Another relic of the analog age

While having a bit of a clear out, Cathy found this: the last print edition of the Yellow Pages ever delivered to us. I took a photo before we tossed it in recycling.

I was struck how the front cover shows the architect of the Yellow Pages' downfall, a smartphone. 

Time was, every business had to have a listing in Yellow Pages. It was the first piece of advice given on enterprise courses to people seeking advice on setting up a business. We had one when we ran our own business, although nobody ever called us because they saw us there. 

Businesses that relied on their Yellow Pages listing used all kinds of daft ways to be first in the directory - calling themselves AAAAAAAA111 Plumbing or so on. More successful businesses paid for box ads or half page ads or even full page ads. Spots on the cover cost thousands. 

It was worth it too, because everyone had a Yellow Pages and almost everyone would use it to find a tradesman or check where their nearest branch of a given shop was. Yes, there were competitors, like the Thomson Directory, but Yellow Pages dominated the market, an ultimate authoritative information source and able to name its price to advertisers as a gatekeeper of information.

And then smartphones came along and killed that business model. They tried to pivot online as Yell but as search engines got better there wasn't any need for a directory website any more. 

In their heyday, a Yellow Pages directory would have hundreds of pages. The final edition was a stripped down bare bones affair compared to the fat and satisfied versions in its pomp; the advertisers surely placing their entries out of habit rather than any marketing strategy. 

Like other businesses that cornered their now-vanished markets, no-one misses Yellow Pages. It had a good run but the world changed far too rapidly for it to keep up. It's a warning to any hegemony - your reckoning time may come. Will you be ready?

Highlights of 2017: Graduating with a MSc

I feel a bit embarrassed to be writing about graduating with a MSc in Business Psychology, but if I can be indulged as I pat myself on the back for a short post, I'd be grateful.

Red sash for science

2017 saw the culmination of my post-graduate degree that I began back in 2014. By the time it had finished the course had moved campus, I had learned a lot about organisational psychology, and I had changed jobs, partly because of a classroom exercise.

The first term was a basic introduction to key concepts like motivation, job satisfaction and burn out, which were three themes that really interested me. We did the burn out quiz and I scored very highly compared to other people on the course. I remember looking at the results and thinking, 'I need to change jobs'. Nine months later I had started a new role, leaving behind a job I realise now I had stagnated in.

At the start of the second term, I received a significant diagnosis, which resulted in being put on medication that had significant effects on my ability to concentrate. Fortunately I was off those particular drugs by the April. I just about scraped through that module, recording just above the 40% cut off. But, hey, a pass is a pass.

For the second year our lessons moved from the Caerleon campus to Trefforest. This was better for me in terms of travel, although not for my class colleagues, who were all travelling from Bristol. At some point during this year we were all asked if we were willing to be photographed for the course prospectus. We all agreed and I really liked my photos. However, I clearly wasn't sexy enough to be the face of Business Psychology in future years.

In the second year, we did the course I found most interesting - External Communications. This focused on cognitive psychology and examining how we are manipulated into buying things, showing brand loyalty, and so on. I wrote an essay about the psychological techniques the Lego company use to boost sales. They use a lot, although I can't say for sure that they do it knowingly. I saw great correlation between marketing techniques I'd read or heard from various gurus and psychological theory, and the whole subject really engaged me. I blogged about Neuromarketing at the time.

The Leadership module didn't engage me. Partly because the lecturer was a few weeks away from quitting the university to go and work for a rival. The subject matter felt very much like a run of the mill business theory course. And in the first week the lecturer started talking about how all the problems in the NHS were down to poor leadership. I thought this was hilariously simplistic and told her so. She told me I should read the Francis Report into the Mid Staffordshire scandal, and didn't seem to hear me when I said that I had written a white paper partly in response to the Francis Report.

I've been very lucky to have a job where I have met a number of NHS CEOs, not to mention Medical Directors, Nursing Directors, executive directors of all shapes and sizes. Generally I think they are all very smart, committed, people who really give a damn about doing a good job and somehow keeping the NHS limping along. The truth is, though, NHS organisations are unleadable. They are too big, too riven by competing interests, too underfunded and over-demanded, too entrenched in delivery mechanisms that were always a compromise, and are basically organisational oil tankers that need turning circles the size of cities. Anyway, she wasn't having it. She had never worked in the NHS but knew how to fix it. I just shrugged and left her to her delusions.

The last section of the course was a dissertation. I did a study trying to see if positive reflection on work affected job satisfaction. I didn't find any statistically valid effect except that if you ask people to reflect on their successes they are more likely to be dissatisfied with the performance of their manager. This is bad news for me as I now line manage three people, so I obviously need to make sure they only think about their failures and not their successes! (Only joking!)

The dissertation took up the latter half of 2016, particularly the final three months. When I finally submitted it in January, the feeling of relief was immense. I remember going with Cathy to the cinema and sitting there and realising that I didn't feel guilty about doing something fun for the first time in months.

The graduation ceremony was fun too. We were arranged in order of qualification and then alphabetically by course title. There were only four of us attending the graduation and 'Business Psychology' was the first of the MSc courses listed. One of the PhD students didn't show, meaning that my friend Nick was the second person called on stage and I was the third. We had an address from Steven Moffatt, the Doctor Who show-runner. He was quite funny but overdid the message of how badly his generation had messed things up for the generation of fresh-faced youngsters who made up the majority of graduates there.

I was very pleased to share the day with Cathy. and with Connor, who had come down from Birmingham for the event. Cathy was my rock during the dissertation in particular, but she has also been a tremendous support throughout the course. Without her, I'm not sure I would have carried on post-diagnosis back in 2015 so it seemed only fitting that I let her share my graduation hat!

Things I learned from running my own business

In 1998 I helped found Salt and Light Greetings with my wife, Cathy. It had a very simple premise. She would design cards and I would sell them to shops. Over the next four years we supplied shops from Jersey to Aberdeen, Liverpool to Lowestoft. We also partnered with other businesses to produce calendars, height charts, and cross-stitch kits.

Looking back, there are many things I’d do differently. Of course, the landscape has changed. These days we would set up a Blog / Twitter / Facebook presence and try to recruit fans to the project. We had many comments from people who loved Cathy’s designs. We could do more direct selling to the public, but there are several other things I’d try and do as well.

Mailshots

It took us a while to do a mailshot. When we started out I would drive to shops to make sales calls. This was time-consuming and a day of several unsuccessful appointments was soul-destroying.

I researched mailshots, reading Power Direct Marketing by Ray Jutkins and other books, and based our letters on industry good practice. We had a response rate of 20 per cent for one mailshot, and our response rate never dipped below five per cent.

20 per cent is a miraculous rate of return. The reasons? A highly-targetted list. Clear special offers. Very easy-to-use order forms – including one where all you had to do was fill in your name and address and tick one box to get all the cards at a special rate, post-free. Plus our letter that outlined that we were a small business, but we were friendly and we wanted to work with people.

The lesson: If I was starting a business now I would build a highly targeted list and mail to it sooner rather than later.

Other lessons

After a while I wasn’t afraid to chase late-payers, including faxing or phoning every day until we got our money. When I started out I would often let the 30-day period lapse and wait another month or more before contacting people. I changed when I realised that not paying on time was akin to people stealing from us. So I chased the payments.

I can’t remember which book by Mark H McCormack said you should never be afraid to fire your customers. I took that to heart and we blacklisted persistent late payers and refused to supply them. Continuing to do business with unreliable or unethical people can only harm your business. It can be hard to say ‘No’ to people when you run your own business, but you have to sometimes.

If I did it over again I would seek out more partnerships and licensing opportunities. We had great success partnering with other businesses who wanted to use Cathy’s designs on products we couldn’t afford to invest in. Knowing what I know now I would try to partner with more people. The benefit is that they do the hard work of selling and you get paid for it.

I would also look for premises to operate the business in. They cost money, but the psychological advantage of having to get up and go to an office would be good for personal discipline and motivation. It would also mean I could leave the work behind and get a proper break from it. We spent a couple of years with boxes of cards stacked behind the living room sofa, acting as a reminder of how many we still had to sell. That’s the kind of low-level pressure that builds up until eventually I completely lost my enthusiasm for the project.

Finally, I would network more. I think there is more of an emphasis on networking these days, or maybe I just know more business owners who go to business breakfasts and the like. The pressure was on to make sales and so sometimes I discounted the importance of maintaining a network of contacts who I couldn’t sell to. What I’ve learned is that people buy based on recommendations and word of mouth is the cheapest way of selling there is, so I would put time in to build a network.

A final thought

We set up our own business without really knowing what we were getting into. I don’t think we’re so different from most people who set up their own businesses in that respect. The main thing is you have to want it to work. You can’t go in half-hearted. You have to commit. I think the biggest reason so many small businesses fail is because people don’t realise how hard it can be.

The main point of my sharing these lessons I’ve learned is to help people find it less hard when they decide to set up their own business. I hope these lessons are helpful.

Barclays Bank appear to be a bunch of tax-dodging bastards

I’ve just had a bit of a rant on Twitter. Thought it might be worth making a more structured argument here.


Last year Barclays paid £113m in corporation tax on £11.6bn profits: that’s 1% rather than 28%.

The thing that really gets me about such (probably totally legal) criminality is that tax-dodging on such an epic scale is really a form of social robbery. Barclays should have paid £3,164 million (or 3.164 billion if you’re using American billions) in tax.

They have robbed the British treasury of over £3,000,000,000, which means they have collectively robbed the people of Britain of whatever the Government could have spent that money on.

Seriously, that is how much they have stolen from us by exploiting legal loopholes.

Does that bank have a social conscience? Do the people who work there? Do the people who bank there? Do the people or institutions that own shares in it?

If you’re making money off Barclays you’re guilty of complicity in this swindle. I honestly think that.

I don’t know why we don’t get more angry about this. I know it’s not just Barclays. It could be every other large corporation. Why aren’t we angry with all of them?

Business can be conducted differently. Business can create wealth for the good of everyone. It can bring much-needed equity into a sharply-divided society. Paying tax is about good citizenship and the demands of good citizenship apply equally to banks and corporations.

But it’s not going to happen without pressure from people like me and you.

This country is going to lose its free healthcare system. It’s going to lose investment in its infrastructure. The schools and hospitals and roads and rubbish collections and leisure centres and libraries and parks and public transport in your area is going to be cut. Fact. And if you’re a normal member of this society you either don’t know that or you don’t give a shit.

Most people don’t. Who cares about corporate profiteering when you can watch Got to Dance on Sky? TV is the 21st century opium of the proles.

Jesus hated profiteering and took direct action (Mark 11: 15-17). I reckon he'd be up for having a go at Barclays.

This resonates with a dark part of my soul (wait, I have a soul?)

From the awesome nihilists at Despair.com

Boneheaded Coporations

The buzz is Mattel/Hasbro are planning to sue Facebook for allowing Scrabulous to rip off Scrabble. As one of the half a million people who play Scrabulous pretty much daily, that is a) irritating beyond belief, and b) doubly annoying because it shows how stupidity is ingrained in corporate reactions to anything these days.

All across the world Facebookers, bloggers, Scrabulous fans and any intelligent person is saying 'What the hell are Hasbro/Mattel doing?' For a few quid they could pay off the guys who developed it and have access to half a million people. They'll have a Facebook presence any other global brand could only dream of and the income from the ads would easily pay them back what the Scrabulous set-up would cost (it's much easier to negotiate a good deal with someone you could otherwise nail for copyright infringement). Basically someone else has done all their R&D and built up a client base for them. Only an idiot would threaten that.

Plus, if they bought out Scrabulous, they'd look like a right on corporation who understand the ever-changing technological world we live in. And , more importantly, I could carry on beating Clare on a regular basis.

Instead with their copyright lawyers and legal threats they look like a bunch of grunting luddites with the commercial nous of a small walnut. It's a wonder they have any internet presence at all as they obviously hammer their thick-ridged skulls against the keyboards in the vain hope of communicating with other simian evolutionary throwbacks.

They are the boneheads who see a goose laying golden eggs and decide the best thing to do is kill it, piss off all the people who loved the goose and then try and sell them stuff. Morons!