Category Archives: Customers & clients

Mind your language

I’ve got the blues. The bad language blues. Not the effing and blinding variety, feck no. That would be hypocrisy of the highest order from one who indulges in foul-mouthed badinage on a woefully regular basis. Nope, the bad language getting my goat is jargon. I’m talking about the strands of language used in niche

Continue Reading →

Small business swithering

Sshhhhhht! Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve got a confession to make. See, I’ve been completely and utterly undecided. No, not about the big vote, I’ve been completely and utterly decided on which box I will be placing my X in long since. Nope, the vacillation, the dithering and the procrastination causing all kinds of angst

Continue Reading →

The inside track

Expert? Who, me? Expert in heehaw. Or at least that’s what my instant reaction was when introduced recently at a client’s board meeting as a “media expert”. S’funny being called an expert, and brings the self-effacing Scot in me rushing right up to the surface, but expertise is all relative, innit? Compared to the good people

Continue Reading →

Sick as a parrot

Sole trading? It’s enough to make me sick. Picture the scene. It’s half an hour before you’re due to head off to deliver some work for a client, when the words that strike fear and loathing into the very soul of every sole trader or small business come calling. No, not “hello, this is HMRC,

Continue Reading →

The fickleness of feedback

The customer’s always right, right? Wrong. Or at least, the customer’s opinion has to be taken with a large pinch of salt. Because frankly my dears, who can really be bothered with feedback? But before you come over all high and mighty, get down off that high horse. I don’t mean that the feedback I

Continue Reading →

A sprint to the finish

Hurry, hurry! Time waits for no man (or wee wordsmith). Take it from me, working to a deadline ain’t good for your heart. It’s bad for your blood pressure, your nerves, and your love life. More exactly, it’s writing to a deadline that does you in. But writing against the clock is a great big

Continue Reading →

Bleeding hearts and business

Take your bleeding heart and stuff it. Well okay then, that’s not exactly what a fellow traveller in small business was told recently by a certain gentleman from the dinosaur school of wheeling and dealing. But this particular gentleman did mention that my mate was unusual for someone in business because she has a social

Continue Reading →

Business is like buses

We’re all doomed. No, I’ve not gone and joined a group of end of the world adventists, but I definitely had a Private Frazer moment recently.  For a couple of days I simply couldn’t shrug off a certain despair. There I was in early January, looking over the vast tundra of emptiness that was my

Continue Reading →

Cracking the client communication code

A wise businessman and fellow sole trader once told me that clients often don’t really know what they need. They just know they need something. This fellow traveller in the field of communications, training and confidence building, has had a few more years under his business belt than me to recognise the early warning symptoms. He’s

Continue Reading →

Tagged with

bbc business business start up children clients commerce confidence COVID-19 enterprise entrepreneur entrepreneurial family Glasgow mental health pandemic parenthood poverty radio Scotland Scottish self employment small business sole trader startup work life balance

Archives