Hi, I'm Marc.

I am a small-business consultant based in Melbourne, Australia.

I use the term "consultant" because it's simpler, although less accurate, than "part-time executive working on a regular basis with a select group of small-business clients". (You could also use "business coach", "mentor" or "advisor"... they all work.)

If you want the full story, including my background, services, prices and testimonials, check out the various pages under the "About" menu at the top of the page.

If you're like 95% of us and don't have much time, here is the important stuff:

My goal is simple: to help my clients generate a decent return for the time and money they invest in their business.

That's all very nice, but what you really want to know is why you should talk to me when there are so many business consultants to choose from. Right?

Click to read more....

Minimum or Maximum?

In your normal business day, do you spend more time looking for ways to do the minimum or the maximum?
Take these examples:

What is the minimum I need to do to justify invoicing a client this amount?
What is the maximum I could give this client within the project budget and still be happy with the outcome [...]

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The Big Short

I recently finished reading one of the best books I have ever read, The Big Short by Michael Lewis.
Lewis wrote his first book, Liar’s Poker, in 1989 when he was in his 20’s, and this was one of the few books that almost all of my finance industry colleagues had read. (Although people took [...]

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Time Is Money… But How Much Is It Worth?

We are human, and that means we are not perfect in our decision making.  Far from it, in fact.  One area that we often make irrational decisions is around the value of time.
Take this experiment, for example:

You are shopping for a shirt that costs $50, and you hear that it is available at a shop [...]

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Why Incorrect Forecasts Are The Best Kind

I am surprised at how few small business owners do any kind of financial forecasting given how valuable a tool it is.  I am given many reasons as to why this is, but most often it is: “I’ve tried, but my industry is too uncertain and my forecasts are always wrong, so there is no [...]

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Short-Term Thinking May Be Killing Your Business

I’ve never put together a list of the biggest problems across most small businesses, but if I did the abundance of short-term thinking would be very close to the top of the list.
Short-termism
The release of the results of a recent survey conducted by the Australian Institute of Managers showed that a significant number of corporate [...]

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The Internet’s Next Big Thing

I don’t normally post gadget and technology news, but I think this news is worth me changing that policy. In the last couple of days Google announced and demonstrated their latest toy, and this time it’s a big one even by Google’s standards. It’s called Google Wave, and it is likely to be [...]

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5 Common Myths About Business Plans

Too few small businesses have a current business plan, often due to a belief in one or more of the following myths. By dispelling some of these myths, I hope that a few small business owners will decide that now is the time to write a business plan and it will quickly become one [...]

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Be The Best in The Market

Every business should have this goal: be the best in your market.
Luckily this is not as hard as it sounds.  After all, you get to decide what your market is, from as large as the whole world to as small a niche with only a handful of customers.  Also, not everyone’s definition of “the best” [...]

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Case Study – The Book Depository

I thought I’d provide a free ad for a great online bookstore that I’ve been using for the last few months and have recommended to a few friends – The Book Depository. I also thought I’d add some thoughts on why I like them from a business point of view.

They are a UK based, [...]

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Free Web Tools – Part IV : Google Reader

UPDATE: As an alternative to reading the whole post, here is a video that runs less than four minutes and does a good job of explaining RSS. You can then scan through the rest of my article to learn more.

The free tool that I use far more than any other is Google Reader. [...]

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Kiva – The Video

By now most of you would have noticed the link to Kiva.org in the sidebar. Many people have commented on it, including people that know and love Kiva to others that haven’t heard of them.
I cannot say enough how great this organisation is, and this recently made video is a great introduction to the [...]

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What I Do… in “E-Myth” Terms

The goal for this blog is to share my ideas with clients and give potential clients some insight into the way I think. It is not to directly market my services, however one of the benefits for being self employed is I can do whatever I want! So in that spirit I’m writing [...]

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It’s Not What You Know

In my most recent PMBA session we all read Michael Gerber’s “The E-Myth Revisted”. It was a decent enough book with several interesting and stimulating ideas, however I wanted to share just one quote with everyone:
Contrary to popular belief, my experience has shown me that the people who are exceptionally good in business aren’t [...]

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Do You Really Care?

I was listening to a podcast yesterday where the head of a boutique investment bank said he believed the best investment bankers were the ones that cared the most. Leaving aside the obvious jokes about using “investment banker” and “care” in the same sentence, particularly in the current environment, this made me think… how [...]

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Social Branding and How to Build a Tribe

A friend shared a great article with me the other day, published at MediaPost (unfortunately registration is required, although it is free).
The article discusses “social brands”. Part of the definition of a social brand relates to the use of technology to communicate with stakeholders (blogs, Facebook, wikis, email newsletters, forums, Twitter, etc). However, [...]

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Free Web Tools – Part III : Diigo

Part III of this series of posts is about Diigo, a great social bookmarking tool that I can’t imagine living without. At it’s core Diigo is a great place to store and manage your bookmarks, but it goes well beyond that without adding so much complexity that you feel like the simple task of [...]

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