Team Building?

It’s our company conference tomorrow, so the office is a mess of palpable nerves and bristling egos. I’m trying to gather all the presentations together: deadline Wednesday pm, so far it’s Thursday lunchtime and half of them are done

I have no room to talk: mine’s not finished either! But don’t I automatically I get special dispensation as the Marketing guy?

As I polish off my Cajun Squirrel crisps (possibly my favourite Walkers experiment so far) I’m checking my desk for car keys, as I’m off to the bank to releive the Sports & Social fund of £440 towards post-conference refreshments.

I’m a big believer in Conferences as Team Building events, but I have to confess that it’ll be a relief to get back to actually doing some flippin’ work next week. The new style marketing’s working very well and I need to keep the momentum up. 16 good leads in the last 5 weeks from emails and the web, which in our niche is brilliant, if I say so myself.

At Home…

No progress on the blinds business, BUT I did get a little more of the ‘plane done.

It’s looking vaguely like an actual aircraft now, and with each step I relax a little bit more.

Taking Shape… … See?

Note the clever use of a dark background this time.

Well, I’d better get to the bank before 22 Utility Masters employees and up having to pay for their own beers tomorrow!

Bye for now.

If at first you don’t succeed, get distracted.

It quickly becomes apparent that one post isn’t enough. We didn’t progress the blinds business last night, choosing instead to deliver a birthday present and shortlist potential Easter holidays.

Bala Lake in mid Wales is looking favourite. We drove past a place last October and I fell in love with it just for the view: www.glanllyn.com.  Terrible website, but gorgeous place and reasonable prices. No play area for the kids but a beach leading down to the lake, so I’m sure we’d be fine there.

I also put another step in on my way towards the Hawker Hurricane model you can almost see, light grey against white (note to self: use different background) here. Building the model is a guilty pleasure: I do it either while Sharon’s out, or in the smallest room, or while I’m making our bedtime brew. Girls don’t understand Airfix!

Hawker Hurricane in progress

Work’s going really well. I got another unsolicited phone call from a potential customer this morning. They’d looked us up on the web after two rivals, recommended by KPMG, turned them down for being too small! Silly rivals, they’re not too small, you’re just too inflexible. Thank you for your incompetence. Anyway, this chap found us on the web and just dialled the number on our homepage www.utilitymasters.co.uk/

Not sure what tonight’s plans are. Maybe a little guilty modelling, maybe more holiday planning, maybe even something useful!

See you soon!

So, I read somewhere that posts start with “So…”

So… I thought I should start blogging. I revamped the website at work (with loads of help from our web designers) and the benefits of blogging were explained.

The company blog at http://www.utilitymasters.co.uk/default.aspx was up and running, so… I got to thinking.

My partner Sharon can run up some mean Blinds & Curtains, and we’re trying to get a little business up & running to make use of her talents. So… I’ve been spending a little time boarding out the loft – and soon I hope we can call it The Workshop. Capital T, capital W.

I figured we need a little web presence, more than Google Maps at any rate. So… I’ve been struggling with technology at home, with one old laptop and a newer (but significantly more hopeless) PC. I also have a great time taking a few photos as I ramble through my busy life…

So… Why shouldn’t I put something on the web about that?

So… I am going to. And this is where I’m going to do it.