Good luck in your exams!
Exam season is imminent in our house. My oldest is in Year 9 and he has end of year exams coming up and the youngest has 11+ in September. Nails are being bitten down [...]
“I Am Not a Number; I Am a Free Man”
So said Patrick McGoohan’s character Number Six in late 1960s TV series, The Prisoner. It’s a phrase that’s been going round in my head a lot recently. I’ve been thinking deeply about the relationship between [...]
Does my solution fix your problem?
I’m always surprised by the number of freelancers and businesses I interact with who fail to ask themselves this simple question, “does my solution fix your problem?” It would be easy to assume that this [...]
I’ve Started … So I’ll Finish
Watching the new series of Mastermind recently and hearing the immortal line “I’ve started so I’ll finish” started me thinking about how I manage and plan my work and wishing it was starting, getting [...]
Finding a Mentor and Taking a Drop of My Own Medicine
Over the last decade I’ve done hundreds of hours of mentoring for creative entrepreneurs and freelancers. Much of it through organised creative enterprise programmes, but also some informal mentoring with freelancers and entrepreneur I’ve met [...]
Why I Do My Tax Return at the Start of the Financial Year
The new financial year is upon us again. I can’t quite believe it has come around already. I feel like I’ve only just taken a breath since the January deadline for tax returns and [...]
Does my network have a use by date?
I was asked recently how long a professional contact can be considered still within your network. This really surprised me, and it started me thinking … Does my network have a use by date? [...]
How I Discovered the Power of Networks and Became French Debutant of the Year 1991
It’s the summer of 1991. I’m on my summer break from university and generally having a good time. The phone rings. It’s one of my mum’s best friends on the phone. Her sister works for [...]
Unscripted Development is the beating heart of a TV Production Company
Unscripted TV is where I cut my teeth in telly. I worked on a wide range of programmes from Blues and Twos (the first of the fly-on-the-wall emergency services shows), right through to It’s [...]
Eyes on the Prize
“Why me?” It’s a question I ask of freelancers regularly and rarely do I meet many that are clear from the outset what their secret sauce is, and why they add value to clients. When [...]