Matthew Kimberley

On Saturday I’m flying out to Mexico for two weeks, just as an area of low pressure moves into the Yucatan Peninsula. I anticipate returning well-read, well-fed and, well, wet.

If you don’t already subscribe to Tim Ferriss’ blog, I recommend you do so immediately. Two brilliant pieces have caught my eye in the last few days – How to Negotiate like an Indian and How to Get George Bush or the CEO of Google on the Phone.

In the first, Tim says that in any negotiations, you should “try for 70% off” and never be happy with a discount of less than 30%. In the second, he says “I believe that success can be measured in the number of uncomfortable conversations you’re willing to have”.

Very true.

I made the leap from being a mediocre timeshare salesman to an almost-passably-good one when I applied a similar philosophy of “doing one thing a day that really takes you out of your comfort zone.” (I’ll never forget the time my client and I switched roles: I told him he couldn’t buy anything, and he was practically begging me to let him buy it).

Incidentally, if you like what you read there, I can whole-heartedly recommend his book, The 4-hour Work Week: Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich

The other prolific author and polymath that’s caught my notice this week is Tom Peters. Although I’ve been aware of his existence for a couple of years, I’ve always found his dense prose a little daunting.

But what a return on investment when I made the effort (or took myself out of my comfort zone)!

Take a quick ganders at this article, his top 50 “Have Yous” for a taster. This man writes so intelligently and covers so many bases that you can’t afford not to listen … I’ve not had to really deal with people management in the past, but this is one bit of writing I’ll be referring to regularly as that changes.

So happy Christmas, and until the New Year!

It seems that the Temporary Agency Workers Directive – being discussed by EU representatives up until yesterday – has fallen through. Something to do with the directive on working time, which was linked to it, and doctors being able to get enough sleep.

For independent contractors, this shouldn’t have had a very visible effect should have been adopted. Most genuinely independent workers, operating through a legitimate VAT vehicle, will have specified in their service contract something along the lines of “this isn’t an employment contract”.

That said, a court in the Netherlands has upheld recently that a contract which was meant to be for the provision of services, was in fact, by its nature, an employment contract, as the consultant concerned was being given sick pay, holiday pay, severance indemnity and the very nature of the relationship was employee/employer.

In other news, I’m just back from Prague, where I went to a reading of my friend Lewis’ book, The Pornographer of Vienna. I got chatting to somebody over a plate of goulash and dumplings and came back with an exciting potential for collaboration with one of the Big Four consulting firms. Who would have thunk it?