Category Archives: What’s the Word

Bringing down the career curtain

Exactly one year ago this week, I hung up my headphones, flicked the On Air switch off, picked up my P45, and headed out of the door at the great glass shoebox that is BBC Scotland’s Pacific Quay HQ. It was a momentous milestone in my working life, one which made me feel very weird

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The slovenly side effects of start up

It was a shaft of spring sunlight that nearly caused my own wee waterworks to start sprinkling this week. Admittedly, I was a bit broken after a few days of particularly tough graft and nowhere near sufficient shut-eye. I had a horrid headache and burny eyes, a queasy tummy and a wee bit of the

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Praise be for rough-edged role models

Polished professionals, business behemoths and the fabulously famous don’t mean diddly squat to me. Well okay then, I might make an exception for David Bowie, but when it comes to role models, whether in business, personal or social life, I like mine real, and preferably with a few rough edges. Because for me, fame doesn’t

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Small business signs of spring

I wandered, lonely as a cloud. Well actually, I wasn’t wandering, I was running. Running through the monsoon conditions that have been sweeping in over the wilds of west Glasgow at regular (nay, incessant) intervals lately. And I wasn’t lonely, though there were clouds – great big black bruisers of nasty nimbostratus. But I was

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Wanna be in my band of believers?

Belief breaks my heart. Or, more accurately, the lack of it. In one week alone I have witnessed two smashing specimens of Scottishness show a really saddening lack of self-belief. One didn’t even want to big up his business. A business, by the way, which is well worth shouting about. I’m far from the full

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Offspring versus enterprise

What is it about women and wee yins? Or to be more maternally and entrepreneurially correct, why is that women in business tend to make so many apologies for being a mother? Let’s set out my own stall right from the off – in my business I’m not in the business of saying sorry for the

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Business is like buses

We’re all doomed. No, I’ve not gone and joined a group of end of the world adventists, but I definitely had a Private Frazer moment recently.  For a couple of days I simply couldn’t shrug off a certain despair. There I was in early January, looking over the vast tundra of emptiness that was my

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A healthy dose of small business self-improvement cynicism

It’s not that I’m perfect or anything. As if. Indeed, I’m all for learning and growing, and admitting my flaws, but small business self-improvement brings out the full-on snarling cynic in me. And it’s not just small business self-improvement that gets my goat, it’s the whole self-betterment snake oil shebang with its cultish converts that

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Self employment and the fine art of self pity

Woeful and wabbit. Wrung oot and wallowing. Ah yes, this week we at Word Up have been feeling well and truly sorry for ourselves. It might be nothing more than the January blues. Dear knows, there’s nothing like the sound of the relentless rain rattling off the Word Up windaes to bring on general gloom

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Cold calling collywobbles

There’s nothing like lifting the handset to try and sell something to a complete stranger for bringing on a case of the commercial collywobbles. The very thought of it makes me sweat and feel ever so slightly sick. Because, when it comes to finding new clients, the fine art of cold calling is something we

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bbc business business start up children clients commerce confidence COVID-19 enterprise entrepreneur entrepreneurial family Glasgow mental health pandemic parenthood poverty radio Scotland Scottish self employment small business sole trader startup work life balance

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