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…

Are you too busy to exercise?

What’s the first thing that you are too busy to do? For me it’s exercise. Or should I say for me it was exercise.

After discovering “Brain Rules:12 principles for surviving and thriving at work, home and school” by John Medina (http://www.brainrules.net/) I am now going to have to find something else to be too busy to do.

Why?

Because according to John exercise is the closest thing we have to a magic bullet for our brains and:

we learn 20% faster immediately after exercise
exercise improves our brain’s higher-order functions (complex problem solving, reasoning etc)
we are best at decision making when our heart rate is up
we get better outcomes from business meetings when we hold them while walking at 1.8 km per hour (sounds funny but I think it works –I feel much more eloquent when I walk about while using the phone)
exercise will improve our long term memory

My nibble is this. I find it easy to be too busy on my business to get all hot and sweaty, even though I know how important it is to look after my physical health. But knowing that 45 minutes spent exercising will have a positive and direct impact on my business, well it’s a no-brainer.

Oh and if you are thinking this guy is just a quack you might want to know that he is actually a developmental molecular biologist whose work focuses on the genes involved in human brain development and the genetics of psychiatric disorders.

And he’s very entertaining. Take a look at his website (http://www.brainrules.net/)

A daily dose of goodness

I can’t remember how I stumbled across this now, but I did, and I love it.

It’s called the Daily Good and it’s a free email service that delivers a little bit of inspiring goodness straight into your in box.

So every day I get to read a little story that leaves a big impact.

It feels good. It revitalises me. And it reminds me about what’s really important.

Check it out at www.dailygood.org

A midwife in every village

How would you feel if you gave birth to a baby that had died because it’s head got stuck in the birth canal?

How would you feel if that baby’s skull had rubbed a hole in your bladder or rectum giving you uncontrollable urinary and faecal incontinence?

How you would feel if you were then abandoned by your family and cast out of your village because the incontinence made you dirty and smelly.......

This happens to 9000 women a year in Ethiopa.

The childbirth injury is called a fistula injury and it can be completely fixed.

I have been looking for a charity to support with my book (it’s not too late to enter a story: email me at Julia@thebusinessbakery.com.au) and I have decided to support the Fistula Foundation http://www.fistulafoundation.org/

In 1959 Catherine Hamlin went to Ethiopia with her husband to set up a midwifery school. Seeing the plight of the Ethiopian women they set about changing it and they never came back

Today Catherin Hamlin is 84 and she is still working at achieving her dream of putting a midwife in every village.

It’s an amazing story. Visit the website http://www.fistulafoundation.org/ and see.

Would you like to feature in my book?

I am writing a book. Well I’m editing it actually because it’s all written - I am just going through the making-it-better bit.

The book is called The Art of Baking a Business: Recipes for the Kitchen Table Tycoon - and that’s exactly what it is - a collection of recipes and fun stuff for baking a business.

As well as the “how to” recipes the book has lots of tasty tales - stories about successful former Kitchen Table Tycoons.

I am also profiling a selection of Kitchen Table Tycoons who right this minute are starting or running their small business. But rather than just feature women that I know I thought I would run a sort of competition to get the best stories from around the world.

And so I am inviting you to be part of the book.

All you have to do is email me: Julia@thebusinessbakery.com.au and let me know 3 things:

What your business does (just in your own down-to-earth words – no pompous crap)
What you find exciting about starting and running your own business
What has gone wrong - this can be funny or serious or something that was serious that now has a funny side

Just send through your quick thoughts - I won’t be publishing your stuff without speaking to you first so there is plenty of opportunity to worry about the niceties of wording it later!

So why would you want to do this? Well I am hoping that by being involved in this book your business will get some fabulous free publicity - and if you are like most of the Kitchen Table Tycoons I know, it will surely come in handy.

What can be seen in Agyness Dean

The other day I was reading an article about the English model and style supremo Agyness Deyn. It is pretty well known that she started life with a much more ordinary name (Laura Hollins) but there is a bit of controversy over whether she was “discovered” working in a fish and chip shop in the bleak North of England or whether, in fact, she skilfully engineered the launch of her astonishingly successful career.

The article I read put it well. While I can’t remember the exact words it went sort of like this. “Isn’t it better to be architect of your career rather than the passive participant?”

Hollywood movies roll out the passive participant story with impressive regularity. The best feel good movies have the nice-girl-just-going-along-doing-her-thing-wins-the-competition theme. Which I think is highly ironic given that no-one with any connection to Hollywood could be accused of passively participating. In fact the opposite is true. They are all gung ho-ly architecting and building their careers.

And so must each and everyone of us.