I shared a video on gift wrapping and got so many comments that I thought I should explain.

In my grandfather's shop, grandfather was very good at wrapping gifts. It is an art to do it right. It does not take long to learn and once you can do it well, it is very quick to do. It certainly helps to sell your products. In this time of year is an important part of your offering which adds value to your store. We used to have queues with people waiting to get him to gift wrap their purchases.

This video shows how quick it can be done and how good it can look.

This video will show you how to do it. It explains step by step really well. The instructions are clear and I like the different camera angles that show clearly what she is doing. 

Also note that this woman is not wasting paper because she is using the exact amount that you would use. See how good the finished product looks. 

Give it a try.

If you want to get into gifts, its a good idea.

I hope that everyone is prepared?

Short-term are you prepared for Christmas?

1) Have you checked to make sure that everything technically works? 

2) Have you checked your stock levels?

3) Staff levels?

Here is an interesting question to ask yourself, what will be the cost to your business if you cannot handle this holiday?  Are you able to deliver the level of service that your customers demand?

Medium-term are you preparing for 2020?

There is nothing you can do about change? 2020 will be different. Retail has always been changing, change is part of the retail environment.

A stale retail operator that keep things the same is not going to attract new business. What they will do is lose a small percentage of their current business!

That document is generally considered the Internet’s birth certificate; it records when the two computers started communicating.

Note the date 50 is fifty years ago.

Do you remember your first introduction to the internet?  Mine was 24 years ago. I was talking to a guy on the phone at work. After I had fixed his problem using a modem. He told me to go to this site, download some software and once I did that to run the software, then told me to *enjoy* and hung up. 

Who knew that this would change the world so much? 

A Phil Brandenberger of Philadelphia used his credit card over the Internet to buy on the site, NetMarket, He brought Ten Summoner's Tales, a CD by Sting on August 11, 1994. This is considered to be the first retail transaction on the Internet.

What about you?

Mine would have been some books and DVDs from a company called Amazon, which claimed to be the biggest bookstore in the world. Because of the postage costs, I had to buy a big purchase to make it worth my while. I felt really modern and was really excited. I remember then ringing my sister and talking about an hour on how it worked.

Well if anyone wants an example of the power of Facebook in today's world, well here it is Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us. Over 2 million people have signed up to go, although it is highly doubtful that anywhere that number will show up. 

Even if an alien or evidence of any alien technology is there which I doubt, I am sure it will not be found. If it is there, it will be moved and/or hidden today. And I doubt that any of the demonstrators will get anywhere near the base. They are quite a distance from the wall, and the wall encloses an area of 8,000 sq miles. Area 51 is about 150 sq miles and is well inside this wall. The area is protected by many guards who are instructed to shoot to kill and people have been killed trying to break in. There are good reasons for the guards' concerns to keep people out as we do know that the area has highly toxic materials lying around and two people who work in Area 51, probably died from this. I just hope no-one gets hurt.

Still, it has proven to be a significant business event, many businesses and merchandise related to this event are on offer. If you have some items that fit such an event, you should put it in front as there is undoubtedly a lot of buzz about it.

Check out what a robot home delivery could look like one day.  The first of these robots are expected to go on sale early next year in 2020.  It would be great to see one in action. 

Check the video out here.

NASA's Mars 2020 Rover is heading to the red planet and if you click here you can submit your name and it will be stored on a memory chip in Mars when it arrives.

Makes a nice gift for someone.

It is a shame we cannot convert these frequent flyer points to QFF or Virgin?

I have a question!

This is a prediction made from an *expert* the day before the election.

Labor to win by about 11 seats! This was a typical prediction.

Okay this is my question how could the polls, from every company, the private polls done, the polls done from the political parties and the exit polls on the election day all get the same result which is so badly wrong?

Yesterday we had an example of how quickly and ruthlessly a major corporation can move with BigW closing 30 stores in Australia with probably another 30 to go soon. 

Today Google shut down Google+.  If you have a Google+ page for your business well it is gone now. I am stunned as according to its Wikipedia page it had 100s of millions of monthly users surely there would have been some loud protest from some of these and it would be a fortune that Google has written off, I saw figures of $585 million the project had cost Google in 2011, 8 years ago, I wonder what it would be now? The investors I am sure are concerned.

It is not the first time Google has done it, check out here, the so-called the guillotine and graveyard for Google's discontinued products, services, devices, and brands, 

What these examples do show is that business owners have to think objectively about their business just like these companies are doing to survive. If you do not do it then your competitors will do it.

Then like the Video stores (remember them), you will go.

Gone the last video library left near me.

I am trying to figure out what to do with my life since Instagram & Facebook are STILL down

I have often wondered why our clients in cake shops, restaurants and pizza parlour are rarely fat. If you put me in such places, I am sure I would get into real trouble. 

Well, researchers may have found the answer. It seems that the body is fooled after a long period (2 minutes) of smelling the fatty foods to eat something else. Here is the article have a read.

I am going to try it out to see if breathing in fatty food smells for more than two minutes is enough to put me off some high-calorie foods. See how you go.

 

There is a famous story of the race between the Tortoise vs Hare, where the arrogant and over-confidence hare is is beaten by the steady tortoise.

Well, check what happens in real life when they race.

It is not actually an accident as this race been done a few times with 

The tortoise wins not because he was slow and steady as many say but because the hare stops while the tortoise won because it was focused and maintained consistency.

Like the tortoise we need to focus on the things will control, not get distracted and stay focused on the goal.

Come Halloween, most of our clients did something to take advantage of the holiday traffic as it is becoming more accepted and more Australian mainstream.

So did a lot of other organisations, NASA deciding the time was right, released this picture today showing that there is something spooky now in our solar system. 

You want some ideas for next year, here are some instructions on how NASA makes an out-of-this-world Halloween pumpkin?

{links were removed}

Today was a public holiday in Victoria because of the 2018 AFL Grand Final.

Support was as usual as we are diverting the phones to our interstate support bays. Our week-end support and after hours numbers will be the same as usual over the weekend.

Hopefully, you will not need it, so you can appreciate the match, come tomorrow.

It has been a terrible season for me a Carlton supporter, still, I am hoping for a good game.

Despite the fact that Collingwood lost to West Coast Eagles in the qualifying final, I still think that they are the team to beat. 

Hope your team does well. 

Update: It has been a long time since I have enjoyed a game as good as this one. 

Overall it was a great game for anyone that was not a Collingwood supporter.