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Time To Celebrate
Sunday, 30th December 2007
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The end of a another year, and what a year it was! I usually spend this time of the year reflecting back on what I’ve achieved and what I want to do next year. In terms of business, to be honest I really haven’t been focusing as much as I should have on BLKMGK. Instead this year I chose to focus on building other community development innitiatives such as the ACS Mock Interviews and creating the Dream, Build, Inspire, Lead! website. By doing this, I’ve made some amazing new connections and really opened up a lot of doors for me both professionally and personally. Finally after all my efforts since I first started BLKMGK in 2005, I’m starting to be recognised within the NT ICT Industry and that for me is an amazing achievement.
So having done well this year, what’s on the cards for next year?
In terms of business, I’m going to be restructuring BLKMGK so that we focus on three new key areas of the ICT Industry. Then there’s the ICT training centre that I’m trying to establish - which is bound to be a HUGE project. Finally on a personal level I want to spend more time on my health and fitness and have more time to myself. I might even take up meditation to help me relax. I was reading about a particular type of medidation called Transcendental Meditation (TM). Apparently TM followers experience a deeper relaxation sensation than a deep sleep - now that could come in handy considering all of my plans for next year!
Okay, you’ve heard about what I did this year, and what I’m doing next year, so now its time to celebrate a great year and usher in the new year in style!
Thank you all for visiting the site this year, and I hope that I’ve provided you with a little inspiration and motivation whenever you’ve needed it. Make sure you come back next year for some more great stories, photos, and interviews to keep you fired up and passionate about turning your dreams into reality.
Until then, Dream great Dreams, Build amazing things, Inspire those around you, and Lead through motivation!!!
AJ~
Author: AJ Kulatunga
Category:
Dream, Build, Inspire, Lead
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Playing With The Big Boys
Sunday, 23rd December 2007
First of all, I want to wish a very good friend of mine Happy Birthday. Over the years she’s provided me with a lot of advice and I especially couldn’t have gotten through Year 12 English studies without her encouragement and entertaining support! So Kylie, happy birthday - hope all your dreams come true for you this year!
Now, last week I spoke about the importance of networking so this week I thought I’d share a meeting I had on Friday with a friend of mine from IBM - Ben, to illustrate the fact that networking can happen anywhere, anytime, and doesn’t have to be so clear cut and boring.
Earlier in the week I received an email from Ben asking if I was free for a chat to discuss some new projects that IBM has on the radar for 2008. I responded saying that I would meet him in his office on Friday afternoon. He confirmed that he’ll meet me at his unofficial office - Kitty O Shea’s (a local Darwin pub) - talk about outsourcing reception services! Normally I’m not a pub sort of person but when Ben is concerned, I’ll throw out all my standards and meet him wherever because there is always an unwritten guarantee of a good time to be had by all those involved.
So we met up at the pub and started talking about opportunities for next year that we can work on, and his phone kept ringing and as it was pretty much the last business day of the year, he had to keep answering it. Turns out that he’d just closed a very big deal earlier that morning and his bosses wanted to know how it all went. In fact Ben’s been doing some great deals all throughout the year and I just had to find out what his secret was!
Ben’s only been in Darwin since January and to have achieved what he’s done within 12 months is amazing - considering that no one knew him up here when he first arrived. He said to me that he just spoke to potential clients to find out what their frustrations were and then he’d come up with solutions to those problems. Having the backing of a major multimillion dollar company like IBM would help, but I think the secret to his success is the way he spoke to his potential clients and then managed these introductions to build sustainable business relationships with them.
He’s always attending some sort of networking function, or hosting events that are always well attended by clients and business partners but he’ll go one step further and invite people to his unofficial offices and conference rooms like Kitty O Shea’s or Darwin Golf Club and focus on having a bit of fun outside the office. The by-products of these fun events are the massive deals he does, and he is living proof that 80% of the world’s business deals begin outside the office.
Earlier this month I also attended the IBM Christmas party, and they put on a grand show. Our bar tab was around $5,500 and Ben’s biggest worry was that we would not hit that mark, but in typical Territory spirit, we were more than happy to pitch in and help out a fellow ICT Industry colleague to achieve his key performance indicator for the night!
While we continued our “meeting” a few other key players in the NT ICT industry joined us and we shared stories about everything and anything that were fueled on by the amount of rounds that we had. Never in a million years would I have imagined a little guy like me would be sitting down with these guys and socialising. Now if I can just work out how to turn these acquaintances to potential clients!
So as you can clearly see, networking is not all clean and dry and you can really make it some fun. You can catch up with someone whom you met at a networking function for coffee or a drink and talk about anything other than work. Or if you read an interesting article that you think one of your networking companions would like, forward it onto them. Or you could be like Ben and throw a crazy party but you might need the backing of a big corporation for that - or a rich Uncle with more money than sense!
As for me, I can’t wait to see what Ben comes up with next year so all the best to you and your family for Christmas and New Year Mate and I’ll see you early in 2008!
Merry Christmas People!
Dream, Build, Inspire, Lead!
AJ~
Author: AJ Kulatunga
Category:
IBM, networking, build,
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The Art of Networking
Sunday, 16th December 2007
The NT Branch of the Australian computer society had its annual general meeting this week and I got elected as Vice Chair. During the meeting, we put up a slide show featuring some of the events that we held during the year. Most of them were organised by me on a very small budget by calling in favours from friends, colleagues and clients and it reminded me how far I have come with my networking skills.
Networking is an art form and the old saying “its not what you know, its who you know” is exactly right. Life’s pretty tough as it is so it always helps to have a few people that can point you in the right direction every now and then, or someone who can get you a foot in the door.
Today I was watching bits of the 1987 movie “The Secret of My Success” staring Michael J Fox. Basically in the movie, Michael plays a kid from Kansas who comes to new york to conquer the world of business and goes for a job at his Uncle’s firm. He’s been trying to get an interview for ages but never had any luck, so he decides to just show up at the office unannounced and tells the lady at reception that he is the CEO’s nephew and he is granted a 2 minute interview. He actually is related to the CEO so its not a complete lie. At the end of the interview, he scores a job in the company and the CEO tells him “you’ve got a foot in the door, what you do on the other side of it is up to you.” You’ll have to watch the movie to see what he does on the other side of the door, but it’s quite entertaining!
So how do you go about building your empire of contacts? I could write a whole book on the art of networking but here’s a few tips to get you started:
- Join a club or society that interests you. Chances are that you’ll meet a lot of like minded people and start to swap ideas about mutual interests.
- Attend networking functions such as dinners or drinks and aim to meet at least one new person at each event. If you attend with a friend, partner with them and walk around the room meeting people. My target is to meet 5 new people at every event and usually this leads to more business for me.
- If someone gives you their business card, take the time to study it before putting it in your pocket. This shows a bit of respect for the person whom you’re talking to and also helps you to remember who the card belongs to when you finally pull it out of your pocket.
- One of the fundamentals of networking is to build trust and develop a relationship and nothing breaks trust as quickly as empty promises. So if you happen to say that you will do something, do it. If you promise to give a person a call next week, make sure that you call them - even if they make empty promises themselves. At the end of the day, they will realise that you are someone they can depend upon and they will want to associate themselves with you more often.
- The final key tip about networking is that it is a two way street i.e. you have to help other people just as they help you. If you focus on what you can help the other person with, chances are they will want to do the same for you. It also helps to focus on things outside work - try to find some common interests as they often forge the greatest friendships which helps in problem solving. At the last networking lunch I went to, someone was complaining about them having a problem at work with their excel spreadsheets and I mentioned that I encountered a similar problem with another client and would be more than happy to pop around sometime to help them work through it. It’s as easy as that!
If you follow these 5 tips, you’ll be well on your way to building up some good contacts that will hopefully open a few doors for you. What you do on the other side of those doors is up to you but in general make the most out of every opportunity. Get networking now!
Dream, Build, Inspire, Lead!
AJ~
Author: AJ Kulatunga
Category:
networking
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Challenge Yourself
Sunday, 9th December 2007
Its been another crazy week for me, but this time its not for business. I’ve got family and friends in town and I’ve been trying to spend as much time as I can with them in between meetings. Its a hard task, but the time I spend with them, I learn a lot from them and a common theme amongst them is that they all have faced and dealt with a lot of challenges in their lives.
Firstly, there’s my friends who are visiting from Melbourne. I went to uni with one of them and the other is one of her friends from Italy. Both of them have some amazing stories about their travels in Australia, and in typical tourist style they’ve got plenty of photos to back them up! My friend from uni has a unique challenge at hand. After living in Melbourne for the past few years, she is giving it all up to go back home to Singapore to be closer to her family. I’m a bit surprised at her decision but she’s an amazing person so I know that she’ll be just fine in dealing with this challenge, and if it doesn’t work out, she’ll just have another story to add to her collection! Good luck Sarah!
Then there’s my aunt who runs her own international school in Sri Lanka. I’ve never actually taken the time to understand what she does exactly but these past few days I’ve realised that she’s been through so many challenges in her life and she’s always come out on top. She used to be the Principal of a very prestigious girls school in Sri Lanka and the position alone attracts many challenges, but also had many rewards.
We were watching an old home movie that was taken 18 years ago and what totally amazes me was that she looks very much the same now as she did back then. I asked her what her secret was and she basically said that she was happy about life. All her children have settled down and she visits them quite frequently. Her school is doing well so there’s no dramas there. She’s essentially had all these challenges, faced and dealt with them and is now in a position to really continue to enjoy life. Somehow though, after everything I know about her, I think that for her happiness wasn’t really a destination, but more so a way of travelling through life. Good luck Aunty!
Next off the rank there’s my cousin Asanka from Sri Lanka. My god he is a high flyer! While most of the rich buy cars, and houses, and boats, this guy goes out and buys a hospital! I couldn’t believe it when I heard the news, but he’s got a very good reason for doing so. He runs his own medical supplies business and he’s spent the past 15 years travelling the world to buy medical supplies and he brings them back to sri lanka and sells them to the existing hospitals. He also purchases medical equipment such as x ray machines, ct scanners, endoscopy machines and leases these out to the poorer hospitals in the country. It’s an amazing business and he built it all by himself from scratch. He rarely comes to visit Darwin, but when he does I always manage to spend an hour or two with him and honestly what we talk about during those few precious hours, puts me miles ahead of my competition.
Having grown the business from scratch, I’m sure my cousin has had many challenges along the way but each time he’s risen up and faced those challenges which is why he’s been in business so long. He’s got an amazing attitude to succeed no matter what and that’s important because sometimes your passion to succeed will be the only thing to carry you through the hard times. Good luck Asanka Ayiah!
Finally there’s me. A friend of mine nominated me for NT Young Achiever awards and that required me to produce a list of my achievements over the past few years. I struggled to remember exactly what I’d done but eventually I managed to put together a pretty good list. I also had to smile because each item on my achievements list came with a lot of challenges, that I had to face and deal with effectively in order to achieve my goals.
Even if you’re not being nominated for an award, I recommend you listing your current achievements in life so far because at the end of it you really start to feel good about yourself and want to challenge yourself more and more. And each time that you face your challenge you start feeling extra great about yourself. Its a great cycle to get into, but make sure that you have a little fun along the way.
So having said that, I’ve decided to formally announce that my challenge for 2008 is to really step up and change the world. I’ll be creating a Technology Training Centre in Darwin so as to train Small business owners on how to use technology to enhance their business; provide a venue for the very successful IT Cadets program; and educate two aboriginal community champions on how to build and repair computers out in their respective communities (because its never been done before!).
I mentioned this to a fellow Young Professionals member and his comment was something along the lines of “gee you really set the bar high don’t you!” What can I say...its how I roll!
Challenge yourself and see where it takes you!
Dream, Build, Inspire, Lead!
AJ~
Author: AJ Kulatunga
Category:
challenges, motivation, inspiring
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