I was washing my brand new Ford Falcon XR8 Sprint one Saturday morning a couple of months ago thinking to myself, what a great car that John Bainbridge of Macarthur Ford sold me. I’ve known John for over twenty years, since his hair was dark and mine was present!

So, it’s time to upset the HR apple cart. Big time!

Over the past month I’ve held a number of meetings with clients whose family businesses are being derailed by the personalities that are inside of them. Notice I said personalities, not people?

Ubiquity. Most people have never heard of the term. It’s a big word. It has a big meaning. If you indulge in it, it may well yield big results for your business.

Ubiquity means everything, everywhere, all the time. If someone is ubiquitous, they are constantly in contact with you with offers and opportunities. In a lot of ways, they never leave you alone.

A few months ago, I wandered through the lounge room as Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory was playing on the television. If you remember the story, Charlie wins one of the five golden tickets, a win that changed his life and that of his family, forever.

As I write this week’s newsletter, I’m sitting in Kansai International Airport in Osaka, Japan. I’ve travelled here to meet with my Growth Cycle – my International Mentoring Group – in the beautiful city of Kyoto.

From time to time, someone might not do the right thing by you. An employee oversteps the mark. A client is rude, demanding or unreasonable. Perhaps someone gives you feedback that you did not invite. How do you react to each of those events?

One of the great aspects of working with the owners and managers of family businesses is understanding what makes them tick. For some people, they’re looking for big financial wins. For others, the work they’re doing is a life long passion. For some others, it is their creative instincts that cut in.

In July of this year, I visited the doctor after experiencing some abdominal discomfort. I felt it was worth checking out, just in case. I was sent for a raft of tests. Bloods, ultrasounds, CT scans. It was time consuming and inconvenient. However, I wanted to find the cause of the problem and do something about it.

Now, before you start to panic, I’m not using that as a profanity! As far as I’m concerned, WTF stands for “Where’s the Figures?”

Last Friday, the last Ford Falcon and Ford Territory rolled off the production line in Melbourne. After 91 years of manufacturing cars in Australia, Ford was the first of the remaining manufacturers to close. By the end of 2017, an industry that has employed hundreds of thousands of Australians and generated billions of dollars will be gone.