So Christmas is here and for me this means one thing. Christmas FM is back on air!! Since being a teenager I was in love with the world of Radio and although I no longer and involved full time in the industry, every Christmas for the last three years I fall back in love with it.

This year we are broadcasting in 5 regions in Ireland a huge increase as our first year was just in Dublin and the second in only Cork and Dublin. This year we broadcast on the following frequencies:

Dublin – 89.9 | Limerick -105.5 | Cork -106.7 | Galway -89.5 | South East -103.8

We also had the No1 downloaded I-phone App on itunes in Ireland within 2 days of launching it.

Christmas FM is a social enterprise. A business set up to run a temporary radio station for 1 month a year, with all the proceeds going to charity and run by volunteers. There are three simple aims:

1. Make as much money as possible for our chosen charity each year and help raise awareness for the work they do – This year our Charity Partner is Barnardos.
2. Spread a bit of Christmas joy to everyone who wants to tune in.
3. Have a lot of fun with all the volunteers who help make the station happen.

Last year Christmas FM won awards for “PR Excellence for a Non Profit” from the PRCA.

For me it’s a great way to leverage charitable donations, so we raise money for the stations operation costs via the Christmas FM online store and put money forward to cover the operation costs. Then the station itself builds a huge listenership who text message in to have requests and everytime they text €1 goes to the charity directly. Also by raising awareness for the charity (Barnardos’s) good work, our listeners give generously to their cause and we have street teams to raise cash in all the major cities.

People love the radio station, feel under no obligation to give to the charity if they don’t want to. And yet we often get people who find the station from all corners of the world, listen online and then want to give back to a cause that brought them a small piece of Christmas happiness.

I heard something very disturbing today that really got me thinking. A friend had mentioned that they found their status as a previous public sector worker was causing them problems to get a job. It wasn’t just some bitching and moaning, he was confidentially told this by a personal friend who was involved in the hiring process that it was a deciding factor. Now I know this is an awful generalization, very unpolitical correct no doubt against the law (I mean they always write the laws in their favour right?). But is it possible their is a small truth in it??

In my mind there is a big chasm between public sector workers and private sector workers who work in the SME sector. The public sector has different goals and performance reviews. The big thing I notice is in this “job for life” sector its very hard to get fired unless your stick you neck out and do something abnormal. In the private sector its very hard to get promoted unless you stick your neck out every so often so you can be noticed.

This not sticking your neck out is why departments like Enterprise Boards have committees to approve every small grant. Enterprise Ireland spent two third of their budget on Administration and only one third on grants! Making every decision by committee is a massively expensive way to make sure no-one is accountable.

Things that have happened in the last month made me even more aware of the gaps between the two sectors of workers. Its not that the people are bad but the systems change their approach to work. There’s huge talk about offering redundancy to public sector workers who no longer have any role in the departments they work in, but cannot be let go due to agreements previously made without big redundancy. This simply wouldn’t happen in the private sector. If they couldn’t afford you, like it or not they would find a way to get rid of you. I don’t mean unjustly, but its a simple fact that some people have been abusing the system in the public sector, FAS was never decidedly a “bad” organization, no one every stuck their head out they just slowly raised the bar on the levels of corruption over time. If you need to down size your department in the private sector and people have been committing fire-able offenses, em no brainer.

An example of how one could down size without redundancy: Check the last 10 years of stationary expenses. I bet Septembers bills we’re usually high, a stationary rep told me they we’re instructed to get in quantities of childrens copy books etc, which they didn’t normally stock to facilitate demand from government departments with no ties to education. Cross reference and hold the purchasing department also accountable for not preforming their duties. Cut the sloth, don’t reward it.

But this post isn’t politically motivated, the question is – Are public sector workers attitudes toward work somewhat spoiled by their previous experience in a organization where their wage and future weren’t as closely tied into the ability of their job to provide positive return on investment?

Has the public sector made a section of the work force less valuable?? And if so is there anyway of addressing it?

Its been one hell of a crazy month. Halloween means Halloween Costumes and that means TheCostumeShop.ie goes into full swing. This year I was really chuffed to have crossed into the Top 200 websites in Ireland on Alexa and place 194th at our peak in the Irish listings. And more surprisingly high in the UK listings – and we’re really not optimized to be featured there at all.

The Costume Shop Alexa Rank on 30/10/10

During this month we created 64 new jobs in the Portlaoise Area, something that i’m really proud of in the current climate and I have to say the Irish work force has some incredible people being under utilized. We also had a lot of fun along the way – Did anyone see Deric reading the weather on TV3 dressed as a mad hatter?? Classic.

One of the great forums of marketing that I finally got around to learning was Facebook pages, I have to be honest and say i really hadn’t been keen on the idea of formalizing a role for someone to look after social media as part of their duties, but I was completely proved wrong. Michelle and Stephen did such an incredible job of The Costume Shop facebook page and by the months end, we had gone from 100 likes (fans) to 6250 likes in just a month with decent conversion rates. At least for Ireland that has to be some sort of social media record.

Quick word on facebook marketing, we didn’t spend any money on facebook ads to get fans. Buying ads to get likes on facebook is simply retarded, you wouldn’t buy friends for your personal profile so don’t do it for your business. When running FB ads, always land on your own domain and at an optimized page. Also there is a huge difference between an active facebook page and a stupid facebook campaign. While the I like tatyo crisps on bread campaign was considered by a few a success (currently with 17,700 likes) – I’m not sure how many (if any) conversions / packets of crisps sold, they made as a result of the campaign. And having acquired all those likes, which is really more of a statement about the person than an interest in the business, what else can they say other than “I still like…”. I digress. Facebook marketing only works when you engage and share things of interest with people who already are interested in your products. There’s no point in shoving your product down peoples throats. Find your tribe and stick with them as Seth Godin would say.

So I’d love to say the next few weeks should be a chance to calm down and catch up on the non existent sleep we’ve been getting, but the plan is to get two new businesses concepts investigated and hopefully get off the ground before 2010 is out. As they say create a tight timeline and a mammoth task to focus on to let peoples true potential out.

One of the most enlightening talks and ideas I’ve come across in a while comes from Steven Johnson. I’d just had to share talk courtesy of TED. For me this speech is freakishly relevant to whats been going on my business for the last few months.

As always i’d love to hear your thoughts!

I was delighted with the news that we got nominated for FOUR Irish web awards on projects I’m currently involved with.

It’s great timing for us with our Halloween Costumes business, TheCostumeShop.ie, gearing up for another busy season. The Costume Shop is nominated for Best E-commerce / Service Website in Ireland AND Best SME Website. A huge compliment given the caliber of other companies in this category.

The Bikini Shop which saw huge growth this year in Swimwear sales due to the warm summer is nominated for Most Beautiful Web Site, hopefully not just because of the beautiful models that we have on the site

And the icing on the cake Christmas FM, a social enterprise that raises money for charity but playing non-stop Christmas music during the festive season was nominated for Best Music Site. A true achievement for a project coming into its third year running.

The Full nominations list can be seen at the Web Awards website.

Below is a speech from Peter Jones, Dragons Den Investor and inventor of one of my favourite terms Ultrapreneur. This speech echo’s something i’ve been saying through out this recession, it’s the best possible time in our lifetime to start a business. It also got me thinking what Ireland is doing to match this type of innovation.

This type of entrepreneur lead method of teaching teenagers and aspiring entrepreneurs of any age that there is an option of there to have a go yourself is sorely missed in Ireland. And while I don’t want to take away the great work of programs like the Young Entrepreneur competition and Mini Company program, I do feel schools and CEBs could do a lot more. I mean is there anything more silly than a teacher who has never worked in the real business world being responsible for the slight exposure a teenage encounters to the business start up lifestyle.

Wouldn’t it be great if every school had talks and speeches from people out there today making a change in the economy and doing it for themselves? I’m sure other business owners feel the same. Anyone know of how we can make this happen here in Ireland?

It’s been well documented in the media lately how banks are causing many business to go bust and generally making SME life hell, the there’s a group of ninja bankers that seem to have almost invisibly slided by without barely any notice hidden behind confusing legal documents and the assumption that “thats just how it works” and leaving bodies of dead SME’s in their wake..

Yesterday the latest start up in my portfolio of businesses which sells Satellite Dishes was suddenly struck with a potentially fatal illness, someone had been sucking the life juice from her for several days and unfortunately like many diseases in was in an a very problematic stage before we noticed anything. The Merchant bankers, Elavon, had decided they would keep all the money from the sales. Thats right they just decided, no warning hell they didnt even tell us after they did it. It was kept a secret from us. As it happens I am in weekly contact with our rep there regarding our next start up, but no apparently them stealing money from us wasn’t worth a mention. Seriously they didn’t notify us in anyway at all, they just helped themselves to an increasingly sizable chunk of money.

Now having been screwed by AIB Merchants several years in the past who tried their own little version of the kiss of death by asking us to spend €20k+ to fly in an onsite PCI auditors to Ireland and later asking me to send them the meaning of PCI DSS as they didn’t really know what it meant. I had already spent sleepless nights reading the rules of the financial regulator (when that doens’t put you to sleep you know things are bad!) so this morning I was straight on the the financial ombudsman.

The problem is that like myself most SME owners don’t have time to learn off every aspect of law and standards as to do so would take tens of thousands of years. Therefore we assume that the bankers decisions are probably correct and it rarely occurs to us that they could be making up the rules as we go.

Another great example from boards.ie of a business whos Merchant bankers recently tried to force in early grave. A merchants decided they’d decrease their “risk” by taking €100,000 from an SME in the form of a “deposit” to continue doing business with them. This sort of money to many SME’s means closure there is not other alternative. Apparently they took the money without permission and gave the alternative that the business could get the money back by closing their account – IE cutting off their income stream, so suicide or be killed your call!

At the moment getting a new merchant account has never been more difficult. Even with my track record for successful launches I found it difficult so one can image how nearly impossible it would be for a first time Entrepreneur starting out on a shoe string budget to gain the ability to get paid for their business. Grounds under which applicants will be refused a merchant account would be things like using a residential address for registering their company or being involved in any aspect of an industry such as the lucrative wedding industry. It’s ok for our government officials to have a home office but if you want to try and start your own business god forbid you can’t afford rent for an office – even if you don’t need one! By this logic I would never have been granted my first merchant account, nor would Richard Branson for that matter.

This needs to stop, governments need to assign a specific overseer of this cloak and dagger section of the banking industry and give businesses in Ireland a fighting chance. If they want Irish businesses to export – Let them sell to our neighbors up north in the format they want – debit card, don’t insist businesses open an office in the UK there before we can compete for sales on an equal footing!!! In this day of e-commerce and high tech business that they are apparently supporting how about helping the SME sector which is where the real bulk of the export potential clearly is! It’s the small fixes would have the biggest impact!

I find it so Ironic that there really is no real competition in the merchant banking industry but their close partner companies Card Processors Such as Worldnet TPS and Realex are one of the most innovative sectors with the best customer service available.

A great example of how messed up our country is at the moment can be summed up with one term Preliminary Tax. The double taxing of new businesses to stunt their growth.

Some idiot in government during the boom years decided to increase the tax take they’d ask companies to pay next years taxes in advance and somehow the country awash with money let it slide by into law, after all banks would easily loan you the funds to pay off the burden, especially in the first year if you turned a decent profit. But what does this really mean for start up businesses in today’s economy? Well even extremely viable businesses can’t get credit from the banks, hell new businesses can’t even get bloody over drafts without jumping through hoops of flames. We just spent the next generations rainy day fund on, new businesses are being asked to pay TWO YEARS TAX in their first year of business, effectively stunting their chance of rapid growth.

The government needs to get behind new business and with SME’s accounting for the most of the potential jobs that will eventually get the country out of this recession, it’s farcical that their first years profits – the ones which are the most likely to be reinvested in the business, which in turn creates the jobs so desperately needed are being sucked up by the government. Ironically then simply passed back to unemployed pool, who would have had a job if the SME’s we’re allowed to grow and compete on the same playing field as a business who has been trading for several years. Talk about biting the hand before it feeds you. This seriously needs to be re-addressed in the current financial climate.

*Preliminary tax must be paid in its first accounting period for all new businesses that earn more than €200,00.

Today at Lunch I got more than I bargained for, a guy two tables away from me shared his personal finances with absolutely everyone in the restaurant. It was incredible how much information was divulged in a short space of time. Strangely it kind of motivated me if someone that stupid can be successful then success can’t be that closely correlated with intelligence. This wasn’t a case of listening in on someones conversation, simply the conversation on our table (and most others) stopped because the person was so loud we’d have been shouting just to be heard by the person next to us.

I don’t feel the need to paint the picture because you already know the type, you’ve met them before no doubt. They are certain the world revolves around them and the louder they talk the clearer people will understand their point.

As their meal started Mr. Loud lets call him, received a call from his investment fund manager. Through the next 20 minute conversation I knew absolutely everything about the state of his finances. The conversation revolved around the guy not wanting to pay his fund managers administration charges on the basis that his investments hadn’t been successful in the last few months (recession anyone) and therefore he didn’t deserve his fee’s (idiot!!!). In some odd way of trying to impress his fund manager (who works for one the banks) he was telling him of all the business he’s done with his bank and all about how negative performance in his business would not be rewarded with any pay.

Very quickly one could deduce this less than socially aware person has two mortgages hence owned two properties, invests in blocks of 30-50k without understanding the investment vehicles he invests in, is a founder and managing director of a technology company and then by giving his email address he gave away his companies name and his own. It was car crash TV, think the MTV jack ass of corporate stupidity. Knowing the field he’s in the competition would have definitely paid for the information he was throwing away. All in all, one could deduce the companies financial situation, his personal asset base and have enough data to preform identity theft.

So next time your out and your phone rings, remember that something as simple as calling out your email address in public is giving away a lot more than how to contact you.

One thing that can’t be denied during the economic boom is that Ireland has become a litigious society. The below talk from Philip Howard on Ted really got me thinking that with Ireland as a country being so badly in debt surely one of the big area’s for savings would be in the legal and court system. Ofcourse brave would be the politician who decided to make cut backs in an area of litigation, however it could be done with amazing results. If you took the one principle from Philips talk: Judge not on disputes but on the effect on society.

Take some fairly simply examples, the effect on the over all tax take on making people spend time in courts / legal work:

1. Speeding / Other fines lost in the post etc – A mandatory court appearance?? Please in today’s web 2.0 work, a self financing website / app could automate these procedures for those that don’t want to argue against the charge. And really do you need the cop on duty present in the court, the guy may be as responsible for the fine as having parked the automated camera trap van.

2. Anyone that spends a day in court will be aware that there is a guard for each case in court in case a judge asks a question… why does this need to be physically present? Surely Video conferencing or prerecorded statements and prerecorded answers to the most likely asked questions by the judge would eliminate the wait around wastage, which is unbelievably costly. I don’t think anyone could reasonably argue that all those guards are needed in the court room, I don’t believe they enjoy being there and I don’t think the cost of their time when you consider the small relative fines handed out in the median in circuit and district courts. At the very least people accused should always have a change to enter a plea or accept a fine / sentence without showing up if they have no intent to dispute the facts as laid out. The opportunity cost has become too high.

3. I love Philips idea of “Case dismissed, without predigest or refiling” rules; there’s nothing worse than people using refillings to stall or elongate the processes.

The Law should be their to protect us, but it should be common sense that we use to guide us, Not fear of the law. Somewhere along the line we’ve lost sight of the end goal. To have societal rules that help us get along in life not to have a negative net impact.

This isn’t a politically motivated post, it’s a post of common sense brought on by Philips Howards speech.