To say my life was in tatters is an understatement, I lay in a foreign hospital bed hooked up to a machine with a drip in each arm with a headache that I have yet to find words to describe the pain. I was very much alone. I was disorientated beyond imagination. Am I alive or am I dead? This was the question that filled every waking moment and consumed me for the weeks and months that followed and to this day I occasionally question what happened that day. I remember dying. I remember every second of it with the clarity of high definition slow motion. So where am I now? I remember being woken up, is this real or is this just the next… Read the Rest »
At the CBI awards at the Midland Hotel on Friday I sat and listened to a very clever man Jon Moulton put some of our country’s problems into plain and simple English. “For every £3 the government earns, they are spending £4.” So to break even they’d have to reduce spending by 28%. How can this happen? Charles Dickens famously said: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.” With all the technology at our fingertips in today’s society how can we not balance the books? Where else in the world can you get away from this sort of lack of control where you can spend more than you… Read the Rest »
If you think getting to the top of where you want to go is hard, think again, that’s the easy part. Many people achieve it, yet only few manage to sustain it and even fewer go on to greater things. So why is this? I have a theory and I am in good company with some other wiser folk than me with this one too. The theory is this. In order to reach a great height in whatever you do, you have to set it in your sights as a target. You have to know where you are going. That sounds like common sense but so many people fail to grasp this one before they set out on their journey. You have to define the success… Read the Rest »
Jim Collins recently sent me his latest book, How The Mighty Fall, which I have not managed to prise off my wife yet. If he’d written a British version of this book, it would have to feature BA. British Airways. How on earth has the greatest British brand fallen out of the skies to such depths of despair? I asked a couple of members of the BA staff, does BA stand for Bloody Awful, after the worst experience I have ever encountered of substandard behaviour by representatives of BA. I was checking in proudly to my first class seats at the BA counter in Manchester, when I met the second rudest woman I have ever had the misfortune to meet. We had telephoned the night… Read the Rest »
Tiger Woods is certainly getting a great deal of publicity at the moment. However, what is really going on behind the scenes. He has clearly behaved stupidly, but is it our business what he does in his private life? Are all the people judging him in the media squeaky clean? I doubt it. But nevertheless, whenever the TV is switched on there he is, in the public eye. His recent apology in my opinion is farcical. He should not apologise to the world, his issue is a lot closer to home. In my opinion he is apologising purely to save the Tiger Woods brand. The potential lost revenue bad publicity brings. Everyone remembers the Ratner story how one of Britains biggest brands fell out of… Read the Rest »
This week has been an interesting one. I gave a talk at the ProManchester event at law firm Pinsent Mason’s which was great fun. I mentioned that I was lucky enough to be “raised in a convent” making a joke that this was a different talk for another occasion. Well, maybe it’s time for that discussion. A couple of weeks ago we were planning our new “School of Hosting” campaign. This was at a time when we had just had a very successful day where staff dressed up in St.Trinian’s outfits to raise money for charity, it was suggested, why not use the photography and continue the theme to promote the School of Hosting. Business men and women of City Tower Manchester are used to… Read the Rest »
I remember an argument between 2 friends years ago. It was a regular discussion that happened between 2 actor friends of mine. I remember trying to play the piano whilst they both went at each other. My closest friend Ashley Paske played Matt in Neighbours the Australian soap which consumed the UK in the 80′s and early 90′s. Ash had finished with Neighbours and was treading the boards in Oxford. He couldn’t go anywhere without being mobbed. People would interrupt every occasion when we were out in public, it is incredibly frustrating, but one he thrived on. The other actor was far less famous. Successful in his own right however on a much less grander scale. He was in a failure of a programme called… Read the Rest »
Whether or not you like Bing as a search engine you have to be impressed with recent events. Google the internet giant that grew from a garage start up in San Francisco has a competitor. As an underdog myself in the hosting world fighting to grow our business, I have to favour the smaller player. It is not often that you can refer to one of Bill Gate’s enterprises as a smaller entity. But smaller for how long? A little like a boxer who smiles at his opponent in the ring when he feels a punch that cuts him to the quick, he makes too much effort to hide the pain. Recently Google have been sparring in similar style scoring points with Microsoft over petty… Read the Rest »
Entrepreneurs and business people. Being a business man or woman is not clever. It doesn’t make you any more special or less special. Yes you can get a great feeling of connection from some of the things success can help you achieve, yet these are no more important than those of doctors, teachers, nurses etc. Yet there are those amongst us who feel the need to talk about their goals. What they are going to achieve and what they nearly did. I am talking of the ones that you have a sneaking suspicion are “all talk.” Yet, they keep talking and that is all they seem to do. And on the journey because of their gregarious nature and confidence they have a tendency to land great jobs… Read the Rest »
It has been an interesting week. UKFast, finalists in the National business awards, winners of 2 ISPA accreditations, but the icing on the cake for me was a very small event, a dinner party with the Sarah Ferguson The Duchess of York. I am not one for being dazzled by stars of any type. I grew up in my 20′s with some very famous friends and girlfriends, Ashley Paske from Neighbours, Craig Charles from Red Dwarf and it taught me that fame comes with a very expensive price tag. You loose all sense of privacy and there is literally no where to hide. And the more famous you become, the bigger the price tag! Michael Jackson is a good example of this. A man who… Read the Rest »
