Phew, that was hard work!

Phew – that was hard work!

Just thought I’d write up the events of the last couple of days, before I forget!
I’m really pleased with how much we achieved, but it wasn’t all plain sailing.

The biggest issue was about permission from all the various authorities, which we thought we’d sorted weeks ago, but we were nowhere near sorted. There were so many organisations we didn’t even know were involved or that we had to contact!

Here are all the parties that have some authority in the area we were working (MEN Arena/Victoria station and surrounding areas):

MEN Arena incl their security/safety staff
Victoria Station management and Network Rail
Landlord of the building the Arena is in (SMG Europe) and their agent (DTZ)
Manchester City Council & Greater Manchester Police
NCP Car Parks (with direct access to the Arena)
CBeebies show promoter
BBC Children’s TV

I ask you! We had cleared things with some of them, but others just kept coming out of the woodwork! On the first day, (Thursday) we were refused permission from the landlord to stand in an area that was considered a fire exit, but were given permission on Friday morning to go inside the Arena foyer area itself (which is still their land), only after they’d cleared it with the Arena safety staff (who keep track of numbers of personnel in the building) for fire safety purposes.

Great news, eh! Well so it started, but then we were stopped from handing out crayons to the children going into the concert, because the Arena staff were worried that they would crayon all over the walls and furniture. I was completely dumbfounded but had to obey them and we were told to come back after the concert, and we could hand out to children/parents leaving the concert. This also applied to those other entrances from outside where we were handing out crayons. So we went back at the end, and carried on, taking care just to hand out to those leaving the first concert, and not those arriving for the next concert!

All going well, then we were told that our permission had been revoked. By this time I’d had enough, and wasn’t just going to obey them, I needed to know their reasons, and had to speak to the decision maker. After speaking to the Safety Manager at the Arena, I was told it was actually the promoter who was upset because he said we were taking business away from their merchandising stands. I countered by stating that as we were handing out to those exiting the Arena, they had already passed all the merchandising opportunities, so it wasn’t a valid argument. And then I got told that it was actually the BBC and the Head of Children’s Entertainment that wasn’t allowing us to do it, because the parents may think we have something to do with the BBC or have been recommended by them. What?!! Would parents think the same of all the traders selling cowboy hats and sparkly shiny things too? Because believe me, I’ve bought some of these things (at CBeebies Tweenies concert last year) and the quality is extremely suspect. Which certainly isn’t something you could say about our business. The crayons all have the necessary safety mark and the website certainly won’t cause anyone any harm.

Well at that point, I just gave up. I’d had enough of fighting, and to be honest we’d probably already managed to distribute 6,000 of the 7,500 cards we’d brought over the two days. Plus the fact it was absolutely torrential rain outside, and the girls were soaked.

I reckon we covered over 50% of those attending the 4 concerts in total. So that’s not bad. And it also proved to me that the figures of attendees that we were told by our PR company (before we parted company) weren’t correct.

When I’m reflecting on this, the thing that astonishes me about it all, is that no-one seems to know who you have to get permission from. I suppose if you are a large company and do this type of promotion all the time, then you know automatically what you need and from whom. But it was our first time, and as a small company, I had to do the legwork myself. Our PR company had no idea, it was obviously not something they’d done before for any of their clients – another reason why I’m glad they’re no longer acting for us, they just don’t have the specific experience we can benefit from. The promotions agency we hired the staff from, told us it was our responsibility to obtain all the necessary permissions. And I just got passed from pillar to post when trying to speak to these organisations. I think we were a bit of an anomaly for them. We weren’t trading/selling, or collecting donations. And we didn’t have a large fixed stand or were interviewing people. We must have had a bit of a novel idea!

However, on the positive side, we got a great response from parents and kids. They were delighted to be receiving packs of crayons and were quite happy to take the cards to see the details of the competition. One telltale sign is that over the 2 days, when I was circulating around the whole of the station, outside on the streets, the car park and in the Arena itself, I only picked up one card off the floor. All the rest had been taken home.

So hopefully the parents really appreciated the crayons, the kids made good use of them, thus allowing the parents to relax (“…..& now you can relax” is our strapline, and we included it on the crayon packs) and over the festive period they’ll remember/be bothered/have access to enter our competition.

Well, more news of that in the New Year when our web programmer can tell us how many people have registered their email address on our holding page. I'll also tell you then exactly how much it cost us to do this promotion, just so you know!

Next week is mega busy again. Got to get more content entered, as the final deadline is now mid Jan for media & editors. And we’ve got to prepare our promotional mailing to referrers. Lots more address/contacts research to do, sticky labels to print and envelopes to stuff! And this is twice over! Once for the jigsaw and once for the invitation that is being sent a couple of days later. The first mailing has to be ready to be posted on Tue 3 January, and second one on Thursday 5 January.

We also have to prepare the media packs and I want to do a newsletter for our team and other stakeholders, to update them on all recent events – which have been numerous! Not a very restful time planned then, but very very exciting, and I wouldn’t have it any other way!

Now I'm off to peel vegetables, wrap presents and write cards in time for 11 people descending on us tomorrow for Christmas dinner. By the way, Luke had a lovely birthday party yesterday - amazing how you can knock up a buffet for 20 people an hour after you've finished upsetting the BBC!

And I didn't mention how much Ross & I are both aching! Poor Ross, he had to go to work last night aswell! Our feet, legs, arms, shoulders and back are all sore. We can't say we haven't struggled for our cause! And if that's anything to go by, we deserve to be successful eventually.

Kirsty

I'm so nervous!

Well this is it, it’s the morning of Thursday 22nd December and the first day of our promotional work outside the CBeebies concerts in Manchester. This is an ideal target market for us, because these are parents/carers who:

- have pre-school children (and therefore several more years before their kids are 11, our cut off age); and

- have bothered to find out about the concerts (therefore are likely to be internet users or research activities for kids); and

- are willing to pay for their kids’ entertainment

A couple of months ago we were discussing this event at length, weighing up all the pros and cons of doing it, compared to the cost, and eventually, after much deliberating and soul searching, we decided to go ahead with the promotion.

Our aims of today and tomorrow are:

- to make our market aware of our brand and the website’s launch date
- to drive people to the holding page (www.entertainthekids.com) to register their email address, so we can email them when we launch. We are trying to build up our database.

So we had to think of something that would get attention, would be favourably received, and would meet our aims. At first we were just going to hand out crayons (kids need occupying before the concert starts and in the interval, and will probably have a programme with some colouring pages in it), but after discussing this we realised that just presenting them with our brand, wasn’t sufficient to get them to go to the website. So then we decided that we would also hand out a card (business card size, so they can put it in their purse, pocket etc, and hopefully not just throw it away) giving details of a competition.

Even this took ages to decide upon. We wanted to make the prize something that people would value, and would be bothered to enter, because there was a really good chance of them winning – that’s why we’ve offered 50 free memberships as prizes. And we put a deadline on it of 1 January 2006, because it’s a memorable date, people will hopefully get chance to do it over the Christmas period sometime, and yet it instills some urgency in them to get on with it!

So you can see an awful lot of thought has gone into this promotion.
We’ve had 10,000 packs of crayons delivered (see last week’s diary), and 7,500 cards (which look great by the way – thank you Andy at Fluid Creativity!).

We originally looked to family and friends to help us find some volunteers to distribute the crayons, but in the end decided to do it professionally. So we’ve booked 6 promotional staff from Oz Promotions in Manchester, who so far have proved to be very professional. I’ve got the names and phone numbers of the team, just in case we can’t find them at our meeting point. We have allocated 2 staff to each of the 3 possible entrances to the venue, and as some are outside, I’m praying it doesn’t rain today or tomorrow!

I’ve packed 8 bags with crayons and cards, and have bought Santa hats for everyone. We had a nightmare with branding the bags (again, see earlier diary), so decided in the end not to bother, and we are just giving them plain black bags with long shoulder straps so they can put them over their shoulder and across their chest. So the Santa hats are being used instead to get some attention. The car is packed with spare crayons and cards, in case we run out and I envisage Ross and I will be circling around the team filling their bags up during the day.

I’ve printed off our home page for each of the team, so I can brief them a bit about who we are and what the website will do, and I also think I’ll offer them a bonus if we hit a target of emails registered by 1 January 2006 – just need to confirm this with Ross later this morning.

So here we are. The first big promotional event we’ve done, which we’ve spent a fair bit of our budget on, and I’m very very nervous! It's the first time that our assumptions about our market will be tested. Are we thinking the same way they are? Have we made the correct decisions? Will it pay off financially (which we won't know until after launch) or will it be a complete waste of money, time and energy?

I will update you again in the New Year, when we’ll know how successful the promotion was, and then we’ll be right on top of our Preview Evenings to potential referrers and our presentations to the media.

By the way it’s my father in law’s birthday today, and Luke’s 2nd birthday tomorrow – not a busy time at all really!! Stop the world, I want to get off! Wish us luck! And Happy Christmas!

Kirsty

How to save the planet!

I think the best ideas to save the planet will be long-term - getting the next generation involved so that they just become used to doing things that are environmentally friendly. It worked in Australia for the 'slip, slop, slap' health promotion, and it has been proven time and time again that you need to change the kids' attitudes before you'll make any major difference in society.

So here's ten ideas below for children to get involved with, whether they're your kids, your nieces/nephews or neighbour's children.

1. With your children, build a compost heap and recycle your kitchen and garden waste

2. Show them how worms break the waste down, by building a wormery in a plastic bottle, so they can observe the worms at work

3. Give your children responsibility for splitting the recycling piles between newspaper, plastic bottles, cans etc. Help them decorate and colour the boxes that they are kept in, labelling each one for each type of waste

4. Make it an 'event' to go to the recycling station every week - same time, same place, so it just becomes a habit. Preferably with a small 'treat' afterwards, so they link it with positive things

5. Encourage a love of nature wherever possible - collect natural materials and make a collage, or make home-made environmentally friendly cards, make bird feeders and nesting boxes

6. Make your own recycled wrapping paper and always try to buy recycled paper and cards

7. Teach your children about organic growing - start with growing carrot tops in water, and cress/grass in eggshells, then progress to giving them a patch of land or a container tub to grow their own flowers or vegetables without using chemicals

8. Water is a lifeline for sanitation, hygiene and health. Children should learn how vital it is to those in developing countries and how lucky we are in UK, yet we waste so much. Did you know that the average person in the UK uses 135 litres of water every day, but the average person in the developing world uses 10 litres of water every day for their drinking, washing and cooking. This is the same amount used in the average flush of a UK toilet. On current trends over the next 20 years humans will use 40% more water than they do now (source www.WaterAid.org). See if they can guess how much water is in a bath, or get them to carry water from one container to another, on their heads, just like they have to do in many parts of Africa and Asia.
9. Conserving energy to minimise carbon dioxide emissions. According to the Energy Saving Trust (www.est.org.uk), each household in the UK creates around six tonnes of carbon dioxide a year which is enough to fill six hot air balloons (10 metres in diameter). So involve the children in doing some small but effective things - If everyone put an insulation jacket on their hot water tank, we'd cut carbon dioxide emissions by 600,000 tonnes - enough to fill around 120,000 hot air balloons. If everyone in the UK installed one energy saving light bulb, we'd save enough carbon dioxide to fill the Albert Hall nearly 2,000 times.

10. Plant a tree to encourage oxygenation, home for our wildlife and to build a lovely environment around us. The Tree Council hold special days if you want to join an organised event, or if you want to set up a family tree scheme by helping to build a new forest. www.treecouncil.org.uk

Kirsty

What has happened to customer service?

Written on 18 December 2005
I’ve had a very annoying week this week. I really feel that customer service is a thing of the past for most companies, especially when their customer is a small start-up company, who is really having to watch every penny.

I can see that the business we are giving to others is obviously minimal compared to the level of orders they usually get from established businesses, but how short-sighted are they? How do they know that in 12 months’ time we could be making the same large orders, when we are more established. Well you always remember who’s let you down, so bear that in mind when you are dealing with customers yourself!

There’s been a few incidents this week which have caused the above rant. And after the PC World fiasco last week, I was in no mood for them!

Firstly, I rang the printing supplier on Tuesday. We had travelled over to St Helens (Merseyside, a good 90 minute journey for me) the previous week to see the (supposed final) artwork and the bag samples for some screen printing we wanted doing on some bags for the promotional work we are doing on 22nd and 23rd December. When we got there, the artwork hadn’t been done, in fact what had been very hastily printed off was something that bore no resemblance to our logo at all, and the colours were completely different. Now I remember how much care we took with our logo, branding and the colours, and I’m quite protective of it now I think we’ve got it right! So I was not impressed at all. One bag we should’ve seen a sample of hadn’t arrived, and the other bag just wasn’t suitable. So we left it with them that they would email me the final artwork and the quote, for both the bags and 2 fleeces we left with them, and came away. I should’ve received this email on Monday. So by Tuesday, nothing had arrived, and I rang them up. The salesman I had spoken to wasn’t in, so I was put through to a printer (I think, but he may have been a designer, he didn’t say who he was). He told me it wasn’t possible to screen print in the number of colours we needed (3) onto the bags/fleeces. Not sure why, I didn’t even stop to ask. I was furious. Why had no-one rung me? We were up against a tight deadline, and I’d just been ignored. Charming.

Second incident, again due to printers. We were supposed to collect some promotional cards when we met our mentor on Thursday (which itself went very well, but more of that later), as they have done the design and dealt with the printers. Despite giving us a due date of Thursday, they then informed us that the cards were still drying, and so they wouldn’t arrive until Friday. Apparently, the factory was too cold, and the drying was taking longer than anticipated. I ask you, British Rail and leaves on the track ring any bells? Okay, so not a disaster, and they did arrive as promised on Friday. But still a bit niggling.

Then on Thursday evening we had to do to the UPS depot to collect 10,000 packs of crayons, again for our promotional event. Now I’ll give UPS their due. I’m very impressed with their service. We had missed the attempted delivery on Thursday morning, so rather than them attempt a second delivery on Friday, we arranged to collect them from the depot. And our promotional supplier, Angus Limelight, helped us out with tracking numbers etc, so we could arrange this. He really tried his best and I thank him for this.

However, when I looked at the crayons I was a bit disappointed. The branded packs were smashing, really good quality. But the crayons themselves were about 2cm shorter than the box, and when they were laid side by side, they were quite a bit narrower than the box. It looked like we’d put the wrong crayons in the box.

After speaking to Angus Limelight about this, he told me it was really difficult to get crayons in such small quantities, and the choice around the world was very limited. I appreciate to him, and worldwide crayon suppliers, that 10,000 packs is small-fry, but to us it was a massive investment. And it took a lot of discussion and research before we made the decision to go ahead with this promotional event, simply because of the cost to us. (see diary post on November 10th).

I suppose I blame myself, because I didn’t ask enough questions about the product. I knew the size of the box, but just assumed it had been measured to match the size of the crayons. Well I’ll know in future to ask a lot more, and think of every possible thing that may not be as I expect.

I think the motto here is just to keep on top of your suppliers. Confirm every detail of your purchase order, put everything in writing, and keep chasing them and double-checking delivery dates until it arrives. Insist on good customer service, even if it means you make yourself a nuisance. Good suppliers won’t mind because they’ll realise the possible lifetime value of your business with them.

The last things we’ve already ordered, for our preview evenings in January, are due to arrive on Tuesday and Thursday next week. I’ll be really hassling about them keeping those delivery dates, because if we miss them, we are right on top of Christmas, and I bet most suppliers are closing down on Friday. We have a lot to do over the Christmas break, and we really need these deliveries to plan ahead for the first week in January.

Some excellent news this week. We met again with our proposed ‘mentor’, and went through the nitty-gritty of the deal with him. Everything seems fine. Just one minor change to the documents for tax reasons, and he should be signing this week. So more about him and his planned role in our business next week.

Kirsty

Let's get on with it!

Written on 9 December 2005
This week has definitely been much less traumatic than last, and looking back on it, I actually feel we have made some good progress.

Technology issues at the weekend. We really needed to upgrade our scanner as it just wasn’t performing well and was causing us some real inefficiencies. I roped in Ross, as his technical mind is far superior to mine. After a visit to PC World, we were exasperated! No-one there could tell us about the scanners’ functions, capabilities or what all the technical jargon meant.

They were busy, and, as always it’s a nightmare trying to find anyone to help. We were passed from pillar to post, from a salesman who knew nothing about scanners at all, to someone who was just responsible for demonstrating and flogging a 3 in 1 printer/fax/scanner, which was just too slow for our needs, and anyhow we only wanted a scanner. He then sent us to the business customers’ area, and of course there was no-one around. So we managed to find a manager who was supposedly directing staff to the required customers, so we waited, and waited and waited, and then walked out. One hour wasted and PC World have lost a sale.

Thankfully Ross knew of an independent company called Scan Computers, who luckily are based just down the road. So we went there instead. Should’ve gone their in the first place. We thought PC World would have a broader range and someone we could ask questions to, but obviously not. Scan helped us out, only had a few models in stock, but we found what we needed and came away much happier. I finally managed to install it on Thursday, as I’d just not had the time without Luke around, before then. It works great. Now I just need to get my memory on my computer upgraded, because it’s starting to plod.

Also had a great coup when we got an email from Denise Robertson, the agony aunt on This Morning. We’d written to her back in September to see if she liked the idea of our site, and she’s finally replied with some fantastic comments. So they’re going straight onto the holding page, along with Kym Marsh’s comments!

We’ve also managed to subscribe (courtesy of Venturepoint, the company organising the MEN Venture Awards), to ResponseSource.com which is an email notification system for journalists to contact PR companies with their requirements for features/case studies. I’ve already replied to 3 journalists, so you never know, we may be in print soon. Think we also have to find a cuttings service too, we can’t possibly keep track of all these publications ourselves, and we need to know when we make it into print, so we can track our marketing work.

Today’s major task is to go to the printers to see the design for our screen printing, choose the bags we require for our promotional staff to hold the branded crayons in, and get our fleeces printed with our logo. All with Luke in tow!

I really feel that we are beginning to make progress again with the PR/marketing, something that I really thought had become stagnant over the past few weeks, as we had mistakenly begun to expect the PR agency to fulfill this role. Oh well, you live and learn!

Next week we are meeting our ‘mentor’ to agree terms with him, but more about that later. And I’ve got nearly 2 full days to concentrate on finishing off the content for the site. Can’t wait! I’m under pressure from Ross now who’s now managed to enter over 1,000 items in the database. Let the contest begin!

Kirsty

Advent Activities

Children are going to be eating enough chocolate over Christmas, so if you don’t want to start them on 1 December with the standard chocolate advent calendar, how about doing something different this year? A few ideas below to build up to the excitement of Christmas……

Build a nativity

Each day make another piece of the nativity scene, and gradually build up your model every day until Christmas. It doesn’t have to take very long, for example:

1 Dec – get a cardboard box, cut off one side, and let the children decorate it for the stable
2 Dec – collect some grass, and leave it to dry, so it can be used as straw
3 Dec – make some lambs. Use cotton wool balls, draw on their eyes with black pen, & matchsticks for legs
4 Dec – make some shepherds or wise men or Mary/Joseph – for all the people, cut out a shape from card, leaving a rectangle tab under their feet, so that it can be turned backwards as a stand

etc

Handprint advent wreath

Draw around your children’s hands at least 8 times and cut out. Use green paper or get them to colour them in afterwards, to make green leaves. Cut out a disc of cardboard, and stick the hands around the edge of the disc.

Roll up pieces of coloured paper (or plain paper that has been coloured in by the kids), to make a thin tube. Make 4 of these to be candles. Stick on some orange/yellow paper to be the flame.
You could make a candle each week, and build up to the 4 weeks of Christmas, ‘lighting’ the last one on Christmas Eve.

Advent paper chain

Make a paper chain, with 24 links of paper strips taped together. Number each from 1 to 24. And write an activity for the children to do on that day. For example, make/write Christmas cards, buy present for xxx, decorate the Christmas tree, hang up the cards, collect evergreens from the garden to decorate the picture frames, wrap up presents, make/write gift tags, bake some Christmas shaped biscuits etc!

Have a wizarding time

Harry Potter mania has struck again, so use this theme to entertain your kids (& their friends if you want to make a party of it) for an afternoon…..

Wizarding makes

Making a cloak or wizard’s cape:
The material:
If you have some old sheets you can cut to size & dye black in the washing machine, then great, but if you don’t have the time, consider getting an old adult’s shirt, turning the sleeves inside out (or cutting them off) and sealing the armholes up (sew them, sellotape them or glue them!)
Decorate it:
Get the kids to decorate with felt tips, draw a crest on paper & pin or glue onto the back, add sequins or glitter onto the collar, glue tinsel around the edges etc etc

The wizard’s hat:
Use old wallpaper (turned inside out if it’s patterned) or wrapping paper and make a cone with it, glue or sellotape to hold in place. Get the kids to decorate with sparkly bits, foil, paint, glitter etc

The all-important wand:
Get a dead twig, as curly and knotted as possible, or a few chopsticks tied together, or even a roll of newspaper, covered with papier mache (flour, water mixed into a sloppy paste added to more newspaper bits stuck on). When it’s dry it can be decorated, again with ribbons, wool, tinsel, foil, glitter, stars and anything else you can find!


A Wizard’s feast

Okay, so it’s not exactly a balanced meal, but great fun for a one-off! Serve in old glass jars, or on tin foil

Eyes of newt – squirty aerosol cream with a raisin in the middle
Bashed beetles – small lumps of cornflakes or rice crispies covered in chocolate
Slimy pond sludge – green jelly
Wriggly worms – cold spaghetti (esp if cooked in boiling water with red food colouring)
Witches fingers – cocktail sausages
Blind eyes – half boiled egg, remove the yolk and add a grape or pickled onion instead
Bats’ wings – chicken wings (cooked!)
Dead bugs & flies – raisins frozen in ice cube trays of water, and added to drinks
Mixing Potions – lemonade coloured with green food colouring
Dragon’s blood – blue coloured water

HAVE FUN!

A tale of two halves

We always knew this week was going to be important. Ross and I had decided back in October that we were going impose a deadline upon ourselves for entering content. So we decided we would both clear this week of other work/activities and aim for 5 full days of working on the business.

I booked extra childcare for Luke, and Ross took holidays from work. So apart from a couple of hours here and there, with things that couldn’t be avoided, we have pretty much worked full time on the site. And what a difference it has made!

In terms of my emotional state, I just felt so much more relaxed in the evenings, feeling that I had really done a good day’s work. Unfortunately the house is a complete tip!

Content has been added apace. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning were very productive. However, things slowed down a bit from then on, because we were having trouble with the scanner. It just isn’t up to the job of scanning the volume we need to, and at the speed we want to go. So after a lot of messing about and time wasting, we’ve decided to invest in another one. We’re off to the shops this weekend to have a look at what’s around. In the meantime I’ve managed to get nearly all the content entered, that doesn’t require any attached scanned images, and I’ve just got a couple of categories left (arts/crafts, colouring/puzzles & kids parties). Ross has also made great progress with Days Out, and has nearly entered 1,000 venues now.

So the story of the second half of the week starts to unfold…

Besides the technology causing frustrations, we also had a couple of other major business issues to deal with.

Firstly, another website has launched doing exactly what we are doing, albeit to a much lesser degree and on a smaller scale. However it’s a bit disconcerting that it’s so like our offering, and I’m wondering if we shouldn’t have been so public about what we were doing. I thought we’d left it late enough, so that someone else couldn’t get in on the act before we launched, but I suppose if you already have the main requirements of a website (from an affiliated company) and an existing customer base, it doesn’t take long. This particular site is run by another trading company, who are of course advertising all over the place, so it is a bit distracting. This is exactly one of the things we are staying away from, it’s one of our Unique Selling Points (USPs) that we don’t have any advertising on the site that distracts you from the content, and also we don’t have links that take you completely away from our site.

Having looked at the site in some detail, I don’t think it’s going to pose us much of a threat. Technically it’s not great. Links are missing, search results are returning incorrect activities for the search parameters you have requested, and the content is absolutely minimal. They are relying on others providing content, which could take an awful long time to build up. Whereas we are putting the hard work and long hours in ourselves to ensure that there’s a minimum of 2,000 items already on our site when we launch. Then we will be adding more every week aswell. We believe we had to launch with a complete offering from the start, especially since we are charging our members. But every search will return at least 8 items that are relevant to those search parameters. Most will return a minimum of 25 items. This is something we are taking great care (& therefore time) over.

But at least it shows us that someone else also thinks there is a big gap in the market for our idea!

We had another blow on Thursday. We had got to final stages of agreeing the legal contracts with Fido, the company we had chosen to be our Public Relations advisors, and had a meeting to conclude the deal, one way or another, and the result is that unfortunately we’ve decided to walk away from them. The deal had just changed so much from the initial discussions we had with them, and what they wanted, compared to what we were willing to offer, were poles apart. They were quite adamant they weren’t going to budge one inch.

It’s a real shame, mainly because I think we have completely wasted three months of potential marketing time, which we’re never going to get back. I had sent over several press releases with themes of wizarding activities, and advent, and nothing has happened to them at all. But also because I think the relationship has just totally broken down now, and there’s no way Ross & I want them to be a part of our company. We just won’t be able to work with them in the future, even if we could thrash something out to resolve the deal.

This is something that I was concerned would happen once lawyers got involved. I have worked with lawyers on many deals (I have advised countless businesses on buy-outs, buy-ins, mergers, disposals & fundraising). It is always the case that lawyers advise you of the most risk that you could be facing. Don’t get me wrong, that’s great, that’s exactly what we pay them for. But then it’s up to the client to judge the commercial risk, and what they are prepared to accept in those particular circumstances.

The lawyers don’t always know the full story about the full strength of their client’s negotiating position. I had hoped that our lawyer and their’s would discuss this deal between them, which is the usual way things go. Things are normally much smoother that way, but is does mean that you incur more fees. When the clients negotiate the deal between themselves, it usually means things end up getting more heated, simply due to the inexperience of the parties who are doing the negotiating. In fact I felt that they made a couple of classic mistakes in our meeting.

Firstly, they completely misjudged the strength of their negotiating position. They thought they were invaluable to us, and we were worthless in the scheme of things. They totally missed the point that we don’t actually need a PR company at the start. Yes, it would be useful and we would certainly benefit. But we started the PR work ourselves before they were involved, and made huge strides forward. (getting on startups for instance!) Since they have been ‘on board’ (or not actually on board as it turns out) nothing has happened, because we took our foot off the pedal, thinking they were taking care of it, when actually they were waiting until the legals were signed.

Secondly, they stated at the beginning of the meeting that their offer was non-negotiable. They didn’t want to enter into negotiations (when in fact we already were, because it was nothing like the first offer we discussed!) and actually backed themselves into a corner. I asked them several times to clarify that this offer was ‘take it or leave it’ which they confirmed. Very foolish. I actually teach negotiating skills to accountants who are acting for clients, and this is one of those things you see inexperienced negotiators do. They didn’t leave us with any option or any alternative route to go. Their offer was certainly not acceptable, so after just 30 minutes in the meeting, we left it!

Oh dear, what a shame. However, Ross & I actually feel a sense of freedom again now. Not only have we regained part of the company’s shares that we thought we had handed over, we actually feel in control of the PR again. We had been getting a little concerned about how things had been going, and now we have more determination than ever to make a success of this business. We have a couple of other options with PR advisors, so we’ll investigate those. But it’s not the end of the world if we don’t use any external advisors for the moment.

So onwards & upwards! By the way, I’ll include the wizarding activities and the advent activities on the next blogpost, in case anyone who has children would like to use any of them! May as well make use of the work I’ve done!

Kirsty

It's all a big foggy!

My working time has really been thrown out this week. I was in London on Tuesday and got fogbound at Heathrow, and the plane was delayed for several hours. I finally got home at 1am. I was so tired on Wednesday, and Luke must have sensed it, because he didn’t sleep at his usual time, so I didn’t get chance to get the work done I’d wanted to. So I got more ratty of course! But after a good night’s sleep last night, I am fine and firing on all cylinders again.

This week has been a bit frustrating generally, as there are some key areas of our business where we just aren’t quite there. Legals, negotiating final bits of deals etc.

But I suppose we have made some progress if I look back over the week. We’re finalizing our arrangement with our mentor and Venturepoint, and the last amends on the site are actually being done as I write, in particular the Worldpay online merchant account. It’s so gratifying to see the functionality and design changes taking effect. Just small things, but they give it a much better look. Sometimes when you’ve been looking at the same thing for weeks and weeks, it’s hard to stand back and be objective. We’ve also had the artwork now for some promotional gimmicks we’re using, and so they are ordered. After all the ‘umm-ing and aaah-ing’ about the cost and whether we should do it, I’m glad it’s finally underway.

On Monday we had a look around Venturepoint’s office space. This would really be useful for us for meetings. It’s not ideal having to meet people in hotels, or rely on them to host the meeting at their offices all the time. Plus it’s quite central for Fido, us and our mentor.

I’m trying to plan in a regular management meeting for all of us to get together once a fortnight. If it’s a set date in the diary then it is more likely to happen, rather than having time drifting in between each meeting. I think they are very useful as they provide a focus for getting things done, especially if you have to report on progress. But I insist on structured meetings. I can’t cope with those meetings that just go on and on. I always set an agenda for a meeting, have action points (not minutes) with responsibility and timescale attached. It just drives your workload much better and ensures you prioritise – it’s me and lists again! Also saves me having to keep everyone ‘in the loop’ all the time. You lose track of who knows what, and with our business structure, all our team should have a good knowledge of everything, not just their own particular area. It will all overlap, and anyway we are all responsible for making sure we hit our goals.

Met up with Jen whilst in London, our Greater London regional manager. Was glad to have sorted the technology, so we could look at the site on my laptap in the hotel, by using my mobile phone. I know, the technology’s been around for ages, but it’s only recently that we decided we needed the ability to do this, particularly with the preview evenings/focus groups coming up in January. And I definitely only have your average user’s technical knowledge. So really chuffed that it actually worked! Made such a difference being able to train Jen whilst showing her things on screen. Sharon (our Greater Manchester regional manager) made some suggestions when I trained her, and it’s fab to see that those have been implemented. Will make entering content a bit easier.

We have been talking about a few business changes. We have an annual membership but are thinking of offering a single month’s membership, which may suit some people better, and may entice those who don’t want to commit to a full year until they know what they’re getting. I’m setting the price at about one third of the annual membership price, so then again, some may go for the full year just to make the saving.

But we are going to have to think about this carefully. We need to convert those who pay for a single month into annual membership, so we are really going to have to market it well to them, probably using emails. This is where our mentor is going to come into his own, and I can’t wait to get things moving on this area.

Preview evenings

Another really progressive couple of days. Mainly about finalising designs for various pieces of print and promotional products we need, paying bills (yuk!) and sorting the final bits of the Worldpay application.

We have heard that the MEN Venture Awards will be decided on 7 December, and we should know the results shortly afterwards. But in the meantime we are meeting Venturepoint team to go and have a look at their office space at Venture Space in the brand new massive business park in Manchester call Central Park. We are definitely going to use one of the rooms there for our Manchester preview evening in January. So the preview evenings all booked, and everything more or less ordered for them. Now I just have to plan what I’m going to say and what we’re going to ask them!

We are collating the invite list, which is proving to be quite a mammoth task. Trying to ensure we target as many influential people as we can, so we can get their comments and start the ‘word of mouth’ process going.

We have also been in touch with the local childminders’ associations and children’s information services around Greater Manchester. They all deal with communications to their childminders in slightly different ways, and some will be easier to contact than others. Obviously, because of data protection and privacy laws, we can’t be given the contact details of the childminders directly, so we are working with other agencies who may be able to inform them about these preview evenings.

Going to see Lee Evans tonight, for a bit of light relief!

Then next week, besides meeting with Venturepoint, I’ve also arranged to meet up with Jen our London Regional Manager again. Looking forward to updating her on everything that’s been going on and seeing how she’s doing.

Must get some more content entered…….!

Kirsty

First meeting with our new mentor

Very productive meeting today, really think we have made the best choice for a mentor. We’ll really get some good value from him because he fills in all the gaps in our skill base. Just talking to him this afternoon showed us the scope of his knowledge, either that, or he’s very good at winging it! But I’m sure he knows his stuff, I’ve known him for 2 years, seen his own business grow exponentially, and I trust his judgment.

Just been watching 2 shows tonight about start-ups, Make me a Million (C4) and Dragon’s Den (BBC2). When you see some of the other businesses you inevitably begin to compare yourself to them, and I find this even extends to me in my everyday life. I look at haulage trucks on the motorway, or shops in the high street, and think, well if they can make a business work with all their overheads, then surely we can. And I keep looking for any weaknesses in our business, anything at all that might mean we fail. But I can't find anything. And so I have faith. And then I wobble. And then I have undoubted faith!! Is that normal?

Sorted some extra babysitting for Luke tomorrow so I can get 4 hours of solid content into the database. Having 2 days where I’m supposed to be ‘working’ whilst Luke is in nursery is great in theory, but when it’s full of meetings away from the computer, it’s not so good. But essential nevertheless. So I’m starting to get a bit concerned now that I won’t get all the content in, hence I’m sat here tonight at 10.40pm, and I’m making some more hours available tomorrow. Got to really focus now for a few weeks, so that by Christmas we have the site ready to go!

Grit teeth, head down and plough on!

Kirsty

The final push

Had a nice break in Dublin over the weekend for Gregg’s birthday. But somehow it seems worse when you’re not working, because you have so much in your head that you want to sort, that it’s really hard to relax. Knew I should’ve taken my computer with me!

So it’s quite strange, and very unnerving, that after all this time of designing and fine-tuning the site, we are now at the stage of final amends. Our web programmer is on holiday for virtually all of December, and as we need the site to be fully operational and available to be reviewed by our focus groups from January, we effectively have about 2 weeks left! Eeek!!

We have been booked into his work schedule for this week, and we’ve had to get our final list of fixes and tweaks over to him today. This was quite disconcerting, as we are under pressure to make sure we have covered everything in this list, once and for all!

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been noticing various things on the site, and having ideas by the dozen, and I’ve been trying to keep a note of them in one place, so that when we put this final list of changes to him, we don’t forget anything.

For example, I did the initial draft copy weeks ago, and since I read a book about how I should really be writing it, I’ve been meaning to have another bash at it. But now I know how important it is, I’ve been nervous about the redrafting, and I’ve managed to find other things to do instead for weeks! However I finally got that done and over to him today. I think it’s much better, but I really need to see it on the site before I can tell how it looks. I suppose we can use the focus groups to advise us and change it again if necessary, before we launch in March.

Plus I still know we have a few gaps with the copy. There are some pages where we need to decide exactly how we are going to treat certain things. I’m hoping our meeting with our mentor tomorrow will shed some light on those areas for us.

I’m panicking too about lead times for promotional products and print. We really only have about 5 weeks of working time left before January, so I guess this is the final countdown now. I think it’s just going to get manic from here on in. Hold on tight!

(written on Mon 14th, but not published until Tue 15th due to problems with Blogger)

Getting somewhere

Things are starting to come together quite nicely.

I’ve managed to get quite a few of our promotional work costs down, by finding other suppliers, changing venues, and just haggling a bit wherever we can. So things are still very very tight, but I think we can progress with our ideas now. A couple more days of thinking about these things has only made me more convinced that we should go ahead. We have identified some activities that we think will really add value to the business, and so we are going to have to do them.

Hmmm, there’s a lot of ‘thinks’ in there isn’t there? If only we had some track record, or could scientifically evaluate whether these activities are going to be financially viable or not…..but our marketing guys (Gavin at Champion to be precise) made a very poignant comment to me – although not helpful at all! David Ogilvy said – “Half of all marketing doesn’t work. The problem is, no-one knows which half”. Great.

Also, we’ve been told we are definitely one of the 3 finalists in the MEN Venture Award – now how fantastic is that?!!! That means we get coverage in the Manchester Evening News as a case study, so we may get some benefit from word of mouth, and we also get a mentor for a year. We have been told we can choose our own mentor, and I didn’t need telling twice!!

So Ross & I had a chat about some people, mulled it over, and finally today decided who we think will be most beneficial for us, in an area we feel is our skill gap. We both know him, and know we’ll get on with him, and really respect his knowledge, so he’s ideal for a mentor. Matching personalities is so important with these types of things, I’ve heard loads of nightmare stories about mentors/non-execs/business angels etc who had a clash of personality, or just didn’t all work together to achieve the agreed objectives for the business.

I rang him today, and explained what we were doing, our USPs, what we’d already achieved (in a nutshell) and how we’d been ‘gifted’ the use of a mentor by MEN & Venturepoint (I’m not really sure who’s paying for it). He was delighted, flattered and sounded genuinely interested in our business. After ringing Venturepoint, it was virtually all agreed, so we’re meeting him next week to go through some more specific things in our business, and to give him more background information.

Now I know we’ve got a great team around us, so there’s no stopping us now!

Kirsty

Know your figures

Had a couple of days away from entertainthekids work, doing other things. It would be great if I could just concentrate on ‘etk’, but then I’d have no cash at all, a very unhappy son and an extremely scruffy house with bare cupboards! Altogether now….aaarrrh.

Had a bit of a scare aswell. We have come up with some cracking ideas to promote the site pre-launch, but they all cost money unfortunately. And you just don’t realize how much it all adds up, until you get some proper quotes, factor in the cost of any postage, food/drink or any other bits and bobs, like promotional clothing etc. And suddenly you’ve no money left! (luckily we’re just at budgeting stage, we haven’t actually spent it yet).

I should know better. When I look at our projections and business plan, I can see that we just didn’t go down to enough detail on the numbers for PR & marketing. I’ve just assumed a nice round estimated figure. I suppose it was because I thought at the time that none of it was crucial, and if we couldn’t afford it, we just wouldn’t do it. Which is fine in theory…..

But once you’ve come up with these ideas, and believe that they will really make a difference to your business financially (ie - with lots of members signing up from day 1) you begin to think that they aren’t optional at all.

So, I keep putting my objective head on. And looking at every budgeted figure in detail, to see if there’s any way we can get any costs down. I find that only the business owners can do this. Anyone else (such as your marketing advisors) just don’t have the same drive to keep costs low, it’s not their money after all. I’m having to be a bit creative and think of other ways of achieving the same objective.

And although I keep trying to persuade myself that it doesn’t matter if we don’t run our focus groups in the way I want to, and don’t do the promotional work at the events I think we should, and don’t hold a launch party etc etc…..I just can’t convince myself.

I guess this is what they mean by taking risks as an entrepreneur. You only have a finite amount of money available, and at the end of the day you just have to trust your own judgment that the spending decisions you make, are as efficient and worthwhile as possible. So much of a risk taker are you?

Kirsty

How rude!

Had 4 meetings today, from one side of Greater Manchester to the other – you really learn how to cram things in when you’ve only got a couple of days where you can concentrate solely on work!

However, my last meeting didn’t actually happen, as the gentleman I was supposed to be meeting wasn’t in the office. It appears he had forgotten/not put in his diary/insert other reason as appropriate! Not a good feeling, a complete waste of time.

On another note, I've just done a couple of tasks this evening where I’ve had to summarise where we’ve got to in our business so far. First was for the Guardian, who are writing an article about digital entrepreneurs (that would just be fab if we got a mention in their supplement!) where I had to say why I thought we were ‘special’!

And the second was a catch-up of events from Jan to now, for the startups.co.uk website that I am starting to write a summary blog for each week. Oliver from startups, had asked me to write 500-1000 words, but I’ve written nearly 1500! Well you try condensing 10 months into a couple of pages of A4. Hope he doesn’t mind too much, as it’s all really relevant info.

But it does make you appreciate where you’ve been, and how far you’ve actually come. Quite important I think to keep your self-belief topped up. It’s so easy to get downhearted when you have such a long period until you will find out whether you are right or not, in our case, our launch in March. It really helps too to find that other people believe in you. Another great meeting today with Laura from Fido, really feel like we are making progress there now. Lots of tasks for both of us, so my ‘to do’ list is growing again!

Talking of others believing in us, it’s deadline day tomorrow for the MEN Venture Awards, so I guess we’ll find out early next week if we’ve been lucky enough to get to the final. God, how fantastic would that be!!

Kirsty

Playing away!

Today was forecast to be a warm(ish) & dry(ish) day, so I decided to take Luke out to the seaside after his Jo Jingles (music & dance) class this morning. Sometimes I think I’m just not making the most of my days ‘at home’ with him, and instead I end up spending my days with him in a stressed-out state.

I’m trying to get housework/cooking/shopping done, emails and phone calls answered, and as much work as he’ll let me do in the study, whilst at the same time attempting to deal with his practical and emotional needs. In the end, it just naffs both of us off and we both become tetchy!

I heard once that children are so enjoyable, but only when they’re your 1st priority. And although he is definitely my top priority in the great scheme of things, on a day to day basis, I’m ashamed to admit, he is just in the way (parent guilt trip kicking in again!)

Well, enough of that, for one day at least. And I devoted the whole day to him. Which made me so grateful that I am in a position to be able to do that.

We went to the seaside (yes, in November!), walked on the beach in wellies, splashed in the waves at the seashore, and collected pebbles (for painting/decorating at some point, of course!). Doesn’t it sound idyllic?

Well, perhaps I should tell you that Luke managed to walk alone for about 10 minutes, wanting me to carry him the rest of the time, or wanted to be in the trolley – he’s still getting used to his wellies, I think! And our trolley is not one of those multi-terrain things, so I ended up dragging him backwards, with front wheels in the air, across the sand to the ramp, to get him up on the prom as quickly as possible! With weighted-down nappy (/lunch/handbag/toy) bag hung on the handlebars aswell of course. Cut to a Mum out of breath and looking a right sight! Now do you get the real picture?

But it was a great day. Luke had a fun afternoon, I got my ‘fix’ of the sea, smell of seaweed and sound of seagulls (I find I need that from time to time, must be something to do with living on an island!) and I even managed to keep him entertained on the 2 hr journey home with a combination of food, water, milk, books, spotting the animals in the fields (until it got too dark), and then singing lots and lots of songs….the wheels on the bus…..aaagggh!!

So now I’m trying to get a few hours work done, but in good spirits, despite the time it says on the clock. A busy day tomorrow, four meetings, some for etk (entertainthekids), some for other things. So best go and make sure I’m prepared for them before I call it a night. The sea air has got to me too I think!

Kirsty

A tale of 2 evenings

Feel really invigorated tonight, after spending the full day working, doing a full grocery shop with Luke, cooking and eating tea and still being in a good mood.

So much different from last night!

Before I went to bed last night I wrote one of my infamous task lists, and so when I hit the computer (not literally you understand!) at 8am I was ready to go, focused and determined to get tons done – which I have. Well not everything, my task lists are always a bit too ambitious, but anything left over will get added to the list for tomorrow or, more likely, Thursday. Tomorrow is mainly taken up with ‘mummy’ things with Luke and the house.

So what have I accomplished today?

· I’ve started getting quotes for the room hire for the focus groups we are going to hold in January
· Discussed with another promotions agency about the feasibility of our proposed promotion in late December
· Read through all the draft legals and sent comments back to Nick
· Entered more content for another of the sections (this feels like real progress, I’ve just not been able to get around to entering any, with everything else going on, and after all, that’s our product!)
· Discussing ongoing security & hosting issues with Ross
· And some other work-related things, but nothing to do with this business

So a new month and a new surge of activity.

Now, where’s that glass of Chianti?

Kirsty

Tired and emotional

Of all the things I had planned to do over the last few days, I don’t think I’ve got any of them done. My task list has just grown again overnight it seems, I’ve just got Luke to bed, after cooking & eating tea (later than usual because my husband had to work overtime again – how blissful that must be to get the opportunity!) and now I’m starting work at 7.40pm.

Today’s just been one of those days (again). Up to my eyes in pumpkins, witches & ‘trick or treaters’, and Luke didn’t have his lunchtime nap, so there was no chance from 4pm onwards, as the door bell never stopped ringing. I don’t mind the kids calling, in fact I love it, but it was just typical that I had loads to do at some point today (ie when Luke was asleep) and it just didn’t happen.

However, one piece of progress was that we went to the bank to sign up all their forms for the account & the loan.

So now I’m off to read a ton of legal documents, the report from Fido, and try to plan tomorrow. Luke’s in nursery, so I’ve got a full day to work – yippee!!

I just hate it when I’m so snappy, but I’ve just got to get some of this work off my task list or I’m going to collapse under the weight of it. If anyone thinks working from home is easy, think again!

Kirsty

Introducing new members of the team

Met up with our first Regional Manager, Sharon, yesterday for a ‘training’ session. The Regional Manager’s are going to be responsible for entering the ‘local’ content to do with Days Out & Places to Go.

We have an ideal candidate in Sharon, as she is a registered childminder and mum herself to a (nearly) four year old daughter. Sharon is responsible for Greater Manchester, and she lives in North Manchester herself. In our business plan we set out the role of regional managers as follows:

Excerpts from the company’s business plan:

Regional managers live in the region for which they are responsible. Their roles are to be the ‘eyes & ears on the ground’. In particular they must:

· continually research, input & update the local activities in their area;

· assist in developing the referral network (including planning & promoting the launch party for their region); and

· be available to provide interviews/photo opportunities for their local media

The personal attributes of the regional managers are all likely to be as follows:

· Enthusiastic & upbeat
· Confident & considerate
· Witty & sociable
· Ambitious, self-motivated & organised

They are likely to be parents themselves, and have probably held professional roles in a previous employment.

All regional managers will be compensated for their time by being gifted a shareholding in the company. This decision has been made because it is likely that the quality of the personnel the directors wish to attract, will not be motivated by a low hourly rate, akin to the minimum wage. As the company’s cashflow is restrictive, it would not be able to compensate them with a paid salary, at the levels they are likely to be used to.

You’ve got come up with ingenious ways of getting the best people when you can’t afford to pay them!

Sharon was always going to be involved because I’ve known her for years, and have worked with her before when she was (an excellent) office manager.

In a fit of enthusiasm, I’d already emailed to Sharon (& to Jen, our RM for Greater London) tons and tons of information about us, including our full business plan. In hindsight I’ve realised that I’ve completely overwhelmed them, because they just haven’t time to digest the information, and the really important stuff just gets lost amongst the interesting, but less important, stuff. All of our RMs are going to be busy people themselves, as they will all be parents, and are probably also doing some other employment or self-employment.

So before yesterday’s meeting, I drew up an ‘Information Pack’ which just contained the following information:

Mission statement, first year objectives & USPs (total 1 page)
Regional rollout programme (1 page + 2 pages detailing regions)
RM’s role (1 page)
Local content categories & sources of information (2 pages)
Instructions to create new resource/delete/edit (1 page)
PR activities – successes & planned (1 page)

I printed it all off and put it all together in a folder. This gives them enough information about the business, what they are going to do, and how well we are already doing, and is hopefully sufficient information to get them excited about working with us. It seems to have worked with Sharon.

I’m meeting Jen on 22 November, so if she hasn’t ploughed through the emails by then, I’ll give her one of these packs instead, and she can bin the emails!

Yesterday’s training threw up some interesting things. First of all, we couldn’t logon to the site (either back end admin database, or front end) on Sharon’s computer. It turns out it’s probably something to do with the firewall that NTL have, as she is on NTL. Accsys are looking at a way around it. But that kind of threw our plans for entering some content. Luckily Ross lives about 2 miles away, so we packed everything up, including Sharon’s daughter, and hotfooted it over to Ross’s computer!

She came up with some ideas to make entering content a bit easier (and therefore quicker), and just some things from a user’s point of view. She takes no prisoners when it comes to using websites! If she can’t see what she wants within about 3 seconds, she moves on! Phew! What a great way for us to test the site though! She also gave me a real insight into the childminding market, and ways we may be able to attract them.

So I’ve now got a list of things that I need to speak to Accsys about, to see how difficult, time consuming (& therefore costly) it will be to incorporate the changes she’s suggested.

Unfortunately my other lives seem to be getting in the way again at the moment. I’ve got my VAT return to do this weekend (for my training/consulting business) and I’ve got a full set of course notes to write for early next week too. So priorities may have to shift for the next few days.

P,P,P,Pick up a Pro!

It’s suddenly dawned on me how grateful I am that I’ve got a team of professionals around me who are experts at what they do. We had a meeting yesterday with Laura from Fido, and she just clarified our thinking a little bit. We had this idea to hand out free packs of crayons to potential members, but when we worked out the costings, we realised that it was going to be difficult to estimate how effective the PR had been.

Our key target at the moment is to capture email addresses on our holding page, so that when we launch in March, we can directly tell these people by email.

So whilst we had lots of great ideas for PR, we need to now prioritize them according to their cost and likely effectiveness. It’s so tempting to do something now because it may be seasonal, but instead maybe we should be a little patient (something I really struggle with usually!) and use it next year, when it may be more appropriate to the stage of the business’s development (ie after we’ve launched).

So we are just tinkering with the crayons idea to see if there’s any way we can make it really work for us. And thankfully I’ve also got a great promotional team on board (OZ Promotions) who really understand the way promotions work, and so they’ll be able to give me the benefit of their experience too. Also, our promotional merchandise company (Angus Limelight) will be able to give us ideas about other potential (& cheaper) products that may also do the job for us at a lower cost.

Also, I’ve just had an email from Nick our lawyer, who has sent over the draft of the Deed of Assignment, which Champion Marketing (our creative designers) have to sign, in order to give us ownership of our logo & website design. It does of course make a lot of sense, but it’s not something I would have thought about if we hadn’t appointed someone with his calibre. He also pointed in the direction of a great trademark agent who is searching the market for any potential threats in that area.

Phew, there’s no way you can run a business on your own, and it pays dividends to use the best experts you can afford. I’m sure this will be money & time well spent. Much like last night, Patrick Kielty was very funny!

Take a deep breath!

Change of plan today. Was due to meet Sharon to progress the local content for Greater Manchester, but her little girl has been up all night, which doesn’t bode well for Sharon being alert either! So we’ve rearranged to Thursday.

Which means I’ve got a few hours to enter loads of content into the site, I want to finish off music & rhymes and gardening sections so that there’s plenty of content, no matter what age you are searching for.

Then I’m meeting Ross to deliver our business plan for the MEN Venture Award (for young entrepreneurs) and then a meeting with Fido to go through the proposed promotional exercise planned for December.

We are running out of time on this one, as there’s a five week lead time for delivery of the promotional stock, and we need to make a decision if we think the whole exercise is viable or not. This is where we really start to take a leap into the unknown – taking a commercial risk by spending a fair chunk of our bank funding on a speculative project. I know that's the main purpose of the bank funding for us, but it still makes you nervous, actually going ahead and spending some of it - what if it's wasted?

I suppose we can only weigh up all the costs and potential benefits, and then make an informed judgment. I’m really glad we’ve got Fido on board, because this is where their experience will help us. We should be able to measure the effect aswell, it'll be the number who register their email address with us on our Holding Page over the Christmas period. Plus the more general raising of our profile won't hurt either, but that's harder to measure and is just a bonus.

We also need to decide whether we should be having corporate Christmas cards or not, something else that needs deciding upon quickly.

Then we’re off to Patrick Kielty’s show tonight, now what have I done with those tickets??!

Kirsty

Inspirational!

I think Ross & I have just done the most inspiring thing ever – it’s a ‘vivid description’ and has really motivated us both. It’s something you have to do as an individual really, and it helps if all members of the team have something that’s similar!!

It’s a creative approach to setting your goals. We decided to split our goals into short term, medium term & long term. The short term is a list of specific objectives, which are SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic & time-based) and will be achieved within one year after launch. The long term goal is basically our vision, where we want to get to, the ‘end-goal’ in five years’ time. So the medium term, in three years, had to be something we could imagine, but not too specific.

I’d read about this ‘vivid description’ in a book I’ve been given by Allan Wilson (Jen’s husband). It’s been written for Tenon, the accountancy firm, by Robert Craven, from Warwick Business School, which specialises in SMEs. The book is called ‘Kick-start your business – the fast track to a leaner, fitter organisation’ and it’s quite practical, not just loads of theory. Although I’ve seen many of the concepts before, it does no harm as a refresher, but there’s also lots of new ideas that I haven’t seen. Yet another book I’m reading now, and another page in my notebook with lots of scrawled ideas from it!

This vivid description seemed such a good idea, that Ross & I decided we had to do our’s this weekend, as we’re currently updating our business plan (for the third time!) to enter it into a competition which has been launched by Manchester Evening News and Venturepoint, a new organisation set up to support new companies in Manchester.

What a laugh! It’s really difficult to do, to rack your brains and imagine where you will be in 3 years’ time. You have to create a pictoral image in your mind, and then write it down on paper. What’s going on around you, describing the environment you are in, the sounds, the people who are there. Ross has written his at an award ceremony (I haven’t seen it yet, but I assume we’re winning something!), and mine is based at our 3 year anniversary party at Centerparcs, with all the families of our team members around us too. Crystallises everything and makes it seem attainable. It’s like everything going from being a bit misty, to being in technicolour. Because it’s a creative image, it stays in your mind in a different way to more formalized objectives. So now we’ve got a good mix of short term, medium term and long term goals.

We also wrote our mission statement. Thought I’d list it below so you can see what we are all about. Something else that just focuses you as a business.

““To be recognised as a valuable & necessary resource for parents/carers, to support those who are caring for young children, ensuring enjoyment for all , to be able to contribute practically and financially to the wider community and charity sector, and to provide tremendous job satisfaction and personal gratification for the whole team”

Hmmm – onwards & upwards then!

Kirsty

Hello, are you still there?

I know I’ve not posted anything since Monday, but I’ve got my excuses!

We’ve had a remarkable few days, and I’m not sure I can quite take it all in. Ross & I keep having to pinch ourselves. It’s finally all going well, after so many frustrating weeks of not getting anywhere quickly, so why are we still so nervous? Believe it or not, I’m actually getting a little frustrated at the lack of criticism – too many positive comments about us and our idea is just putting so much pressure on now!! How bizarre is that!

Anyway, to fill you in. We went down to London on Wednesday evening, and after I’d done some ‘proper work’ ie presenting a seminar on Thursday morning, we had some great meetings in the afternoon. We’ve secured the interest of editors of parenting magazines, and they’ve agreed to review our site in January, and even provided us with a comment! They also gave us some useful feedback and some areas for us to develop or think about a little more.

So hopefully that is a real investment and we might get some positive PR in their magazines around March (they have a 2-3 month lead time). Now we’ve really got to get on with inputting lots of fabulous content so it’s not a disappointment when they do review it. All this market research is great fun, but there’s no point at all, if we don’t get on with the actual site itself.

We also had a smashing meeting with our lawyer to make sure we had covered all our commercial risks, and sort out our shareholders agreement. We need to look at trademarking pretty soon too. He’s great. Very good (I’ve worked with him lots of times before when I’ve recommended him to clients) and yet easy to talk to, and quite flexible on fees aswell! He knows our situation with cashflow, so hopefully we’ve struck a deal that’s fair to both of us, but I know he’s agreed much lower fees that he usually would for the work he’s doing for us. Really chuffed he’s part of our ‘team’.

Then we met up with Jen, our newly appointed Regional Manager for Greater London. Quite an amazing story how we came to be introduced – I actually trained her husband on a course a few weeks ago and we just got chatting about the site. But she’s just perfect for us and we had a really lovely evening. I’m sure we could’ve talked all night. Looking forward to having her on board, and I’ll meet up with her again over the next couple of months when I’m next in London.

The next morning we found out that www.startups.co.uk want to publish a weekly round-up of this blog – so welcome to any new readers from there! I’ll have to write a ‘catch up’ for the first edition I think.

Then on our way home we collected the market research questionnaires from our old primary school. It was absolutely amazing! Really similar results to that research we’d done a few weeks ago at Luke’s nursery. Same response rate, around 20% (pretty good, apparently you would normally expect 10% for questionnaires), and once again it looks like we’ve got our pricing spot on.

Last night I managed to speak to a high-flyer in the website world, who very kindly gave me half an hour of his time to pick his brains. I’d approached him to be chairman, but unfortunately his contract precludes him from taking any other commercial roles, but he did agree to talk to us. So I gave him a quick overview of who were were, what we were doing, our USPs, our successes so far, and our challenges. He probably told me the most useful thing he could have done – he didn’t think our business model would work! He said if we manage to charge members to use the site, we’d have achieved what many had tried to do already and failed at. I’m not sure that’s strictly true, but it certainly threw down the gauntlet to us! It’s not borne out by all the market research we’ve done, with parents and professionals, and I’m still a great believer that websurfers are more and more prepared to pay if it means they will get quality, relevant information for their needs. He also recognised that the environment for an internet start up is completely different nowadays to where they found themselves back in 1999 at the height of the dot.com boom. And that led to me rethinking our approach for advertising the site, simply because what they did (predominantly a national radio advertising campaign) is not necessary appropriate to us now.

And last but not least, we’ve spotted a competition for budding entrepreneurs which is just down our street! So we’ve decided to enter that. I need to submit our business plan, so I’m going to look at our original plan from last month (which was mainly written for the banks) and update it. I want to get it in by end of next week. The deadline’s 4 November, so we’ve only got a couple of weeks anyway.

Phew, so am I excused for not doing a blog entry since Monday?!!!

Kirsty

It's a new week

Wonder what this week will bring? Can’t believe how much we achieved last week, but now it’s about tying up all loose ends and getting things moving.

Really varied task list today, which includes finalising meetings for London, Luke’s tots club, projections for another project, chasing outstanding debtors for fees and hopefully getting hair done – just looked at my roots & I can’t have important meetings this week looking like this!! Hope Mum can babysit or else I’ll have to postpone until tomorrow when Luke’s in nursery, although I was hoping to use tomorrow for another 20 things, including a meeting that’s likely to take up all the afternoon.

And I’m also working on getting us a non-exec chairman – just a small thing to fit in.

Got my car MOT’d too! Yes, progress has definitely been made!!

Kirsty

A day in history

Not quite sure if yesterday really happened! So much progress in one day. Oct 13th will go down in the history of this company!

First of all we finally got permission to do market research at a primary school (knew that persistence would pay off eventually!), then we heard back from RBS who have agreed to provide us with a loan facility (not quite as much as we asked for but should be enough), then we had a fantastic meeting with our new PR partners, Fido PR, who are taking a stake in our company in lieu of fees, and then we firmed up the appointment of our Greater London regional manager. Wow!

So now things are really taking off and I’ve had to think about the shareholders agreements, the roll out of the local launches around the UK and the legal implications. Now that’s what I call progress!

Hopefully will meet up with Jen (our London regional manager) and our lawyer next week whilst we are in London doing our focus groups. Time to go, been on the computer sending emails, typing up documents etc since 7.15 and Luke’s had enough of being in the study and wants to go downstairs for breakfast! Think I’ve run out of bread for toast – eek!

Kirsty

STOP PRESS

Now I am really worried – we’ve just heard that our old primary school are going to distribute our market research questionnaire to the parents of their 220 pupils.

Fantastic news eh? But I think on the basis of past experience we are really due some bad news soon. like I said, I’m really getting worried!

Sssshhh!!

Don’t say it too loudly, but we are having quite a good couple of days at the moment. No big let downs or disappointments, just slow but steady progress. It’s like taking little baby steps, one at time, without trying to do anything too outrageous. So we tiptoe (rather than ‘plod’) on.

I mainly seem to be following things up at the moment, lots of phone calls, trying to get through to the people I need to speak to and hope they can assist in whatever I’m asking them for. A bit frustrating, and at times you feel like your pestering, but sometimes it does work as long as you are always friendly and polite.

We have a meeting this afternoon with a PR company we quite like, to try and work out how we might be able to work together to the benefit of all of us. Should be interesting.

K

On a short lead

It’s so frustrating!! Another step forward and three back - yet again!

Sometimes I think I’m dealing with think I’m dealing with it really well, and I’m almost laughing at these little setbacks, because I know I should expect them. But other times they really get me down and it takes an iron will to plough on, taking the positives and trying to improve upon or change the negatives.

After being so pleased with myself for setting up our focus groups for next week, one of our key members has cancelled due to another meeting. Hopefully she may be able to send a colleague, I can only ask. So now I feel I’m back to square 1 and I’ve got even less time to sort it. We’ve booked our travel, Ross has time off work and there’s no way I’m just giving up completely….well not just yet!

No need to ask what my task list looks like today!

Luke is in nursery all day and I’ve got 2.5 hours this morning before I have to leave for a course in Hull, and I won’t be home until 7pm. So I’ve got to write this quickly and then get on – loads to do. Of course, I’m not only trying to progress the business, but I’ve got 2 other projects I’m helping out with (also both contingent work and no guaranteed income yet) and then there’s the small issue of my own existing training business, which is desperately short of cashflow due to the quiet time over the summer holidays.

So my task list for today is split into 4 different areas, and that doesn’t include anything for the house/car – which still hasn’t had its MOT by the way!

Later,
K

If you don't ask, you don't get!

I’m sure there’s a theme running along here – anyone who gives up easily need not apply!

They say it’s good for you to get out of your comfort zone once in a while. And I so had to do that today. Dealing with the media is not something I’ve ever had to do, and to be honest, I was pretty overawed by all those journalists and editors in London. So I think I’ve done pretty well today overall.

I had 2 courses booked on Thursday 20 October, but there was a chance that one of them would be cancelled. Bad news in one way, because it meant I wouldn’t get paid, but good news in another, because it would give us a perfect opportunity to spend half a day in London on our project that we’ve entitled ‘Ask the Experts!’ It’s a type of focus group/market research, but on a one-to-one basis.

So when the course got cancelled last week, I thought I’d better get on with planning what we are going to do on our afternoon fact-finding mission! Once I’d checked the train times and booked them, there was no looking back really. Ross had already booked the time off work. And so I woke up this morning thinking I’d run out of time to delay any more, and I really had to start trying to book the meetings with some potentially very influential people for our cause.

So after taking a deep breath (quietly, Luke was asleep next to me!), I drew up my shortlist, found out their email addresses and drafted an email to them. Then redrafted it and redrafted it, then just pressed ‘send’. Oh well, I thought, it either will happen or it won’t! And it has!

Almost immediately I got a couple of very encouraging replies back and we have scheduled in one definite meeting already, and have one that just needs firming up. Still got a few replies to wait for – or not! If they don’t reply I’ll pick some more that I want to speak to, and try them aswell. It’s a shame that we’ll have quite limited time and most of that will probably be spent travelling around London, as they appear to be based in all corners of the city. But we want to make the best use of the time we have.

It’s timed pretty well for them I think. Unfortunately it’s half term week, so some key people will be on holiday. But the monthly publications have sorted their bumper December issues by now, and the weeklies/newspapers are well into an active time for them. And we will still have time to amend the site or our product based on the opinions we get from them, before we finalise the site.

Now I need to sit down and carefully plan what we’ll be asking them and what our presentation will look like. Eek! This is a really important time for us and I don’t want to mess it up. Another deep breath…..

And I’m still chasing the primary schools to try and get some market research – just have to try again tomorrow!

One step forward?

You’ve really got to have persistence when you’re trying to set your own business up…..and look at the broader picture and longer term, so you don’t get down-hearted at the little things that happen.

We’re really struggling to find a school to allow us to research their parents. But we’re still trying! I’m trying to get hold of the head at the school me and Ross both went to. I think my calls are probably being avoided, but I’m determined to get to speak to her. After speaking to the secretary, emailing in our questionnaire (with lots of suitable disclaimers to distance the school from any involvement or perceived recommendation of the business), then Ross following up with a call to the secretary to see if the head had approved it, we’ve just go nowhere. The secretary was quite shirty, which I think just isn’t on.

There’s no risk to the school whatsoever, and we’re even offering something in return – either a donation to the PTA, or my services in running some sort of enterprise workshop for the older children (I’m already CRB cleared for children’s work, so they should have no problem with that issue).

I will keep trying to speak to her. Other schools have said no, and glibly wished us good luck. But how can they mean that if they’re not prepared to help us. Frankly I think our old school has a duty to support their past pupils whenever they can. And hopefully I’ll persuade her of this!

Alternatively, I’ve approached our minister who is a school governor of the school that I’d quite like Luke to attend actually. She’s given me the name of the head at that school and said I can use her name as a ‘way in’. She’s not in until Monday so I’ll ring her then and see if she is more willing to help. There’s got to be a school out there somewhere.

On a more positive note, we had a really good meeting with Royal Bank of Scotland today. The manager totally understood our offering and is just our ideal customer. She has a 2 year old boy and is expecting another and we got on really well. So hopefully that will be progress to allow us to do some great PR – because I’ve got loads of fantastic ideas on that front!

And I still haven’t managed to get my car MOT’d – maybe tomorrow?

Time and space....to think

I suppose I'm quite lucky in that I have enforced periods of time alone. No, I'm not at Her Majesty's pleasure! I work all over the country, and often have a 2, 3 or 4 hour drive.

It's amazing what ideas you can come up with if you just spend a little time thinking through something. I get quite excited when I have a gem of an idea, and then I develop it in my mind, allowing it to expand into something which could be quite special.

I think this has benefitted our business to a massive extent. How many good business ideas have you had, or who do you know who has had a great idea, only to see it developed by someone else later on...and then they're kicking themselves, aren't they?

The difference between successful people and those that aren't, is that successful people actually get on with it and do something. And to be able to do that, you need time to think about your idea and take it to the next stage. Here's me talking about 'successful people' and we haven't even launched yet!! But I'm so convinced we've got it right, I'm sure we'll get in that elite group one day.

You've heard them all saying it, Richard Branson, Stelios etc, you have to take some risks and get out of your comfort zone. But I think that as long as it's a measured risk, and you know what you are really getting into, then you're not being foolish. After all, I have a mortgage and a baby, and I'm not going to risk our stability for wild idea.

But we have taken it really steady, researched, developed and asked a lot of questions about ourselves and to others, so we are sure we are heading in the right direction. Now that just makes good business sense.

Yesterday I was travelling for 3 hours each way to Bristol and back. And on the way home I had yet another new idea, and the tingling sensation happened again. I was trying to make notes for myself so I wouldn't forget what I was thinking (you know what I'm like about lists and lists), so I was scribbling on my hand because I was driving!

You've got to be careful that you don't lose focus, but when you get a really good idea, that's timed right for your business, then you have to go with it. So this morning I've been researching (again!) to make sure I’m going down the right path. And By Jove! I think I’ve got it!! Another cog in the big wheel.

But I’m not telling you what it is until I know if it’s worked or not…..so watch this space!

Kirsty

Checking out the competition!

It was an exciting couple of days after I'd first thought about the concept of entertain the kids.

But I was dreading the fact that I might find that someone else had already done it, and although I was a pretty intensive internet user, I just hadn't come across it yet.

So I decided that I needed to spend a few days just trawling the internet to see what else was out there.

I found that parenting websites tended to come under one of the following groups:

1. Home-made webpages. Usually set up by a US parent (Brits don't seem to have as many personal websites yet as the Americans do), containing their thoughts and ideas. Tended not to have any search functions, and very limited content, just one or two pages with a dozen or so ideas specific to a particular type of child. So if you are looking for something for a one year old boy, you might just find things that suit a 7 year old girl.

2. Portals/webrings - personally these sites drive me mad! They are just links and links to other sites for advice, health, shopping, reviews, and more portals! I just end up going round and round in circles and hardly ever come across any original content, and before I know it, I've spend an hour getting nowhere fast. Loads of pop-up ads and banners too, and you end up clicking on them aswell - usually by mistake!

3. Women's sites - these tend to be all things to all women! Really good sites with loads and loads of content, but often quite difficult to navigate, and you know what you want is there somewhere, but hard to find and often quite slow. Lots of advertising too.

But the fantastic news was that I'd not found anything that was as specific as I was thinking. This allowed me to refine my idea to the following USPs:

- quick to load
- no obtrusive banner ads or pop-ups
- excellent search facilities for age groups, location & type of activity
- keep focused. No advice, shopping or health pages.
- lots and lots of original ideas, so that if you search for a certain criteria, you'll get at least 10 different ideas returned

So that gave me the confidence to take it a bit further forward.

Now I just had to think about the costs and income a bit more.

If I wasn't having advertising on the site, how would it make money? And just how much does it cost to build a really good website and how much would the marketing cost to promote it?

The Strategic Business Plan starts to be written.....

Kirsty

Research research

We've tried to do our own market research, simply to cut costs. The experts say that a surprisingly small number of answers will provide a good reflection of the market's opinion in general. Apparently the General Election opinion polls are carried out with just 1000 people and they are usually pretty accurate.

We've managed to get a good response from Luke's nursery, and are now really trying to get into a primary school, to get them to allow us to research their parents. We've made it as easy as possible for the school. We'll print the questionnaires, which are only one sheet of A4. We will drop them off and pick them up, and they include a disclaimer for the school - they can't be seen to be recommending our business. But so far, we haven't had any luck. Ross is following up the schools who haven't replied yet, and I'm holding out that the school that both Ross and I went to will agree to it.

We've also approached some celebrities and are absolutely delighted that Kym Marsh (Hearsay, Loose Women, mum to 2 young children) has given us a comment and allowed us to use her name, and she hasn't charged a fee! We've put the comment on our site and our holding page, and we'll add some comments we've had from other parents too. Testimonials are so important I think to give us credibility.

Technology is moving on apace isn't it? We are already looking at the next phase of our business (way before we even launch!) to take advantage of the mobile technology developments, and the audio visual products such as podcasts. Did I say I wanted a business that didn't need updating regularly? I think all businesses have to be impacted by some changes in the wider world, and you've got to constantly look to the future, or you'll be left behind. But we need to focus on our current business aswell, to make sure we launch with a really good quality product.

So it's all about research at the moment - market research from potential customers, researching the future technologies, aswell as the tons of research we are doing for loads of different technical things like the wording of our editorial copy, software to do certain searches on the site, and the payment processing facilities from providers like Worldpay.

And then there's the research for the content of the site. Because when I first set out with this business, I thought I'd have more than enough ideas myself to fill the site, but after really scrutinising our categories, I've found that I should put a lot more for certain age groups and certain activities. So I'm off to do some more of that now.

Well, that's after I've picked up Gregg's car and paid for a new clutch, because it decided to break down on the M62 on Saturday! And Gregg's at work of course. Good eh?

Kirsty

Don't drop a ball!

It's a bit like juggling, this business thing. There's so much you are trying to do at once, and you have to keep all the balls in the air!

Not done much specifically to do with the business today, as I've been busy with other things. But I have had a couple of ideas (mainly PR & marketing related) so I've made a note of them. I have to keep lists of my ideas, as otherwise I'd never remember them, even by tomorrow I'll have completely forgotten about this one! And I'd kick myself if I missed the chance of implementing one of them.

I get tons of ideas, or lists of things I need to do/check, when I'm reading books, so I add those into my notes aswell. Keeping it all together in a notebook (instead on scraps of paper all over the place) means I can review them regularly and take appropriate things to the next stage when necessary.

A few weeks ago, I was a bit bothered that it was all getting out of control, and I couldn't see the woods for the trees. So I drew up a 'Timetable and Countdown to Launch' work programme which is split into monthly tasks from September to May. Pre launch, launch (March) and immediately post launch.

It allows us to focus on the priorities and not get carried away spending time on things that aren't that important yet. We brainstormed everything we think we need to do, and then I divided a table into columns showing Technical activities (actually getting our product right), Marketing activities (market research, PR and direct sales) and Business activities (bookkeeping, tax, company structure, finance etc). It's worked a treat.

But as I sit here and look at September (being 30 Sept today) I realise that I've probably done about 70% of what I set out to do, but loads more that weren't in the original plan, but became necessary - such as this blog for instance! That's fine, because it needs to be flexible, and I can add things to the months as we go along. For example, I forgot that I needed to buy a scanner, so that's been added into November's tasks, and it means I can forget about it until then. Frees your head up and stops you becoming so overwhelmed at the size of the job in front of you.

Dropped off the first lot of 'gifts' for our market research respondents yesterday. Hope they liked them!

Kirsty

Well would you credit it?

Amazing! Only yesterday I was complaining to anyone that would listen (or read), that RBS weren't returning my calls, and hey presto, this morning the bank manager has rung to set up a meeting for next week, to go through our business plan in more detail! So I'd better hold off my scathing opinions of the banking community until we've seen what happens with this. But sounds very promising.

So, back to the story about the day the lightbulb finally lit up! It was a cold wet day in January 2005......

Well, actually, to be honest the thought really developed over a few days, as I had a couple of instances of sheer exasperation that made me think seriously about the offering from businesses already out there.

The first one was when we were driving back from visiting some relatives, I was driving the car and Gregg (hubby) was in the back seat next to Luke (one of us tends to do this if we are on a long journey, and it was a 2.5 hour drive). Luke had started to play up (just one year old at this time), was getting really restless and Gregg was running out of things to entertain him with. Next thing he was sick! (Luke that is, not Gregg!)

So I stopped the car, we cleaned him up, and we swapped places because Gregg's patience had pretty much run out. And I took over as the in-car entertainer. We weren't that prepared with toys, books etc, because up until that time Luke had generally slept for the full car journey (babies are great like that, aren't they?) So I started improvising with empty water bottles, magazines, anything I could find. And I managed to settle him a bit and he started to cheer up. It occurred to me then that some of us are more natural at quickly finding things to entertain children (of all ages) than others. I recalled my days of being a cub leader and kids club leader and realised that it was probably something I was pretty good at. It's amazing what you can do with an empty matchbox and some energetic kids! Honestly, there's loads of things! And I knew that if I was going to set up a business, it had to be doing something that I really enjoyed and was good at (because I get bored quite easily). So that was lightbulb moment number 1.

Number 2 came the next day, when I was surfing the web at home. I'd decided that it was about time Luke started colouring with crayons, but I didn't have any suitable things for him to colour in (plain paper yes, but no colouring books as such). I'd decided that somewhere you should be able to download colouring pages for children, in this technological age you couldn't have just been reliant upon buying books from the shops for this type of thing. Well it took me ages! Eventually I found a site that linked to another site (an American site) that did provide some colouring pages to print off, but they were really a bit too 'old' for Luke. I wanted something really basic. Lightbulb moment number 2!

And ideas were starting to come together.....next step, developing the concept a bit more and talking to Ross about it. Who's Ross - my brother and now my co-director! I'll explain how things moved on later.