Am I out of the loop??

I did an interview this week for Business Quarterly Magazine. Turns out they are kind of a big deal, distributed to 10,000 business leaders from all over the region, both Chris Baxter (Geni) and Claire Barber (PR) think its a big coo.. but I have to admit, I had absolutely no clue what it was!

Now I put this down to complete inexperience in the entrepreneurs field, as you have to remember I am not exactly a business leader and really, I don't know any (or at least well enough to go through their post) so how am I meant to have come across it before.

Anyhow, the interview went great, they even said they could make me look like I am not slightly losing my hair! This could seriously improve my chances of meeting a future wife!

Interestingly though, I featured this week on www.ifwecanyoucan.tv in a video we shot a few months back about young entrepreneurs in the north east. Click here if you want to see me ramble on http://www.ifwecanyoucan.tv/home/resource/A9BE-LFA0-XZN7-7RIN-C4OJ about Dovcor and the need for a young entrepreneurs group in the North east. At one point I do say I have not seen one of my bathrooms finished, I have been told off for this!

Sadly as the manufacturer I am kept slightly out of the loop, as the shops/fitters are middle men in the process so I never meet the end customer. Its a shame I spend so much time on my products and never get to meet the person who uses them! I think I need to find a way of changing this!

As you can tell from the video, I am very passionate about helping young entrepreneurs from all over the region. Essentially I saw how organisations were ploughing investment in to creating entrepreneurs in schools but them dropping them in the deepend after school! I kind of realised some one should take up the mantle once these kids leave school, providing them with a launch pad and supporting them all the way through.

For this reason, while www.dovcor.com is my work, my hobby is now www.youngentrepreneurstrust.org.uk. We are now running the under 35's in business dinners once a month for all young entrepreneurs throughout the north east . Who said I had spare time!

When young people start out in business they don’t have years of experience to back them up. Usually the urge to go it alone is because they feel they have the raw talent to be better than the competition in their particular field, but from experience we know most are not experts in all the other areas needed to make a business tick.

The experience of starting a business is daunting no matter what the age, but we recognise that young entrepreneurs have a different set of social issues to the norm. Often young entrepreneurs can still be growing up, with friends that often do not understand the stresses and strains of running your own business. It can be both the most exciting and socially stressful moments of their lives.

The under 35’s in Business programme is designed not only to bring young entrepreneurs together socially, but also to provide them with the support needed to run a business by providing social and business mentors along with training to help them set up on their own.

Time to force my way into the loop I think..

What is this Adwords thing all about?

I can't say that this week has been the most thrilling of my life.. although I did venture to a swimming pool over the weekend, I haven't quite as yet managed to change the world... or even get a hair cut (note to self: hair cut first).

Well I say that, but actually I have both founded a charity, the Young Entrepreneurs Trust, and organised a new networking group to meet on the first Monday of every month in Newcastle as part of my world domination plans..and we reach 25,000 entrants into our competition to win a bathroom www.dovcor.com/comp.asp but it then if I measure success by good intentions I would probably be some sort of God right now... well at the very least Jesus.

Anyhow, after receiving some rather unwanted news this week, I decided to have a push with our website www.dovcor.com. Now whether its just me or not I don't know, but we have been piling money into our SEO over the past year for quite frankly shocking results.

As with anything, the slow climb to the top will take time, hopefully I will still be alive when this happens, although not at the current rate it seems.. but in an attempt to be pro-active I thought I would pick up on something I tried a few months ago.. google adwords.. a brilliant little system yell.com or some charlatan keeps ringing me up to tell me I cannot tame myself (maybe in hindsight they are right).

After reading a few articles on the internet it was with great enthusiasm I started playing around with keywords and traffic estimators, to come to the conclusion that google doesn't like the person that actually puts effort in..thats me by the way.

You see by my reckoning those that have a fat bank balance and are well LAZY.. could easily jump to number on on the google ads.. but for those of us trying desperately to do something different on a modest budget, life seems to be so much harder.

We could spend all the hours of the day searching in vain for that one overlooked mega keyword..only for google to screw us over in the process.. despite its claim.. google quite clearly does not love the little guy!

Now I am not going to profess to be some sort of expert at this, one nights googling doesn't make you a web god.. but when google says cost per click for bathrooms is £1, average number of clicks per day 1000, resulting in £1000 a day costs to us.. this seems obvious..

So how hard can it be to utilise a much cheaper keyword? Take the keyword bathrooms UK for example..a 0.04 cost per click, average clicks per day 200.. resulting cost £0... HANG ON this isn't rocket science is it? I am pretty sure google could take away the complicated analysis and simply replace it with such comedic phrases as.. jog on son.. or ..your avin a laugh mate..

If everything went to plan (according to adwords at least) I would right now be rolling in prospects, but some how I don't think so.. life just isn't that simple..

What could go wrong?

So the time has come for me to start writing a blog..

To be honest, I am not quite sure what I want this to be, I don't just want to make this into another rant at society, neither do I want to fill this with the kind of crap you hear most entrepreneurs blurt out, about how difficult life is, and little snippets of gold like how contacts are key, oh and by the way.. do you realise how much better I am than you.. hmmm average person??

Ok, so as you can tell, I am prone to rant, its not my fault, I think its down to a predisposition to look at the world from another angle, the one where you see the reasons behind peoples actions, not necessarily the actions they make... it makes for interesting revelations..

On New Years Eve I was waiting in the que to a club in Newcastle, when I got ushered to the front by a friend of mine who knows the manager (or atleast some sort of person involved with the bins.. ) anyway they got me in pretty dam fast so i stuck out my hand in a congratulatory kind of way to be reassured with the phrase.. "thats what you get when you have my contacts"..

Brilliant.. thanks.. everyone else now thinks your the man.. but did you have to do it with the yes i am a god smile and the you will never be able to have my contacts attitude??

I think what I am trying to say is that I don't like this modern craze of having to be the alpha dog.. personally I am quite happy getting all my mates in the front door to massage their egos and then entering through the back door to avoid anyone noticing..

In case you haven't guessed...I just don't buy into the image generation..yes I want to make money.. yes I want to be successful, but I don't want to do it for everyone else's praise.. I do it for me..and thats not me being selfish either.. I help people, because it makes me happy, not because it makes other people want to deal with me..

Am I a contradiction to the modern entrepreneur image? I don't buy flash suits just for a night out (why can't we wear our best clothes to work?) or buy bottles of champagne because it looks cool.. most people do it to give off the image they are something better than they are.. and thats just not me.. I don't want to be anyone else..

I am me..