Thank you very much for helping me to raise over £330 for H.O.P.E. on my Boxing Day Swim.  By 10.30 several hundred of us had gathered on Tenby’s North Beach.  I lost count of the number of Father Christmasses, Vikings, Planet Earths, Vicars, Cricketers and Christmas fairies getting ready for the swim. Looking for someone to start a conversation with (there can’t be anything more embarrassing than standing around in swimming shorts being stared at by thousands of extremely well-clad onlookers), l met a very jolly, rotund Father and Mother Christmas.  Together they resembled a pair of gigantic knitted red peppers. ‘Well boyo, I said to the wife I wouldn’t make the mistake I made last year, so today I’m wearing sandals, two pairs of woollen socks, thermal long johns, a vest, over-trousers, a shirt and sweater underneath my fleece Father Christmas suit’. I felt a pang of anxiety.  Was I rather under-insulated for the occasion? There was no time to panic  – a shout came over the tannoy and the three of us joined in the mad headlong rush to the sea.

A vicar tripped over his vestments, several Father Christmases collided with one another and a small fairy fell over in the surf. The Vikings whimpered, a bearded nurse mislaid a breast and the swimmer dressed as a cardboard Christmas tree lost several baubles as his branches sagged with seawater. It was bedlam in the finest Welsh tradition. A group of us swam out a little further and when I stopped and looked back, I realised two things; I was out of my depth and it was, unsurprisingly, eye-wateringly, teeth-clenchingly cold. However, it was worth it just for the view. The whole of Tenby seemed to have turned out to cheer the swimmers on. Every balcony, balustrade, pavement, road, garden and windowsill was filled with onlookers. Between us a huge beach bonfire sparked and roared like something from the set of the Wicker Man. I swam back and walked up the beach looking like a slightly undercooked lobster. Someone thrust a cup of steaming vegetable soup into my hand (thank you Tenby Lions!) and I felt that fantastic endorphin rush as the body’s thermostat puts its foot on the gas and says ‘that really is quite enough madness for today Kevin, thank you very much’. A big thank you to Tyna and Rhiannon for being there too.

Brad Burton rang up the other day. ‘Kevin, I urgently need a three-minute video to promote myself as a motivational speaker. Can you get to Doncaster race course next Wednesday?’ When I first filmed Brad a few years ago I noted that while he was built like a gorilla, he had the rather squeaky high-pitched voice of a girl guide and we might have to do some work in post-production to bring it down an octave or two.

Brad has employed a voice coach and personal trainer and the man we filmed last week was a completely different gorilla. He practically charged onto the seminar stage, clutching his beloved pizza box, and held the audience of Yorkshire business folk (not the easiest to warm-up) in the palm of his hand.

There is an authority and confidence that booms out of him now, mixed with some incredibly honest stories about his own personal growth and development. His stroke of genius, that has taken him from box room to a boardroom in less than two years, was to recognise every business needs two things: people and appointments. Using his innate marketing talents and creative imagination he set up a new Business Breakfast Network. Everyone thought he was mad. There were breakfast groups everywhere. But Brad held onto his dream and designed a format that simply blew away the cobwebs of traditional style network breakfast meetings. If this Somerset success story doesn’t inspire and motivate you to develop your business and expand your contacts, then nothing will!

A big thank you to Peter ‘X-factor’ Dickson for his fantastic introductory voice-over, and Barry Mellor for his excellent photography on the day.

His voice reverberated through multiplexes the world over. Godfathers, terminators and apocalyptic futures have all been introduced by the deep dark chocolatey tones of Don ‘In a world where…..’ LaFontaine. In a culture frantically texting, twittering, emailing and blogging, we forget just how powerful the gift of speech can be. Sit back and listen to the master whose voice launched a thousand blockbusters. And if public speaking is your thing and you’d like to improve your skills, here are some great tips from Toastmasters

Engraved on the doors of the Amazon warehouse entrance is Jeff Bezos’s motivational phrase to all his employees ‘Work hard, have fun, make history‘.  Just below this notice (and written in invisible ink), is the following addendum  ‘and thanks for making me a multi-billionaire in the process‘. The growth of Amazon has been truly phenomenal.  From a two-bedroom house in Seattle in 1994, with extension leads running into the garage to power the servers, to a global business now serving 45 million customers.

When I’ve run e-commerce seminars, one of the questions I regularly ask delegates is ‘What do you think is the secret of Amazon’s success?’  Almost everyone says – ‘ the low prices’ or ‘the range of stock they carry’.  I then bring up the quote from Jeff Bezos himself, which underpins the Amazon philosophy – ‘Amazon.com is obsessively focussed on great customer service‘. It is a sentence that should be enshrined in the heart of every e-commerce entrepreneur.

It is hard to believe that when Amazon started receiving its first online orders, the programmers coded a small electronic beep to sound in the office every time an order arrived.  Every beep was greeted with a loud cheer in the Amazon office. It wasn’t long before they had to switch it off. Permanently.

Jacques Tati, that genius of observational comedy, excels in directing this short clip (from his 1971 masterpiece Trafic) about the relationship between the personality of the driver and the activity of their windscreen wipers. The roots of the best comedy are in observation.

Every so often I come across a concert performance that gives me goosebumps. Branka Parlić is one of the most prominent interpreters of contemporary classical music in Eastern Europe.  Here she takes on the cycle of Philip Glass’ Metamorphosis, which is considered to be one of the most challenging tasks in the sphere of contemporary minimalism, and plays with a vigour and intensity (those forearm muscles wouldn’t disgrace a blacksmith) that is simply stunning. Recorded with breathtaking clarity at the Synagogue in Novi Sad, Serbia.