Veteran Digital Marketing Consultant
With less than two weeks to go until the election we now have a letter from 5,000 small businesses pledging their allegiance to one party and it’s the blue party again.
Furthermore, that letter is once again published in The Telegraph where, this morning, the newspaper’s website calls it a “boost for David Cameron”…
Having been out of the professional business and journalism loop for the last year, the item in the news today that caught my ear was that The Conservatives wheeled out their 100 business leaders as signatories backing another parliament of blue bosses.
It seems that, in retaliation, The Labour Party said that “zero hours contracts” were a problem and their vote winner.
So what’s the issue here?
Are you sitting comfortably? No, really, are you sitting comfortably? Reading this on your desktop PC, laptop, tablet or mobile device you may think that you are sitting comfortably but now that I’ve got your attention, you may probably be more acutely aware of your posture than you were before.
Watching the 10 o’clock news last night on BBC iPlayer I was encouraged to see the story about British companies bringing work back to these isles after many years of offshoring.
The benefits of offshoring from a British business point of view are obvious – If you can cut costs by using foreign workers on a lower rate of pay then it makes perfect sense to help boost your bottom line and keep the shareholders happy.
As previously posted, I was recently looking for an alternative to Amazon. The thought process came about after I was accused, quite reasonably, of putting money into Amazon’s pockets when there were serious questions to be asked about their ethics and morality. The main points of contention are that:
1) Amazon have been accused of paying very little UK tax on billions of pounds worth of turnover (2011 – £3.35 billion turnover with a “tax expense of £1.8 million according to the BBC)
2) If that’s the case then small businesses are being subjected to unfair competition (Because they pay full UK taxes on their profits and their Goliath-sized competitors do not)
3) High streets are apparently suffering because of online retailers and some of those are based in tax havens
4) Buying from local businesses puts money INTO the local economy. Purchases to big corporations ensure that money is drained OUT of the local economy.
“Should SMEs Be Worried About the Demise of HMV?” was written by Paul Mackenzie Ross and first appeared in the is4profit small business blog The news this weekend has been filled with stories about the demise of HMV. That’s not to say that the store, founded in 1921, will totally disappear, but it has been … Read more
“A SMART Business is a SMARTER Business” was first published in the business advice section of www.is4profit.com When looking for ways to improve your business one method of working is by using SMART objectives. First coined in a 1981 edition of Management Review, S.M.A.R.T. is an acronym/mnemonic for: S – Specific M – Measurable A – … Read more
“You Can Bank on Dave” first appeared on the is4profit small business blog.
So what happened in “Bank of Dave”, episode 2 last night?
Burnley Savings and Loans has been lending a LOT of money. The problem is that they still don’t have their savings licence and cannot take deposits.
But, on the bright side, at Dave’s doing to the local economy, he’s so far lent…
And there are other local small businesses who are banking on Dave where other institutions will not lend. But the “Bank of Dave” is lending more than it has in savings, so Dave is using his own money to back his venture. And he’s lending around £25,000 a week!
One of Dave’s solicitors comes up with a plan linking savings to deposits as a workaround to the FSA guidelines, in effect, being an agency selecting who money goes to. The plan works and now Burnley Savings and Loans can take deposits.
Going to his local radio station, Dave puts the word out. When the day comes to open his doors to savers, right on the dot of 10 o’ clock, in marches a queue of local people who will get:
The Bank of Dave takes over £60,000 in cash deposits in the first day it’s open to legally accept savings.
Dave’s next idea is mobile banking, but it’s more of an attempt at guerilla marketing than a serious mobile venture – He takes a 14 year old Mercedes minibus from his main business, and has it fitted out with a cash machine, a safe and a counter. The “battle bank” then takes to the roads and Dave Fishwick goes about some guerilla marketing. Taking advice from Burnley FC supporter and ex-Blair spin doctor, Alistair Campbell, Dave is told:
“Take your bank and park it as close as you can to the treasury”
Taking in Blackpool, a little town in Wales, where their last bank is about to shut, and finally London, the battle bank parks outside The Bank of England in Threadneedle Street, where he shouts about his savings account on a loud hailer (And gets some unwanted attention from the City of London Police)
“I want change in Britain, I want change in the financial system”
Dave gets more attention by speaking with local MP, David Stevenson, and has the matter raised in the House of Commons. Vince Cable, the Secretary of State for Business, also steps on-board the battle bank, this time in Scarborough, and agrees to get his team to speak with the FSA and “smooth things over”, promising to “take it to the next level” and agreeing that the banking system needs more competition.
Remembering Dave’s golden rules in the first episode, he gives his venture six months to be profitable. After investing in gold (And smelting it down into a gold bar) and buying and renovating a small property to rent and finance the bank, Dave’s day of reckoning is upon him…
In just a few days, mainly due to the time he’s been unable to raise a savings licence, he’s taken £110,000 in deposits.
In less than 180 days, Burnley Savings and Loans has lent £365,000 to local people and businesses.
Adding all the overheads, profit and loss, the grand total comes to… *drum roll*
A profit of £9,511
Dave Fishwick is well chuffed – Comparing his tiny tiny bank’s profit to the losses of RBS and other big high street banks over the last year, the gulf between what they’ve lost and what he’s made amounts to billions of pounds.
True to his word, the Burnley businessman sets out to redistribute the profits and goes off into town to hand cheques for thousands of pounds to local charity shops. They’re all genuinely bowled over with his generosity of £2,000 each, proof that a small-scale, low-overhead bank that doesn’t hand out big bonuses, really can make a difference to people’s lives.
Let’s see where Dave takes this next week! You can Bank on Dave!
If you’re interested, go and see the Bank of Dave website and there’s more of “The Bank of Dave” on Channel 4 next Thursday at 9pm. You can catch up with all the episodes so far on 4oD
And if you can’t wait to see the next episode in the series then you can always buy Dave’s book – Bank of Dave: How I Took On the Banks: The Story of One Man’s Heroic Attempt to Take On the Banks
“Leadership Styles” was written by Paul Mackenzie Ross and first appeared in the business advice section of is4profit.com
Leaders may have any one of a number of so-called “leadership styles”. You can see them quite publicly, on the TV, in football managers, for example:
Some time ago I decided to join Ecademy to try it out and possibly extend my network within my industry. Immediately upon subscribing a couple of people were “all over me”. Now that’s not exactly “the way I roll” but I connected with these people anyway and, in a short period of time, received numerous … Read more