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Posted in Young Enterprise on November 15th 2009 | No Comments

As some may know, I chair the Area Board for Young Enterprise covering the Northampton and Daventry area. One thing never ceases to amaze me is the shortage of people willing to volunteer their time to share their knowledge and expertise with the Entrepreneurs of tomorrow.

So why should anyone in business work with Young Enterprise? It doesn’t matter whether you are self employed, the manager of a large corporate business, or employed. It only matters that you have some experience of working in business, and are willing to share that knowledge. The students who take part in Young Enterprise are willing to learn from this experience, and the energy the volunteer picks up from these students is difficult to put into words. Quite obviously I recommend everyone gives it a try.

There are both Primary and Secondary School programs available, so for those who are only able to spare a few days here and there then look at the Primary Programs. Working with children in a primary school for a day or two is a true eye opener, especially as you start to see them “get it” as you deliver the educational program. At the Secondary School level the programs such as the Company Program generally run for a few months, but you and the students learn so much more. The students run a real company for around 6 months, deal with real money, and have the chance to go onto European Awards. The satisfaction a volunteer can get from seeing the students they work with go on to earn real money, overcome real challenges, and win awards is fantastic.

If you are based around Northampton or Daventry and would like to know more about volunteering for Young Enterprise please ask me for more information. Once you’ve experienced volunteering for Young Enterprise you’ll want to do it again, inspiring young entrepreneurs is very rewarding.

A date for your diary! – Sunday 6th December, come to the Grosvenor Shopping Centre in Northampton and visit the Young Enterprise trade fair on the first floor. You’ll see for yourself what the Young Enterprise Company Program is all about.

My stolen motorbike and Twitter

Posted in Internet on September 17th 2009 | 2 Comments

It has been a couple of months since my last blog post, and mainly down to time constraints and also the only things I could think of blogging about in my life were commercially sensitive. Bad excuse I know, but then this happened to me…

This is my stolen Yamaha R1 taken a couple of months before it was stolen from outside my office on Moulton Park, Northampton

This is a picture of my stolen Yamaha R1 taken a couple of months before it was stolen from outside my office on Moulton Park, Northampton

Tuesday 15th September was my birthday, and for a treat I thought I’d take my pride and joy to work. My motorbike that I’d worked my nuts off for and bought as a birthday present to myself 5 years ago. When I’d managed to clear the 3 credit cards and bank loans I’d ran up starting Quick Formations. I always enjoy riding my bike, the freedom it gives you away from ringing phones, and being such a symbolic purchase has high sentimental value to me.

This post is partly to let as many people know what happened as possible, in case anyone saw the bike being transported, but also the speed in which the message spread through Twitter absolutely amazed me. That in itself demonstrated to me the power of using Twitter to send out an urgent or immediate message.

At 12:50pm on Tuesday 15th September a tatty looking grey Transit type van reversed up a kerb onto a central decorative area of our car park where my bike was parked. In broad view of 20 offices mind, in front of two witnesses who were in the car park at the time. The van registration was S425 UOF, and appeared to have a roof rack and possibly 3x pipes on its roof.

Two men got out of the van, one wearing black motorcycle leathers and a dark blue or possibly black crash helmet. The other was wearing blue jeans, white trainers, and a white sweater or jumper with blue horizontal stripes. This man had brown hair but quickly put on a blue cap. They both appeared of stocky build and around 5ft 10″ to 6ft tall. They went round ot the back of the van, picked up my bike which isn’t light, and put it in the back of the van. The one in leathers jumped in the back with the bike, the other shut the van doors and drove the van away at speed.

The police were notified within 5 minutes and managed to track the van through surveilance camera’s and ANPR camera’s. The van was found within about 45 minutes.

Where Twitter came in is that I posted the following message on Twitter;

“My m/bike just stolen 10 mins ago, blue R1. Thrown in battered grey transit reg S425 UOF in Moulton Park , Northampton Please RT” – you can view it here.

Within minutes the message had been ReTweeted countless times, the message had been posted on biker forums around the UK, the local paper had picked up on it and posted a story here, other business owners I know around Northampton had started emailing messages to each other spreading the news. Telling everyone to keep an eye out for my bike. Within an hour of my bike being stolen social media had spread the news as far afield as Newcastle and as far south as Cornwall. Just searching on Google already shows how far the message has travelled, and that is what websites Google has crawled already.

One last thing I am hoping is to find my bike before it is destroyed by those who stole it, and sold off for spare parts or smashed up. They wont be able to sell it on the open market easily as every component is tagged and marked with MagicWater, so I dread to think what could happen to my pride and joy. So I am hoping if anyone around the Northampton area saw a blue sports motorbike being delivered by some men matching the above description, please call the police on 03000 111222. This delivery would have happened some time between 1pm and 2pm on Tuesday 15th September. It could have been to a house, a lockup, a warehouse. This location would be within an hours drive from Moulton Park Office Village, Northampton. My bike was parked alongside the tree in the centre raised area you will see on that satellite picture.

I am a big fan of social networking, always have been, but the support from everyone else helping spread the message so quickly after my bike being stolen is heart warming. I keep saying it on Twitter, but again, Thank You.

I hope this blog post goes a step closer to me getting my bike back. I know the insurance money could get me another, but it won’t be “My Bike”.

The bank is not your enemy

Posted in Entrepreneurialism on June 26th 2009 | 2 Comments

There has been so much negative press about banks lately, and yes I know that the people at the top have made some very big mistakes, but I still don’t get this whole the bank is the bad guy thing that seems to be going on. It is being discussed on Twitter, on business forums, and even when I was at a networking lunch today I felt sorry for an RBS business development manager who found herself trying to defend herself at one point. So I thought I’d put together a guide on how you should work with your bank, because I do and I’m pleased to say I’ve never had an problems with my bank.

Keep you Bank Close
Firstly and most importantly, if you walked up to a person on the street you had never met and asked them for a £50,000 loan what do you think they would say? The chances are they would laugh, tell you get to a life, and walk away, so why would you expect anything different?
If you do not keep your bank in the loop with what you are doing with your business how on earth could you ever expect them to make any personal decisions about your business? Meet your relationship on a regular basis and just fill them in with what you are doing, the plans for the future, and what is  working and what isn’t working. If you have any bad paying customers let them know, I’m talking warts and all. That way they get to know you and your business. You become more than just a number.

Keep them up to date with your finances.
Do you send your relationship manager your monthly management accounts? If not, you should. If you don’t have monthly management accounts then you have bigger problems anyway. Add your bank relationship manager to the email distribution list for your management accounts at the same time they come to you, not doctored versions made to look better or worse, exactly as they come. Also include your aged creditors and debtors, give the bank the full picture.
Believe me when I say, if they know exactly how your finances work and can even see you run a well managed financial system in your company it gives the bank more confidence in your business, it helps them apply the personal touch to decisions about lending or other facilities. If they know nothing about then it becomes a computers decision solely.

Put your money where your mouth is!
So many people expect the banks to freely lend them tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds for their business but are not prepared to commit anything themselves. They are not prepared to put up any security on their house, or any savings or finance of their own in. I’m not a bank but what this says to me is “I’m not that confident in my business so am not prepared to risk my own money, but I’d happily blow your money”. If I was a bank and someone was asking me for money but not put any of their own up alarm bells would be ringing loud and clear. If you don’t believe in your own business then walk away, but if you do believe in your own business then you should be prepared to risk as much as the bank.

Ask their opinion and feedback
You have a good relationship with your relationship manager from the bank because you meet them on a regular basis, and they fully understand your business. They know your financial situation because you copy them in on your monthly management accounts. So now ask them for their thoughts on how the bank can help you with your business, do they have any other clients you could do business with that they could introduce you to? Do they have any other products that could help your business (finance, factoring, more)? Do they have any thought about your business that perhaps from the outside they see and you don’t?

If you don’t have a relationship manager with your bank, get one, if your bank doesn’t provide them then the chances are you will be a number. If you don’t ever need more than a basic current account from your business bank this will be fine. However, if you ever need any borrowing or other more complex facilities then it is important to establish a good relationship with your bank.

I work by these basic rules with my bank and have to say I’ve been extremely happy with them over the past 10+ years I’ve had a business account. I’ve had quick and easy decisions on overdraft facilities, mortgages and other bank facilities. If I didn’t talk to my relationship manager it would not have been that simple, he knowswhen things are good and I’ve also sat with him and talked through when times have been hard, where I have made him aware of what my plans to handle the bad times were. My bank has supported me through all these.

I’m happy to give testiment that my bank is The Royal Bank of Scotland, the bank that has received such bad press lately. The same bank that got the bad publicity for the leaked memo about splitting their good and bad customers into differing categories. Well excuse me, isn’t that what all good businesses are meant to do, not that this was actually what was really happening mind, I’m not going to go into detail here but it was a paper/balance shuffling excercise.

The bank is not your enemy, it can be one of your biggest assetts, but you have to communicate with them. If you don’t then don’t be surprised if you become nothing more than a number processed by a computer.

Social Media – Is it a waste of time?

Posted in Networking on April 24th 2009 | 2 Comments

This morning I attending an event in Milton Keynes where the speaker gave a presentation on using Social Media Advertising in your own business. I went along hoping to learn something I am missing, pick up that little nugget of information that would help me improve my own use of online social media networking.

The event itself was fun to listen to, the chap presenting was @N3W_Media on Twitter and despite his rather dry humour did get the message across, albiet the room was clearly filled with people who had heard of the likes of Facebook or Twitter but not really used them. I also disagreed with some of his comments, such as he ignores the “noise” on the timeline on Twitter. Surely if you ignore the time line and only use robots to send out scheduled tweets you’re ignore everyone else and missing the whole point of social networking! You should interact with everyone else, it’s rude not too.

Back on topic, and the reason for this post. I met a gentleman there who attends a number of networking breakfasts and lunches, and dinners, every week. He spends, we estimated, about 25-30 hours a week networking! Yet he didn’t get the point of online networking so I tried to explain it like this.

At a networking lunch you might meet 20 people, who you will obviously exchange your business card with. This lunch, allowing for travel to and from, will take about 3 hours of your day to meet these 20 people. If you are lucky maybe one or two of these twenty people will have any interest in what you business does.

If you spend 3 hours on a site such as UK Business Forums you could contribute to about 50 threads, network with about 2,000 people, and have had your company information viewed by potentially tens of thousands of people. This is just one example, but it would be better that you use those 3 hours to spread yourself across tools such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and forums such as UK Business Labs and UK Business Forums. With more and more people moving to online mediums for networking and business social interaction, it is ever more important to spread your networking across both offline and online channels. What is even more brilliant about online networking is that you are target more effectively the groups of people you networking with, by common interest or industry groups. This targetting can significantly increase your prospective conversion rates making those twenty people you may have met at lunch look pretty insignificant.

With efficient use of your time and using smart tools you could streamline your time too, but linking sites such as Facebook and Plaxo to your Twitter updates. For example, Plaxo and Facebook will automatically import your blog updates and Twitter updates. This means you only need to post a Status Update to Twitter and which automatically updates these other two social networks. Likewise, post to your blog and have all your social network accounts automatically import your latest blog entries (an example would be Notes in Facebook). This dispells the myth that online networking can take too much time, you such manage your time differently that’s all.

Spend some time researching these tools, it may take a few hours of your time to find your way around but it will be time well spent. Then, start spreading your time between your online and offline networking. They both have their place, but online networking does give you a much wider exposure than any person could physically manage offline.

Are the banks really not lending?

Posted in Entrepreneurialism on March 26th 2009 | 1 Comment

This morning I was at a breakfast meeting and bumped into my bank relationship manager from RBS whilst I was mid conversation with a relationship manager from Clynsedale Bank. We were having a discussion about, as if anything else, the banking situation in the press, Government funding, and the banks calling in of overdrafts and loans.

I had an interesting round table debate at the Chamber of Commerce a few weeks ago where I found myself, only initially, standing alone defending he banks. Almost all business owners around the table were very upset about the stories of banks retracting overdrafts despite none of them having experienced this first hand. An accountant in the room voiced concern that funding was becoming harder to obtain for his clients, and all in all the banks were not being seen in a very positive light. In the end I felt I really had to speak out…

Around that table I said the same thing that I said to the bank managers this morning, are they really not lending any money? I actually believe they are, in fact I know they are, and they are now doing things correctly .. which to be honest they should have been doing in the first place!

My wife and I identified an opportunity for a Buy2Let last night. We done the maths and this morning I spoke to the bank, by this afternoon we have a mortgage approved and we’re about to embark on our first investment property venture. Yes we needed to demonstrate we could afford it, yes we needed to put a chunk of our own money in, and yes the bank has a nce big bit of security over our home to cover our ventures; is that really a bad thing?

Here’s why; a stranger walks in off the street and asks you to lend them £1,000 for a share bet business idea because he knows it will work. Would you hand over your own £1,000? Probably not, but if that person had a fully thought out business plan, was putting in half the money themselves, and put up a bit of security to back you up, then would you? If nothing else, it focuses their mind to work a bit harder when their neck really is on the line, shows some commitment on their part, and makes them really think about their business first. Isn’t that what the banks should have always done before lending money every high risk punt before getting us into this mess?

Personally I can speak from experience, the banks are lending money both commercially and personally, they’re just being sensible about it now and that can only be a good thing. Before starting on any venture it will always need careful consideration, and if your business model in sustainable and you have the security to back youself up the banks are likely to support you.

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