Category Archives: Small business progress

Joking aside

Choked up, streaming eyes, gasping for breath… No, dear hearts, not evidence of the widespread January lurg, or the intro to a tedious “sickness and small business” saga. These, my dears, are simply the symptoms of helpless and hysterical laughter. You know, the kind that’s utterly impossible to get a grip of. The kind that has

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Silence is olden

Wrinkles, a spare tire, sag and spread. A light sprinkling of liver spots, the sprouting of some rather robust facial hair, a pair of creaky knees, a brace of aching hips, and the distinct droop of a once proud embonpoint. Another year is about to pass into the history books, adding another chapter to the litany of advancing

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Progression confession

For me, there is no one direction. But for clarification, I’m not talking daft boys bands here. As if. I’m an old punk rocker, remember. I don’t do boy bands. By this I don’t mean that I’m veering wildly from one entrepreneurial idea to another. Nope, the basic principle has stayed the same. I help people

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Wishful thinking

Once more unto the small business breach, dear friends. The sun has set on Word Up’s annual summer sojourn. And amazingly, for a Scottish staycation, there was actually some sun. For two whole days. But not in a row, dinnae be daft. Annoyingly, given the desperate need for a break from the trials of entrepreneurial

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Pack mentality

  If safety, security and water cooler chat feature high on your career wishlist, then sorry old chum, but sole trading just ain’t a path you want to be wandering down. Working as a lone wolf is exactly what is says on the tin. Not the wolf part – although I’ve met a few vulpine

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Purple reign

Sexists, racists, fuddy-duddies and intransigent old farts, look away now – I’m in no mood for soft soapery. On second thoughts, naw. You lot better keep right on reading because it’s time to wake up and smell the multicultural coffee. It’s time for you lot to get with the programme or find yourself in a provincial, economic and

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Sector sectarianism

Taking sides. We all do it. And we Scots have got our side-taking skills down to a fine art. Fence-sitters we ain’t. We love a good rammy, a ding-dong, and a heated debate. We’ll argue ’til we’re blue (or indeed, green) in the fizzog, and stick to our side of the story long after the

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Heavy mettle

Business, it’s like childbirth. Well alright then, commerce is heehaw like childbirth, but there certainly are a couple of uncomfortable parallels. Firstly, if you knew the truth about what running a business is really like you’d have to think very seriously indeed about whether you’d go through it or not. And then, of course, there’s the exhaustion.

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Sod’s law

Cut the crap. Basically, that’s been my commercial mantra since setting out on this sole trading malarkey two years ago (two whole years and not bankrupt yet, whew). Tell it like it really is in small business – highs and lows, warts and all – that was the simple objective for this commerce confessional. I

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Business bumpsadaisy

Who am I, exactly? What the hell am I doing? Nope, I’m not in the grip of some mind-bending existential crisis, no time for that, but I’ve been doing something of an entrepreneurial stocktake these last few weeks. And the bottom line is this. I’ve been kidding myself on, big style. Aye, it makes uncomfortable writing,

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