Glass half-full
Days since redundancy: one month (decided against commemorative drinks party/shopping expedition)Bona fide new business leads: two (v exciting)Ratio of business to personal mails/texts sent from BlackBerry: improving
On the whole, events of the past week have reaffirmed my 'half full' world view. And that's despite the very depressing news on the economy. Up to three million unemployed, and a fair few of them in the south east and London? These are surely the sort of figures we thought we'd never see again? However, there are still pubs trading out there, and brewers making beer, and some of them want PR. So this is no time to sit and weep.
I've attended a press launch and an industry dinner, handed out a few business cards, followed up on initial conversations and now have a couple of meetings in the diary, the most promising with a small but growing pub company. And if just one of these prospects turns into a piece of business, I might recoup my investment in a haircut, spray tan and manicure. I'm rapidly learning that high maintenance and low funds don't go together.
It seems slightly odd to be spending entire days effectively networking. I wonder how I managed to do it as well as a full-time job, and conclude I probably wasn't doing it very well. If I had, I would presumably have been helped seamlessly into the next role by a lovingly-fostered contact. A life lesson I'm learning rather late in life.
Business plan
Spurred into action by the one-month milestone, I've written a business plan. Not one that would pass muster on Dragons' Den, but putting objectives, deadlines and finances on paper was both a sobering and empowering exercise. I've also faced up to the fact that, much as I've loved working in the drinks industry for 20 years, if there's no work for me in it at the moment , my skills are transferable. Pet food, power tools and personal hygiene all beckon, and the money is the same, wherever it comes from.
I also have a website (www.shielcomms.co.uk) - albeit just one page at the moment — which means that now, visitors will get an idea of what I can do for them, rather than the previous, sloppy "under construction" sign. If you're claiming to be a good communicator, you surely have to get your own communications right. I'm grateful to my designers, Radius, who built the site and created the Shiel Communications identity.
They've also come up with a clever design for a Christmas card that I am going with, though it's yet more spend with no guaranteed return. The pot of money put aside for investment in the business is starting to look, well, half empty.
With limited money coming in, I'm taking a close look at what's going out. It's easy to rein in on some spending — for example, I don't need any more handbags or lipsticks for a while. I'm wary of cutting back too much, too soon, though. One of the better pieces of advice I received was to "concentrate on doing the things you can earn money from, and pay others to do the rest".
Dabbling in web design, cleaning the house or redecorating the office all smack of work avoidance. I need to avoid them and crack on with some PR. And get my work-avoiding teenagers to address and stamp those Christmas cards.
A tale of two pubs
I am cheered by a Friday evening in my local pub, The Black Jug in Horsham. West Sussex. It's busy, buzzy and yet relaxed, as it has been every Friday night for the last decade. Proving that, when pubs can provide what customers want — in this case, unfailingly good food, drink and service — they will draw a crowd, credit-crunch or no. Licensee Ally Craig and his excellent team deserve to weather the recessionary storm ahead.
Sadly, the same can't be said for the café-bar which recently turned away our party of four, despite having a number of empty tables, because their computerised booking system was down. My suggestion that they could book us in with a good old-fashioned pen and paper fell on deaf ears, and yet they were effectively reducing their takings for the night by around £2,500, by my calculation.
In a different branch of this national, casual-dining chain a week later, service was so slow that customers were leaving before their meals arrived. Strikes me that what they've got wrong, and my local right, is staff training. Good training gives your team the confidence and flexibility to make sure the customers leave happy. You can bet I'll go back to my local, but I won't give the others a third chance to disappoint.
Ros Shiel was public relations manager for the industry's beer image initiative Beautiful Beer. She was made redundant by the British Beer and Pub Association after members slashed funding.
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