The beginning of my journey.

For those of you reading this and wondering what an “Infopreneur” is. It’s a sort of mash-up between entrepreneur and information, i.e someone who commercialises their ideas. Why does this appeal to me? Well, I’ve always liked being the go-to man for people who want advice, whether the subject is technology, MBA’s or career. So, this gives me the opportunity to package up the ideas I have floating around in my head, expand them, link them together, put a framework around them and then find out who might be interested in hearing them.

In 2010 I completed an MBA from the Melbourne Business School in Australia, part of the University of Melbourne it vies for top spot in the Australian MBA rankings with AGSM in Sydney and sits around the 50 mark in the global Financial Times MBA rankings. I completed the degree part-time whilst working at MBS in the careers department, advising students (mainly full-time ones) on their post-MBA career options. When I graduated in May 2010 I considered a career in management consulting (the default post-MBA career option) but decided to work for a start-up business, looking to establish a talent consulting practice. I initially thought I could satisfy my entrepreneurial urge, but soon realised that working for someone else, whether in a large company or small one meant you had to do things their way rather than chart your own course.

In April 2011 our first child was born, with my wife taking 6 months maternity leave, the start-up would have to wait and a stable income was the first priority. However, whilst I was taking time off work to spend time with our new daughter Amelia I met a few people who were involved with an organisation called “Thought Leaders”. One of them, Sean Spence ran his own consulting firm, during our meeting (which was initially about sailing!) he suggested I look into a course called Million Dollar Expert with the founder of the Thought Leaders concept, Matt Church. He had recently completed it and had found it worthwhile.

Over the next year I worked at a company called Dimension Data, working on their Talent attraction and development strategy. Due to a business restructure an opportunity arose for me to continue to work for them on a part-time basis as an external consultant whilst establishing my own practice. This brings us to the present, March 2012. I completed the core MDE course last week and have started to work out my practice growth strategy. Starting with the best of intentions I have decided to write a weekly blog outlining my progress towards becoming an infopreneur. This is the first explanatory post and I’ll complete another one on Friday with the progress made during the first week, including any doubts, fears etc that I have faced.