This is a fabulous story of David beating Goliath ... and what can happen in the new world of social media if your customers don't love your business, and you patently don't care about how they feel.
 
In our little tale, David is aptly named Dave Carrol - a very likable country-singing guitar-playing Canadian. Our Goliath is United Airlines, a behemoth of a company worth in the vicinity of $1.8 billion US dollars.
 
Dave and his band of merry men, The Sons of Maxwell (that's the name of the band) were travelling to Nebraska on the afore mentioned airline when to their horror, they saw their guitars being thrown by the baggage handlers. And as it turns out, Dave's Taylor guitar was broken.

You've no doubt heard already, but just in case you are living under a rock, there was an article about me and Love Your Business on p44 of yesterday's Melbourne Herald Sun. That's right, p44. And I'm pretty sure I would have been on the front page if it wasn't for the Collingwood signing Malthouse and Buckley on the same day.
 
Here's the article (click picture to read)

If you've been reading my blog recently, you'll know there's some big changes going on for me and Love Your Business at the moment. I wrote in an email yesterday "I've changed my diet, my exercise, how I spend money, the business, the stuff we've got, how I spend my time, and my involvement on boards of other companies." As I said, some big changes.

A couple of weeks ago at a team meeting I was talking about what I want to do differently with the business, going to Bali etc, and I got some interesting feedback. A couple of the team members said that they didn't feel included in the decisions, and they weren't feeling valued. This wasn't surprising given they weren't really included in the decisions.

My job as a leader, according to the Love Your Business Model, is to inspire and unite the team. I was obviously falling a bit short of the mark.

I've been reflecting on failure. The last financial year has just finished and part of me thinks "thank god that's over". We've had our share of failures over the last year.
 
We grew quickly, got up to 10 people, moved into a gorgeous office, realised that not all of the people were the right people for the business, lost some clients because of that, lost some money, cut back the team, learned some great lessons and went through a fair bit of pain.

I've got a very cool BlueAnt wireless Skype headset . It connects via Bluetooth so I can be talking on Skype or listening to iTunes without being attached to my computer. As I said, very cool... until it stopped working. And of course I've had it for over a year so it's outside the warranty - isn't that always the way?

I'm quite handy, so I figured I'd pull it apart and see if I could fix it.

Do you support any worthy causes through your business?

We do - mainly through the Love Your Business Epicentre Project which aims to end hunger for 10,000-15,000 people in Africa over a five year period. And I've just been introduced to a much better way for us to give (thanks Paul!).

And what's this better way of giving? Its called transactional based giving - and if you give, or plan to, then this is for you.

How much do you work for? What's your real pay rate?

Turns out last month I worked for $18 an hour.

Here's how you calculate it. Take your after-tax after-super pay at the end of the month - the money that actually hits your bank account, or your pocket so-to-speak. Subtract everything you spend in a month as a result of running your business (or doing your job). Travel costs, clothes you buy, coffees you wouldn't otherwise have, lunches you buy, dry cleaning, the drink you need at the end of the day because you need to unwind etc. Everything that you wouldn't spend if you weren't working. That's your actual pay.

Seth Godin, author of Purple Cow, all Marketers are Liars and recently Tribes, has come across my desk a couple of times this week. Well, not him personally - and more across my computer screen than my desk - but you know what I mean.

The first instance was a link to Seth talking about Tribes on TED. (By the way, if haven't seen TED before, check it out. I've added 'speaking at a TED conference' to my list of things to do before I die). It's 17 minutes, but worth watching if your interested in leadership. He proposes a new model of leadership made possible by the internet based on a notion of tribes, tribes being any group with a common interest that are connected.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about moving our headquarters temporarily to Bali. Looking at what I need to change in order to run the business remotely and not have an office has been a cleansing and revealing exercise.

As a business grows, it starts to have a life of its own. The team grows, stuff accumulates, and more and more time, energy and money can get taken up just keeping things going. I have been ruthlessly going through everything I do and the business does, and asking do we need to do that ... and do I love doing that?

I read a great article by Jeffrey Stibel, entrepreneur and brain scientist, on the Harvard Business Site called 7 Ways to Be Happier at Work . Entrepreneur and brain scientist ... I think that's what I want to be when I grow up.