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