Kevin Duncan

Kevin is a business adviser, marketing expert and author. He was educated at Oxford and has worked in communications for 25 years, advising companies such as British Airways, Carlsberg-Tetley, Diageo, Heineken, Lloyds TSB, Marks t work on). He has deployed £600m of funds on more than 200 brands, overseen over 1,000 projects, and won 35 awards for creativity and effectiveness. His experience covers every management role and all the major communications groups.

For the last six years he has been an independent troubleshooter, working on his own as Expert Advice. He advises companies on how to run their businesses, produces marketing plans, strategies and creative solutions, facilitates awaydays and conferences, repositions brands, advises on company structures, provides training, and improves new business effectiveness, working with clients or agencies. He has many contacts in the communications world, and most of his business comes from repeat purchase.

books

Ever wanted to be an entrepreneur? Ever wanted to control what you do, when you do it and stop just making money for someone else?

Now is your chance. Starting up a business has never been more exciting.

This book explains what you really need to know to make your business a success:
• How you'll know if you've got a good idea
• The practicalities of setting up a company
• How to manage the money
• How to sell what you do
• How to make sure you stay soon through it all.

This is the book you need to swagger into the Dragon's Den full of confidence.

Introduction

Chapter 1 - The Idea

Chapter 2 - The Business Plan

Chapter 3 - Systems, Tools and Legalities

Chapter 4 - Money

Chapter 5 - Sales & Marketing

Chapter 6 - People

Chapter 7 - Growth and Staying Power

Chapter 8 - Lifestyle

How many times have you thought of something crucial to do and then forgotten it completely?

That's why people invented lists. And very useful they are too. If, and only if, they are used effectively. Put thirty things on a list, and it becomes too daunting. Put three things on, and there's no point in having a list. And so we have refined the art of list writing to allow for about ten or twenty things to do.

But in truth, most lists are rubbish. Randomly assembled, they do little to help the author navigate their way through the maze of stuff to do. After all, the only point of a list of things to do, is to get things done.

Tick Achieve does just that. It shows you how to get stuff done, with lots of little techniques tried and tested on scores of individuals over 25 years. This includes the cathartic and highly effective process of writing a list of what you are not going to do.

The author has trained hundreds of people in the art of getting stuff done. There is no Big Plan as such (contrary to what many other books suggest). It's all about details, and they can be very easy to implement. Little things can make a massive difference.

Once you get the hang of it, life gets easier. In a business context, and personally. You can sleep better and worry less. Concentrate on the things that matter, and leave out the trivia and irrelevant. Learn how to celebrate little bits of progress, look down your list, tick off a job well done, and shout Tick Achieve!

EXAMPLE CHAPTER OUTLINE

1. BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

  • "I'm too busy, I'm in a meeting": professional time wasting and how to avoid it
  • Teams; what's the point?
  • The problem with the business world: other people
  • How to think more and worry less
  • How being organised lets you take it easy
  • Action not activity
  • Outcome not output
  • "If I do x, then y will happen...'

2. STRAIGHT TALKING AND GETTING STUFF DONE

  • Permission to talk straight
  • Cliché and jargon red alert list
  • How to get to the point and get everything done quickly
  • Some ways to say no politely
  • How to liven up boring meetings
  • Spotting business bull****
  • Cutting through it and moving on

3. LEAVE IT OUT

  • Less really is more
  • How eliminating issues gets to faster answers in business
  • Write a list of what you are not going to do
  • Improving your time management
  • Simplifying everything
  • Being totally objective about the past
  • How leaving it out forces the issue

4. ONE IN A ROW

  • How breaking big problems down into small tasks really works
  • How to eat an elephant - in stages
  • Knock 'em down one at a time
  • Rapid sequential tasking: an alternative to multi-tasking
  • The one-touch approach
  • Tick, achieve, move on

5. LOOK LIVELY!

  • The value of energy: in business, and in life generally
  • Getting your attitude right
  • Why lazy people are unhappy people
  • Speed, that's the thing
  • Spotting pointless people
  • Ditching the time wasters
  • Don't waste time yourself: beware aimless net surfers
  • Cutting out the irrelevant stuff

6. HOW TO OUTTHINK YOURSELF

  • Pre-arranging tripwires
  • Dealing with problems
  • Pretend the job is finished
  • It's urgent - pretend it's not
  • It's not urgent - pretend it is
  • The art of outthinking yourself

7. TICK ACHIEVE

  • The art of great list writing
  • The Priority Matrix
  • The Growing Pane and how to use it
  • Tick achieve
  • So have you done it?

Start is a one-stop guide to getting your business of the ground. Written by someone who has actually been there and done it, it gets straight to the heart of launching your business, with no-nonsense ideas to help you start out with confidence and a clear direction. Pick up some essential tips like:
* Start with the idea. What is it and how will it realise your ambitions?What is the long-term plan? If you don't know where you are going then you won't get there.
* Simplicity is the key. Don't overcomplicate things so that the idea is pecked to death by ducks. If you can write it on a postcard and explain it to your mum, then you can get started.
* Make clear plans. Draw up One-page business and personal plans to work out what you want in the simplest and clearest possible way.
* Decide what you want. Flush out whether you are building to sell, or just want the business to fund your lifestyle, then take the leap of faith and get it underway. Work hard, but don't confuse being busy with being effective.
* Learn from experience. Realise when you are gaining speed but losing altitude, and have the courage to change things when they aren't working well.

All vital stuff, packaged and presented in a way that will help you put it into practice right away. So what are you waiting for? It's time to Start.

So What? gets straight to the point so you can cut through the noise and nonsense of work. Much of what we learn in our formative years is unlearnt in later life. As grown-ups we are often unable to answer the simplest of questions in a clear, direct way, and frequently have no idea why we are doing something. This can lead to crippling inefficiency in business, and goes some way to explaining why so many people spend so much time doing things that have no bearing on the true purpose.

by behaving in a genuinely inquisitive way, you can get right to the heart of the matter and save yourself hours, days, and even months of anguish. The questions So what?, Why?, How?, and When? can be hugely effective when applied in the right context, and this book shows you how to use them.

Once all the right questions have been posed, there is a final sure-fire method for testing whether something is relevant and helpful. By completing the sentence "Something must be wrong if...", it is simple to work out if you are wasting your time. For example, "Something must be wrong if I don't want to go to work in the morning."

So What? shows you how to become truly inquisitive again. So let the questions roll. Pay attention to what the answers are. Learn from them, and you will immediately improve your prospects of finally getting somewhere in life.

thumbnail image: Kevin Duncan

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