Time is continuing to fly by...

So... another 3 weeks down the line, what has been happening that's made the time pass so quickly?...

Numbers, numbers, numbers...

Well, I've been very tied up in discussions with our Finance Director, various people from the bank, and our senior management team - it's Year End, and what with looking at how our 6th year in business has gone, managing the intricacies of the cashflow with a couple of our clients slowing payments down to a halt and planning for next year, it's been a bit on the busy side! I never thought, when I graduated with a degree in English literature that I'd need to get to grips with the intricacies of accounting. The terminology has been a whole task in itself ('nominal ledgers', 'balancing journals', 'WIP accounts'...)and as I'm in the process of trying to sort out the technical blips in our accounting package for year end, I'm on a steep and mind bending learning curve.

Taking stock of our 6th year in business

Once again, Year 6 has seen us grow again - we've now increased our turnover every year since start up which has been great although the Year on Year growth hasn't reached the heady percentages of our first few years. Our difficulty is maintaining the profit margins we want when we have a pretty big office to upkeep and that ongoing issue of keeping staff here happy and motivated while keeping costs as tight as possible! Business: it's just a big juggling act and although it's a fun environment here, ultimately people always want higher salaries and bigger bonuses - if only we could be as generous as we'd like to be!


Supporting our very own in house singer

Speaking of motivation and people, I do think getting as involved in outside of work activities as much as possible is a good thing for directors of businesses - to keep in touch with what's going on. So last week I had great fun going along to a gig performed by our receptionist/office manager. Leila's background is in drama and music and she's desperate to break into the big time with her singing so often performs after work. A group of about 8 of us from the office went along to a little venue just off Regent's Street to cheer her on, support her and have a few drinks.

It was a good chance to get a bit of a feel for how people are responding to us having brought in a new Chairman (which has had quite a bit of press coverage in the marketing media) - although there's lots of positivity, there's definitely also a bit of suspicion regarding what value he'll add, ('is he all talk and no action?') but I think over the past few weeks Matthew has demonstrated that he really knows what he's doing and will be a big contributor to the business.


Discovering a completely different business environment

I had another new experience last week - having recently been invited to sit on the governing Council of University College London (my old uni) I attended my first Council meeting. It was a really interesting, stimulating and educational (unsurprisingly!) experience and made all the more enjoyable as my 3rd year tutor is still there, going strong and made a presentation for the council members on The Bloomsbury Project. I enjoy the opportunity to input into the university's strategic direction although I'm on a steep learning curve here too as while there are similarities with running a business like Intelligent Marketing, there are plenty of differences too - scale for one! But it's all part of my ongoing quest to ensure that I learn from other experiences - what I learn at UCL, can also be brought to bear at IM, and vice versa.


Away day Inspiration

Now a quick request for brilliant ideas please - we have our bi-annual Away Day scheduled for 1st May and I'm looking to get everyone out of the office and doing something fun. It needs to be a team-based activity that will get everyone excited and buzzing - and we're quite a competitive bunch, but - and here's the big but - we're 'credit crunching' it this time, so need to keep costs tight. There'll be about 25 of us in total - if you have any suggestions (and have made it this far down one of my epic blogs), let me know!



And finally...

...we bagged another award for our Lufthansa Breakfast campaign, winning the Direct Marketing category in the Travel Marketing Awards. Now we just need to make sure we leverage the wins and don't hide our successes 'under a bushel' as we so often end up doing! It's an opportunity to target the travel sector for new business, so I must just get on to that now....


Tar-ra for now...