Who’s John?

John’s Short Profile

John Counsel is one of Australia’s leading small business authors, trainers and advisors. His penetrating insights cut cleanly through buzz, hype and spin, offering fast, practical, measurable and profitable solutions. His take-no-prisoners style is tempered with an irreverent sense of humor.

**Australia’s fastest-selling small business book from 1996-1999.**

This book is currently being put online again. A link will be posted here.

John’s training as a teacher was seriously subverted when he had to “put up or shut up” after criticizing the college newspaper… and he was made editor, leading to a life-long love of all aspects of writing, design, publishing and printing.

Does John have any education or qualifications in psychology?

Actually, yes… he majored in psychology in his qualifications for teaching at Deakin University, plus extended studies at Monash University, but these studies were primarily in educational psychology.

He is not a registered psychologist, does not claim to be one, and declines requests for counselling or related professional services. His interest in psychology was purely motivated by becoming a better teacher. He spent some time teaching marketing psychology to Master of Education students at RMIT University in the late 1990s.

In 1970 he began a career as copywriter, art director, strategist and creative director for several advertising agencies, then into senior marketing roles and an academic career teaching marketing, advertising, graphic design, as well as in MBA and Master of Education programs — often while working professionally and/or running his own small retail, service and manufacturing businesses.

His comical first foray into direct selling as a flat-broke (except for $14) new teaching graduate is told in his free report “How I Stopped Failing at Selling and Found Success with Marketing! (And made much more money, faster and easier)”.

It was written as a practical case study to accompany his popular (earlier) free report “Is it Marketing? Or is it Selling? (And can YOU tell the difference?)”

View or Download (PDF)

View or Download (PDF)

These days, John is semi-retired due to increasing age and declining health, but he still keeps his interests alive and well as The Marketing Doctor at The Profit Clinic, his Melbourne (AU) based consulting, publishing and training firm.