If Only They’d Had That 6 Years Ago
June 16, 2009 at 9:41 am
Sabrina Dent wrote a good post recently about things she’s learned since working freelance. Her last point was about time. In my experience, when you get your head around the importance of time and its impact on your business, it’s a turning point for you in terms of how much money you will make.
When I started my business I had the wrong perception of time.
I saw time as an infinite resource. “I love what I do. I love being self employed” was my way of thinking. It didn’t matter to me if I worked very late at night. Bank holiday weekends were viewed as a great opportunity to catch up. I even invented a word that resonated with how positive and upbeat I was feeling – “Bizzy”. Bizzy applies to the kind of week where you know at the start of it that you’re going to attempt to cram about three weeks work into it, but it’s got a positive vibe to it. It’s not a moany word, it’s an upbeat one with energy to it: bizzy. After 6 months my partner asked me to stop being bizzy and to ‘look at’ the time I was spending working. After 18 months my partner made me promise to turn over a new leaf for the coming year and stop working crazy hours and make more time for him. This was my wake-up call; I knew that I had to make a change.
The reason start-up owners work deep into the night and weekends and bank holidays too is because they are battling against time.
I think everybody works long hours in the first year because there are just so many things to do and so little hours in the day! Identifying your partners and getting your systems working gobbles up so much time. When you’re first starting out in business, and you need to get some printing done, you have to get quotes from a number of printers and work out who you’re going to give the business to. At financial year end, you’ve got to find a good accountant. This involves meeting one or two and deciding who you like. Establishing your network of suppliers takes time.
I used to spend long hours on hold to my broadband provider, my mobile provider, hosting companies, payment processing companies… I spent ages chasing Bank of Ireland who had hit me with charges on credit cards that I just didn’t have. I got very angry with utility companies not billing me for months, then hitting me with a very large bill that needed to be paid within 28 days. Money was so tight those days that I just didn’t have an extra €100 to cover unexpected electricity bills. I didn’t have a car. So travelling to meetings by bus ate up more precious time.
There are lots of annoying things that get in the way of trying to do the business.
When you spend your day on the phone to tech support, meeting men in suits who you view as a necessary eveil, etc. it’s hardly surprising that it’s not until the wee small hours that the real work gets done.
But that doesn’t have to be the case. Not any more. Especially not if you live in Limerick.
Introducing Greenhouse Incubator
It’s an incubation space for start-ups to nurture their idea for 6 months – unaffected by all the time-consuming stuff that goes along with starting a new business. Time to spend on your business, not on securing office space, getting your head around the IP registration process, etc.
It’s open for online applications now. If you have a business idea and you’d like to put yourself forward to get minded by those who know, while you develop that idea, then you should apply to be a part of the first batch now.
What do you have to do? Complete the online application – don’t worry, they do not want a business plan or projections for the next 15 years – and if your idea is good enough, you might be invited to come in and pitch your idea in the first week in July.
What then? The best pitches will be offered a place in the space in Limerick. It’s centrally located on O’Connell Street. Now that is central – O’Connell Street and Sarsfield House are the only addresses this Dub knows! You get to work in alongside other entrepreneurs like yourself, all with the same goal of developing your business and not having to worry about the ancillary things like:
- Legal (registering IP
- Maintaining an office
- Marketing & PR
- Finance
What’s the catch? There is no catch. The team behind Greenhouse Incubator do not charge you for this. They take a piece of equity (2 – 10%) from your business. You could look at it like this – at the moment 10% of nothing is nothing, so what have you got to lose? Or you could look at it like this – if they’re bought in to your success they will do everything in their power to help you succeed. (I like that one!)
What a team you’ll have behind you. Greenhouse Incubator is the brainchild of Evert Bopp, an experienced technology entrepreneur. He’s assembled a Board of heavy hitters made up of:
- Pat Phelan, the King of Telecoms
- Richard O’Donnell, software entrepreneur
- Kevin Thompstone, ex CEO of Shannon Development
These guys are just the kind of people you want behind you. Think of the contacts! The introductions. The wisdom.
There has been a lot written about people starting their own businesses of late. In these current economic times, they are to be applauded. But I’ve written before about how these tough times are bringing out the best in people. Evert Bopp and his team are to be applauded for taking the bureaucracy out of start-up support and bringing a good news out of Limerick that doesn’t involve rugby.
Tags: Greenhouse Incubator, Start Up, Start Your Own Business Ireland
Ada Lovelace Day Today
March 24, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology.
The post below is a bit negative and unsupportive of the cause. If you’d like to read someone else’s thoughts who really gets it, then click on over here to Ireland’s Favourite Grannymar!
Ada Lovelace was the founder of modern computing, along with Charles Babbage. She was the only daughter of the poet, Lord Byron, and was born on 10 December 1815. A month after she was born, her mother moved back to her parents home. It seems that the great Lord Byron was disappointed that his ‘glorious boy’ was a girl. It’s a pity that he didn’t know that the sex of his child is all his own doing and not the fault of the mother.
Lovelace met and corresponded with Charles Babbage and during a nine-month period in 1842–43, Lovelace translated Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea’s memoir on Babbage’s newest proposed machine, the Analytical Engine. With the article, she appended a set of notes. The notes are longer than the memoir itself and include in complete detail a method for calculating Bernoulli numbers with the Engine, recognised by historians as the world’s first computer programme.
She died at the age of 36, was famous as a traveler in the Middle East and some have claimed her to have been a bit of a party-er with a reputation for drinking, gambling and scandal. I think I’d really like to have been her friend.
Ada Lovelace Day Today
Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Wanting to play my part, I was all set to write about women who excel in technology, but I ran into problems. I think my definition of technology is too limiting. I was trying to think of women who have come up with things that have set the world on fire in terms of hard core tech – code-crunching stuff. Not designers. Not bloggers. Or digital evangelistas. Or super project managers. Or amazing all-rounders. Thinkers. Creators. Innovators. I can list a whole lot of them for Ireland alone, but I can’t come up with a single Female Technologist – in the definition I have in my head of it.
Bill Gates. Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Steve Jobs.
Michael Dell. Jeff Bezos. Jerry Yang.
These are all men. Men who have created technology that has changed lives.
What are there no women there?
Why wasn’t Google started up by two girl maths geniuses out on a college campus? There’s no denying that girls are outperforming boys in schools. So why is it that they are not as visible as they should be? Is it because the girl maths geniuses are out doing other things and have more balanced lives? Is it because society breeds women to not have the combination of talent and ballsy-ness that is required of successful entrepreneurs?
I’ve said it once and I”ll say it again – I don’t understand how so few women work in the web.
It’s an area that lends itself to all types of skills and offers a high degree of flexibility. It offers careers for those who are design oriented, writers, programmers, problem solvers. Maybe it’s because it’s not seen by young women to be sexy? If you’re a great organiser, maybe it’s more exciting to work in Events than the Web. If you’re a writer, you might aspire to being a journalist or a PR press release writer and get to go to lots of new product launches… than being someone who writes for the web. I don’t know. If you have answers, please share them with me.
In the meantime, I’d like to share three things with you:
- This year, the leaders of the G20 countries are making a plan to fix the economic crisis. We20 is a new social networking site that helps you meet, in groups of up to 20 people, to make your own plan. Something most definitely for the women. Because we all know that when we want to make something happenm, you get a woman on the case! Now’s your chance to change the world here.
- Tonight a splinter group of the Girl Geek Dinners are meeting for drinks in the Long Stone pub in Dublin. If you’re knocking about town around 7pm and you fancy meeting some like minded souls, get on down!
- Girl Geek Day is happening this Saturday in Dublin. It’s the first time it’s happening and it looks like it’s going to be great. Kind of like Barcamps in style, but only for girl geeks – get down with the sisters, support, give a demo, do something. And of course, enjoy!
Tags: Ada Lovelace Day, girl geek day dublin, We20
All About Advertising
February 25, 2009 at 11:51 am
Three things to tell you today, all advertising related:
- I just attended a breakfast briefing by Brian Sparks, no not Brightspark!, Ireland’s only pitch doctor. The takeaway? Don’t do an agency pitch unless you have to. If you’re not happy with your agency, carry out a relationship audit first. What should you be looking for in an agency? Quality people. Thinking. Creative Output. Process. Remuneration. Would someone please tell Agency Assessments to update their site? It’s got a ‘what’s new’ dating from 2005. While Brian himself seems to ‘get’ Digital and included it every time he mentioned the various channels, his parent company is not singing the same tune judging by their site.
- Ryanair has updated its website and is now selling non-travel product. Another way for Ryanair to make money? I’ll be interested to see the results. I personally wouldn’t have thought of going to Ryanair when I wanted to buy my stainless steel egg slicer but who knows what kind of actions people will take late at night when booking cheap flights? Plus, the search area in the main panel of the home page is a little squashed. Hello? Browser check anyone?
I have read possibly the finest analysis on ‘these current economic times’ so far. How do I know this? Because I keep quoting bits of it in my everyday life to all sorts of people. And I’ve promised practically everyone I know to send it to them – because it’s relevant to us all. What is it? It’s called AAAGH and it’s a piece of research by Young & Rubicam on how to market in these uncertain times. It’s a nicely designed pdf, you can download it here.
It’s so insightful I’ve become a fan on Facebook! And I’m going to post separately on its forecasts for digital in these current times. But first, a little taster:
Likens the current economic times and our getting our heads around it to the 5 steps of dealing with grief:
- Denial : pre-Christmas late night shopping in BT’s or Dundrum anyone?
- Anger: happening now. Will be directed at anyone who can be punished – bankers, government, advisors… Golden Circle?
- Bargaining: salvage what they can. This might appear to some as the good times back again or may be mis-read as tentative signs of an upswing, but really it’s just people adjusting their portfolios and spending habits to the new environment.
- Depression: early 1990’s Britain, nobody wanted to spend. Herd mentality that is hard to break.
- Acceptance: can take a very long time, and time taken will be a function of the amount of money people have lost. It took until the early 1940’s for acceptance of the 1929 crash to kick in.
7 Types of Money Minds – Which One Are You?
- Succeeders: need for control. High appetite for risk. How to market to them now? Be seen to be helping them to survive
- Mainstreamers: risk averse, savers not investors. Their fear and weakness in understanding the economy will cause them to be passive aggressive. How to deal with? I’d say, avoid them!
- Explorers: early adopters, tend to go for new experiences. Can sell innovative products to them.
- Aspirers: follow the herd, strong affinity for luxury goods and brands. Sell them ‘recessionary chic’.
- Reformers: articulate, tend to reject materialism. Sell them using a little cynicism.
- Resigned: believe their best years are over, very conservative. Sell safety.
- Strugglers: they live in the extreme short term, have been hit hard, but spending doesn’t change in a recession. Key thing here is their numbers are swollen.
Tags: Agency Assessments, Brian Sparks, Ryanair Selling Egg Slicers, Young & Rubicam AAAGH
Website in a Week : Jobless And Proud
February 19, 2009 at 9:51 am
An experience of how Irish people still have it in themselves to give. A reminder to all that while the Celtic Tiger might be over, our traditional generosity is still alive.
Background
David Jones lost his managerial position in a furniture factory. He was given one week’s notice and had his company car, laptop and mobile removed from him. In the immediate aftermath, he couldn’t find the information he needed. It seems this time the Interweb failed!
Returning home, unable to sleep, David sat down and wrote a book about his experiences. “Oh No I’ve Lost My Job What Am I Going To Do”. He wrote the book in 4 days and 4 nights.
Some days later, I heard David being interviewed on Newstalk. He mentioned that now he had the book written, he needed to find a publisher and get it up on the internet. I texted the show and said I could help. The next day I met with David and I gave myself the challenge that if he could write a book in 4 days and 4 nights, then I could create a website for him in the same time – and for free!
Tapping In Through Twitter
I blogged about it. Then I put a shout out on Twitter about it. Chopped up the project into its component parts and listed the skills we’d be needing.
- Web designer
- Book cover design
- Coder
- Blog skinner
- Hosting
- Photographer
- Podcaster
- PR people
Within 2 hours I had the team that I needed.
Everyone jumped on board and were really happy to give. Not only that but the offers kept coming!
- We had business coaches offer to coach David in finding a new job
- A media coach offered to prep him for TV and radio interviews
- He even had a super hairstylist offer to do hair and make-up for any TV appearances!
In a week when there was a lot of bad news about job losses in the Irish economy, in my little world there was nothing but abundance. Generosity of spirit. Sharing of talents.
Resultarama
The website went live on 17 February - and David went back on Newstalk to tell the nation! Exactly one week after he had been on before, he was now the owner of a brand spanking new site. There were 1,300 downloads of the book on the first day. Since then the numbers have reached 4,000. Clearly there are many people out there who need this information.
The site itself is rather impressive. It’s not just a rush job, but a very contemporary ‘one page website’ style. It’s got a blog that David has been trained up on and he regularly posts to it.
I found Twitter to be invaluable in terms of mobilising the message. My initial call for help was retweeted many times. The project team was located all over Ireland and in the US – we found 37signals’ Basecamp to be a great way of keeping everyone in touch and files/messages/tasks clearly communicated. I use Basecamp for everything, it is my most treasured business tool. More so than email!
As a 57 year old man who has worked all his life, David Jones could have thrown his hands in the air and proclaimed that the sky was falling in. He could have felt sorry for himself. But that is not what he did. He embraced everything that came his way. He went from one week of not knowing what a blog or a podcast was, to becoming a blogger and being part of a podcast! He took to media like a fish to water. A last minute request to appear on the TV3 lunchtime show saw him hop off the bus he was on, make his way to the studio, and sit with the Editor of the Evening Herald and other guests looking like he was born to it!
David is now pushing ahead with his idea to form a Job Seekers Union. Helping workers to help themselves. You can find out more here.
I am very interested to hear how people use the tools of the web to help themselves. The last recession in Ireland was in the 1980’s, so none of this greatness existed. If you have any stories of people using the web to help others and themselves, please let me know.
Tags: david jones, jobless and proud, Website in a Week
Website in a Week : Fin
February 17, 2009 at 12:13 am
This is it. It’s alive! Jobless And Proud.
One week later and David Jones will be on Newstalk tomorrow (Tuesday) morning at 7.40am. Do like the Angeles and stop whatever you’re at to listen!
UPDATE – switch on TV3 Tuesday lunchtime and you can see David Jones being interviewed. You’ve heard the voice, you’ve read the words, now see the man!
This Story Has Changed
This story has altered from being one of a man committing himself to paper and sharing his experiences… to one of people supporting people. At a time when I fear this country is being over-run by the new creed of ‘cute-hoorism’ it’s restored my faith and shown that there are a great many people out there who don’t subscribe to that. Who give.
My Observations:
- Efficiency. With very little time, there has been no messing around. But truly this project has run in the smoothest most efficient manner possible. I’m not praising myself there. I believe it ran so smoothly because everyone on the team believed in what we were doing. We were given free rein to unleash our creativity and show off how good we can be. There were no agendas about things, so sign off and agreement was reached pretty quickly.
- Everything seemed to be in tune with this little project. While all of this was going on, I was hearing news of friends losing their jobs. No, not 15% pay cuts. But job losses. It made the words of David’s book all the more meaningful. I’m hearing too many tales of people down the dole office being treated badly; the staff who work there don’t seem to know how to deal with people with MBA’s and former six figure salaries. I got to listen to the inspiring Lucy Gaffney speak on Thursday and she was telling how Newstalk (and other stations in the Communicorp group) now have a positive editorial policy. And all the time people were coming out of the woodwork offering themselves and their services for free.
- Exhausted in Dunshaughlin. All the while we’ve had David up and down (by bus) between Dublin and Dunshaughlin. We’ve done most of the web work remotely, ranging from Belfast to Cork, but David had to be photographed, recorded for podcast, and interviewed. The poor man is exhausted – but I know, exhilarated too! He’s a 57 year old who didn’t know what a blog was this time last week and has just now published his first post! He has shown a remarkable ability to learn so quickly, to take everything in, and importantly – not to knock it. Too often I’ve come across people who don’t get the web and they knock it because of that. But David has taken all things www in his stride.
I wish David Jones well in this next chapter of his career and yes I know that was a very poor pun indeed. I also wish these fine people lots of joy and success and I say thanks for being so generous, quick to respond, and for taking that asking call!
- Mega talented Rachel Earley for coming up with a kickass design, for putting her own portfolio site on hold to do this, and for being there for all the little iterations.
- David McDonald, the only one amongst us who has a clue what book design is about. His mention of ISBN numbers at an early stage instilled confidence in me!
- Gordon Murray for quietly answering every request that was asked of him.
- David Duignan for managing to capture the real David on digital film.
- Alex Gibson for recording him and making him feel at ease.
- Seamus from Corkmedia.net for making some intro’s.
Now goodnight, I have to be up early to tune in the wireless to FM 106 for the launch of Jobless & Proud.
If you have a blog, please link to the new site. If you have a spare fiver buy the book. It’s a good read.
Oh and we’re still looking for someone to skin the blog. If that’s you, please get in touch.
Adding an international dimension to this project, we’ve just got our blog skinner upper – Dennis Deery.
Tags: Jobless & Proud, Website in a Week
Website in a Week : Day 4
February 16, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Where We’re At:
Much running around. Plenty of phone calls. But the upshot is we’ve now got a site, it’s up and 99% there. Hope to make it live tonight. A few finessing details being looked after by Gordon right now.
We had another extremely good offer of help from Seamus at Cork Media. He’s meeting David today and is going to help him out with some media introductions.
We’ve also got confirmation that David is going to be back on Newstalk tomorrow morning to give them an update. So set your radio’s for 106fm and your clocks for 7.45am and if you like you could even text the show and tell them what a great story it is!
What We Need:
UPDATE: 3.40pm
We need someone to skin the Wordpress blog. We’ll give you the styles, the thanks and the blog’s already installed. You will also earn yourself a place in the hall of fame – be down as the Wordpress Skinning Expert.
We need you to tell your friends about the site when it’s up. If you have a blog, please can you write a post about it and link to it. If you hear any coverage on the radio, text in to the show and say what a good idea it is.
Good ideas need to be supported. Just like this one has been.
Triumphant media frenzy… and unveiling of the new site…
Tags: Website in a Week
Worst Microsoft Ad Ever
January 16, 2009 at 6:37 pm
This is so embarrassingly bad. I feel sorry for Microsoft. And notice the MAC covered in stickers she’s using. (Thanks to @paulwalsh for this steer)
Tags: Microsoft Advertising
Is This Really Microsoft?
September 8, 2008 at 7:11 pm
I just landed on Get Inspired.Net and I can’t believe that Microsoft is behind it.
There are typos and grammatical errors all over the place and really bad design and coding. And we’re invite to join the community – but not really told what for?
You can see what I mean here:
Tags: Microsoft Advertising
A Great Deal on Images – Some Good News For These Tight Times
September 4, 2008 at 10:58 pm
If you love animals and nature, you should probably turn your poor wee head away NOW!
Getty Images are targeting Ireland. Their Country Manager admits that the pricing for Ireland to date has been ‘all wrong’. [I agree].
This evening I attended a Getty evening where they got to show some of their amazing news, celeb, and global affairs images. We got to consume the message that ‘Ireland is just like Manchester’ [I think they mean in terms of market size, I certainly hope they mean in terms of style and beauty] and they [humbly = my words] acknowledge that they’ve been pricing our market all wrong.
So now they invite us – the Irish – to go online, find an image we like, and then contact them directly for an Irish specific price! A thrilling challenge indeed. And I’m not just talking about images. You can do it for sound to go along with your video, and even for video moving images. We used Pump Audio on Kanchi videos and it was really easy.
The Getty country manager is:
Marek Wystepak, his telephone is 010 246 2700 and you can contact me direct for his email or mobile if you need it. If you’re looking for contacts in relation to sound or moving image, there are direct contacts there too! [Almost sounds too good to be true eh!]
If you’ve ever been searching for amazing images for your website, found them on Getty and the cost was prohibitively expensive, well those days are gone. Now all you have to do is contact Marek and strike a deal {accordingly]. Maybe this is the good news story of the week?
I took a look around. For me, Getty Images are great. But when it comes to stock shots, good looking people in a contemporary life environment, iStock rocks. Where Getty excels however, is in news, current affairs, and key issues.
The following image is one I gleaned from the web [ie. didn't pay for] that was included in the exhibition and truly brought a tear to my eye.
Down with poachers. Boo!
Tags: Getty Images, Poachers
How to get your name off phone directory lists
August 15, 2008 at 11:42 am
The company that looks after the eircom phone book and the yellow pages is called Truvo. Following Wednesday’s post and the interest it generated, I telephoned them and asked about getting my name removed from all future distributions and they put me through to their distribution company. I gave my details in there and that’s it! I’m off.
You can get your name removed too. Telephone 01 46 000 46 and give them your details.
You may also be interested to know that the eircom phone book includes phone numbers of all landlines (that are not ex directory). So even if you’re with Perlico, Digiweb, etc your name and number will still appear.
Now all I have to do is wait a year to see if this change takes effect, but you can rest assured that I will be keeping an eye out to make sure they do what they say they’re going to do!
Tags: golden pages, phone book, remove name, yellow pages
