Still as one door closes others open and the experience is leading to a bit of a rethink on our marketing plans over the next year. We've had some business support from Jenny from Rainbow's End fully funded by Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council's Creative Industries project which has helped greatly in distilling out what we do really well, what distinguishes us from our competition, the messages we need to get out to potential clients and areas to focus on over the coming months.
This coming Tuesday sees David Laud of i2i Business Solutions kindly giving up his lunchtime for a business meeting with me. David has a lot to answer for as he is the person who I engaged to look at developing my part-time web design business into something better - leading me to set up a limited company in a recession and work longer hours and earn less than I did as an employee of others before! I love every minute of it and David's advice was excellent, hopefully he can help me take things further forward as we continue to grow our influence and staff.
On Friday I met up with Martin of World Insight Media of Saltburn. Whilst we have an overlap in the services we provide, we also have some separate skills that we could provide for each other as an enhanced service to our customers. Martin struck me as very likeable and ethical guy and we are exploring how we can help each other.
Last week saw us adding cookie compliance code for a client and adding an opening times management system to the website of The Pottery Loft, an arts & crafts centre and cafe in Billingham (and a great place to take the kids for a fun session).
We also completed our Small Business Solutions website - we are aiming to simplify working your way around our services and the Small Business Solutions site has a series of packaged options for purchase to provide the ideal solution for a new or micro business launching on the web, including e-commerce and e-marketing packages. We're also open to tweaking these to the needs of any new business so contact me if you don't see what you want - we're only too happy to help or pass you on to someone who can if we don't provide the service you require.
We also had another meeting to set up a business referrals network in Redcar and East Cleveland which was the biggest yet (even had to move to a bigger room) and had a couple of businesses keen to be involved more long term which is great - things are really moving forward with some great people and dynamic businesses. We also seem to have sorted out all the issues re funding a new apprentice and have interviews on Tuesday morning for a new Social Digital Apprentice via Middlesbrough College's partnership with the Digital Youth Academy.
The rest of the week saw a morning of sitting around in James Cook Uni Hospital for people to poke around with Matty's knee - we're not really any the wiser but at least he's walking around now and we're booked in for an MRI scan (or a sit in a hospital for hours) on Wednesday evening. My back and neck is still knackered so painkillers and no booze for over a week now :(
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