Yesterday I read Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson – the guys behind 37signals and products such as BaseCamp and Highrise.

While controversial is probably too strong a word to describe the book it certainly is not your standard business guide. When you boil it down the book could almost be described as common sense though I expect there are many who would disagree!

Some of the section headings that show this non-conventional approach to starting a business include:

Ignore the real world

Learning from mistakes is overrated

Planning is guessing

Build half a product, not a half-assed product

Throw less at the problem

Good enough is fine

Underdo your competition

I could go on and on but you can see the theme. As book it was certainly an easy read and I was surprised how quick I got through it.

That said I think I will read it again soon as there was an enormous amount to take in – though as with all my reading I take all the ideas and concepts with a grain of salt and adopt aspects that I feel will benefit my business and me most.

It is a common myth that success is built on great ideas. While it is important to have an idea to begin a business, true success comes from execution and actually making the idea a reality.

I have recently read Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky that is all about the execution side of ideas. You’ll notice the book is from a website called the 99 percent – highlighting that the ideas is only the first 1%.

The book gives a number of good pointers as to how to turn ideas into reality while at the same time highlighting why in many cases ideas never see the light of day. It talked about the challenges in team building and leadership that also hinder many ideas.

The recent issue of Idealog had an article on the Casualties of coincidence which looks at plagiarism and how many ideas emerge at the same time from different places. At the end of the article there was a link to a Malcolm Gladwell article that talks about the fact that many of histories great inventions were actually invented by more people than receive credit.

The article is a great read and it talks about a firm that has been set up simply to invent ideas which reinforces the theory that the idea is only the start.

If you enjoy Gladwell’s article then I also recommend his latest book What the Dog Saw – a collection of articles he has written for the New Yorker.

While we were busy getting our new website together we also passed another significant milestone with Cadimage.

$1,000,000 USD in Online Export Sales.

While this milestone has taken longer than we would have hoped the graph below shows that sales are growing at an increase rate.

You can also see (as would be expected) that sales jump everytime there is an ArchiCAD Upgrade.

Note: The graph above shows till the end of 2010 hence the flattening off!

My team and I are extremely proud of this achievement and it is especially rewarding knowing the revenue is 100% export based which complements our existing New Zealand business well.

“absolutely conceivable that the euro will replace the dollar as reserve currency, or will be traded as an equally important reserve currency”

Alan Greenspan 2007

All my purchases of ArchiCAD and related products are transacted with GRAPHISOFT in Euros so I keep a constant eye on the ups and downs of the Euro.

As can be seen from the above quote the Euro was once seen to possibly be a stronger  currency than the Greenback in the longer term – how things have changed!

With the recent turmoil in Greece, many commentators are questioning how long the Euro will survive.

For those of you interested I found this article in the NZ Herald (originally published by the Independant in the UK) quite informative.

With such a long time between posts I imagine many of you may think I have been travelling again – but following our epic 73 hours return from Europe I haven’t actually left the country!

Not surprisingly life has been a little hectic with balancing work, study and relaxing (not that much of that has happened!) So finding time to blog has taken a back seat.

Over the last 5 weeks a number of things have happened though so thought I should share a few highlights:

Board Meetings

We’ve had a couple of Board Meetings with our new director Lance Wiggs with another scheduled for later this week. Lance’s no BS approach is both refreshing and challenging. While it is early days the formalisation of Board Meetings has already provided a discipline that Tracey and I enjoy as we look to grow our business.

New Website

A couple of weeks ago we launched a new Website as the first step in a series of strategic branding steps. Over the last 9 months we have been working with Brian R Richards Limited to build our brand by following an approach similar to Better By Design. The new website consolidated two of our previous offerings in to a single platform on which we will build and deliver future solutions. Keep an eye on the website on the 9th June when we plan to launch our new brand.

ArchiCAD 14

GRAPHISOFT have announced the next version of ArchiCAD so our team is busy preparing for both the international and local release.

UPDATED: 12/03 Full Press Release on Lance’s Site + Technical Details

It is great to see a lead being taken with regards to New Zealand’s broadband (and over at Stuff)

This is exactly what we need to get New Zealand business competing on a world stage.

I can’t say I am too surprised to see this as Rod @Xero has been advocating this for a long time, obviously to the point of him saying – well no one else is doing it, we might as well do it ourselves. Sam Morgan also eluded to it in the latest issue of Idealog.

Lance Wiggs (who is now also part of the Cadimage Team) is also part of the group behind Pacific Fibre so I look forward to hearing first hand how this progresses.

I can’t wait for this to come on stream so thanks to the group for doing what Kiwi’s do best – just getting on with it!

As a company we have continually engaged external sources to help us with the ongoing development of our business.

Two years ago we undertook a significant strategic planning exercise with Helen and Greg Cross from Cross Ventures and we are currently working extensively with Brian R Richards with regards to the strategic branding of our international business.

Both of these engagements have been project based engagements which have focused on specific areas of the business. Strategy however, isn’t something that can be simply looked at on a project by project basis and requires constant review and adjustment.

I am therefore pleased to announce that Lance Wiggs has joined the Cadimage Board of Directors. This is a significant step forward for the Cadimage Group as Lance is our first non-executive director and this marks the start of our next growth phase.

Lance brings a wealth of experience from around the globe and has already started contributing to the direction of the business with a full on 3 hours yesterday afternoon to drop him in the deep end.

Tracey and I are really excited about this next period of development for our business and are stoked to welcome Lance on board! (pun intended)

For those of you who know me you will know I don’t generally buy-in to the whole area of Political Correctness – I’m probably a little too competitive! That’s not to say I think it is a bad idea but there are so many cases that are simply insane.

Take for instance this case where an employer was told that it was discriminating to advertise for ‘Reliable Workers’  - like the post title says “What is the world coming to?“

Twitter is certainly getting a huge amount of hype at the moment as it makes the transition from gimmick to becoming a core part of  business and their social marketing plan.

Twitter to many seems like a waste of time and as many tweets revolve around what I ate for breakfast or what my dog just did. As a result of this and not surprisingly there is a lot of scepticism as to whether Twitter is a fad and how long will it last. I myself have times where I tweet a lot and then days go by without a single tweet.

Many smart businesses are now finding that Twitter is a great tool to communicate with customers, make offers and answer support questions. This is based on Twitters ability to connect quickly with a large audience that can see your messages on all types of devices from Internet cafes, to computers, to phones. While I cannot mention the exact number Andy Lark recently told me how much business Dell does via Twitter which was simply astounding.

While we are starting to use Twitter increasingly for our Cadimage Tools business (@cadimagetools) initially we have also found it beneficial as a way of receiving information. *

For those who want to read more here are some recent links that may be of interest:

Twitter 101

Twittering on about Business

Twitter marketing tool of the future

Seth Godin outlines on his blog he doesn’t have time to Twitter but does at least have his blog ‘hooked up’ to Twitter so that a Tweet is created everytime he posts a blog item.**

Twitter and Business

* There are many ways to receive Tweets I find Seesmic Desktop particularly good as I can easily create different lists or groups of tweets so I can easily review them.

** There are a number of ways of having Tweets automatically created when a blog article is published. I use Twitter Tools, Seth uses twitterfeed - there are many more but once set up it is a great way of publishing content to multiple sources in a simple and efficient way.

Last week I had a week off.

Based on the following I can’t imagine when Rod had any time off:

Rod Drury, Selwyn Pellett enter NZ Hi-Tech Hall of Fame

Rod Drury joins NZX board

Accelerate 2010

The great thing all of these have in common is that even while Rod is building a world class company he still has time to give back!

Great work Rod