Business gets jaded when there is no call to destiny. Business gets dangerous when there is no connection to the collective unconscious. "Business is business" may become lethal to our survival and the survival of the planet when its exponents subscribe to the philosophy that it is only about the money or meeting shareholder expectations.

In each case they are operating through a separateness of existence. This is dangerous because like the Butterfly Effect....everything is related and closer that we may realise.

Even wondered about our greater purpose or indeed if we collectively have one?

Today's journey is on the subject of group minds and business

When you create any thing new like a business you create a new thought form.

I remember going to a lecture at the Theosophical Society many years ago to hear a speaker expound a published theory on brown holes.

For him there wasn’t spaces between mass, instead what you could not see there, supporting the mass, were brown holes. Brown holes held group thought, visions and intentioning.

Rupert Sheldrake was the first scientist to open this area for discussion with his 100th Monkey offering on the subject of group minds. (Morphic Resonance)

It was on this topic he detailed a study on animals waiting for their masters to return back from shopping trips or holidays.

The animals would be filmed during this entire time their masters were away, to see at what point they "knew" when their master was going to return home.

What the study revealed was that the instant the person (hundreds of miles away) decided to return home (they were also being filmed) the dog went to the door or their "greeting in wait" place every time and waited for their physical return.

It begged the question how is this possible that an animal can know the instance you decide to return home unless there was a group mind it also had access to as part of the household collective unconscious. The thing to also note here is that this group mind includes animals.

He proposed that we are connected into a group mind. Family is a group mind (including animals). societies are a group mind as well as special Interest groups and of course business.

When you start a business with your intentions and your vision you are laying the foundation bed of a group mind.

Like a garden it can be nurtured or polluted.

The whole point of creating visions and values is to bring the collective structure to the vision you hold for the business, so that others when they join the business can tap into this field as well and get to know the culture and story on an intuitive level.

That is why in our model of the MetaBrand System, the CEO is a powerful influencer of the business.

How you ever unwittingly been a pawn to bring down a company. Listen up. Here is a way it is done every day.

I just received this viral marketing campaign from a well meaning friend. Perhaps you even got it.

This one was entitled:

HUGE VIRUS COMING !!! PLEASE READ & FORWARD !!!

Hi All, I checked with Norton Anti-Virus, and they are gearing up for this virus! I checked Snopes (URL above:), and it is for real!! Get this E-mail message sent around to your contacts ASAP. PLEASE FORWARD THIS WARNING AMONG FRIENDS, FAMILY AND CONTACTS! You should be alert during the next few days.

Do not open any message with an attachment entitled 'POSTCARD FROM HALLMARK,' ....

When I checked it out the link to www.snopes.com...this is what I found.

“although the postcard virus is real, it isn’t a BIG VIRUS COMING” (its already been around in a multiple forms for a long time now), it will not “burn the whole hard disc” of your computer, CNN didnt classify it as the “worst virus ever”

Poor Hallmark this campaign slurs their reputation makes people wonder about e cards might be sent by this business.

I don't like being a pawn in someone else’s mischief or fear making. But worse still being misguided by a negative viral marketing campaign. Be careful of what you forward you could be an unwitting pawn in a competitors slur campaign.

What happens when you believe that you are the safest airline in the world? You might stop worrying about the old “pleasing the customer” routine.

“I didn’t know it was self-service” was the parting comment from a first class passenger, aimed at the purser, on leaving. He also chose to ignore the angry glare, in return.

“You do what you are told” is how customers now summarise flying with Qantas.

Yet people still keep flying with them because of their impeccable crash free record. That is of course ignoring that skidding off the tarmac “mishap” in Italy.

The trouble is, it will take only one air accident and Qantas will be surprised at the mass exodus of their customer base. And, it wont be just because they had an accident. It will be accelerated as a result of their non-existent customer service.

I am kind of curious how they have factored that into their business plan.

Let’s be really clear Qantas’s customer loyalty is due to one thing and one thing alone, no deaths. The best positioning and brand promise that any airline in the world can own.

Take that away and Qantas' customer service record is an easy poor fourth to the likes of Singapore, Thai, or Emirates. Ask any experienced international flier. Customer service is no longer a part of the delivery of our once great airline.

Now that is a legitimate cost cutting business approach if you can guarantee no accidents. But with that gone there is nothing left in the "esteem" bank account to draw upon.

How do you think they arrived at the size of the fuels tanks of the sides of the NASA spaceship?

It kind of went like this. The size of the fuel tanks was limited by the railway that brought the fuel tanks to NASA. The most limiting factor, on this track, was a tunnel, the width of a train (and a bit).

The width of the train was really dictated by the gauge on which it rode. Apparently the gauge of that particular rail track was determined by the guys that originally supplied the trains.

These guys before they got into trains used to do horse carriages, so for the wheel gauge and undercarriages they adapted the same kind of tooling that they used for horse draw carriages and consequently ended up the same gauge for trains.

Heard something amazing at a talk on leadership today. How do you think they arrived at the size of the fuels tanks of the sides of the NASA spaceship?

It kind of went like this. The size of the fuel tanks was limited by the railway that brought the fuel tanks to NASA. The most limiting factor, on this track, was a tunnel, the width of a train (and a bit).

The width of the train was really dictated by the gauge on which it rode. Apparently the gauge of that particular rail track was determined by the guys that originally supplied the trains.

These guys before they got into trains used to do horse carriages, so for the wheel gauge and undercarriages they adapted the same kind of tooling that they used for horse draw carriages and consequently ended up the same gauge for trains.

Now the wheels of a horse drawn carriage were set to ride in the ruts in the road. There was an accepted guage or width that most of the carriage makers used...as these ruts had built up over hundreds of years.

Ten guesses who started with the ruts... the Romans, who based their chariot wheel widths on the width of two horses backsides.

And here we have the most sophisticated mode of transport today being influenced by the width of two horse backsides.

What a legacy that original chariot maker had on the space shuttle.

Legacy...you never know how much influence you really have.

One of my business buddies reported at a breakfast that he found a stapler in the rubbish bin at his office a couple of days ago.(We didn’t even want to go why he was rifling through the bins at his office.)

He then asked his staff why it was in there...a perfectly normal working stapler.....

You won’t believe the answer he was given...

"It ran out of staples!"

When 60% of GDP comes from production of goods where the IP has been stolen…you can understand the EEU saying to China that the figure needs to be halved before they could possibly get accepted as a trading partner.

When 60% of GDP comes from production of goods where the IP has been stolen…you can understand the EEU saying to China that the figure needs to be halved before they could possibly get accepted as a trading partner.

Even dealing with China….the lure of cheaply made goods goes hand in hand with the possibility of your designs even your actual branded products being sold to another country in a heartbeat. And I never understood why.

The fact is, that China has only had property ownership for the past 10 or so years.

If owning land is such new concept, imagine the leap in understanding that a company or a person is also able to own the Intellectual Property for something.

(Remember that China was a massive state collective of farms, factories, everything…The government is now having to find 25 million new jobs each year as these collectives are disbanded.)

If owning the land is such new concept, then the idea of a company and person owning “intellectual property:” is going to take some real getting used to.

Ownership after all is a philosophy…………..of separateness.

Coles-Myer hadn't registered www.colesmyer.com as part of their brand protection strategy. So some enterprising person decided to register the .com and proceeded to redirect all the web traffic to www.woolworths.com.au for fun.

Priceless...

No sympathy for Visy on this one...

Tell anyone who has had anything to do with printing boxes and see if they act surprised. The cartel in cardboard boxes is a rort that everyone in the design industry has been aware of for years.

From my perspective, this cartel has been damaging the image of Australian fruit growers overseas fo years.

Consider this. I went to Italy in the last few years as part of a trade mission to investigate packaging and branding. It was devastating on a number of fronts.

Firstly, I was taken by one of the largest packing houses to a cool room to show me Australian Produce. There they were...boxes crumpled in the corner. The packaging had not withstood the sea journey and was leaking the contents onto the floor. This was typical of the packaging and the state it arrived.

They want to do business with us...its just that we don't make the grade.

Secondly, an Italian distributor showed me these beautifully made full colour boxes and specially designed lids. When I asked him how much it has cost him to have it printed he said, just one dollar per box. There was not one gram of recycled paper. It was strong and perfectly printed and designed.

The reason why the Australian product loses its edge on the international front is from this cartel in packaging.

For one dollar the Australian growers can only expect a weak box with high recycle content and poorly printed in spot colours. (Designers even have to allow a 5mm poor printing margin for error)

Compared to any other first world country Australia's packaging is inferior and looks shabby on arrival because of it.

Our growers could not afford, nor should they have be paying the price this cartel was asking. As a result, thisd cartel isw packaging products affected our export industry and Australia's image abroad.

No sympathy from me guys....I am on the side of the growers…I hope you learned your lesson, so we can start the process of rebuilding our export image overseas.

An interesting situation arose with an associate/client re the purchase of a domain name. It should not have surprised me, but it did.

It was my recommendation for Joe Matthew from Seoecom.com to take on the mantle of SEOJoe and suggested that he buy the domain www.seojoe.com.

He is one of the top writers and professionals in this space as well as having the one of the few name that can rhyme with SEO.(JOE)

Scientist have done some interesting work with rhymes. People attach more credibility to phrases said in rhyme over non rhymes especially in positioning. So "SEOJoe, is the way to go" for example would come over as more true than "SEO is the right choice".

Iteration which SEOJoe falls into as well, is an easy memory device to remember a name. Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse...Walt certainly knew what he was doing.

So, from a professional recommendation, right on the money.

However, here is the issue I totally overlooked. There was one bad report that had been linked to the name, previously.

So now Joe, who is such an impeccable person, has been put in the position where he has to manage this slur from another business which has now been transferred to his new online identity.

The person that he is, he offers the company that posted the report about the old entity compensation of what they had lost in his services. He didnt need to do that...to me this speaks volumes about who I know Joe is. And no doubt he will manage the issue because of his immense character (and internet capabilities).

But here is the rub.

The worth of any domain name can only be realised to its full value, if it is a virgin domain. If it has been used before...then it is a case of buyer beware and reputation value needs to be cfactored into the consideration.

It's like buying a used company, How do you know if there are any outstanding claims against the company. That is why most people don't go there.

On the web, you need to make sure that there are no outstanding claims against the reputation of the domain name.

To me, it just added a whole other layer to buying domain names, that I had considered.

It’s quirky but true. Our capacity to process new information is limited. Essentially our conscious can only handle 7 plus or minus 2 bits of new information any any one time. Mobile phone numbers in Australia at least, have 10 digits. Which puts memorising them right out of the ability of most Westerners.When I was doing my Master Prac NLP with Marvin Oka, he suggested that Asian cultures because of their use of the character form of writing, actually had slightly more capacity to hold bits of information and process them. He believed unlike for most in the West it was increased to 8 plus or minus 2 bits of info at any one time.

TIP: In order for people to grasp your mobile number, you need to chunk your number into smaller amounts. For example 0411 221 025 can also be chunked 0411 22 10 25 which brings the number down to a more manageable amount of data for most people. It’s also why the whole 1-300 “flowers” concept works, because it only requires 3 bits of new of information to be stored by potential customers.