I had a flat tyre this week and I rang my old mate Noel to see if he could repair it. He asked how urgent it was and said he would be there as soon as possible. Noel would be in his late 60’s maybe 70, and he is still flat out working. He told me he has just won a trip to Los Angeles & Las Vegas, but he's too busy to take time off. Plus he has never been on a plane before.

At the moment the bake house is flat out making Christmas cakes and puddings. It's great to see. We get orders from all over Australia and several from overseas. There's one man from the UK who has been ordering our Christmas cakes for the last 10 years and he rings us to place the order!

We now also get a lot of people ordering them on line through the bakery website Beechwoth Bakery

It’s a big job as each cake in hand made It's very labour intensive, but well worth it. I love our cakes and so do many of our customers.

Tom

  Dianne at Beechworth

I did a talk for recently for a group of Kiwis in Melbourne. They were a great audience and were with me all the way through my presentation.

After the talk they invited me and my wife Christine to join them for dinner at the historic Emu Bottom Homestead in Sunbury. If you ever get the chance to visit this place, you should go. There were 4 bus loads of Kiwis, so around 200 people there and boy did they put on a great show. They had these real Aussie characters to entertain everyone, with whip cracking, boomerang throwing, sheep dog demos and even a game of two up.

There were lots of laughs all round and then it was topped off with a beautiful spit roast meal that was served in the original shearing shed that was built in 1835.Christine and I were both really impressed with how well trained the staff were. They gave great service and were willing to give everyone a smile. You could see that they really enjoyed working there.

Check out their website Emu Bottom Homestead

Tom

I recently did an interview with Rosemary, a researcher from Swinburne University who is doing her PhD. The topic she is researching is passion. Passion in  work or business.

I've never done an interview about passion before, but when I really got into the interview she made me realize that it's my secret for success. Passion!!  Get in there boots and all, 100%, live it, breath it, talk about it, be positive and be enthusiastic!

Passion gives me energy. I often get asked "Tom where do you get all that energy?”

If you have the passion for something the energy follows and so do the rewards, because you will be happy in your skin. You will be in love with life and rearing to go.

Get the Passion!!

Tom

The Bakery helped to sponsor John Coutis to do a talk in Benalla recently.

John has an incredible story that he tells. Here he is with only half a body. No legs, no bum but leads a very normal life. He is married, drives a car and gets around on a modified skate board rather than using a wheel chair.

John has spoken many times all over Australia, New Zealand and even in China. Now he's about to head of to the USA in December to start speaking over there.

As part of our sponsorship we had a table with a lot of our people there. My partner Martyand his wife  Jo,  Anthea and some of her team from our Albury store and Alan one of our pastry cooks at Beechworth.

I have heard John speak heaps of times and I still love hearing him, it was a great night with about 180 people attending. There could have been a lot more, but so many people are ruled by the TV these days.

We need to break those habits!

Tom

My mate Keith & I took the 1930 A Model Ford Beechworth Bakery van down to Wodonga last week to the Murray Valley Centre for people who are intellectually handicapped. One of the staff members was leaving after 35 years service and they put on a bit of a farewell and asked us if we would bring our Bakery Van down for their clients to have a look at. As well as the Bakery Van they had Fire Trucks and some other older interesting vehicles on display.

It was a great couple of hours. The clients were so happy and lots of their Mums & Dads were there as well and they all loved the old Bakery van and some of the cakes we took along as well.

Seeing these people and their families makes you realise how grateful we should be that we are able to lead the lives that we do.

Tom