Colin Jones (on right) at My Beach House June 2009
It’s not every day that you get a visitor from down under. In 2006, when I toured Australia and New Zealand talking about my first book, You Need to Be A Little Crazy: The Truth About Starting Your Own Business, one of the places I spoke was in Hobart, Tasmania (off the coast of Austraila). Professor Colin Jones from the University of Tasmania (or UTAS as it is called) invited me to speak at a luncheon sponsored by local business people. We became fast friends and I interviewed Colin for my second book, Bounce! to get an Australian view of resiliency and failure.
Colin uses both my books as texts in his entrepreneurship class. He has been a huge supporter of mine in the international education community.
The founder of many service-based, import-based, and education-related businesses, Colin has experienced the highs and lows of self-employment. A willingness to trust and assist others has helped to advance his life. Now a professor in entrepreneurship at the University of Tasmania, Colin continues to mentor local start-ups and his students. He was the 2005 winner of the Australian University Teaching Award. His career change has afforded Colin valuable reflection space within which to contemplate past failures and plan new entrepreneurial ventures.
Colin and I have been able to stay connected through all the social media tools including Skype. He flew on Saturday from Tasmania via Melbourne via LA via Chicago to a train to our beach house. It felt like he was part of the family. Colin was in town to continue is PHD studying Pizza!
