Tag Archives: sole trader

Full steam ahead, good ship small biz

Pop the corks, hang the bunting high and hoist the mainsail, it’s my birthday! Well, not my birthday, dear knows I’ve banged on enough about my recent half century coming of age – at this rate I’ll need to join the ranks of the right royal, and have an official birthday as well as one

Continue Reading →

The inside track

Expert? Who, me? Expert in heehaw. Or at least that’s what my instant reaction was when introduced recently at a client’s board meeting as a “media expert”. S’funny being called an expert, and brings the self-effacing Scot in me rushing right up to the surface, but expertise is all relative, innit? Compared to the good people

Continue Reading →

Sick as a parrot

Sole trading? It’s enough to make me sick. Picture the scene. It’s half an hour before you’re due to head off to deliver some work for a client, when the words that strike fear and loathing into the very soul of every sole trader or small business come calling. No, not “hello, this is HMRC,

Continue Reading →

Ageing, with attitude

Cardi, slippers and a wee sweet sherry? No, ta. I’m not quite ready for mind-numbing middle age. Or maybe I’m just kidding myself on. I’ve got just about enough marbles left to be well aware that I ain’t no spring chicken no more – the harsh truth of the matter is that I am well and truly

Continue Reading →

A summer survival strategy

Two days into the school summer holidays, and my nerves are in tatters already… I’ve been fretting for weeks about how exactly I am going to carry on at the commercial coalface whilst the Word Up Wean is mumping, moaning, and generally getting under my feet whilst school’s out for summer. See, I’m not one

Continue Reading →

The fickleness of feedback

The customer’s always right, right? Wrong. Or at least, the customer’s opinion has to be taken with a large pinch of salt. Because frankly my dears, who can really be bothered with feedback? But before you come over all high and mighty, get down off that high horse. I don’t mean that the feedback I

Continue Reading →

Liar, liar pants on fire

Only kidding. Kidding myself, and everyone else, on. Because, you see, I’ve been telling fibs. Not wee white lies, but great big porkies. Not the kind of lies that are going to get me hauled up by the polis, or land me in the dock – I’m not a politician, a tabloid editor, a banker,

Continue Reading →

In (faint) praise of partisan parents

Annoy Your Kids. Surely one of the most important inclusions on any parent’s job description? However, it’s a bit rich for me to cast aspersions on anyone else’s parenting skills, seeing as I often rate pretty damn low on the Word Up Wean’s goodwill to all mumkind scale. So please forgive me when I moan

Continue Reading →

Bleeding hearts and business

Take your bleeding heart and stuff it. Well okay then, that’s not exactly what a fellow traveller in small business was told recently by a certain gentleman from the dinosaur school of wheeling and dealing. But this particular gentleman did mention that my mate was unusual for someone in business because she has a social

Continue Reading →

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

Continue Reading →

Tagged with

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

Archives