The Body Shop founder, Dame Anita Roddick, has died. I just heard the news on Terry Wogan’s BBC Radio 2 show just now. She was inspirational in the way she set-up and ran her shop originally and then went on to create the Body Shop chain. She was one of my business heroes. My sympathies [...]

I’ve just had an illuminating interview with David Speakman of Travel Counsellors.  David originally set-up Travel Counsellors to do the administration for agents and allow the agents to do what they do best: organise holidays. The company is now a multi-million pound one that’s based in Bolton in the Northwest. David has handed over the [...]

I’ve really enjoyed blogging with Blogger. But now I’ve hit a number of its limitations. One major one is a lack of good plugins to enhance the user experience. Similarly I’ve decided not to transfer all my posts to my WordPress.org blog because of the limitations there. So I’ve decided to enhance the blog for us both [...]

“My son is now an ‘entrepreneur.’ That’s what you’re called when you don’t have a job.” – Ted Turner. Do you tell people you’re an entrepreneur, or remember this one, intrepreneur? You can’t really call yourself an entrepreneur because it’s a label other people attribute to those that have started and run companies. So until [...]

At last I’ve done it! I may be mad but I finally decided to transfer to the new blogger widgetised template. It meant losing some of the customisation that I’d built up in the previous template. Although to be fair I didn’t lose that much. And I’m gaining… Labels! So if you fancy stuff about [...]

Richard Bandler (co-founder of NLP), Peter Thomson (owner of Achiever’s Edge) and me (Power Packed Copywriting and Coaching) all have something in common. So what is it I hear you shout! We’re all on this blog in audio form. Thanks to the existence of amazing technology I’ve put a BOXFILE in the sidebar of this blog [...]

How often have you heard that every business needs to bedifferent and unique to its competitors? In other words it has to have a USP. You’ve probably heard of the marketing term USP. Unique selling proposition orunique selling point. Has the concept got a little pedestrian!? Everyone claims to have one. Unfortunately the USP is [...]

This is a test post to allow me to find out how Google is indexing my site. If you liked that post, then try these…ZazzleYour Sales And Marketing Growth Exploding?Your Business GrowthYou Make The Rules For How You Do BusinessYou Can Get Things Done Fast!Social Bookmarking

I wrote an article called “Do Your Adverts Sell?“ in early September 2006 about the importance of direct advertising compared to branding advertising and how Cannes Lions are what Ad agencies chase rather than sales! This year the Cannes Lion Award are 17th to 23rd June, so if you’re not there now I suspect you already know [...]

Last Thursday I was so excited because just as I left for a networking meeting I noticed that my blog had attracted 998 hits. I knew with the USA just waking up I’d get a few more so after my previous record of over 600 earlier I’d now hit another milestone – 1,000 hits in [...]

The coolest guy on the planet must still be Seth Godin because his blog bounced back to the top of  The Viral Gardens top 25 Marketing blogs. Every few months I like to see what’s happening on the traffic front for other marketing blogs. In May Mack Collier decided to change how he rated the top 25 marketing blogs [...]

To its eternal credit the USA has kept faith with NASA and continued to send men and women into space. After all without space activity how can we believe in Star Trek, or any variant of it? Although the space programme is an important part of the global community it can also be part of [...]

The second episode of this 4 part series on fashion shops went very much like the first. The main difference was that the boutique concerned appeared to have more staff. This time Mary Portas helped the shop’s owner get rid of a vast swathe of old-fashioned gear that nobody wants to buy and is really just [...]

Shock Horror! Stop the presses!! Google product manager Eric Case apparently reveals that blogging is dead!! Apparently the shift is to Twitter where you get to tell everyone you know that “you’re on the train”, “down the pub”, “on Every Street in Manchester.” Yes I’m on Twitter too but I don’t expect that I’ll be [...]

Now this is a PR person’s dream (isn’t it Rob?). A software company releases a new online game that relates to Paris Hilton and then gets their PR person to do a news release about it, complete with URL. Do you think it’s going to be on the news? You bet! You can play the [...]

For the first time I’ve got over 600 hits in a day (676 if you want the figures). To find that information out I use Statcounter – a fab piece of FREE software and to confirm Google Analytics. Two years ago I would have been happy to get 600 hits in a month. I was doing pretty [...]

Last night with very little fanfare BBC2 introduced a new business mentor or guru onto the small screen. Mary Portas, retail shop reviver. She has written for the Daily Telegraph for some time and this foray into the world of business makeover was fun and really helped the struggling fashion boutique (Ju-Ju’s) she’d been brought [...]

Strategy vs tactics is an ongoing conversation with many business owners. I’ve blogged on strategy vs tactics in a few other posts simply because it’s vital to a good growing business: strategy vs tactics (example and definition) The Art of War Definition As a recent example of the importance of strategy: I was coaching Will from [...]

I can’t really say very much about this at the moment as I’ve been asked if I want to be involved with a new start offline business newspaper to write a chunk of the content and to act in an editorial capacity. The newspaper will pilot in a particular UK region. It will go to selected [...]

Well maybe not quite. But he’s made it clear that he is not going to go on with The Apprentice (USA) with NBC. Can he take it through his own production company like I suggested? I think the format has got a little uninteresting for the American public. This is something the BBC needs to address [...]