So What’s New? For up to the minute news, you should check out my main blog
To help you find the information you need more easily, I have set out the most recent changes (during 2014) in three core areas:
Work – My latest clients, consultancy assignments and professional research
I’ve posted a month-by-month account of the major work themes during 2014.
During 2012 I repositioned the business to reflect the shift away from the more practical aspects of marketing and business development and on to the increasingly strategic nature of my work and the increase in training and coaching work. Like all businesses, mine continues to evolve – and 2014 has been an interesting year! What remains constant is my thanks to my clients for their continued trust in me.
Whilst shortlisted in the Chartered Institute of Marketing’s (CIM) Women in Marketing awards in October 2011, towards the end of 2012 I was nominated as a Trustee of CIM (thanks to all those who supported me) although I didn’t make it through the elections. During 2013 – as well as significant assignments for some accounting practices – I also worked on projects relating to pricing and project management. In 2014, I also produced a series of blogs on creativity
Business development remains an important element of my work. My fourth book “Rainmakers and Trailblazers – A step-by-step guide to business development for lawyers” was published in February 2014. And I wrote a host of blogs for my own site as well as leading London entertainment portal
For an update on my work in the various sectors, take a look at:
I also was once again a judge on the Managing Partners’ Forum Management Excellence Awards, early in 2014 I was honoured to be a judge at the inaugural Laurie Young Global Thought Leadership Awards and in December 2014 I was a judge in the new Legal Industry Video Awards
Speaking – On tour
A significant part of my time is spent speaking and lecturing – at public conferences and training courses and for in-house events for partners, lawyers, accountants and surveyors at all levels of seniority and marketers and business developers. Themes during 2014 included strategy, planning, client service excellence, marketing, business development and relationship management. During 2014 I also continued to provide numerous courses for Professional Marketing Forum and CLT as well as a host of others such as The Law Society and MBL.
The following blogs provide a flavour of some of the public conferences, courses and talks during 2014 and 2013:
2014
- Persuasive writing
- Relationship management and Key Account Management (KAM)
- Communication, conflict management and negotiation
- Cross selling
- Persuasion and buy-in
- Digital marketing and social media
- Business development
- Property marketing trends
- Strategy
- Thought leadership and client/referrer relationships
- Coaching
2013
- Marketing strategy for personal injury lawyers
- Campaign management
- Marketing Return on Investment (ROI)
- Marketing in the professions
- Delegation
- Developing private client practices
- Persuasion
- Project Management
- Family law practice development
Knowledge – Books, articles and other knowledge resources
Having written a few books and continuing to write White Papers, articles and blogs on a regular basis, I make a reasonable contribution to the knowledge on the topic of management and marketing in the professions. I still lecture part-time for the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) professional diploma (and in 2013 this took me to Germany) and the range of training courses and other participation in the professional services and marketing sectors are outlined in this section.
My fourth book “Rainmakers and Trailblazers – A step-by-step guide to business development for lawyers” was published in February 2014. And I developed an exclusive 40 page guide to communications, conflict management and negotiation to support my consultancy and training work in this area. I may expand this guide and publish it during 2015.
After training to become an accredited psychometrics personality assessor at the start of 2013 to supplement the resources for my coaching clients, during 2014 I finally embarked on my training to become a psychodynamic counsellor. I completed level 2 and am already half way through level 3. That leaves another two years’ training until full professional qualification! And my continuing interest in psychology was reflected in numerous blog posts on psychology in the areas of communication, personality assessment, resilience, negotiation, persuasion, pricing, relationship management, selling and stress.
In June 2014, I presented a paper at the inaugural Estates Gazette Property Marketing conference and published a series of blogs based on the research and interviews I did in preparation.
And for fun, I published a series of blogs on creativity reflecting some of the content and exercises I use on my workshops in this area. The first blog includes links to the other six articles in the series.
Web Site Update – Current Content
Since this web site was originally launched back in May 2000 (I can’t believe it has been up and running for over a decade!), it has been through a number of radical revisions. There was a rebrand in 2012 and during 2013 I finally had it moved to a WordPress platform. Whilst I try to keep the site up to date, most of my updates can be seen on my blog or through my posts on LinkedIn and Twitter (@RedStarKim).
This section contains a quick guide to the latest content changes and additions during the most recent revision in early 2014.
Personal – Those aspects of my life beyond work which may have value or interest to others
Business is more and more personal these days. This section updates you on some of the travel and out of work activities that occupy me in my “down time”.