em:two; the musings of a casual geek

The year I mean,  I honestly can't believe it's nearly Xmas again. I do love Xmas though so I'm not complaining.

I wish I had a bit more time to blog but to be honest it's been all work at the minute. We're just rejigging the website at work and that's my main task. We're also nailing the product suite down so there's a a shit load to do but it's all gravy.

Been hammering Gears of War 2 too this last week, it's bloody awesome! If ever there was a time to buy an Xbox 360 then now is the time indeed; £127.99 for an Arcade version (ok you wanna be going for one with a HDD I know but still, as a cheap  source of fun you can bolt an a drive later) and you can even get them with top notch games thrown in too for that price. Stonking!

Must find time to write some songs too....

Laters!

Yeah that's right it's been quiet on this old blog recently.  Been busy at work since we moved in to the new offices and not really had time to blog what with being bogged down with marketing, product development and blog design. Seems I've got blogs coming out of my ears!

Anyway, I'm still around blogging away but it's just a bit quiet at the moment, might perk up again who knows!

Still, got the old Xbox back, geddin!

Ahhh it's been a bit busy recently so I've not bene blogging so much.  Which is probably a good thing, actual work that pays monies (Agdgdgwengo) is obviously better than wittering my time away blogging about random BS.

But here I am. You love it.

Anyway I've got a brew and five to kill (minutes not animals or people) so I'm putting something down about all this recession stuff that we keep hearing about on the news.

I've got a small business, we used to do just web design (didn't everyone?) but recently we've branched out into being a full sweep marketing company. So we do business branding, marketing campaigns, marketing advice and consultancy in collaboration with a marketing guru (morning Jamie) and all sorts of other stuff.

At the minute I'm trying to grow the business so I'm finishing up my (hopefully) final long term NHS contract for a while and moving into some new premises with the marketing business, employing a new devloper and am even on the look out for a new deisgner too. I've saved up enough money in the business to pay us, and all the bills for a few months and we're good to go.

Now, I'm not bigging myself up, i'm trying to make you aware of where I am.

The point of the story is this: is it the right time, given the "recession", to be trying to grow a small business into one that's a bit bigger?  Alot of my gut says yes, in fact most of my gut says yes. And here's why:  if you are small business and you sit back on your laurels trying desperately to keep what few clients you have paying minimal fees for services that they class as expendable luxuries (some businesses class web hosting as expendable, trust me) then you're going to suffer.

The small pot of clients that you have will be feeling the crunch too so they're going to be tightening their belt, which means that you may lose out or at least be waiting longer than normal for payments.

In my eyes what we small business owners need to be doing is hitting the marketing trail. Lets let people in the local and wider communities know that we're here to stay, we've got a solid, affordable and effective suite of products that in turn can benefits our clients' business and help them bring in new business, even in this cool financial climate.  Let's be honest, growing a small business at anytime, recession or not, is a risky and scary prospect but I firmly believe that if you raise the bar and show your potential clients that you understand their needs and can cater for them in a cost effective (not cheap I might add, people don't mind paying for quality) and timely manner that you will succeed.

Now that's just my two pence worth in there, I may be totally wrong and this time next year might be falling flat on my face after trying to grow the business. We shall see. I hope that doesn't happen but you never know do you.

Anyway, my brew has gone now so I'm off.  Oh and I hope Obama wins, he blows McCain out of the water.

Well it's been a few days since I've on tinterthreat to post a blog. Thought I'd have a bit of a blog sesh whilst I wait for this iTunes "Genius Bar" to update my music library. Geeky that innit.

Been a bit of a bizarre week, kinda quiet but busy if that makes any sense at all.  We've not done anything with Green Ball Flyers for a couple of weeks, I was away working then had our youth's birthday doo so 2 lots of practices got cancelled. Boo. We were supposed to have a gig for some charity thing on Saturday 27th but the plug got pulled on that by the council, for supposed health and safety resons. They do say charity starts at home. They were probably just annoyed cos they weren't making any money out of it, in fact I'm surprised they didn't tax us for playing. That seems to be the answer to everything days. I think I'm getting old.  Worse still, with me doing this blog thing I'm turning into Bris. Oh crap.

That said I dont post poetry, tell you how I'm feeling deep inside (urgh) or pretend to do things that I've never done (good drumming dude) so I can't be all that Bris.

Hmmm, so yeah been busy. Mainly with work. We're just moving into some new premises and I'm sorting out my first employee (eventual partner) which is a pain in the ass but also awesome at the same time. Scary really cos it's the first time I've actually had to find the work myself. Course, I've been contracting for a good few years now but even in that environment your're still getting paid on a schedule. It's all very scary.  But something we've got to try.

Anyway, I can't be arsed writing anymore cos I need a brew.

This always seems to crop up in my head a few times a year and today was one such time.

I was on the way to today's place of work this morning and was 10 mins later than usual due to a bloody slow puncture (new tyres, argh!). Because I was a whole 10 mins late the traffic at one particular roundabout was heavier than usual.  So I'm sat in traffic laughing along to Scott Mills reading through crazy classifieds and everytime I looked over to my left (right lane driver) I was faced with a sow faced commuter looking like they were on their way to being hung.

It occurred to me, as it does now and then, that most of these people probably head over to the same place at the same time every single day. No doubt that some people actually love this, but it seems from seeing these poor souls this morning that most people probably don't. They do what everyone else does and work a job they're not keen on to pay the bills and get by.  I find myself thinking how lucky I am that I actually don't mind my job at all and also get the chance to move round most days to a new location and meet new people, it's what keeps me sane (that and my crazy beautiful lady).

Weird turn out for us isn't it how we all work our arses off for the great end game of money. Lets get back to working for bread and chickens, I'll build you a fence if you sort my roof out kinda setup.

Mind you, wouldn't be writing this if that was the case would I.