About Lamaan Whyte

About Me In Brief:

G'day, as we Aussies like to say. My name is Lamaan Whyte - my friends call me 'Lamaan'. I am Australian, a man a bit over six feet (about 186 cm) in height, with greying, thinning hair. Widely educated, and even more widelyread, my career has including many years of running my own businesses, and more than two decades as a business consultant and coach.

These days, I'm at the 'interesting' end of my career. By this I mean, I am more or less retired, and thus able to concentrate on doing what I like most, which includes thinking about the 'human' - psychological and sociological - issues of entrepreneurship and personal success, and, most especially, about the dramatic rise of the Internet home-based business. I also have the honour to be President of the Darwin Seniors Computer Club.

My first name, for those interested in such matters, is pronounced 'L-m a r n'. I am told that it is Dutch-Malay in origin, although, since I am neither Dutch nor Malay, this information is of little help to me. My star-sign is a secret known only to astrologers, who invariably get it wrong.

About Me In More Leisurely Manner:

I was born during World War II in Melbourne, Australia, but soon began to roam. Over the years, I have spent time in many cities, towns and rural communities around Australia. I presently enjoy life in Darwin, capital cityof Australia's vast Northern Territory.

I studied Law at the University of Melbourne, and later Sociology and Psychology at the University of Wollongong, gaining the degree of Bachelor of Arts, Honours, with a double major in sociology and psychology, and honours in psychology.

In addition, I studied advertising, marketing and economics, and read very widely on an A-Z of subjects, business and otherwise, all the way from accountancy to zoology.

In between all of this study, I also managed to get a bit of work done: in alphabetical order, as advertising copywriter, business owner, door-to-door salesman, farm hand, law clerk, marketing researcher, postal worker, psychologist, photo journalist, real estate agency sales manager, retail shop assistant, and taxi driver. To mention but a few.

In early 1977, I launched a Sydney-based advertising and public relations consultancy, targeting small and medium businesses. Although the focus of this consultancy was always on publicity - especially on cutting-edge advertising techniques - I began to wonder whether there were not additional ways to help my business clients. In particular, I began to ask the fundamental question of all business studies:

" What has to happen to change an unhappy, struggling business into a happy, prosperous one? "

Which lead to a further question: of all those things that have to happen, which are within my personal control as a consultant or counsellor, and which have to be left to the attention of the entrepreneur, the Government, or society at large?

Finding answers to these questions proved somewhat time consuming, involving (so far) over a quarter of a century of study, research and experimentation.

In short, it turned into quite a journey of discovery.

Some Features of the Journey:

Entrepreneurship and Business Organization:

I read widely and conducted my own research programs concerning entrepreneurship and its associated issues - such as its history and philosophies, plus issues that affect business success and failure such as social attitudes, organization size, gender and learning styles. All of which helped me to place the concepts of 'business', 'organization' and 'entrepreneur' within the broad sweep of history and human existence, and to understand better what was actually happening in the modern world of business and globalization. Which lead me to...

The 'Grand Theory of Business':

One of my Holy Grails became to create a Grand Theory of Everything to Do with Business - one theory that allows one to exactly predict the future for any individual enterprise, whether large or small. Such a theory would of necessity unite all the many and varied business-related disciplines - economics, marketing, human resource development and management plus everything else. Of course, I know that such a Grand Theory is quite impossible - nevertheless, I have learned how to take it a long way.

Business Planning:

Like many words today, the term 'business plan' is used with at least two radically different meanings: as an investment prospectus, or as a plan for success. As a prospectus, it means a document that goes to a bank or investment house - in effect, a sort of sales letter. As a 'success plan', by contrast, it tells the business's owners and managers exactly what has to happen to create success. Over the years, I have created many plans of both types.

Entrepreneurial Development:

As I discovered during my academic research, the success or otherwise of a business depends almost exclusively on the personal psychology of the entrepreneur. That is, if the owner-managers of businesses (or their equivalents in corporations - presidents or CEOs) think one way, their businesses prosper; if they think another way, they flounder. The mode of thinking used can be influenced or taught by suitable psychological methods. I have developed many effective techniques for helping entrepreneurs shift their mode of thinking towards the 'more successful' end of the spectrum. Some of these techniques are extremely simple; two - business coaching and marketing relaunching, both discussed below - are not.

Business Coaching:

From 1981, I began to develop a concept that I called 'business coaching'. Loosely modeled on sports coaching, and drawing on a very wide range of disciplines, business coaching may be defined as a particular method of improving an individual entrepreneur's chances of economic success.

Marketing Relaunches:

In a marketing relaunch, the business is, as it were, restarted from scratch. All established marketing ideas, methods and preferences are written off, and everything is rebuilt again, from the ground upwards. Although the primary aim of relaunches is always to create a better business, I have found that they also provide a very useful method of helping entrepreneurs improve their personal effectiveness.

Organizational Technology Diffusion (OTD):

One problem sometimes encountered within larger organizations is resistance to new methods and ideas. In effect, the organization can sabotage the introduction of new ways of thinking, or of new and needed technologies. To deal with such issues, I have developed a number of useful programs which may be grouped under a general heading of Organizational Technology Diffusion. As the name implies, the programs are specific to the introduction of new technology withing complex organizations.

Micro Businesses:

Going from the larger business organization to the smaller end of town, I have in recent years turned to study of the very tiniest businesses - the one-person and especially home-based business - a segment of the business community that is exploding in both numbers and prosperity. The rapid growth of this sector has profound implications for the world's economic future. Trying to crystal ball this future is a major current preoccupation.

Network Marketing:

One aspect of the home-based business that has commanded my attention has been that of network marketing (a.k.a. multi-level marketing or MLM). The past decade in general, and the past couple of years in particular, has seen major technological changes within this sector, with the potential to make it the dominant form of marketing within the home-based business sector.

My Research into Success Issues

For almost all of my life, I have been interested in the issues of business success and entrepreneurship. My formal reseach into these topics began in 1977, and has continued ever since, involving nearly 30,000 businesses to date.

My methods of research have been varied, including quantitative surveys, qualititative studies, and both short-term and longitudinal observation.

A feature of this research has been the tracking of all businesses within single geographic areas, usually for about 10 years at a time.

Overall, the businesses studied as part of this research have been roughly representative of the businesses found in Australia: of all sizes from tiny to huge; of most types of industry; both urban and rural; and in most States and Territories.

Since 1996 I have included home-based businesses in my research.  This has included studying such business models as home-based professional practices, multi-level marketing (MLM), and Internet businesses. My studies of Internet businesses have included interviews with actual and wannabe entrepreneurs from all around the world.

About Me in Grotesquely Boring Detail

• Advertising copywriting and campaign planning
• Business coaching
• Career planning and counselling
• Computer security and management
• Economics
• Entrepreneurship training
• Financial management (especially marketing financial management)
• History (including history of business
• Human resource development
• Law
• Management
• Marketing
• Marketing research (qualitative and quantitative)
• Organizational development
• Psychographic research
• Psychological counselling
• Personal goal planning
• Professional selling
• Public relations
• Sales management
• Sales training
• Sociological research
• Strategic planning (both personal and business)
• Systems design (especially design of computerized marketing systems)
• Technology development and transfer
• Vocational counselling