Steve.Richardson - Profile

Have  never seen Game of Thrones (yep there is someone out there)

But maybe it's because I'm under the weather or my minds in the wrong place, but it sounds a bit seedy or sinister?

 from me I'm afraid.

Saw this yesterday and made me smile (or cry)

Agree completely, but came in at the opposite end to you, with a bizarre 2 year tour, that started with HQNI mortared the day I got there then we had the awful Omagh bombing. But after a false start, ended up with the peace process and dismantling of checkpoints almost overnight.

There will always be an undercurrent in NI, particularly during the marching season, but I don't think any sane government North or South will allow a return to a hard border. At least while it is still fresh in peoples minds. I worry more about complacency in 10 - 20 years time.

Still, when Warwickshire votes for independence, I'll be joining the Shakespeare Militia

I think one of the problems is the small size of the majority. If it was 70/30 or greater then end of story, the people have spoken and it is a major majority. But it was so close, with so little thought put into what would happen if the vote went against the government, that has caused this ongoing chaos.

Whatever the outcome, half the country will be opposed to it, from all walks of life and political beliefs. Modern democracy is about shouting out simplistic sound bite key messages, then pumping a fortune into amplifying those messages across the media. The average person will absorb those messages and will vote for the ones that resonate with them. Take back control, spend the money on hospitals, stop immigration. This is where the leave campaign did well, it had the best marketing campaign. But no one really understood the realities or the bigger picture, how could we unless we are political analysts? We naively assume our political class are giving us the best advice and working for us. But instead our current system has exposed blatant game playing, partisanship and self interest at the expense of all of us.

Because the referendum campaigns were cross party, it was always been doomed to failure. I don't think it would matter if Labour had run the negotiations, then end result would be the same, stalemate and chaos.

The current government is a disaster. I'm no fan of Labour but the current Tory party is embarrassing and doing the country no favours.

I think we need a fresh approach, with a proper coalition government to try and bring the country back together and put a genuine plan together. We don't need another referendum, but we do need a clear plan of action, one that brings in industry leaders, and strategists from all political parties with enough time to formulate a proper plan agreed by all, before presenting it to the EU. We've negotiated the wrong way round. 

With a united parliament, and positive messages from industry, we would then be in a strong position to start our EU negotiations.  Any compromises can be debated openly one by one.

Has to be better than a deal done behind closed doors, with endless negative speculation, then a huge document dumped on MP's who have no idea what the plan was and are then expected to vote and agree on it.

Shameful period in our history

<rant over/>

It sounds very obvious. You run a business, so take every opportunity you can to promote yourself. Yet so many people don't?

You don't have to be a full on sales pitch at every interaction, but if you are using things like social media, then ensure your profile includes a link to what you do. Use a separate business persona if you want to keep your business life separate from your private life, but make sure your business persona promotes your business!

Here is my business persona Facebook profile. If you hover a mouse over my name on Facebook, this is what is displayed.

Not really giving many personal secrets away, but importantly I've got my primary Facebook business pages linked in my profile. I make it easy for people to find my business pages.

Now compare this with a recent list of business owners who have kindly left a recommendation for My Local Services on our Facebook page. Guess which ones I was able to thank and give a shout out to, and guess which ones I have no idea what their business is about?

Telling the world you are self employed is as much use as a chocolate tea pot when it comes to marketing yourself.

So take some time and review your Facebook or other social media or online personas. Is it obvious what you do and can people easily find your business? It's simple free marketing that takes minutes to set up, and if it generates just one client, then it's been a good return 

Meanwhile... 8 April, guess what we're still in

What total chaos, we seem to be sliding towards an accidental no deal brexit. The worse possible outcome for everyone thanks to our dysfunctional and unbelievably crap political system.

Bring in the Queen, a bit of direct rule, what else could be worse?

very useful! 

Just a reminder, Google is in the process of deleting it's Google+ archive, so if you had any data you wanted to keep, you need to download it  quickly.

Download your Google+ data

25 March
FB 880 likes, Reviews/Recommends option seems to be down/not displaying?, Twitter 445 followers  and Google+ is now officially defunct, so it was shrewd not paying that any attention! So campaigns without any paid interaction are ticking over and growing organically.

Still plan to do some paid experimentation when budget dictates.

LinkedIn wise, I think it's dependant on the business type. I find it very noisy and self promo. I've got 3,863 connections and I normally go in about once a month to approve new requests and skim through any messages, of which 99% are self promo rubbish. I'm very lazy with linked in, but do keep my profile up to date as I know that some of the work I bid for, normally results in a search of my profile.

I know a few people now that make all of their leads from linkedin, but there's never enough hours in the day to get sucked into another platform, leaving comments, writing blogs etc. But if I was in need of a new means of lead generation, I would take it more seriously.

Excellent topic and the trap of many business owners.

If your business can't run without you, then you have created a job, not a business. I was very resistant to this line of thought and it took a business coach to point out the error of my ways, but it's a fascinating view when you think about it.

You should be working on the business, ie growth, strategy and direction, not in the business doing functional work that can be done by others. Otherwise it's just a job.