Meet Susan. In 2004, she completed a three year degree at a leading university. She joined the job hunting crowd, looked at dozens of positions and got interviewed for three.  In the end, Susan went for the world class company that offered competitive remuneration, extensive training and opportunities to travel abroad.

She put in the hours and performed well. Honestly, she had little interest in the job, the training or work.  Susan travelled a bit, mostly to crappy locations. She knew that life would get better as she climbed the ladder, while others job hopped.

After two years, Susan was promoted to a supervisor position, with a 20% pay increase, four weeks additional training and more travel. While she was proud to show off her new business card, she wasn’t too happy about managing five staff. She was bored, but got the job done.  Fast forward to 2007 and she climbed the manager rung for the local operations. Susan found little meaning in her day to day work, but she survived from one payday to the next. She was travelling a lot more, and soon resented spending weeks away from her family.

Susan was ambitious and believed that if she reached the next level, she could be happier in life. However she needed more than a degree and Susan sweated two years in MBA classes.  She graduated cum laude. Susan continued working hard, patiently waiting to reap the rewards.

When the senior manager retired in 2010, Susan was in the running for the top job.

She easily beat the competitors, packing in the qualifications, experience and relationships for the position. Susan was appointed as Senior Manager – Africa & Middle East.  She’d made it – the status of a position in a top company, a corner office, a plum remuneration package & bonus scheme and first class seats to exotic destinations.

Six months later, Susan had a heart attack and during her stay in hospital, pondered over what really mattered to her. She realised what many talented professionals still had to learn: she built her career by ignoring her passion, chasing qualifications & skills, climbing the ladder for more perks and doing a terrific job at something that she doesn’t want.

Credit: Robert Couse-Baker

Are you climbing the wrong corporate ladder?

Someone asked me during a recent get-together in a Russian pub – did I know where Russian itself as a language fits into the worldly scheme of things. I sipped my Baltika and replied that it changes all the time, and then took a guess, since I knew that Russian is one of the six official UN languages and that there are over 150 million people in the country. My guess was that it ranked 10^th on the amount of people who speak it, mainly because I know how hard it is to learn.

It turned out to be 8^th, which still meant that I owed Sergei a beer. However, most interesting where some other results of the research we both did later that evening… Ok, fine, the truth is we did the research the next day.

Russian is spoken by about 150 to 200 million people, but when one goes up the list, until the second most spoken language, one gets to around 350 million, depending on where you check. After that, the number one language is Mandarin, with almost 3 times that: estimated at anywhere between 850 million and 1 billion!

Another strange thing, is that with all the attention given to French, it is way down on the list by any interpretation, and yet still quite widely spoken. German, too, is not much of a contender for the top 5 by a long shot. Yet Portuguese, with mainly Brazil helping it along, is quoted in some places as having over 200 million speakers.

Why do these statistics and numbers mean anything? Well, for one, why are we not teaching any of these top languages in our schools? Other than English, I haven’t heard of any young people getting Spanish or Arabic, Hindi or Mandarin lessons. Are we setting ourselves up for Europe with our German, French and Italian classes?

What one also has to remember, is that to actually get to these numbers, there is a lot of speculation, and also many assumptions are made. Suffice to say though, that if you speak even three of the top five languages, you have doors opening up to you almost anywhere. Are languages the main ingredient to living a global life?

Every day last week featured news of a performance car, beginning with the Audi S5 Cabriolet I drove recently and ending with the Ford Focus RS I sampled at Zwartkops Raceway.

Contrary to what you might think, the Audi S5 Cabriolet is powered, not by a thundering 4.2-litre V8, but rather a supercharged 3.0-litre V6, that churns out 245 kW and 440 Nm of torque. In the styling department, the S5 Cab sets itself apart from the rest of the range with chrome mirror caps, radiator grille surround, window surrounds and of course the quad-exhausts exiting the rear bumper. Inside, Audi’s cabin wraps you in alcantara and leather combination seat trim. The signs are subtle, but between the decorative carbon inlays, sports seats, ‘S’ badges on the aluminium door sill inlays and multi-function steering wheel, you know you’re in one of their range toppers. Like all open-top Audi models, the new S5 Cabriolet has a classic fabric top. The lightweight soft top opens in 15 seconds – and closes in 17 seconds at the touch of a button. Best enjoyed with the roof down, the S5 begins to speak to you as the supercharged V6 spins past 4 000 r/min – even more enjoyable if you can find a cliff-face to amplify and bounce the exhaust note off. The S tronic paddle shifters are always at your finger tips and offer up seamless changes through the 7-speed transmission. It’s not all picture perfect though, as the brakes get lazy when driven in ‘S’ fashion, the suspension is uncompromising at times and pricing starts at R722 000. It does look beautiful though.

The next performance car to make headlines was the mighty Nissan GT-R. In an effort to keep the car ‘fresh’, Nissan are preparing to release a number of subtle updates, the first images of which hit the Internet last week. As a result, we know the exterior now boasts a restyled front bumper with LED running lights and a new rear diffuser. These changes are said to help drop the GT-R’s drag coefficient from 0.272 to 0.268, while also improving rear downforce by 10%. The latest GT-R will also benefit from a new set of Rays forged aluminium wheels, which reportedly save a total of 12 kgs, while two new paint colours are available, ‘Aurora Flare Blue Pearl’ and an updated black colour known as ‘Nebula Opal Black’.

I first told you about the BMW M3 GTS back in May, but in case you missed it, here’s a refresher: 70 kgs lighter than the standard M3 at 1 530 kg; 331 kW and 440 Nm; M-DCT 7-speed transmission; sports suspension 16 mm lower at the front and 12 mm at the rear; zero to 100 km/h sprint of 4.4 seconds; and a top speed of 305 km/h. Now this is all good and well on paper, but the litmus test – if you excuse the pun – is an official lap time of one of the world’s toughest race tracks, the 20.83 km long Nurburgring Nordschleife. Proving that its go-faster looks aren’t just for show, the BMW M3 GTS managed a lap time of 7 minutes 48 seconds – 17 seconds faster than the standard BMW M3 and 2 seconds faster than the previous generation M3 CSL. Not bad, when you consider a Porsche 911 GT3 RS and Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano managed a lap just 1 second faster. There is a downside though. The GTS comes with a hefty price tag (almost three times that of a standard M3) and it won’t be available in South Africa.

Finally, what’s bright green, has a gloss black front air dam and splitter, rear diffuser and dominant rear spoiler? No, not a Porsche GT3 RS, but a performance car almost as rare in South Africa, the Ford Focus RS. It’s taken Ford South Africa the good part of a year to bring the car to SA. The reason is because the car has been so well received in the UK, one of Ford’s top markets, that they’ve battled to find 60 cars to send our way. However, they have arrived and I headed to Zwartkops Raceway just outside Pretoria to sample the car. For those that don’t know, the Focus RS is a halo car within the Ford stable and rightly so, with 224 kW and 440 Nm in a hatchback. On the racetrack, it quickly became evident that the RS is a very good car. You can read more here about what’s gone into developing the world’s most powerful front-wheel drive car, as well as my driving impressions from a lap around Zwartkops Raceway.

As you’re reading this I’m in Mozambique with Kia, for the launch of the new Sportage and in the SACarFan garages at the moment are a Chevrolet Spark and limited edition Suzuki Swift Sport. Have a good week, mine’s already a busy one.

Boy have things been busy lately! Friday saw The Forge team pulling a really big day, we started grafting at 09h00ish and finished up around 22h30 I think, got a huge amount done and with the addition of a few hours on Saturday morning, I definitely feel like we’re starting to get right back on track, lots of exciting things in the pipeline!

Saturday evening I held a small braai at my place including justBcoz, BeingBrazen, Abby, Will, Fe and last, but definitely not least, James. Ok, so the weather wasn’t that great and the braai turned into a huge pizza order, but it was still a lot of fun and I’m so pleased that everyone could make it – I hope you all had a great time!

Today was awesome, I got up and did about an hour’s work and then Fe and I went for a walk in the forest, followed by some fish and chips on Chapman’s Peak and on the way back we bought some fresh fish from Snoekies in Hout Bay and we’ll be having a braai this evening, I’m looking forward to that. Been a while since I walked in the forest, I’m really lucky to have a fiancé who balances me out and drags me away from the computer to do a few exciting things, this’ why I love her (or at least that’s one of the reason [before I get in trouble]) :)

View of Out Bay from Chapman’s Peak

So ye, lots has been happening and I don’t think things are going to calm down too soon, but if I invest my time carefully and intelligently, I’ll hopefully reap the benefits later down the line.

How have you been?

Starring James Franco, Kate Mara and Lizzy Caplan, this movie directed by Danny Boyle, tells a story about a mountain climber who becomes trapped under a boulder while canyoneering alone near Moab, Utah and resorts to desperate measures in order to survive.

Chanels latest fragrance ad ( Bleu De Chanel – The Film) was directed by Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese. very cool.

I’ve been testing out a new service called FSMS, which is essentially a website that gives you the tools to send free text messages.

Signing up for an account is quick, enter in your person details and wait for a validation code, which arrives on your mobile device. Upon entering in your validation code, you’ll be logged into the system and given several options:

• New SMS
• Contact Manager
• Inbox
• Outbox
• Profile

All of these are obvious, but they’re pretty cool, the contact manager allows you to quickly and easily add your friends and their mobile numbers, you can then sms them, update their details or remove them.

Obviously I wanted to test it out, so I quickly entered in a mobile number, typed out a message and clicked send – The website confirmed the sending of the text message and a few seconds later I received it. This is where I saw the first bad thing, the message doesn’t arrive from your number:

To be honest, this is where I would normally kill my account and move on, what’s worse than not having the messages delivered from your own number – this is a step back in time if you ask me, services like this have been around for years already, so I was a bit let down.’

The second obvious thing is that you only get 10 sms’s per day, which means that there will soon be a paid-for solution, requiring you to buy credits – Sounds very much like a skin for Clickatell or BulkSMS doesn’t it?

I’m hoping that the Web AddiCT(s); will check this out, because they really know what’s cutting in the free sms realm, let’s see if they’ll pop us a comment here and let us know wasup.

If you’re still interested in this service, click here.

My opinion: Skip this one for the time being.

Anyone who’s ever thought about opening a business will know that one of the most important factors of success is having a good idea of who the customers are going to be. Without this knowledge, how would you know if your product is good or how to go about marketing it?

There are 2 things that you must take into account:

1. The first thing you need to do is define who the person is that is going to want to buy your product or use your service.
2. Once you’ve defined who they are, you need to make sure that you understand why they would be interested in your product or service.

Once you know who your customers are and why they would be interested in your product or service, you need to then look closely at the motivation behind their requirements so that you can target the product or service correctly, because you can’t sell a product or service until it has been defined and positoned correctly.

So many people fly into starting a business, but don’t consider some of the most obvious factors. Sure, they’re quite logical, but I always say.. until it’s on paper, it’s not defined. When you’ve written it down and are starring at it, that is when you’ll truly recognise possible potential.

A couple days ago, I mentioned a great short course on starting and managing a small business, it’s worth the read – click here.

Have you opened a business? Share a tip with the readers by leaving a comment.

I see a ton of cool things every day on the Internet, but now and then a real gem comes along, today’s gem is called Rapportive.

Rapportive is a Gmail add-on, which works with Firefox, Chrome, Safari and others. The premise behind Rapportive is that it replaces the Google Ads on the right of your Gmail account with useful information about the sender of the email you’re reading.

In the other, when you receive an email and open it, the right hand side of your screen will provide you with a useful block of information about the sender; from their social profiles to various companies they run or businesses they work with to an assortment of other things.

With the web getting more and more social, and the amount of information to manage growing more and more, it’s easy to see how such a Y Combinator startup would be able to raise over $1mil to fund further growth of the project.

I, unfortunately, haven’t tried it out yet as I’m on my iPhone, but the minute I get to the office in the morning, it’ll be the first thing I do.

If you’re interested in reading more or downloading yourself a copy, here’s the link: http://rapportive.com

Let us know what you think if you try it out please..

UPDATE:

I’ve tried it out and it’s really seamless and doesn’t interfere at all, but based on what I’ve seen, I think it will become more valuable when more and more people start using it.

Let’s face it, Facebook has become a huge number of people’s second place on the web, to such an extent, that the Facebook inbox is becoming a second email client.

With that in mind, don’t you think it would be a really great idea if you could set up an auto responder? Like an “Out of office” response. I think it would be incredibly useful for many different reasons, one which I’ll mention next:

For me, personally, I would like an auto responder, which would send a message back to the sender asking them to rather email me on XX@XX.com so that I wouldn’t have to check my Facebook inbox, because to be honest, I’ve got enough inboxes to keep track of, let alone having to log into Facebook to reply to questions.

What do you think?