Lovely to report that I’m listening to my old friend Lemn Sissay on BBC Radio Manchester being interviewed by Alan Beswick about the fact that’s he’s been awarded an MBE! Regular readers of this blog will know that Lemn is not only an inspiration to me, but also thousands of other people, especially children – he has spent thousands and thousands of unreported hours doing workshops and talks for kids all over the world. In fact, when we used to knock about in Manchester it always amazed me how many bouncers we’d bump into who suddenly drop their guard and say stuff like “Fuck me, it’s Lemn Sissay!”, then give him a big, star-struck hug and spend 20 minutes telling him how much he inspired them in a talk he did at their school years before (much to the chagrin of the other revelers in the queue desperate to get into whatever house of ill repute we were attempting to enter).

Apart from being Best Man at our wedding (the poem he wrote and read at the ceremony “Heart Garden”, is one of my most treasured memories and possessions), he is also Godfather (in a non-religious type way, if that’s possible:-) to my son. Here they are just after he was born:

You can get further background on Lemn here, and you can get his work from Amazon here:

His second published book was “Rebel without Applause”. As he said on Alan Beswick’s show this morning, after Alan chastised him for moving from Manchester to London, he’s now a “Rebel with a baguette”. I can’t publish what he said MBE stands for. “Might Be Ethiopian” was my suggestion – not as funny as his.

One project Lemn has created that is really exciting is the GPS (Global Poetry System), a typically brilliant idea that is a user generated world map of poetry. Watch the video about it here:

We’ve often chatted about the use of poetry in the commercial world over the past 20 years. A couple of things we did together that I’m very proud of include the famous poem on the wall of Hardy’s Well pub on the busiest bus route in Europe on Wilmslow Road heralding the entrance to Rusholme from the South in Manchester. I pulled that together along with Toby Hadoke and the then landlord of the pub, Andy, back when there was a little comedy club in the back room.

That was back in 95/96 – and it’s still there!

The other thing was that when I won a sales promotion contract with Stagecoach to promote their weekly Megarider ticket (with the company I set up in 2001 that’s still going strong, AIM Solutions) I convinced them to them to do the whole thing around Lemn and use his poems in the promotional material.

We got Lemn on the side of hundreds of buses lying down “Sex and the City” style, his face on millions of tickets and posters inside the buses with his poetry all over them. I’ll never forget the meeting with Stagecoaches’ management when I proposed it. One of them said “I don’t want to do it if he’s associated with drugs”. Oh, racism. What a bizarre and stupid thing you are.

Lemn Sissay. Friend. Brother. Member of the British Fucking Empire!

I came across this video recently whilst looking into the so-called Global Warming/Carbon Crisis following all the hullabaloo after the Copenhagen debacle.

It shocked me.

Are we actually living in a fascist state? Did the Nazis win the 39-45 war? Has everything predicted and illustrated by Orwell and Kafka come to light but hidden in plain sight?

If you care one dot about the concept of free speech, this should frighten the living shit out of you:

I’ve just come across this guy Phelim McAleer – seems like a decent citizen to me. Whether we agree with his views or not should not detract from the fact that he has a right to ask questions, and a right to his views which seem, to me in this case at least, simply to get Al Gore to clarify the fundamental errors identified by the British High Court in his film, “An Inconvenient Truth”. Especially as this film is being shown in schools to our children!

Nothing should be presented as fact like this (although that’s never stopped the religious indoctrination I witness at the nativity plays I am obliged to attend every year).

I watched that film about three years ago and it scared the bejesus out of me.

I’m starting to think that was it’s intention. Another tactic designed to keep us all like rabbits in headlights, along with wars on terror, swine flu, recession – the never ending list of nonsense designed to get us all distracted from massive changes in legislation that effect our rights as human beings on this Earth.

Anyone else getting fed up with them?

An amazing amount of snow on Sunday (which has me on a wild goose chase skidding from shop to shop looking for an elusive sledge – most of which had been sold out to more organised parents presumably) led me to take this picture from the car today. It was an experiment to see how the iPhone camera dealt with looking the sun right in the eye (something I teach my kids to do when they shake hands with anyone).

It’s also a salient reminder of just how beautiful this world really is.

Regular readers of this blog may be deluded into thinking that all forms of inspiration for me come from business shenanigans.

No so.

One man who has always inspired me, and always believed in me, is Lemn Sissay.

Lemn was best man at our wedding. He was my soul mate throughout our twenties back when lager, kebabs and last night fights were a regular occurrence. We both grew up (sort of). Now he lives in the smoke continuing his career/calling as a truly inspirational and brilliant writer and performer.

Lemn was recently made an Honorary Doctor of Letters at Huddersfield University. Here’s Lemn alongside Theo Paphitis.

This is an extraordinary achievement, especially when you know what Lemn has been through to get to this elevated status in society.

He was fostered as a child and grew up as the only black person in Atherton, Lancashire, in the 1970s. He was dumped uncermoniously at the age of 11 by his foster parents, then put into a succession of children’s homes. When he found out his true identity as an Ethiopian called Lemn, he painted the Ethiopian flag on the ceiling of his room. This earned him 12 months in a detention centre.

He escaped to Manchester as a 17 year old and started performing the poetry that was ripping through his soul.

Soon after. he traced his true roots. His father was a pilot from Ethiopia and had died in 1973 in a plane crash. The BBC made a documentary about this called “Internal Flight”:

Even if you have no interest in poetry, you cannot be failed to be moved by Lemn’s work. Here he is doing some of his stuff:

I am so pleased that he is being recognised for his brilliance in this way. You deserve it all my friend.Thanks for everything.

One of the things I love about the internet marketing community is the constant drive to find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

In a tenuous link, one of the things I love most about Ireland, where we spend a lot of time, is the abundance of rainbows caused by the fast moving and usually very wet weather system.

Today we were extremely lucky to catch not one, but two rainbows appearing at the same time. You can also clearly see where the end of one of the rainbows lands. We didn’t have the time to chase it, but I did get a chance to snap them with my iPhone (wide angle app please someone). Click to enlarge.

This is a personal plea for help.

My four year old son, Joe, is on his way to hospital in an
ambulance because the school doctor thinks he’s got swine flu.

I’m experiencing some awful emotions at the moment, and want to ask
you a favour.

Whatever your beliefs, can I ask you to say a little prayer for
Joseph Nightingale Attwood in Stockport, UK?

I believe in the power of positive thought and know of many people
who have been cured of all sorts of illnesses like this.

If you feel compelled to pass this on to anyone you think
could help, I’d really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much.

This one’s for family reading my blog really – Joe is officially top of his class in Maths! Since moving him to the new school in Wilmslow six weeks ago, he’s really thrived. Well done son!

Today was one of the best days of my life. I didn’t think it would be because Katy flew off on a pre-hen party for the wedding of Toby Hadoke and Catherine Mount (I’m the best man. Still worried about that – “Would you like to be the best man at the wedding of a successful comedian and be funny in a room full of all his successful comedian mates?”. I’m sure I’ll come up with something…).

This is the first time since we’ve had the kids that Katy has gone away overnight, and I really didn’t want her to go.

But, we ended up having a brilliant and very chilled out day in the garden in the most glorious sunshine. Being a rare sunny day in Britain I, of course, stripped off without any suncream and burnt like a lobster. Just like 60 million other people today.

I also got round to reading a book I’ve had on my shelf for way too long. It was “Spiritual Marketing” by Dr Joe Vitale. I’ve been following Joe online for a number of years, and was particularly impressed with his turn on the infamous “The Secret” DVD.

The book is short and easy to read, and served to reinforce many of my own beliefs about life and success. Myself and Katy have long talked about the way we have manifested things in our lives.

Against the odds, she got into Oxford to study languages (not against the odds because of her brains – she’s got a brain the size of a planet, but because of a particularly negative teacher at her school and the fact that there was no Oxbridge family background), and I got into the RAF to begin training as an pilot. This was way aginst the odds as I was a kid born in a council house with a family history of “labourers” going back to the early 1800s (that’s what it says on all my ancestor’s marriage and death certificates).

As a kid, I thought that anything was possible. (My Mum always used to say “there’s no such word as “can’t”" Thanks Mum). Despite everything life has thrown at me since then, I still do. Joe’s book today reinforced some of those beliefs – beliefs that can sometimes easily give way to fear and doubt.

Then I remembered a time about 7 years ago when I crawled into my house at about 5am after another heavy night’s partying in Manchester and I had a moment in the toilet. No, not that kind of moment!

I was washing my hands when I suddenly looked myself straight in the eye in the mirror and said out loud “This is not the life you are supposed to be living. You are supposed to be a father living in a big house with a beautiful wife and beautiful children.”

Within a year I was married to Katy who got pregnant three weeks after our wedding day.

Three months ago, due to a large scale systematic theft and a schizophrenic decision to cut our funding by RBS, we had no choice but to go through the excruciating pain of putting the company we worked so hard to build into administration.

We talked long and hard about how we needed an angel. We trusted the Universe to do it’s work.

Eight weeks later, we pulled off a large six-figure investment from one of the UK’s richest people and are rapidly rebuilding our business and our lives.

Going into administration did leave a number of suppliers high and dry, but the smart ones are trading with us again and are already on the way to recovering any lost funds and benefiting from the huge profits we can bring to them.

Last October, I spoke about Internet Marketing in public for the first time. I really wanted to help people and found there are plenty of people wanting to be helped. Katy said “This is what you must do. It’s your special gift”. She wasn’t the only one. I resisted at first because I thought “People will just think I’m an egotist”.

I’ve since spoken at many events very successfully. On Tuesday, I’m speaking at Rachael Elnaugh’s “Marketing Magicians” in London (she of Dragons Den and Red Letter Days fame. A wonderful human being). I’m booked up to speak throughout most of the rest of the year, culminating in a major internet marketing event in New Orleans in December (looking forward to that very much).

Back in the nineties, with no experince whatsoever, I stood up on a stage with a microphone and tried to make a room full of strangers laugh. I was rubbish. But, I said to myself “I am going to write and star in a comedy that gets broadcast on TV”. Six years later, I did it. I also got to perform with and hang out with some of the most talented people in Britain. People like Steve Coogan, John Thomson, Henry Normal, Lemn Sissay, Dave Gorman, Caroline Ahearne, Peter Kay. It was fantastic. The life of a comedian was not for me, but I achieved what I set out to do.

There are many, many more instances in my life where visualisation and actualisation have played an integral part in achieving my dreams. I may well write a book on them myself now I’m getting reflective on it all, but I want to say thank you Dr Vitale for tody realigning and reinforcing my beliefs in what I have been doing for nearly 40 years now.

If any of this resonates with you, that makes me very happy. I should also mention that at all stages of my life when I said things like:

“I’m going to be a RAF pilot”
“I’m going to be on the telly”
“I’m going to make £10 million”

I was surrounded, and I mean surrounded, by people that said stuff aong these lines:

“Don’t be stupid”
“How can you do that? You’ve no experience”
“Aren’t you being a bit silly”
“That’s impossible”

If you have people like that around you – get rid of them.

Seriously. Life is too short. We’re short term energy structures living on a rock hurtling through space at millions of miles an hour circumnavigating a dying star. Break out of your limiting beliefs, stop being afraid, jump off the edge of the cliff and soar like the incredibe beautiful and amazing being that you know you are in your heart of hearts.

If it’s a spouse, a friend, a colleague – just walk away, and start hanging out with people who really understand the way the world works.

Anything is possible.

P.S. This is where I wrote this blog entry today:

We went to Northamptonshire today to celebrate my Nan’s 80th birthday. It’s such an achievement to get to that age and go through all the things she’s been through and still be an utter inspiration because she exudes positivity like no-one else on Earth. I have so much to be grateful to her for, not least the fact that I exist.

We both went through the trauma of losing her son/my Dad in 1986 to a brain haemorrhage. It sent us all off the wall for a number of years, and I truly regret not seeing Nan for nearly 5 years at one point. To be able to stand up today and toast her on behalf of Dad nearly got all of us bursting into tears, but she’s brilliant at keeping herself together and smiling on to make sure everyone has a good time. Here she is sat next to my Pap and my nephew William. Happy birthday Nan! Eighty trips round the sun – here’s to many more to come x (click to enlarge)

…I also managed for the first time ever to get all of the kids in one picture all looking the same way!

I love the TED channel on YouTube. This is a mind blower that I think anyone, not just entrepreneurs, should take note of. A simple, cheap, easy way to increase health and productivity by 20%! Check it out: