You haven't missed that much if you've skipped the previous parts. Being able to board a plane in Sydney to the USA and then Europe was a huge effort by some folks - in particular Roger Campbell and his offsider Craig, Paul Mirtschin, Jeannette Dangelico, Adrian Butterworth, Bill Dawes, Tracey O'Neill and Adrian Van Dam (and sorry if I've forgotten anyone else), as they helped me:
close an office we'd occupied for 12 years;
vacate a house I lived in for 17 years;
sell a business I owned for 13 years,
and buy a place to dump everything, which was then hastily converted into what is now called the 'Taj'.
All of this in a month. Yes, I didn't leave quite enough time. It had been months in the planning but a lot of that was spent looking at the calendar in a silent panic.
The aim was to research new business opportunities overseas, which for a change, included catching up on some cycling and travel that I'd missed in a decade-long blur of 70 to 80 hour weeks, four mortgages (cheap overdrafts) and just the odd stressful moment. I'll only cover the fun stuff here as business is business and who wants to read about that? Probably not the people I've been meeting with …
Much of what's called 'having a life' was put on hold during that time decade. Dave thought a blog would be a good way for me to share my experiences (and he has also been hugely supportive by encouraging me to get back on the bike, as we raced together in '90s and had great times).
Most importantly, I'd emerged from this mammoth work period with my health largely intact. It was a 'get out of gaol for free' card and I wasn't looking back. I am very thankful for this. I could walk out the door, throw a leg over my bike and ride pretty much without any discomfort, excluding the part where you suffer as you watch other riders spin away in the hills and leave you behind. I still get there, eventually.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Sunday, April 26, 2009
April 1996 to April 26, 2009:
It may not be blog netiquette but it's not my idea and therefore a short recap may be necessary.
I started a company, bought businesses, grew businesses, sold businesses, a lot of s*** happened in that time, the end. Next.
Actually, that is grossly unfair to the wonderful people who worked with me then and still do now. I did start my company in April 1996 by acquiring two struggling magazines; Image & Data Manager (IDM) and Australian Exhibitor. IDM became very successful, and remains one of the few independent IT publications in Australia (it started in 1994). And my, we've seen some casualties in that time. It's now in the hands of good mate and publisher, Bill Dawes (Transmit Media). On the other hand, I stopped publishing the exhibition industry magazine within a year. Win one, lose one.
The next score for my company was licensing Internet World from Mecklermedia and publishing it in Australia. That went well until Alan Meckler cashed out in the dot com boom. So that was Lesson #2. (Sidebar: I never really planned to start a company, it was just circumstance. Lesson #1 was working very hard on an Australian film industry magazine called Encore, only for it to be sold by the Australian owners to a British conglomerate that I had previously worked for seven years earlier. After 15 years, I ended up in the same place I started, a complete career loop. I lasted two months under new ownership and thought, "I may as well have a crack myself".)
As a keen cyclist, I also watched this web site called Cyclingnews.com grow by word-of-mouth. It was published by an Australian, Bill Mitchell. In August 1999 I approached Bill, hoping he'd want to sell as I assumed he had better things to do with his time (he is a Professor of Economics at the University of Newcastle) and that his hobby had quickly turned into a monster. Good timing. Bill agreed to sell it to me. You can read more about it here and here.
After about eight fun-filled (!?) years I sold this business on July 3, 2007, to Future Publishing of the UK. I also provided the readers with further detail about the sale as I stayed on as the 'managing consultant' for 18 months after the deal went through. As a sidebar, I learned - during a transnational flight - that July 3 is the same date that Danny Ocean (George Clooney) and his pals carry off their sting in Oceans 13. I did not know that at the time, but it's just a coincidence. Future largely kept the team together - as agreed - and CN stayed the numero uno cycling website in the world.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Introducing ...
Now before we get too far into this, I have to say this wasn't my idea. The blog, I mean, because I have wondered - as do others - if this is really my style. However, I do admire the name of this blog that my good mate Dave Langley came up with. Langers has a blog, other mates have blogs, we sometimes do silly crap that makes for good yarns over beers, so, why not?
The title of this blog is truly one for those with a sense of history, those cyclists who'd been startled by the site of the mutt licking the salt off their legs, or opened the window in old Ted-the-Kingswood when he'd let rip from one too many meatybites. Yes, Rufus became part of the inner-city Sydney cycling scene and part of my life after Bronny bought him home from Queensland. Since those heady days I kept him alive by adopting a silly pseudonym when writing the odd article for Cyclingnews, when I wasn't being the then stressed-out publisher. So Rufus Staffordshire (who I must sadly tell folks is now in doggy-heaven) will live on, at least in this blog. He was a red Staffordhsire bull terrier, who spent much of his life with gonads, so he could be a little, testy, at times. But he was everyone's mate, and we all loved him.
Getting to this point has been eventful, though it was definitely my idea to be setting off on this journey that will - I hope - generate material for this blog that folks will want to read. And I can also think of all the emails it will save me sending, so it has a green angle, I think.
It's taken me about 3 months to even get to this point of adding something to the blog, due to the travel, meetings and business matters, but hopefully now I will get on a roll. It was a rainy Sunday in Gent, Belgium, today, so I had no choice, really. (I have backdated the posts so they make sense, as I am axctually doing all of this on August 2, 2009.)
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