It's amazing what you can achieve when you think around corners.

The best business might not be the one which makes you the most money, but sustains you in a way that brings the most happiness.

Since I left the life of a lawyer, I've talked less and done more. My wife and I have built businesses through careful planning of our money, time, contacts and other resources -- businesses which are fast paced and intense, but which leave us enough time to enjoy the important things in life and to sustain the planet and some of its poorest people whilst we're doing it. Download what THE AGE, Melbourne's major newspaper, said about my retirement in a half page spread in the Saturday supplement. My thoughtful, lateral approach doesn't just solve problems! It makes already good situations even better.

It's thinking around corners which turned silk factory waste into both a means of quadrupling the income of some of India's poorest of rural poor, a means of saving the environment by reducing the amount of plastic bags going to landfill, and a means of reducing carbon emissions by plastic bag manufacturers. We're increasing the wages of these women fourfold, in a project in South India we started in October 2008. Download the business plan.

2008 was huge! The crowning achievement was creating the jobs for so many poor Indian villagers. Read the press release. From software policies for a Danish software company to business plans for a Welsh social work company, research in international real estate markets (and tax effective ways to own real estate), advice on carbon trading for indigenous Brazilians to corporate structures for an international soccer media company to remanufacturing junked shop fittings which now adorn our Melbourne silk warehouse, thinking around corners has been a success! 2008 also saw me:

• writing and editing investment, tourism and health websites,
• arranging the importation of electric bicycles into Australia to ease traffic congestion in the major cities,
• writing occupational health and safety manuals for the building industry,
• designing the marketing push for an American on-line arbitration company to enter the Indian market,
• developing a women-friendly training institution for crowd controllers,
• organising rural development subdivisions and planning permits in the Victorian countryside.

My wife and I planned our "downshift" to our Warrnambool property with three accommodation units in a rural zone (and the first of its type now to have sub-division recommendation), 100% water recycling, rainwater tanks and composting toilets.

We then "upshifted" again, subdivided the property, and built a successful textile business for , now in its eighth straight year of growth. Thinking around corners provided me with success as a lawyer, provided the substance of my Ph.D. thesis and enabled me to retire from full-time work at the age of 42. Download my resume.

The Training Division of Vikasana Institute awarded me my Ph.D in October 2008. Whilst it is rare for a small institution in a third world country to assess the worth of a Ph.D thesis, they say that 600 people who now have work and 84 families who are soon to be out of bark huts and into new modern homes can't be wrong.

As I write this in December 2008, I'm completing studies in Jerusalem whilst arranging the import of Australian woollen clothing to Israel and the import of Israeli water technology and efficient farming methods to Australia.

No matter what you’re trying to do, it always helps if you can think around corners