Personal writing | The SMH archive

You wouldn't spend hundreds of thousands of dollars building a house on land that wasn't even yours, and you definitely wouldn't move your family in and expect to have a long safe residency there. The land isn't yours

These 15 items are on my to-do list every week. It might take 30--60 minutes but I think they're important.

A guide on howto use Mail-Tester to improve your email deliverability.

The times, they are a changing.

Is it just me who searches Wikipedia for a company name because their web site completely fails to tell me what they do?

This is nice

> The lazy lose to the average.<br /> > The average lose to the focused.<br /> > The focused lose to the obsessed.<br />

Things are tough out there, financially and commercially speaking. Many of us are on the coal face, working hard, and not striking gold. Starbucks is selling fewer coffees and Heineken is selling fewer beers, McDona

Robert Pirsig the author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in this interview in 1974:

Some would call it picky perfectionism, others see the pursuit of excellence, I guess the difference is the fruit.

In 20 years you'll be thankful that from today onwards you Post on Own Site and Syndicate Elsewhere.

Don't click this YouTube link until you have 19 minutes spare to have your life changed.

Eric Hoffer knows where it’s at:

Someone I respect and admire - and have done for twenty years - launched a new project recently. I clicked through to it about 4 hours after they'd emailed thin...

Do you ever think about your notes, articles, documents, thoughts, and files? No? Feel free to archive this email and we'll talk again soon.

In Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters, Meg Meeker writes about preventing the psychological disease anorexia nervosa.

James Clear writes,

Seth Godin wrote recently that everything costs and it reminded me of my personal philosophy that everything is hard...

You might have noticed I'm back and publishing. There has been no great change apart from the simple fact that I missed writing every day, and I guess the frame...

What if the storms in life weren't that bad, you just needed to step outside of them and take a wider view

Anka asks: Lately I’ve noticed a lot of celebrants on Facebook have started advertising that they can do weddings overseas?? I didn’t think we could? Im presuming they might be just completing paperwork at the airport be

A few years back, our family spent six months living in a fishing village in Baja California Sur. So many experiences from that time still define us, but there’...

Some of my favourite podcasts come from a podcast network named Relay

I couldn't help but get Jeff back on the letter again:

We do not exist in a vacuum. It's impossible to not be affected and influenced by all around us.

Painter and visual artist Chuck Close on inspiration:

Our clients'/couples' families and family-dynamics are changing, as this CBC article documents on...

Joseph Joubert:

The problem with automations is that if you don't set them up with care, it will become blatantly obvious that you don't care.

From a World Without Time

Jimmy Carr, one of the greatest comedic minds in the world today, said in an interview:

!Don't strive for perfection, strive for authenticity

Kurt Vonnegut told a story about his friend Joe,

Josh Knox's dad has been retired for almost 20 years but everyday he consults a notecard with five activities.

There are two movements you can take in growing your business today: floor raising and ceiling raising.

This week members can rewatch the webinar recording of Josh Withers and Edwin from The Social Sandwich with their 90 minute Instagram Mythbusters webinar on organic growth and attracting couples through Instagram. htt

A guy named George Strait who apparently is a country music star has broken the record for the largest-ever ticketed concert in the U.S. with 110,905 people in ...

My least favourite time of year in Australia are the final days of June. Advertisers are celebrating with EOFYS end of financial year sales and small businesses...

The people I want to listen to most are the people who want to listen to other people the most. It's an admirable trait. That's why I could listen to my friend ...

Naval Ravikant writes:

If you've been on Facebook, Threads, Instagram for more than a week then you might have no idea how the platforms work today.

You can't start on step ten, you've got to start on step one.

The curse of self-employment is having to wear all the hats: bookkeeper, janitor, salesperson, tech support, CEO, delivery person, and be the product.

Shaun Tolhoek from Lemon Tree Film House on building heritage in the we...

"The days can be easy if the years are consistent," writes James Clear.

Enjoying the work is a form of wealth.

In an interview, Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos said of a letter received from a client, “When I read that letter, I thought, we don’t make money when we sell thing...

James Clear wrote:

Nassim Taleb believes that the following list is true wealth:

Twelve years ago this week I shared this infographic about the data being transferred

A unified theory of fucks

In my breakfast radio career a local band asked me for advice in getting into the music industry. My advice to them is the same advice to anyone starting anythi...

Reading Richard Feynman's letter to his late wife moved me, because it's hard to be in the w...

Friends comment on my volume of professional output, "you're so busy" and "how do you do it?!"

I'm a sucker for interviews with masters so when David Remnick asked Seinfeld why he kept on showing up despite his wealth, age and “the extreme left and PC cr...

Reputation is a form of wealth.

I'm better than you seriously, so much better than you at being me, than you could ever try to be,

If your service is the same as everyone else's, or appears the same, or you portray it as the same, then potential clients will look for the lowest price.

Sir Claus Moser:

Jerry Seinfeld's Duke commencement speech stopped me in my tracks when he said

If you're a smart and intelligent person like me, you'll also say that the Star Wars franchise is one of the best series of movies and movie franchise ever made...

Simone Davies writes in The Montessori Toddler

Who knows you is more important than who you know. That's why we build:

Bridget Ann Henisch in Fast and Feast wrote:

15 years ago a letter arrived in the mail letting me know that as of 15 years ago today, the 14th of May, I had been appointed a Commonwealth Authorised Marriag...

Reading this morning about FTX - the crypto exchange that went bankrupt and who's founder was convicted of fraud - is actually now solvent, which means the comp...

My favourite biblical commandment is "Love your neighbour as yourself" because it predicates knowing your neighbour well enough to love and care for them on kno...

The man who taught me radio and communication passed away this week, Stan Hillard is his name, so to h...

If you want to be valued, which is to say, if you want couples to pay that big fancy price you charge, you need to value yourself, value your clients, and value...

Seneca wrote

Mark Twain wrote “the man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read” which is not only true for reading, but for all exercises of intellec...

Our dreams and our hopes are not grounded in reality, instead they originate from only what we have seen and known.

Unless you actually employed me to come into your business and handed me the keyboard, trackpad, the keys to your office, I can't actually help you.

Author and podcaster Glennon Doyle spoke on the courage to be yourself:

I'm inspired and encouraged watching Taylor Tomlinson

Visiting my friend Annie today I was reminded of her unique and awesome business which has been uniquely shaped by her personality,...

All the printers are lined up on a shelf so we can choose one based on aesthetics, but truth be told we don't care what the printer looks like, we need it print...

“Drummer seeks musicians to form band.” That sign hung up on the wall of a high school in Dublin in 1978. It changed the course of music history. This is the...

I've stayed in enough hotels around the globe to know that the hotel buffet breakfast is a global institution. You also don't need to be a published food critic...

The New York Times reviewed 121 rest...

It is so hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head. I'm not going to lie, the way the government response to covid ruined our family business and fin...

"One of the greatest ways to avoid trouble is to keep it simple" was Charlie Munger's catch cry.

Timothy Keller wrote that "all prayer, pursued far enough, becomes praise" and I'd encourage you to replace or further the word 'prayer' with the deepest groans...

An author I adore, Adam Grant, once tweeted

Adam Grant wrote in Originals:

Tim asks how I accept payments across borders?

We waste so much of our precious time with short-term thinking and value-less work that keeps us busy. Warren Buffett spends a year deciding and a day acting...

In Oprah Winfrey</em> by George Ilian, what people actually buy is detailed like this: People don't buy products, they buy emotions. Wh...

Over one billion new pieces of content were created today. Videos, blogs, posts, photos, emails. It&39;s overwhelming being a creator in this economy....

I - and you - do not exist in a vacuum. It's impossible to not be affected and influenced by all around us.

A friend asked me today why I did weddings and not all the other things I'm passionate about and talk about all day, like technology, business systems workflows...

There's been some really good advice shared in these emails, and there's still more, I've got more notes than you could imagine on topics or aspects of weddings...

The cyclical rule about trends and fashion says

Your best strategy should be simple and powerful. Easy enough to explain to a friend, honest enough to explain to a client.

I'm thinking about a quote from someone famous that I can't exactly recall about how 'a man who thinks the same thing at 25 and 35 is a foolish man' as I watch ...

A new study finds that the later we meet someone in a sequence, the more negatively we describe them. The research finds that unconscious bias could disadvantage people who happen to be evaluated later in a sequence, whe

I love my email inbox. That's not something many people can say today. But I really do. I do my business there which provides for my family, plus I subscribe to so many interesting and important email letters there, so i

a reader was asking a question of us this week and mentioned taking payment in person. Sarah offered the correct advice that she might want to consider getting a Square card reader that you connect to

There's a spectacular mountain range surrounding Queenstown in New Zealand named "The Remarkables".

I'm always looking for opportunities to change up my tools. It's the easiest way for me to assess what I have been doing and using, and to find out whether ther...

The chances that someone is born on February 29 is one in 1,461.

At a time when his fate was being decided by TV executives, and his agent was trying to convince him to talk to another TV network, David Letterman decided you ...

Only 20 years ago the common person had one source of information, if any — the local newspaper.

Sutha asks: I am registered in NSW, but will be getting a close friend married in Melbourne. Can I get access to BDM RIO? or is it limited to Victorian celebrants? A blog post about all the different electronic lodge

The Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, Myspace, MSN Messenger, social network we connected with each other on years ago is dead. Those places have either gon...

The reason you won't increase your fee is because of the accountability that comes with a price.

One of the most viral, most effective, and most legacy building Facebook statuses I've ever posted was five words long: "How can I help you?"

Hamish and Andy make one of the best and longest running radio shows and podcasts in Australia, and everyone would describe them as funny.

If you believed the hype you'd believe the world wants mass-produced goods, manufactured for the millions.

A redeeming feature of people who actually are authorities, experts, gurus, specialists, is that you would never hear them say so - because they listen more tha...

For 11 years I have made a full-time living through email. People email me, I reply, they reply, I reply, money turns up in my bank account.

Nearly 30% of Gen Z American adults identify as LGBTQ

Create a rabbit hole for your couples to fall down so they fall in love with you!

Everyone has their little "thing " where they think if everyone else on the planet just did things this way then the world would be a better place, and honestly, I'm all for your and my weird little opinions. One that I r

Communicating value, selling your services, and convincing couples you're worth your fee, is all hard work. Sometimes we discover psychological tricks to lubricate that process, things that can make it easier. Today's

Starting from zero is hard. I've found that creating from scratch, staring at a blank Word document, or an empty notepad, is the hardest work, like pushing a boulder uphill it requires you to muster everything inside of

Before Yeti created a $5 million cooler and adventure brand, the icebox/cooler market (aka the "esky " market, despite Esky being a brand) was a a low-cost and cheap product market. Chris Hladczuk documents their story in

I wonder how many avenues for networking, referrals, and help, us celebrants are leaving on the table?

Any successful endeavour requires a number of ingredients. An award winning cake recipe will have more than one ingredient, and an Olympic gold medal swimmer didn't just swim their first lap that race. There's a p

An element of my social media content strategy I'm quite proud of is that I've really worked hard at making better photos, photos that I have made - and therefore own - so that I have photos and video for my own social m

When you hear of social media posts going viral, it simply means people are sharing it. They're tagging their friends in the comments, sharing the post by direct message, and adding to the algorithm that decides who sees

If you've ever played the iconic Australian schoolyard game of handball, you'll remember that the aim of the game is to intercept the ball on your quadrant/half, then to get it back out as soon as possible. Think about y

The Copywriting Course's subject line generator might be just the gold mine you need to start writring that next blog posts, social media post, or recording that vlog or podcast.

A member has asked about whether the readership includes insurance. It doesn't, and we'll be honest with you, that's because we reached out to a bunch of insurance brokers and insuring you lot in such

At the time of writing I personally have attended four court mediation sessions, and two court hearings. Theses are my stories. Dum dum. Ok, enough of the Law and Order jokes, but I am in the middle of a bunch of law sui

If you're feeling a bit stuck on what to post on your blog, or social media, or both, here's seven content ideas you can easily write right now. Then schedule them up to drop every day, and watch your online personal bra

Instagram has shared a post today about how and why people see what they see on Instagram. I'm not going to speculate on how much of this is smoke and mirrors, or politics, or conspiracy theories. Instead, lets take them

Krystal asks: "I seek perhaps some advice on how I continue to be "out there " without sailing into the boring seas or moving into sharing content on social media that isn't relevant. Maybe I need to be patient with the p

To my fellow celebrants, I have a proposal regarding the one month notice period, and I'd like to run it up your flagpole, so to speak, and then take it to the Australian parliament: that the one month notice period requ

After posting a guide on making sure you and your business is prepared if and when the Facebook ban hammer falls on you, the Facebook ban hammer fell on us.

First Australians have been marrying for thousands of years on the land we now call Australia. Terra Australis, the southern land, was home to people well before the Dutch or the British "discovered " it, so as much as Au

Social media, and humanity in general, can become a little bit self-indulgent at times. It's our tribal, animalistic nature, to look after one's self first. But something beautiful happens when you turn the camera away f

Your challenge today is to create an entertaining meme. Not an educational meme, or an instructional meme, or a demonstratable meme. Today we meme for fun.

Today’s challenge is a little more casual after some intense training days, and it's about Quora.

Today your challenge is to write non-stop for five minutes.

Here’s a chart that tells a story about my business. Before you read on or scroll, what story do you think it’s telling?

Today you get a rare and direct peek into my brain. This next diagram explains how I think about content.

We’re on the home stretch in this social media challenge, and you guys are absolutely nailing the challenge to the wall, good work!

I started this little streak of content prompts highlighting the fact that there five different kinds of good content. This is the fifth: demonstratable content.

Today’s challenge, once more without stipulation of network or medium, is to entertain us.

Today’s challenge is to mentally stimulate us, to make us feel something, something creative, beautiful, and hearty. Today’s challenge, as is the theme in this current swing of content, can go on any network/s of

Good morning students! Today you’re all teachers and we’re taking your audience back to school.

There are five different kinds of good content. Before you click post on anything, ever, forever, it should be at least one. If it’s two, you might get a like, three and you’re having a party, four and you just put a has

Today’s challenge is 98% in your hands, 1% in the calendar’s hands, and 1% from me.

Ansel Adams said that we don’t take a photograph, we make it. Your challenge today is to make a photo, a beautiful photo, a photo you’re proud of, that you’d be happy to see hanging in my lounge room. It ca

One of my favourite uses of Instagram’s Story feature is to document the behind the scenes of what I’m doing. I see a number of benefits to the occasional behind the scenes personal documentary.

Today we’re taking that controversial thought in your mind, and we’re turning it all the way up to [eleven, Spinal Tap style].

Today’s challenge is an easy one, you already know everything about it, the key to the challenge though is 1. Articulating it, 2. Telling it, and 3. Sharing it to as many mediums as possible Today we’re telling yo

It's a weird world in 2020, one where our workload has significantly decreased, yet in other less familiar ways, our workload has increased dramatically with postponements, court dates, cancellations, emails, sending man

If someone speaks well of you, you've got to remember that, embed it deep into your soul, and know that you're good at this. And once you’ve done that you need to share that testimony There’s a whole philos

Who would ever think that there would be a need for an [International Day for Nutella] to raise awareness of the delicious nutty goodness? Sara Rosso did.

Podcasts are so much more powerful than most people imagine. My little podcast, [The Rebel’s Guide to Getting Married], has maybe...

I’m willing to bet that you have received a question about what you do before today, and you’ve hit reply with a really good answer.

Today’s challenge is to find something boring (like a carrot) yet necessary (like vegetables are for your diet) in your business

Every month you should re-introduce yourself to your social media audience. I think you'd be surprised how many don't really know you for the real “you”, and those that do, could probably do with a brand re-alignment.

Making lemonade out of lemons is a popular story, obviously backed by Big Lemonade, but it encourages us to make our proverbial lemonade out of the lemons we’re presented with in life. For day one

Seth Godin today writing about charging per hour, something I still see celebrants do. I wrote about the same topic a year ago so it's nice to have beat Seth Godin to something for once.

Gail asks: Hi Josh. You mentioned in one of the podcasts that you use ToDoist to organise your projects. Could you please run me through how you utilise this as I am also a ToDoist fan.

Video chat, video conferencing, Skyping, Facetiming, or now, Zooming, is going to be a fairly major way we communicate through this season and into the future. The problem is, I see lots of people on Zoom calls not bring

There’s a lot of talk about weddings coming back as COVID-19 restrictions are eased. This is not an article about when and what restrictions are being eased, but a reminder as to how Australia works and how to know if we

I drove through a recently bushfire affected region last week. The ground was still blackened, but not as much as the tree trunks. The foliage and grass that would normally cover the bush floor was slowly achingly coming

Maria asks: I am hoping to be able to travel and marry people in other countries so how do I go about doing that? I understand the law is different in each state in the US and of course Canada so is there an easy process

Do you know the Greek myth of King Sisyphus? As retribution for tricking the gods, he was punished to an eternity of pushing a large boulder up a steep hill only to have it roll back down just as he reached the top.

Many of us have a problem with selling. It’s understandable, most of us have been sold to before, and we’ve hated it. A “salesperson” is often the sleaziest person in the room, and none of us want to be “that guy.” But h

If your couples don't have an easy way to pay you with credit card, I'm of the belief that you're not only missing out on cash flow and cash, but you're also missing out on the goodwill you would generate by making your

I’ll be honest, I haven’t been able to kick the thought that as much as this podcast episode seems like the least likely thing to recommend to a pack of celebrants, I just have to. So here it is. Jerry Sa

Maybe you're a better worker than I am so you don't need this, but over here in Josh-world I'm as easily distracted as a mouse in a cheese tasting room. So seeing this resource made for programmers made me curious

Interaction is a privilege. But it doesn’t often scale.

If you’re not already familiar with the reason why, when faced with two cafes next to each other most of us will choose the busier cafe, the reason is social proof.

Eyewear brand Oscar Wylee is in trouble with the ACCC for its charitable donations. In an era of such transformative social change, more and more businesses are choosing to align themselves with charitable organisations

To bring in the new year, [Stephen Ango asks himself 40 questions]. I liked his list but thought I’d alter it for followers so we could reflect on where we’ve been and look at where we’re going. Ident

A reader asks: "I've noticed the ABIA awards presentation nights have been occurring but what is the ABIA awards and how do people win the ABIA awards? What is the scoring based on? I see these marks of 99.93 etc. " I’ll

A quick Saturday morning flick through the social media feeds showed me six celebrants doing a bad thing on social media. They’re not breaking the law, and in their minds they’re not doing a bad or evil thing. Man

Jeff asks: A general price question: when you both set your prices (to their current rates), were you/are you in line with what others charge or are you much higher? Pretty sure I’m the highest priced officiant in my reg

A repetitive theme in my writing is the encouragement for you to create your own content. I really do believe that creating original, helpful, relevant, personal, content is a majorly easy way for you to have a win today

I’m eventually going to start sounding like a broken record, but we all need to get it into our head: ads as we used to know them no longer work. People hate ads.

Sephora has identified that not every customer desires the same journey, so they created a fork in the road to cater for two different personality types.

There is a fascinating article on The Correspondent today about the next "dot com bubble " being online advertising. The link is a long, but easy, and really (seriously) interesting read, but for the benefit of CI blog re

Thanks very much for your helpful article about PA system recommendations. I hope Bose & Sennheiser are kind to you! I upgraded to both recommended items & during testing at home & at a venue it worked perfectly, but onc

After dropping my car off to be serviced this morning I hit the local cafe strip to find a breakfast befitting of someone wanting to sit in a cafe for breakfast and a coffee while answering emails and writing blog posts.

What most clients pay Sally for—the deliverable, is that five minutes of video footage. But what Sally dreams of doing and being paid for is finding stories worth telling. It’s easier for Sally to sell the outcome—the vi

I believe with all my mind, body, and soul, that service people aren't paid per hour, they're paid for how much value they bring to that hour. So here's my July challenge for all celebrants...

Britt’s grandma always said that you should start how you want to finish.

Would you follow yourself on social media? If you saw that a friend of yours commented on one of your posts so it floated up to your news feed, and you clicked through to your profile, would you follow it?

In a post yesterday I described the hard work of finding your 'Almost Nobody'. This, I argue, is your life's work, and something that will forever be changing. A good example of me doing that work in my own business is sharing authentically on social media.

Stop talking, ask questions and listen, and you’ll learn about them. In order to think like your customer, you must focus on your customer. Your customer could be a prospect, an existing client, a boss, a co-worker, a fr

We spend a lot of time looking at other celebrants, but here's a helpful and practical way to look at your competitors and actually form a competitive advantage.

"Inside baseball " is one of my favourite Americanisms, it's a figurative adjective meaning the details are appreciated by only a small group of insiders or aficionados. It usually refers to a detail-oriented approach to

Have you heard of sonder?

On a road near my house there's a billboard that promises to expose my business to many thousands of people. A similar promise has been made by the producers of Married at First Sight and other TV shows. Everyone wants t

Sean asks "Do you have any advice on taking multiple bookings in a day? Accounting for travel time of course what's the minimum amount of time you leave yourself in between ceremonies, and is this

Every time my car gets serviced, at 10,000km a service that's about four to five times a year, I have this sinking feeling as I drive away from the mechanic's workshop. After spending six odd hours away from me, and an a

"Differentiation starts with the choice to do one thing well " says Bernadette at The Story of Telling blog. I wanted to break that powerful statement down and offer up some food of thought for celebrants today.

Liene over at Think Splendid has published a super insightful blog post about how she prices herself for her speaking gigs. I wonder if we as celebrants have considered not only our costs of doing business expense

A little tip for celebrants using the NSW Lifelink system. I tweeted at the NSW Justice Department decrying their developers of not allowing Mac users to upload documents into Lifelink and one of their staf

Jo asks: What professional association do I join? One? Two? All? I know this is tricky question and high levels of diplomacy may be required - but how does a newbie choose between the associations? My RTO has given no ad

I don't know. If there's anything you can expect from me today and into the future is that I'm not going to talk BS. The good news is that I know as much about Facebook advertising as most marketers and advertisers do, a

Facebook, owner of Facebook but also Instagram and WhatsApp, is pushing hard to get more advertisers on its platform. In last week's earnings call they made two statements which stood out to me: “When we think about Inst

A member asks: When chatting with celebrants recently I heard again and again that most celebrants aren't really that interested in following the general Instagram "best practice " advice that you see on social media blog

A member asks: When chatting with celebrants recently I heard again and again that most celebrants aren't really that interested in following the general Instagram "best practice " advice that you see on social media blog

A member asks: When chatting with celebrants recently I heard again and again that most celebrants aren't really that interested in following the general Instagram "best practice " advice that you see on social media blog

It's every business owner's favourite time of the year: EOFYmas! As the End Of Financial Year celebrations takeover our lives I wanted to highlight the deductions I think we celebrants should be thinking of, and if you d