Southend | Sherie Griffiths

September 28, 2011

Why Gary went green

Filed under: Business, Communication, Media, The Enterprise Gateway — Tags: Apprentices, Apprenticeship Scheme, Basildon, Business Link, Cars, Dad, Economic Climate, Essex, Fleet, Gary Rose, Gateway 97.8, Grease Monkey, Leasing Vehicles, Match Made In Heaven, Mate, Natural Progression, Office Space, Planet Leasing, Proud Daughter, Radio Studio, Sherie Griffiths, Southend, The Enterprise Gateway business — sheriegriffiths.com @ 9:47 am

When I was last in the radio studio, on 15th September, I was talking to Gary Rose of Planet Leasing. Gary has been on the show before. Back in March, he came in with one of his apprentices, Evie Rodgers, to talk about the apprenticeship scheme and the benefits it was bringing to his company, as well as the two young people they’d taken on.

This time, though, the subject was how a company whose main activity is leasing vehicles handles the issue of the environment. No, I know it doesn’t exactly sound like a match made in heaven – but that was the whole point of the interview.

As the proud daughter of a grease monkey (my Dad spent his entire life with his head in one kind of engine or another – and sometimes got his kids involved as ‘fitter’s mate’!), I like to think of myself as being fairly clued up on cars – but I hadn’t realised that vehicles with CO2 emitions below 100G/km are now exempt from road tax. That’s a significant financial saving for an individual – and it’s even more significant when you apply it to a fleet.

The over-riding message to come out of what Gary had to say was that the line between being environmentally aware as an individual and as a business is artificial. His commitment started at home and it was a perfectly natural progression to take those principles into the office, and then out on to the road.

His company is certainly reaping the benefits, having survived – and thrived – despite the economic climate. They’ve recently moved into new office space – and are looking to employ both their young apprentices on a permanent basis. I’m hoping to get him, and them, into the studio when that happens.

From tomorrow, after a disrupted month, normal service is resumed where the programme is concerned. This week – the almost-birthday of the show (it all started on 30th Sept last year) – I’m going right back to the beginning – literally – with Paul Zipzer of Business Link. We’re talking about the things that every start-up or would-be start-up entrepreneur needs to know.

If you’re in the Basildon & East Thurrock area, you can catch the programme on 97.8 FM. Otherwise, you can listen online at gateway978.com.

If there’s a topic you’d like me to look at on the show, or someone (it could even be yourself) who you think would make a great guest, drop me a line and let me know. I’d love to hear from you.

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July 25, 2011

The entrepreneur’s kitbag – the No. 1 must-have is a must-have

Filed under: Business, Business Startup — Tags: Aversion, Blackpool, Blinkers, Bum, Business, Business Adviser, Business Startup, Different Stages, Disregard, enterprise, enterprise essentials, Family Friends, Goal Posts, Radio 2, Ridiculous Amounts, Sherie Griffiths, Snippet, Southend, Spending Money, Stamina, Subtlety, Successful Entrepreneur, Time None, Unshakeable Belief, Weeble — sheriegriffiths.com @ 2:04 pm

Last week, I overheard a snippet of a discussion on Radio 2, about whether anyone can become a successful entrepreneur, or whether you need special qualities. That prompted me to look around at the most commercially successful people I know. They’re all at different stages in their businesses, in completely different industries, and on the face of it, they’re very different people – but they have at least ten things in common. I can’t put NOs 10 to 2 into a definitive order, but they are:

10 – a healthy disregard for time – none of them watches the clock when there’s work to be finished;

9 – The unshakeable belief that they deserve to succeed in their aims and therefore they can – and they will – actually, no, it’s beyond that -‘belief’ implies an element of faith in something it might not be possible to prove; but what they have is knowledge – they know they deserve to get where they want to go;

8 – Equal certainty that what their business does is of real value to its customers;

7 – Ridiculous amounts of energy, including the kind of stamina a distance athlete would envy;

6 – Blinkers – which are capable of filtering out everything except the business,

5 – Less subtlety than the average brick – somehow combined with the ability to inspire forgiveness from family, friends, colleagues etc, for behaviour which, from anyone else would, quite frankly, be unacceptable!;

4 – A powerful set of ‘bum springs’, or ‘weeble weights’ (my terminology) – so that when life knocks them over, they just bounce straight back up again!;

3 – More front than Southend and Blackpool put together and

2 – what I recently heard described as: ‘a constitutional aversion to spending money’.

So what’s No. 1?

Every business adviser you’ll ever meet will tell you you need to set goals. That’s fine – except that goal posts are notoriously easy to move – especially when the goal is a ‘nice to have’. I made that mistake when I got started – and I kept making it for several years! I’d think: ‘I want to earn x, so that I can do Y’. Y was always a nice to have – like a weekend away – very pleasant if I achieved it, but hardly the end of the world if I didn’t. What the people I’ve been talking about all have – and what I have now – is at least one imperative – a ‘must have’, or a ‘must to avoid’. These days, I’ve got one of each – a carrot and a stick. If I start to lose sight of the carrot, the stick catches me across the ankles. I can honestly say I’ve never been so focused in my life!

Now all I have to do is perfect the other 9…!!!

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July 20, 2011

Extreme multi-tasking – the technology bytes back

Filed under: Business, Communication, Media, The Enterprise Gateway — Tags: Afternoon Shift, Afternoons, Alison, Basildon, Business, Caroline Thomas, Communication, Dallimore, Different Places, Dragon, East Thurrock, Fiona Dallimore, Gateway 97.8, Last Thursday, Play Game, Pleasure, Podcasts, Radio Listeners, Radio Live, Radio Show, Sales Scene, Sherie Griffiths, Southend, Spirit, Split Myself In Two, Stint, technology, Thurrock, Thursday Afternoon, Thursday Morning, Urs — sheriegriffiths.com @ 7:51 am

Have you ever looked at your schedule for the day and thought: ‘The only way this is going to work is if I can split myself in two!’? Frequently, I’m sure.

I actually get to do that sometimes. I can be in several different places at once –on the phone to one person, while I talk to others via podcasts – while I talk to my local radio listeners, via a pre-recorded show. How many jobs let you do that?!

Although, of course, it only works if the technology decides to play the game – and you know as well as I do, chances are it’ll decide not to play just at the moment you need it most!

That’s what happened to me last Thursday – literally. In this post, I should be telling you about the interview I did last week, with Fiona Dallimore of Up Urs Betty, which should have gone out on Thursday’s programme… That’s what I should be talking about, but…

Last Thursday was always going to be hectic. I was booked to go to Dragon Jelly in Southend in the morning and I had a vital phone meeting booked for the afternoon. I don’t normally book anything on Thursday afternoons, because I prefer to go in and do the radio show live, but if I didn’t have this meeting at 2:30pm Thursday, it wouldn’t happen for at least another month – and it couldn’t wait that long. ‘No problem,’ I thought, ‘I can record the interview and send it in with Alison’ (who does the rest of the Thursday afternoon shift). That way, I could be on air and on the phone at the same time.’

All was fine – until a text on Thursday morning told me Alie was ill. I’m next in line to take over from her and would normally do it with pleasure – but this time, of course, I couldn’t. I cursed having to pass up the opportunity of a three-hour radio stint – because I love it! – but there it was. At least I could be there for my own slot, in spirit if not in person.

At that point, the station wasn’t geared up to receive my package via the web, so I had to walk in with it. Trouble was, hard as I tried, I couldn’t fit that around going to Southend. As time ticked on, it became clear I’d have to sacrifice the Jelly session if I wanted to get the show on air and make that phone meeting.

‘Never mind,’ I thought, ‘”two out of three ain’t bad”, as they say’.

Except it wasn’t – two out of three, that is. When I got to the radio station, my package wouldn’t play on any of the computers. I still don’t understand that because I’d triple-checked it beforehand – but there it was; nearly twenty minutes of silence. Now, silence may be golden in many places – but the radio isn’t one of them! Twenty seconds of ‘dead air’ is more than enough to cause mass panic in a studio! So I had no choice but to bring the file back and try to fix it. Somewhere between the PC and my little USB drive, it had been scrambled. It would still play on my PC, but part of it sounded as though it had been broken up into little bits, they’d all been thrown into the air and come down in a completely random order.

If I’d had the rest of the day, I could have sorted it – but as it was, I ran out of time. So I must say thanks to my colleague, Tyler, for stepping in for Alison in my absence – and especially for filling the gap where my own programme should have been.

Tomorrow is a completely live show, with Caroline Thomas of Sales Scene. She’s in to talk about her plans to kickstart regeneration in Thurrock (where she’s based). As she’s coming in in person, at least she won’t get scrambled at the last minute… hopefully…

If you’re in the Basildon & East Thurrock area, you can catch the programme on 97.8 FM at 3)PM. If not, you can listen live at http://www.gateway978.com– do let me know if you manage to hear it. If you’re wondering what ‘Up Urs Betty’ is all about, you’ll find out shortly. Listen to the Thursday show, or watch this space…

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March 17, 2010

The Radio Village

Filed under: Book, Business, Marketing, Media — Tags: Berkshire, Blackpool, Duchess, Hendon, Listener, Listeners, Madam, Neighbours, North London, Radio 4, Radio And Tv, Shorthand, Siobhan, Soap News, Sound Foundations, Southend, Twenty Five Years, Versu, Village Tv, Young Lad — sheriegriffiths.com @ 10:22 am

Extract from “On Sound Foundations”, Chapter 2, “A Proper Little Madam!”

“At their best, radio and TV create communities; they break down barriers, binding diverse groups of people together with a common interest, be it soap, news or music.

“I tend to think of radio communities as villages. Some are large, some are small – some no-one outside has ever heard of; but within those groups, everyone knows the place so well, they can talk to each other in shorthand. They know every local landmark and become fiercely protective if any are moved or messed with (just check out ‘Feedback’ on Radio 4 if you don’t believe me); and they feel they know each other.

“The names of listeners who write or phone regularly, stick with presenters – and other listeners can remember those names years later. For instance, I’ve never forgotten Siobhan from Hendon, aka ‘The Duchess of North London’ or James – the young lad from Berkshire, who had more front than Blackpool and Southend put together (he’s probably in sales now) – yet I’ve heard nothing of either of them for more than twenty-five years. Then, of course, the listener feels they know the presenter – and just occasionally, they do.

“There are elements of that in television, but it’s less intimate; less personal. It’s one-to-many communication, rather than one-to-one. If radio is a village, TV is a city. When it works well, there’s still a sense of pride, of belonging, but you’re far less likely to know the neighbours personally.”

I didn’t know I thought that until I wrote it a couple of months ago; but since I put it down in writing and started talking to people about it, it’s met with a lot of recognition.

The technology which has put ‘radio’ and ‘television’ into our hands – yours and mine – means we can now build villages or cities around our businesses. The choice has nothing to do with size. It’s about the ethos – especially the one-to-one versus one-to-many engagement. Personally, I prefer to aim for a village, but what about you?

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