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A very Happy New Year to all!

The New Year has started, as it finished, with much in the news about racism.  I have been a Liverpool football club supporter since they won the 1965 FA Cup Final, the first football match I remember seeing, but find myself disappointed in the way that the Suarez / Evra dispute has been dealt with.

MessageBase is proud to announce a big partnership event to help its customers use social media to achieve your goals: 

SUMMARY

Are you using social media to spread your message, garner support or make sales? Or are you just using it to connect with friends? Have you ignored social media, considering it a distraction from doing 'real work'? Do you like Social Media, but have no clue how to use it to actually grow your organisation?

At this 45 minute talk, John P Morgan is going to be teaching you a simple and sensible approach to using social media that can have a massive impact on the success of your organisation.

AMUSING OR JUST STUPID? GIVE THE RIGHT IMPRESSION

Several signs warning people to expect traffic delays during a local carnival had to be changed because they contained spelling mistakes.

Sittingbourne Carnival Association said it had to announce road closures a week before the event despite the mistakes.

Pam Griggs, from the association, said the signs would be replaced or changed.

She added: "People will either think we are stupid and we can't spell or they will have a good laugh.

"At least people are reading them."

The signs were manufactured by a printing firm from outside the area.

A first impression is not just the most important but who’s to say that you won’t get that chance again? If your business comes across as unprofessional and inexperienced at first impression, it can usually be the deal-breaker with potential clients. Here’s how to be sure the one you leave is the right one.

There are lessons that you learn through life which stick with you, the main one being is that your mother was ALWAYS right, retrospective of course and it often hurts to admit it.

One little lesson that has stuck with me was from a department director who would never allow the word “very” to be used in any communication or script.  I was a credit manager in a City bank (yes I admit to having been a City banker but it was a long time ago when Greece’s credit rating was AAA).  His argument was that something either was or wasn’t, it was either urgent or it wasn’t urgent, it was black or it was white; “very” was superfluous and it is a word I have to think quite hard about using to this day.  Actually “quite” might fall into the same category.

UK innovation is alive and kicking according to a new study among entrepreneurs (@BizMattersMag). The research found that over 80 per cent of the UK’s entrepreneurial businesses have at least 2 completely new ideas which they have yet to commercialise and 26 per cent have 4 or more ideas waiting to be launched.

However whether these ideas will get off the drawing board is doubtful not only due to lack of finance for investment, poor day-to-day cash flow and lack of long-term planning, but over 30 per cent of entrepreneurs just don’t know how to manage their time.

Thanks to our friend Mike, we had the chance to discover a marvellous charity called Julias House. We recently donated to this charity and feel extremely proud to having done so!

Julias House is the only Dorset based hospice dedicated solely to children with life-limiting conditions. They have a dedicated team of carers and nurses who help at any one time over 100 children.

This is the brainchild of a fantastic woman called Julia Perks, a paediatric nurse, who understood the need for a dedicated home for children with severe conditions.

If you wish to donate too, please follow this link: http://www.juliashouse.org/donate

The Apprentice is back on our screens providing a regular dose of Sugar and bringing with it a new round of business buzz-phrase nonsense and baffling bravado from the candidates.

No one likes a show-off, least of all the British, which is why watching the overblown confidence of each new crop of Apprentice contestants is such a guilty pleasure. 

Each year they take the bravado, swagger and self-aggrandisement to new levels. They mix it with the usual business jargon that drives people mad. Financial Times columnist Lucy Kellaway has often written about the subject, calling for an end to all the “blue sky thinking”, “going forwards” and “pushing the envelope”.

The Economist looks at herd investing in the latest issue. Bottom line: it’s still happening and the herd still ain’t doing so well. Buried at the end of the piece is a joke from investor Warren Buffett about herd behavior.

Warren Buffett retells the story of the dead oil prospector who gets stopped at the pearly gates and is told by St Peter that Heaven’s allocation of miners is full up. The speculator leans through the gates and yells “Hey, boys! Oil discovered in Hell.” A stampede of men with picks and shovels duly streams out of Heaven and an impressed St Peter waves the speculator through. “No thanks,” says the sage. “I’m going to check out that Hell rumour. Maybe there is some truth in it after all.”

You may have heard previously the story of Spencer Silver inventing the post-it notes. Scientist Spencer Silver at 3M decided to invent a very strong glue. Before long, he invented a new glue, but found that it was super weak. He figured it was the world’s worst glue! But, he decided to keep it anyway and share his ‘failure’ with his co-workers.

4 years later, his colleague Arthur Fry was trying find a way to stop his bookmarks from falling out of his songbook. He thought of trying Silver’s super weak glue to stick his bookmarks. This worked amazingly well! Over the next 6 years, Fry and other 3M scientists worked with this glue and in 1980, they launched the first sticky notes i.e. Post-it Notes to the world.

This week, let’s remember that even failures can pay themselves forward.. Sometimes as block buster inventions!

Sharing some more stories with you today: do you know what is the common point between famous Thomas Edison and James Dyson?

Edison, one of the most prolific inventors of all time, was busy working on the concept of an electric bulb in his laboratory in Menlo Park. Rumors had spread all across and press reporters were all eagerly awaiting any news of a breakthrough. Many weeks later, Edison finally emerged from his laboratory having invented the light bulb. A reporter asked him - ‘Mr. Edison, rumors is it true that you failed in your first 1000 attempts to invent the light bulb? ‘Young man, I did not fail a 1000 times. I have discovered and documented a 1000 ways on how-not-to-make-a-light bulb! I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.’

Finding accounting software that fits your needs isn’t easy. Existing solutions are often complex with a steep learning curve, rendering them next to useless for small business owners.

In my desperate search for a solution that would offer greater functionality than the bog-standard Excel spreadsheet, I came across FreeAgent; an online, subscription-based accounting software that includes a host of great features including invoicing, expenses management, tax reminders, great visual representations and much more. I’ve now been using FreeAgent for the last few months and to tell the truth, couldn’t be more pleased.

Here are a few reasons why I love FreeAgent (and you will too!)