The book inside
By Jacq
Show
timeIf you've been bold enough to start a business, 9.9 times out of 10 you'll have an idea waiting in the wings that could become a best seller.
A book is a natural progression of a business. In many ways, the easy bit. After all the hard work of setting up a business isn't it time to blow your own trumpet, take centre stage and let the pages of your book tell your story?
Wouldn't you just love the press to fall in love with you. Course you would. The obvious call. Send out a press release. Picture it landing on a journalist's desk. Lost amongst a pile of other press releases. Now imagine the same press release with a book accompanying it. Different story.
Start with your heart. End with your head.
It's tough to get all the way to the end of a book if you're striving for perfection first time round. Forget the minutiae. Word count. Grammar. Chapter lengths. These can wait. Just give yourself permission to write. No holding back. See where the incredible journey takes you. Then when it comes to your second draft, tackle it head on. Some paragraphs will stay. Others go. A perfectly natural part of the process of what can be a rather cathartic experience.
Find the magic number
Books don't write themselves. If you're serious about writing a book it has to be a daily commitment rather than a commitment for a whole day. Top tip. Get a timer. Set it for 45 minutes. Write. No delicious distractions allowed. Everyone has a magic number. After a couple of sessions you'll find yours. Even 10 minutes a day can lead to a best seller.
The Boy Who Fell Down Exit 43
Singer Harriet Goodwin cut back on touring because she had small children. Then she stumbled on her second career. As a children's writer. She woke up one morning, convinced a dream she'd had was the plot for a novel. She began writing for 10 minutes a day when her children were napping or at school. Religiously.
Something in the woodshed
In 2009 The Boy Who Fell Down Exit 43 became book of the month in Borders and was shortlisted for last year's Blue Peter award. Ms Goodwin is now working on a second book in a shed at the bottom of her garden. She hasn't given up her day job and still gives concerts but finds writing complements her singing. Proof there can be harmony between two careers.
So what are you waiting for? Time to release the book inside.
Jacqueline Burns
Publishing Consultant
publishabestseller.com
@writersclub
The virtues of virtual PR
By Lady Who Lunches
Mags and
ragsPR is traditionally associated with paper print such as magazines and newspapers. But there's also an incredibily accessible arena ready, willing and eager to hear about you, your business, your expertise, thoughts, observations and opinions. PR is the perfect passport to fame, fans and followers in the digital world.
Forget-me-not
Think about what happens when someone reads about you or your company in a mag or rag. Unless you're a household brand such as Heinz, Max Factor or Dove or an A-Lister such as Cheryl, Madge or Kylie then chances are they'll struggle to remember your name. Let alone your website.
Right click. Left click
How many time has a business or brand grabbed your attention while you're getting your locks coiffed or your pearlies cleaned and you're having a Gracia fix. Then when you get back to the office you've promptly forgotten all about them. Well that could be you. However if someone happens to stumble upon you online, they're just a click away to becoming a follower or fan, client or customer. Tantilising eh?
Hop on the Merry Go Round
Online PR is a virtual circle. To create a digital footprint all you have to do is get tip-tapping on the keyboard. Write a blog. Or an article. It'll start a chain reaction. A mention here. A tweet there. Write more. Get more mentions. More tweets and re-tweets. The result. A flow of visitors to your site. Increased site traffic leads to higher ranking on search engines when surfers search under your key words and phrases. Google-icious. Bing! Bong! Print is 'ere-today, 'istory-tomorrow. A digital footprint sticks around. Now how cool is that!
Cheap as chips
Online PR and marketing is a gift. Beautifully wrapped with a big bow. The cost. Your time. Forget paying for all-singing-all-dancing brochures, which are quickly out of date. Postage. No charge. All you need. A well conceived email accompanied by the relevant documents. A press release. Photographs. Articles. Followed up with a phone call. Small investment. Big return.
Trackability
Hitting the headlines in the mags and rags and tracking site visitors back to a specific article or offer is not an exact science. Tracking online PR and marketing on the other hand is rather more straightforward. By accessing web statistics you can see the addresses of the sites where your visitors are coming from. Then you can make more than an educated guess on how the stats correspond to your efforts and activity. And, on that note...
Buyability
...if you're getting a flock of clicks from a particular site, but no one's buying, you can make more than an educated guess why that might be. Perhaps they're clicking through on a message that doesn't really convey what you're selling, that might need a tweak. Equally, gateway sites that drive traffic should be treated with love, care and attention.
Fame costs!
Indeed. But before you think about sending out another press release via snail mail, stop. Take a good, long look at email and give some serious thought on how you could become the one to watch in the digital sphere.
Paula Gardner
Do Your Own PR
Twitter : @doyourownpr
Kitchen Make-Over : Part I
By ConceptInteriorsThe kitchen is the heart of a home. A place of delicious aromas. Stews. Soups. Sunday lunches. Freshly baked bread. Time for family, friends and parties. Fanny made a career out of hers in the 60s. In the 70s Tom and Barbara shared a bottle of nettle wine or something stronger if Margo and Jerry popped round. The Golden Girls hung out in there during the 80s. Mr Lewie never ventured out of it. And today Nigella and Jamie invite you into theirs.
Kitchens speak volumes
The kitchen is the number one improvement that prospective buyers look for. So it's worth investing in yours. Particulary if you feel like you’ve stepped into a time machine when you walk in to make a cuppa. If it’s time for a complete kitchen make over here’s Part I of Top-Tips on how you can achieve a trendy cooking space and still be able to cook.
Floor
showGood flooring can make or break a kitchen as well as setting the tone for the whole room. It needs to cope with knocks, spills, scratches and stains. Killer heels. Welly boots. Dirty paws. Flood or fire. Well, you’re spoilt for choice. Vinyl. Linoleum. Porcelain. Natural stone. Rubber. Cork. Even bamboo!
Hard-working-worktops
Worktops are one of the most visible elements in a kitchen. So why shouldn't they be as stylish as your wardrobe as well as hard-wearing and hard-working. Choosing the right worktop will take into account design, budget and maintenance. Traditionally the choice was between laminate for the cheap and cheerful, wooden for the rustic country kitchen or granite for a great look that lasts. Now there's quartz as a modern alternative. Looks good and is is super scratch resistant, stain resistant and wear resistant. Hmm! There's a thought.
Put your kitchen in the spotlight
Lighting is key. Be clever. Be creative using a combination of accent, task, decorative and ambient lighting to enhance the overall appearance of the kitchen. Use plinth lights. Incorporate stylish pendants over an island. Or a chandelier for real dramatic effect.
Fantasy Island
Space permitting, incorporate an island into your kitchen. Mobile or static, it’s guaranteed to add a stylish focal point with a multitude of uses. From storage and food prep to relaxed dining. Entertaining en masse or drinks a deux with a friend.
The sociable kitchen
Kitchens are not just for cooking. They're the hub of the home. A sociable place for family and friends. For invitations and celebrations. Think about adding a breakfast bar to a work surface or soft seating area for sitting, sipping or snoozing.
Samantha Morgan
Head of Design
Concept Interiors
www.concept-interior.co.uk
Follow Samantha on Twitter @smorganconcept
A passion for purple
By Sister Snog
Yin and
YangSister Snog loves purple. The deep purple haze. Rich. Regal with a splash of ceremony and a sense of occasion. Royal with a hint of aristocracy. It sits between the blue hues of the Yin and the red hot sizzle of the Yang. Combine the two. Hey Presto! Sisters Snog's catwalk colour palette.
Hello Sweetie
Dip into the purple palette. You'll find Violet Creams and Parma Violets. Quixotic confectionary. If your taste buds can handle it. Rather like Sister Snog. An acquired taste for a refined palette.
Lavender and lilac
Lavender water evokes a sense of elegance. Victorian charm. Genteel ladies with frilly parasols. A walled garden draped in a gown of wisteria. Sipping chilled lilac wine in the gazebo. Humming a little ditty. Lavender's Blue. Dilly. Dilly. For instance. And dancin'. If yer askin'. I'm askin'. In the rain. Purple rain of course!
Marvellous mulberry
Think purple. Think mulberry. Looks like a cross between an elongated blackberry. A robust raspberry. Swollen longenberry. Certainly not your 'Average Bear Boo-Boo!' And did you know Buck Pal now stands where there was once a fine mulberry orchard. Then of course there's 'Peace, Love, Mud...and Mulberry'. The epitomy of understated Bo-ho luxury with roots in Biba-land. A peculiar juxtaposition. Rather like Sister Snog.
Mighty mauve
Think purple. Think mauve. First named in 1856 by chemist Sir William Henry Perkins. While he was tinkering in the lab late one night an unexpected residue caught his eye which turned out to be the first aniline dye. It became known as Perkin's mauve and the title of his biography Mauve: How One Man Invented a Colour That Changed the World.
Dress to Impress
Colour plays a key component of a brand's personality. Take a step back to think about what your brand colour says about you. And be sure to dress it in a colour that speaks volumes.
Kitchen Table Tycoons
By Virtual Girl
Careers from the kitchen table
The number of people starting and growing a business from home
rose to 2.8 million in 2009. Collectively these Kitchen Table Tycoons contributed £284
billion to the annual UK economy according to a survey by
Enterprise Nation and BT. And many of the are women.
May all your donuts look like Fanny's
Fanny Craddock may have been crowned the 'First Lady of Food' but she's certainly not
the only one who has seen her business leap off the kitchen table
into the limelight. You can find Cheryl Cullen and Kitten Kit keeping company
with Sally Preston, chief cook-and-CEO at Babylicious, Rebecca
Jay with her Dodo Pad and Julie Pankhurst who captured the desire
to reunite with friends. So a big thank you to new technology
which has at last created a new liberation for these Mothers of Invention by enabling them to run
successful businesses from home.
Oh! What a circus
Most Kitchen Table Tycoons double up as Mobile Entrepreneurs. Their average day.
Rarely typical. And they rely heavily on smart phones, apps and
instant messaging to manage their very-much-in-the-now
businesses. Organisation. Communication. Accessiblity.
Availability. All key to the circus of business. The Mobile
Entrepreneur is both Mistress of Smoke & Mirrors and Master
of the act of juggling and balancing the needs of the business
with the demands of their customer or client. Which is what
possibly explains the growth of the Virtual
Office.
Step into the virtual world
Time is both the currency and the enemy of every entrepreneur.
However, outsourcing telephone answering, admin, secretarial and
support services can buy time. Many virtual office companies also
have bricks and mortar locations that can masquerade as a
business HQ. They'll open mail. Forward mail. Who's to know?
They're perfect for a pitch. Marvellous for a meeting. Leaps and
bounds better than Starbucks or Costa. And granny gets to keep the flat. It's a no
brainer.
So if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen and say au revoir to the kitch'n'sync.
Sally-Ann Mannas
Group Marketing Manager
The Virtual Office
www.voffice.com
Follow on Twitter @aVirtualOffice
Eight days a week
By SisterSki
British summer
time. Lazy hazy days, ice-cold lemonade, cupcakes in the garden,
buttermilk scones, home made jam and clotted cream. So you have
to say goodbye to an extra hour under the duvet. So what? But
imagine if you could actually get it back. And some. Just
conjure up another 60 minutes a day. Every day. What would you
do? Get some exercise. Have a relaxing massage. Catch up with a
friend you haven’t spoken to in ages. Or would you answer a few
more emails, send a couple of extra tweets and fill the minutes
with more work.
Stressing about a
lack of time is pretty widespread. Yet there are people who
find time for a daily workout, a hobby, a family, a social
life. And run a business.
You could aspire to be Mrs Thatcher and train yourself to exist
on four hours’ sleep a night. But would you really want to end
up looking like the Iron Lady. Debatable.
Want to magic that extra hour a day?
All it takes are just a few minor adjustments.
One for each day of the week.
MONDAY Less
is more
OK so lists may serve a purpose.
However if you're a List Queen, here’s a radical thought.
Abdicate. Strip down those endless lists to the bare bones.
Learn from glossies on packing a capsule wardrobe. Take
your list. Halve it. And halve it again. Everything doesn’t
have to be done today. And you don’t have to do everything.
Become a Mistress of the art of
delegation.
TUESDAY Three is the magic number
Take three tasks. Work on
them. If you find one hard going, rotate them and work on each
for 20 minutes at a time. Then come back and finish what you
started. And www.teuxdeux.com is a nifty little tool which can
help you mange your
tasks.
WEDNESDAY
Keep it real
Be realistic about the
timeframe. If you have three hours, you’ll know from experience
what you can expect to accomplish. If this is the first time
you’re working on a given task, under-promise so that you can
over-deliver. Less stress for
everyone.
THURSDAY Delicious
distractions
Ignore pings, pokes and
tweets however amusing, interesting or diverting. Turn them
off. Put aside 20 minutes or so at the
beginning and end of the day (and the middle if you’ve gone
cold turkey) when you can respond. It's rare an immediate
response is expected. Try it. You’ll be amazed at how much you
get done without become a social media
slave.
FRIDAY Meet yourself
Set regular meetings. With
yourself. On the agenda. Expenses. PR and marketing. Planning
and development. Turn up at the same
time every week and treat yourself with the same respect you
would any other important client. Down to the biscuits.
SATURDAY All systems go
This is hard to get your
head round if you think of yourself as a spontaneous type but
if you have a system in place for managing contacts, expenses,
subscriptions, account passwords, standard e-mail responses and
client contacts you won’t waste time looking for information.
And might even have time for a spot of
spontaneity.
SUNDAY Life beyond the
desk
Tied to your
desk? Stop worrying about the world
crashing down while you’re away. Even better. Let someone else
do the nitty gritty. Use a call minding
service, find a bookkeeper and hire a VA. Taking time out
feeds the mind. Grab a cappuccino. Walk the dog. Or better still, as you've
found some extra time book the next Sister Snog event and
hook up with the Sisters!
And start a new week with an extra day. Who says you can’t
have 8 days a
week?
The trials and tribulations of travel
By Tanguera
If you don't
have an established car sharing or lift sharing scheme, you should
be careful you don't end up setting up liability for uninsured
drivers. You should not be ordering or directing employees to get
into a car with 'Fred' if you don't know that 'Fred' is insured. If the
car is a fully insured company car that's different.Hourly paid workers are not usually paid except for the hours they work, though salaried workers may be on a different basis. You should check your contracts to see if you do in fact pay people on an hourly basis, or some other way.
Annabel Kaye (Tanguera) is Managing Director of Irenicon Ltd, a specialist employment law consultancy.
T: 08452 303050
F: 08452 303060
W: www.irenicon.co.uk
Twitter: AnnabelKaye
Monkey Madness and Puppy Love
By YoginiThink monkey. Think tree. Link the two together and what do you
see?
Monkeys jumping from one tree to another. That's the monkey
mind. The monkey mind leaps from one thought to another and
then another and another. Distracting us from living in the
present. Which is one of the goals of yoga. Meditation is one of
the ways to tame the monkey mind in order to get to a state of
peace.RIP
The quest for peace is universal. In every age. In every country, people have been trying to find peace within their environment. Nations meet continually to search for ways to make peace with each other. There's even a Nobel Peace Prize for individual contributions to this noble cause. People hold up two fingers in the form of a 'V' which symbolises peace and when someone dies, we pray that they 'rest in peace'.
Inside out
The dictionary defines peace as freedom from strife. A state of serenity, calmness and stillness. Inherent in this definition is the answer to why peace is so difficult to achieve. Life and strife seem to go hand in hand. Yet despite the obstacles, it’s possible to attain a state of peace by undergoing a shift in thinking and changing the angle of vision. Peace isn’t found in the outer world of possessions, positions and relationships. The solution to finding peace requires us to look at the problem from a new perspective. To accept we cannot change the nature of the world or its problems but we can add a new dimension to life that leads to peace. Found within. Reached through meditation.
Meditation teaches there’s little or no control over the restlessness of the ordinary mind. Imagine the mind is like an overexcited puppy. So the question is how can you keep that puppy from running circles around you. The answer. Tie it to a post. Give your puppy something to attach itself to. A note. A sound. A word. A mantra.
Brain bliss
Minds are like mercury. Unable to rest for more than a nanosecond before they go zipping off. With thoughts and ideas constantly popping in. Memories of the past. Fantasies of the future. Never the present. Meditation helps de-clutter the mind. It’s invigorating. It’s energising. It’s totally refreshing. The trick is to learn to observe all those thoughts without engaging in them. Think of the mind as the sky and thoughts like clouds passing through.
So be a monkey. Or a puppy. Find your path to brain bliss.
A dance of leadership and followership
By Tanguera
The Argentine Tango is a living language. With its own rules, etiquette and non verbal vocabulary. On the dance floor the leader responds to the music, his partner and the circulation of the other dancers. The leader indicates the steps or figures he’s inviting the follower to take by his body language. Shifting his weight. A cheeky toe-tapping-flick-kick. Talking with his shoulders.
Even bears can learn to tango
Sometimes the follower does something unexpected that actually works. A good leader leaves enough room for the follower to add an element of surprise and Angel Delight. A colourful twist. That's why the circle of 'leader influences follower influences leader' can lead to a rather merry dance. It may not even be crystal clear who’s actually leader of the pack and has the weapon of choice.
Blame it on the boogie
There are times when things don’t go to plan. Slightly adrift even. Poor leaders blame followers for not doing the right signalling steps. Wise leaders, rarely find the follower at fault if the dance goes wrong. Which it can. Take one inexperienced follower. Tickle the boundaries. Sure. Just a stone's throw beyond the comfort zone to a place of exhilaration and excitement so the follower has little choice but to exceed expectations and feel empowered.
When leadership and followership works in harmony the Argentine Tango is mesmerising. Truly wonderful. Hey! Isn't leading in business much the same?
Shoes with attitude
By Blueprint
Take a pair of toe tappers. Hot red. Ebony black leather. With a sheen that’s glacé. Like a Maraschino cherry. Liquorice laces. Good enough to eat. A cheeky pair of toe tappers. Irresistible.
As fashion follows art and interior design typically follows fashion, here’s how a pair of shoes might walk into a crash pad or club and inspire the interior decor.
A toe tappers crash pad
There's something rather Bugsy Malone about these shoes. So, we're thinking bachelor crash pad with an air of minimalism and an eye for the practical. Space is at a premium in crash pads so everything needs to be easily at hand. Minus the clutter. Voilà. Built-in ‘storage walls’. Full height. Wall-to-wall giant sliding doors that conceal all manner of things. Kitchen units. Bathrooms. Wardrobes. Even a home office. Not to mention the compulsory sound and vision gadget-tastic-paraphernalia.
Crash pads may be compact but the trick is to make full use of the vertical height of the rooms. Use Poliform. Black leather sliding doors from the Bangkok range. Perfect. Those liquorice laces become a rug. Made of woven recycled bicycle inner tubes.
A splash of red. A touch of the oriental. The result? A statement piece for storage. Come home. Sit back. Crash out. And watch Raise The Red Lantern.
Toe tappers in the club
Roll out a red carpet of light as the toe tappers create a bold statement on the dance floor and inspire the interior of a hot and happening Mayfair club.
A black stallion greets members in the lobby, while the A-listers are ushered through black velvet curtains to the VIP area where acoustic berries adorn the walls, floating lights bob to the sound of Bollinger bubbles being poured into Swarovski crystal flutes while guests recline and relax on red patent leather chairs and giant poufs!
