kitchen Table Tycoons can learn from Chanel

The Chanel label is nearly 100 years old. The man at the helm is the 70 –something Karl Lagerfeld and he has been there for some 25 years. Put like that it’s hard to imagine cashed-up gen-Y-ers loving the label. Yet they do. Passionately.

The reason that he can design stuff so appealing to his young worshippers is in his choice of muses - Lindsay Lohan, Amy Winehouse ,Irina Lazareanu, Cat Power and muse-to-be Frances Bean.

His muses are cashed-up fashion-leading gen-Y-ers, and his market is cashed-up fashion-leading gen-Y-ers.

So while the label may be old, and the leader long in the tooth, the source of his inspiration is still young and fresh.

My nibble is this: all businesses need a muse.

Your business needs a source of inspiration as much as an artist does. And like an artist your business needs a real person as its muse. So real that you know where she lives and what she buys, know what she listens to and eats, know where she works and what she wears, and know who she dates and who she hates. You will have a picture of her on your office wall and her number on speed dial.

Just check in with her first. You don’t want to be accused of being a stalker.

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