Author Archive | Matt Hopkins

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Good people can be bad parents.

As an entrepreneur and lifelong learner, my curiosity often leads me to explore various aspects of human behavior and the patterns that shape our lives. In this piece, I’d like to share a personal story that touches on an often-overlooked issue of childhood emotional neglect (CEN) and the lasting impact it can have on our […]

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Meditation without all the nonsense

“What colour do you see?  I see blue” This was a question someone asked me once when I was introduced at a party as someone who meditates. And this is part of the problem with meditation and with encouraging more people to try it. Meditation should not be synonymous with spirituality. It is a technique […]

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Normalisation: a marketers guide

Imagine you’re at a party, surrounded by people from all walks of life. You have a chance to make new friends and connections, but first, you need to find common ground. In much the same way, the world of marketing thrives on finding commonality among disparate data points, connecting the dots to tell a cohesive […]

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chatGPT as tutor and Google-killer

Like so many others, I have been blown away by the capability of chatGPT since its release in late November.  There has been a lot of focus on content creation – articles, poetry, lyrics, stories, etc – but one of its most powerful features is the ability to drill down into its “understanding” of a […]

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Know when to fold ’em

I have always been driven by a desire to create and build something that is meaningful. I have poured my heart and soul into many of my businesses, working tirelessly to turn my vision into a reality. But sometimes, despite my best efforts, things don’t work out as planned; and when that happens, it’s important […]

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Will social media have its email moment?

Email is ubiquitous.  If I want access to email, I can simply sign up to an email provider like Gmail, Outlook, iCloud or hundreds of other email service providers.  I can also set up my own email server.  I can use a service provider’s email domain (e.g. @gmail.com) or buy a custom domain.  And because […]

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Does this still work?

As you can see from the date of the previous post (25 June 2017), I’ve taken some time off from this site.. and from everything else; and a lot has happened since 2017. I sold my business (Vertical Leap) in the summer of 2016 to a fantastic marketing group called Sideshow. We were their second […]

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Pricing, value and the incentive to buy

Pricing your product or service is a difficult process that can involve multiple points of influence – cost, existing market, competitors, etc. But people frequently overlook or perhaps misunderstand the role that value plays in actually achieving any price ultimately set. The typical way we think about a sale Let’s look at both sides of […]

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Response flexibility

I am trying to improve my response flexibility. I came across this phrase last year and it has really stuck in my mind. Response flexibility is about creating a gap between a trigger and the response to that trigger – allowing you to make a conscious decision about who you respond. “Between stimulus and response […]

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On mindfulness and meditation

Despite existing for 2500 years or so, mindfulness has been gaining popularity in recent years. One of the reasons for this is the large body of evidence – both anecdotally and scientifically – of the benefits that practicing mindfulness can bring (the key word here is “practicing” by the way). I only discovered mindfulness about […]

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