Considering the hectic duties of our Manchester business UKFast, a place which is aptly named, I can’t remember a moment where we have ever come up for air.

Yet, inspite of craving the intensity and fast paced business life, I never tire of the Welsh countryside and there’s not a more beautiful time of year.

Time out is so important and the bigger UKFast gets the more I realise I need the complete switch off. I have come to learn that the peace and quiet of the mountains is a great place for me to get the time I need to reflect on the important decisions.

Also, I love it. If I have learnt anything from my peers, life is so short, so just do the things which you enjoy the most. If you can combine what you love the most with what is absolutely necessary, you have the recipe for success.

You’d be excused for questioning why I chose a place where we had no internet, no phone, no mobile, intermittent heating and water over a more exotic location, but for a man who lives and breathes the Internet, this is the only place I have found on earth which is remote enough to disappear. It’s just perfect, it’s on my doorstep.

The journey back is always interesting as my mobile bleeps incessantly as it picks up the emails and texts that escaped me, listening to the news it is mind bending what happens in the real world in just a 2 week period. Yet if you think about it, nothing really changes. The world has a habit of carrying on regardless in your absence.

I am lucky that I have a great team at UKFast who know what they are doing and they have a habit of running  the business better when I am away! I am not sure what this says about me, however I mustn’t grumble. UKFast is a collective of fantastic minds and personalities and it is designed in such a way that it develops in line with the team who run it.

So what’s new? What is on the horizon?

I left the business after a record quarter and with a Royal Wedding imminent, there was talk in the business community of a disastrous April.  With millions of people timing their annual leave to take advantage of the bank holidays, I must admit I had lowered my expectations of what we should expect. Yet, in spite of the holidays and the whole world glued to the telly (including me – yes I found one) for the Royal Wedding, April was a respectable month and we exceeded my expectations.

There were predictions that the Royal Wedding would cost the economy £6 billion, yet as an event it showed Britain in its best light and it is wonderful to see so many people from all over the world coming together for something that we all relate to. Whatever cultural background you come from, everyone loves a wedding and as weddings go, what a spectacle.

In my opinion this event plays an important part in Britain’s recovery. A buoyant economy relies on positivity and an underlying feeling of confidence. I can’t remember an event in my lifetime that united so many people from so many different walks of life. It is absolutely what we needed as a nation. With politicians intent on debating process and problems, we need to build from here.

Gordon “Bennet” Brown’s doom and gloom era is long gone. There is light at the end of the tunnel. Its plain for everyone to see and if you are in business now is the time to remain positive and stick to your plans. After all, you can go away for a couple of weeks and the world wont have changed, it’s just your perception of it that’s important.

So when you are worrying about interest rates that may go up, or tax breaks that could be better, just remember that Britain earned the title “Great” and it’s the Great British public that achieved this. What is important now is not to forget that we are competing on a global level more than ever with emerging economies overseas. And this isn’t just in business, this is especially important in our schools and public services, in fact in every walk of life.

I was asked to talk to some children at a local school once and I prepared my talk around the magic of what every member of the class was going to achieve.

There is no better way to inspire a room of 7 year olds, than to tell them that they are the people who will be building the planes, and trains, hospitals and schools of the future. That they will go on to run and shape the world.

So let’s hope I am right, the signs are certainly there and we have a good cross section of businesses at UKFast and the general consensus is that trade is good.

And in the meantime, whilst I work away in Manchester, I know my mountains are in safe hands guarded by HRH Prince William who keeps a watchful eye on the mountain ranges of Snowdonia in his SeaKing helicopter.

Each season, we review the effectiveness of the relationship and the benefits of a symbiotic relationship with a sports club. There are a great many things to consider, performance on the field, management, community contribution, hospitality, the list is endless. In spite of a poor 09/10 season and some drastic management restructuring we decided it was the right thing to remain with the club regardless of potentially difficult times a head.

But a year on, with all the changes at UKFast and the recent changes to the Sharks squad and management, it feels the right time to hand over the mantle of “Proud Main Sponsor” to another lucky business owner and their team.

When we first got involved, Hodgson was an unknown, a little like us. I have watched him grow and develop into an awesome player, husband and dad, and it has been an honour to be his personal sponsor and friend. Its incredible to see my colleagues at UKFast develop in a similar way too. And along the journey teams change, I have lost people from time to time, its upsetting but sometimes people just need a change of scene.

I do think Charlie’s leaving will be a big loss to the Sharks though. He is one of the most underrated players in the Premiership. People naturally remember his early Twickenham and England appearances and remember a very young man who missed a number of kicks. What people weren’t aware of was that the England kicking coach an ex-school master of Johnny Wilkinson insisted he changed his run up and stance, in spite of Charlie’s superior kicking stats in the premiership.

It took Charlie a few seasons to building confidence to say “No!” but sadly the damage was done.

He has been an amazing ambassador for the Sharks. He is a very calm and well-respected player, both on and off the field, and even with all the difficulties with the appointment of Mike Brewer, Charlie went about his business and kept the players united.

There is no doubt the change in management style with Brewer’s appointment changed the dynamic of the club and when I heard Charlie was heading to pastures new, it is a good reminder that nothing lasts forever, especially where sport is concerned.

We originally got involved with the Sharks as a Technology Partner building their site and helping them with their marketing.

Back then the team played at Heywood Road where a few thousand fans stood in the Birtles.  I have lost count of the number of CEOs and senior managements who have come and gone since then. But the club grew from strength to strength.

We’ve been on the sidelines cheering them through their toughest times and through some tremendous times. I can count the number of games I have missed in a decade, on one hand. My daughters first game was at 10 days old!

The memories I have will last forever and I do not regret one minute or one penny I invested in the club. Jason Robinson’s last game, what an occasion, the dying minutes, Jason turned on his magic and turned a losing score line into a victory, in one of the greatest displays of British rugby I have ever witnessed.

Stood in the Birtles 12 years ago, Gail and I set a goal, “one day we’ll be the main sponsor” it was a pipe dream back in the early days.

So a few years ago when the Sharks lost their main sponsor McAfee, I was eager to throw my hat into the ring. We had grown enormously at this point and in a very proud moment we signed a seven figure contract. In fact to achieve this goal was one of the highlights of my time as a businessman. And in spite of the looming recession back then I still believe it was the right thing to do.

And now as the clouds lift on the recession, UKFast is blossoming and I have a lot to thank the Sharks and their fans for. We have grown 43% on the previous year and although this is marvellous news, it leaves us needing huge amounts of cash to develop more data centre space.

We have spent millions in the past 2 years building our first and I believe Manchester’s greenest data centre. It is due to open in June 2011, literally weeks away. It is large enough to house more than 12,000 servers. However in the last 2 years we have grown so much that actually it is clear we now need 5 times the space imminently. The latest plan is to build 100,000sq ft. This requires every available penny and more!

And so, in spite of the most perfect symbiotic relationship any business has ever had with a sports club, sadly the decision is made for us. It’s game over.

For a Manchester business wanting to align themselves with Manchester’s premiership business owners and colleagues, there is no better organisation in Manchester to support in my opinion as pound for pound the value you get from rugby sponsorship far outweighs any other sport.

I wish Brian Kennedy and his team, the new CEO and all the supporters all the success for the season ahead. You never know, as our business continues to grow, we may be back!

In the meantime, I’ll see you on the sidelines, like the old days.

PRESS:
Jonathan Bowers
jonathan.bowers@ukfast.co.uk
07720 222 227

Watching the BBC’s political programmes this morning, it shows just how oblivious today’s politicians are with basic accounting principals. To compound the huge problem of overspending there are politicians drumming up unrest against necessary cuts in expenditure.

What is even more worrying, it is clear that councillors from certain regions seem hell bent on deliberately cutting frontline services in the knowledge that it puts significantly more pressure on communities, in the hope that it reflects badly on the current government.

In business, if you overspend, you end up in trouble.

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 make and get away with it? Oh yes, I forgot, the banks!

Between the government and the banking community we really have been led up the garden path. Yet in spite of all the warning signs, the government continue to spend like it’s going out of fashion; and sadly our once great nation is precisely doing just that.

As an entrepreneur, we as a group of people do not have it as easy. We do not have a cushion to fall back on and the state that we eagerly feed crushes anyone who fails to comply or who falls behind. Unlike when banks mess up, small businesses are literally wound up. And for those of us who make it, we are “wound up” by government officials chasing our tax in a most brutal manner. There is not a business in the world that would survive if they possessed the customer service skills of a typical tax collector. We are not valued, nor thanked, nor supported.

Ironically “we are the hand that feeds” yet they devour our earnings in the guise of taxation and waste money because they do not understand just how hard it is to earn. We should take every politician and make them work a proper working week without expenses, on the minimum wage. That’s how the rest of us started off. How long would it take before they start to see just how tough it is and learn the value of our currency, but would they spend our taxes any the wiser? I doubt it.

Why do people who don’t understand how to generate money run our country and run our banks? This is a fundamentally flawed system. I don’t care what political or economic degrees today’s politicians have, the majority are unemployable in industry, and although there are signs that the latest regime are consulting business folk, it’s so late in the day.

When I grew up there were many people that we looked up to. Politicians were icons, Rock stars were Demi-Gods, business people were giants, the Monarchy were massive, Britain was the envy of the Western World.

So what’s changed?

When you get good at something, its easy to take your eye off the ball. Being a tiny island is one of the reasons I believe Britons have driven so hard throughout the ages. We have often been the underdog, but the bigger the challenge, the bigger the Britain. And we love a challenge.

But somewhere down the line, someone suggested that children shouldn’t try and win at sports day, black boards become chalkboards, politicians became wannabe pop stars and dancers and the country took its eye off the ball. And around the rest of the world, hunger was awakening a new driven generation, a generation who heard about Great Britain, the promised land. The kids from these deprived countries grew up trying harder with nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Back in the UK, our politicians argued amongst themselves, fighting for power and not for us.

What would William Pitt, or William Wilberforce make of today’s modern day politicians? What do the outside world make of the public spectacle that is televised Parliament. It’s a sobering thought, but these are our leaders bickering like Alan Partridge characters, whilst TV amplifies every flaw.

Meanwhile the rest of the world stepped up a gear, improving roads, schools, hospitals. And to the emerging world we exported Eastenders and Coronation Street and our serious BBC political show on a Sunday morning discusses the sexual preferences of the Ribble Valley Tory MP, Nigel Evans. Too much information over breakfast in my opinion. Have they forgotten we are British?

The result of all this, one day we stopped being Great and just like Mohammed Ali said “I am the greatest long before I ever was.” The reverse happened.  We became the UK. United maybe, just no longer Great Britain.

Then with the advent of the internet, all boundaries dropped and we were considerably weakened. Other countries with more competitive and cheaper workforces, better tax structures ensure that very quickly the balance of power is shifting.

And now, where do the great British public look for help?

Politicians have proven that we cannot trust in their system that they took advantage of. Stealing money through falsifying expense claims. Nick Clegg publicly “declared war” on media mogul Rupert Murdoch, a man who has singlehandedly paid hundreds of million pounds of tax, creating thousands of jobs in countries all over the world. Yet he remains in power? It appears murdering our great nation is now legal!

There is no voice or vehicle for change. We live in a semi-dictatorship dressed as a democracy.

If our country doesn’t balance its books, if we continue to wage war on countries who need help, if our schools, hospitals and once great institutions don’t join hands and work with each other with pride, the steady decline we are currently experiencing will simply gather momentum.

And as a businessman it saddens me because I have always worked hard to help improve people’s lives and I am proud of the amount I am able to contribute through my taxes. Yet, I heard a story yesterday of a business supplying the public sector flourishing massively after the announcements of government cuts. The departments they sell to couldn’t spend the money fast enough for fear of having the money taken away from them, whilst the commercial sector of the same business struggled, because quite sensibly, businesses tightened their purses.

The answer in my opinion is that its time to pull together. Labour and Conservative. Whatever your calling, there is a much bigger worry on the horizon. You don’t argue with the waiter about your steak as the Titanic sinks. You pull together, knowing that there will be casualties but with the respect for the difficult position these cuts will leave thousands if not millions of people in. But by making the UK more competitive, it will eventually kick start the economy and in time, jobs will be created. But ultimately if you suffocate the entrepreneurs with high taxes and zero support, the bigger businesses will disappear to sunnier more tax efficient destinations leaving less revenue.

There needs to be an attitude shift towards the spending of the money, with a focus of on “efficiency.” We cannot continue spending money that we don’t have, both as a country and personally. So we have to be sensible with what is left. It’s a healthy discipline everyone should employ. I recently went through our expenditure and managed to remove £1m of costs by some simple restructuring.

The result, we are more profitable, stronger for the journey ahead and the extra money bolsters exciting plans for the future. Cutting costs is not the end of the world, its the beginning. However, it needs to be done carefully and intelligently, ensuring minimum disruption.

Lawrence Jones
UKFast

I always say, “well I’ll be leaving work at about 7pm this evening.” I hear this question 3 times a week.

I think it is important to know where you are going. Businesses need direction. I am a great believer in goals and raised a laugh at the How-Do convention recently when I admitted my wife and I have a “50 year plan.”

But why not? I work on the principal that you need to know where you are going. What is wrong with mapping out your life to when you are in your 90′s. You are far more likely to get to a desired location or destination if you have thought about it prior to setting out. One thing is for sure, I know we will be together as we are both integral to it.

What happens when you go shopping without a clear understanding of what you want to come home with. My wife’s wardrobe was littered with rubbish when I first met her. Shopping was haphazard and directionless and she probably felt this was part of the fun. Ask her now how much more fun shopping is, especially when she brings me along.

So when do you sell your business? You have to have made something worth selling first of all. This needs a plan in its own right. When we set up UKFast we were tiny. The smallest company in the fastest growing business environment and for years no one knew we existed.

But we had a plan, and we were sticking to it. And when the internet bubble burst and businesses were dropping out of the sky affected by the calamity we just carried on regardless. And still no one really knew who we were.

And over the years we have readdressed the plan, yet we still continue to stick to it. Even during the recession we felt it was more important to keep firmly on track than to falter.

And as the business got bigger so do our goals. Our latest 5 year plan includes a target and MAP to hit £100m turnover. Now as this plan unfolds people are begging to take note of us.

The problem with our initial plans were they were too small, and therefore so was the outcome. You get what you focus on so in my opinion you are better aiming higher. If you miss you still are probably better off than you would have been if you’d been conservative.

But on the journey of growing your business, when do you sell? UKFast is already worth far more than we anticipated in the first plan we wrote. So surely I’d be happy to sell?

For me it is not about the money.  It is about the game. I love work. I love people and I love competition. If I didn’t work at UKFast what would I do? I’d be bored sitting on a beach for more than 22 minutes. I don’t drink and I am consumed by learning.

For me, you sell when you stop learning or when you cannot learn at the speed you need to, to continue driving your business in a controlled fashion.  I am fortunate to work alongside my wife. When we have problems we are able to tackle them together.

We are on a weekend business trip and I am writing this, she is tackling a “too heavy for me” book on Balanced scorecard management, whilst we fly from Rome to Amsterdam for our next meeting.

If you have a business partner that is this close you are able to take on much more than if you do it alone.

What is most fun about UKFast is that we are having to learn at such a pace it is incredibly exciting. We take it so seriously that each year we review our goals together in the Maldives and have the final week of a 3 week break where we then strategise and plan for the future.

We have literally hit every goal we have set, and the crazy ones which take time all have a MAP (massive action plan) and we monitor their progress.

So when do you sell you business? In my opinion only when you are bored. But if you are bored, simply pick up a book and find another challenge. There is always something out there waiting to tax our hungry minds. After all isn’t that why we are in business in the first place?

It is a good ice breaker and for those of us assessing the candidates, it starts to give you a snap shot of what is to come.

A young lady stood up, and I don’t have her name to hand and she described her momentous achievement as creating a small shop on ebay and selling a variety of things.

When she sat down, I immediately asked, “so why are you here?” At first I think she might of felt that I was criticising her at least I hope she realises that I was singling her out because she was clearly different.

Out of the 40 to 50 soon to be leaving education, she truly had done something momentous. She has taken a small amount of cash, purchased something, found a route to market, built a shop however rudimentary and started marketing a business. This woman, because in my eyes, she is no longer a young lady she is a business woman.

Now that I write this blog, I realise that I need to follow up  her progress and make sure she is given encouragement. So often entrepreneurs are discouraged from school, university throughout careers. Usually by people who wanted to do things themselves yet, they never followed through.

If you fall in to any of these categories, it is never too late. My parents left their jobs in their 40′s and bought a run down hotel. Some in the family described it as a midlife crisis. Even I, the eternal optimist questioned their sanity of selling a beautiful family home and giving up great careers to become owners of a semi-dilapidated hotel.

20 years on, how wrong was I and what a hotel. They now have the hotels on either side and it sleeps 100 people. It has an awesome reputation and a massive returning customer base.

Ironically the kick that triggered my father was doing my first years accounts. After tax, it transpired I had earned more than my mother who had been teaching for 20 years.

Last year a young lady came to be interviewed for the job of PA. As soon as I read her psychometric test results, I knew that she would make an excellent personal assistant. However I also realised that  she had the perfect profile of a fledgling business person.

Her test also identified that she would benefit from traveling and it sensed that she was in a bit of a dilemma. I confronted her on this matter and sure enough she was torn between “going travelling” with her boyfriend and starting a job.

I suggested that she should be decisive and as her profile suggested a job working for someone else may just drive her bananas.She just needed a little motivation.

Last week I got a telephone call asking for an appointment to meet with her and her now fiancee. They were back from their holiday, and they had formed a solid business idea and they were putting a plan together. They wanted my advice. I was honoured to meet with her and excited to be a small part in giving her the confidence for her to choose the correct direction of her life.

After a a couple of hours, it turned out, she and her fiancee are about to become UKFast clients and it is looking likely that we will designing and hosting their software to run their new business idea.
If you have a dream, dont lie in bed and procrastinate, or talk about your venture to your pals for years and years. Get a pen and paper and start writing lists, start goal setting. Start organising what you need for your new future. And OK, if it fails, guess what, you pick yourself up, brush yourself down, remember the lessons of the failure and start again. You keep doing this until you get it right.

If a baby is struggling to learn how to walk, do we give up on the baby? Does the baby give up? Never! They keep standing up and falling down until they perfect the art.

Yet as adults this is drummed out of us. We become fearful of what our peers think. A great entrepreneur is born out of simply not caring what those around them think. This in my opinion is why so many dysfunctional kids succeed where clever folk fail. A dysfunctional child is reminded all through their life how much of a failure they are. So it becomes easier to go it alone than be reminded of this throughout a professional career.

My fathers favourite line which stuck with me was “son, you will not even be able to hold down a bin mans job” it was said so much I believed him. So when the time came I did not dare attempt to get a job. Instead I became self employed by default.

All the big entrepreneurs that I know tell a similar story.

Ignore teachers, parents and your peers. Get out and have a go! What is the worst that can happen. Especially whilst you are young and in a recession. In a climate like today’s there isn’t a more perfect time to cut your teeth.

Good luck!

So why a sport sponsorship deal?

It was not an easy decision spending millions of pounds of a hard earned marketing budget in one go, with the recession still firmly gripping society however I felt it important to take the opportunity and be decisive. Its a 3 year deal and when an opportunity as large as this comes up, in my opinion you grab it with both hands.

It is also important to look beyond the economic downturn. The credit crunch will not last forever and it is important to stand by what you believe in. For those fans who go to all the home games, you will know that UKFast gets a mention every time Charlie Hodgson scores. A few seasons back, he injured himself and although we were offered a replacement player, we stuck with Charlie. He came back, stronger, fitter and in my opinion is one of the greatest fly-halves in today’s tough game.

So when McAfee wavered, I made sure we had a window where we were able to negotiate without interruption.

I have had a few chats with Brian Kennedy, and he is grateful for the support and for the fact that there are others in the Manchester and Northwest business community who understand and believe in what the Sharks are doing.

It is the work the Sharks do team building in schools and with kids which sealed it for us. It is so easy to disengage and get transfixed on your financial goals and loose site of what is really important. Gail and I put as much emphasis on hitting personal goals as we do the financial ones, and this had been born from a discussion a decade ago, when First Software were on the shirts “one day, we’ll be main sponsors.”

10 years on, the Sharks, UKFast partnership is more than a logo on a shirt. It gives us an opportunity to say thank you to Manchester and the surrounding community. It is the fun part of being an entrepreneur which enables us to do something as exiting as this.

Just cant wait for the season to start now!

Mid recession, with no clear understanding of how long is the tunnel or how dark it might get, I am drawn back to the hypnotic clouds.

There are some things in life you can’t predict or influence, “weather” you want to or not. But do these unpredictable elements stop you from going about your normal business or day to day lives. Of course not. Only in extreme cases, but even these are “blips” and they cannot halt progress.

I am reminded of Earl Nightingale and his anology of the ship. He describes the damage caused by a ship in a harbor cut loose without a captain, crew, charts or destination. He then describes the same vessel, but this time with a captain, a crew a destination and therefore a purpose. The vessel will reach it’s destination every time. It will seldom be on the exact course, the currents and wind will do their best to divert them. However their collective purpose is stronger than the outside elements.

Just like the plane overhead. It’s destination firmly programmed in to the captain’s head and the onboard computers. The elements are constantly changing, but the clear path is set.

I set a path a few years ago, and every day I tread closer towards my goal. Some days slower than others I might add, but I carry on unperturbed. One of my intentions was to continue learning in order to keep myself interested and able to manage our rapidly growing responsibilities. And even though I am forced to change my location as the rain starts to spit, my vision is not spoiled by the change of scenes.

Far from it in this case. One of my goals is to surround myself with successful people so I can learn from them. I think my wife took this too literally and booked us into a place called The Lodge. Sir Richard Branson’s private Ski Chalet in Verbier Switzerland.

Although Richard isn’t here this week it is a real eye opener to meet some of his team and to see how real everything he has created is. And to realise  just how achievable it is to set and follow similar goals.

So we take a couple of hours a day on the slopes carving our future strategies in our heads before cataloguing, discussing, arguing, debating our future in these sumptuous surroundings.

I realise  that not everyone can afford to take time out in such lavish style. However you do need to take time out! However you do it, it can be in a garden shed as long as you get uninterrupted time to yourself. The important thing is you have the time to reflect and think about where you have come from, what you have learned, and where you want to get to and what you might encounter on the journey ahead.

Planning and knowing your outcome in the reverse order are the two most important factors that separate the Bransons from the Brainless.

“So where do I go and how do I do it?”

Personally I always head for the mountains. At home in Wales, we have been lucky enough to find ourselves a house and lake in the Snowdonia National Park. It is a place where mobile phones aren’t banned, they simply wont work!

Before the Lakehouse , I’d put on a rucksack, pack it full of beer, squeeze in a tent and enough provisions and off I’d go. My first weekend away with Gail who is now my wife, was in a serious thunderstorm where we camped at the top lake on Snowdon.

It rained so hard that breakfast turned to soup and we had to pitch the tent on a steep slope to stop it from filling with water.

But I’d set myself a goal years earlier, I’d find the perfect partner when I was still poor and she would be resilient, determined and kind.

I got more than I bargained for. She indeed became my partner in every sense, wife and business. Yes she had all the traits, and my friends who know me would laugh saying, she needs to be resilient and determined to put up with me!

So what do I mean when I say I got more than I bargained for? Well, I’d set the goal to find Gail whilst I was still poor. A fundamental flaw in goal setting.

“You have to be careful what you wish for” my Gran always used to say. She must have been on a Tony Robbins course!

What I should have set was to simply find the perfect woman. As a result, I remained “poor” and unsuccessful until I met her.

This is not superstition. This is simple programming of your brain. Whatever you ask for you get, whatever you focus on you will feel. This is how seriously I take goal setting now.

To give you an example of a goal I set as a child, “one day I will have a house in the mountains by a lake.”  I also set a burning desire to have a home that was big enough for everyone in my family to enjoy.

Gail found the perfect place amazingly less than 2 miles from the summit of snowdon, with an estate that has a 250 acre lake and the properties combined are big enough to sleep 28 people.

Coincidence? No, I don’t think so. I remember not being able to afford the fee at the Snowdon car park, plus I have too many cases of other goals for this to be coincidence.

It is worth noting that every super successful entrepreneur that I know follows the same key principals. Be very descriptive about what it is you intend on achieving, be bold and don’t hold back.

So instead of trying to switch off from your business at the weekend, get in your car or on a plane. Get a note book and pen and take some time out to pat yourself on the back for all that you have achieved and focus on Stage II.

Your business journey consists of many rungs on a very tall ladder. You determine how high you go. You can get off at any time if you get vertigo like Nixon of MoneySuperMarket.com, or you can keep climbing new ladders. Or in Bransons case, when you run out of ladders to climb on this earth, go Galactic. All I can say in his wake, is “Go Branson!”

And to fellow aspiring entrepreneurs like myself, never stop learning, never stop pushing, and certainly never stop trying.

Nothing should distract you from the path you set and don’t be hypnotised by events surrounding the economy. Your purpose will outlive any economic downturn.

I blogged a few weeks back after Rob Williams from Dolphin Music  died on the mountains where we are now.It is humbling to be reminded that life is so short. So get up, stop procrastinating.

All you need is pen, paper and you have a purpose.

On the high street decreases in spending are evident. You may well spot boarded up shops and buildings to let, which leads to concerns for the economic climate. However this is much more likely just to be due to the natural shift in consumer activity.

The offline to online shift has been taking place for a number of years. More people than ever before are shopping online – in 2007, e-shoppers spent £370m online in just 24 hours on the second Monday in December. And the total spend for the three months leading to Christmas was estimated a massive £17.6bn – up 82% on the same period for 2006.

Online spending is predicted to reach £162bn by 2020 and make up 40% of retail spending. This clearly shows a shift in consumer shopping habits.

Personally, I think not.

Companies that make their employees redundant to save money over the period of recession may be able to balance their books but they don’t think of the long term consequences. The downturn isn’t going to last forever and when in a year or so the economy regains its strength, these companies will have whittled down their pool of talent.

Apart from this, companies that have grown and been successful until this period of economic slowdown also face losing valued members of staff. Team members that have helped the company grow and move forward in the past. Ask yourself – if you lose these staff will you be able to drive your business at the same rate? What is the potential for damage to the company culture?

When organisations choose to batten down the hatches and cut spend they stop focusing on their forward growth and start talking themselves into doom and gloom. All the talk of the failing economy simply allows managers to make allowances for the company’s poor performance – once again causing slower growth. The long term result of this is one of deeper recession, caused by the businesses themselves.

Whilst the newspapers bemoan plummeting house prices and wail about the soaring cost of living, our spirit becomes downtrodden and people forget what it is to fight.

Think positive. Things aren’t as bad as they seem in the hyped-up media. Businesses can still thrive in the current economic climate. Mass psychology determines the directions of markets in the same way mob mentality determines whether a Big Brother contestant is liked or not.

Because people sell as soon as they think a market is going down, it will decrease in value. Market recession is a self fulfilling prophesy.

The rate of growth in the economy is slowing – there’s no doubt about it. But it couldn’t continue at its previous rate. Meanwhile, the poisonous effects of the banking sector on the economy’s current state is largely self-inflicted by the greed of banks freely lending money. And although changes are visible on the high-street, with shops shutting down, this has been happening for quite some time. It is nothing new.

Despite the credit crunch, the economy of Britain is still on the rise. At the recent 0.3% increase it is weak by usual standards, but we are by no means in negative territory at this time. Sadly we are likely to talk ourselves into one though.