Author archives: charlie

I used to be a big reader. (Well, a big-ish reader, anyway.) But nowadays? I’m all about the podcasts. The best ones are thought-provoking, amusing and often uplifting. I love the insights into people’s lives and many of the business and leadership ideas are really valuable. This is so much better than radio! When you […]

I know it’s August already, but today I want to talk about Christmas – in July! (How confusing is that?) Back in December, my family was very upset that we weren’t going to have a “normal” Christmas. It had been months since we were in the same room. So we decided that as soon as […]

It’s the most amusing moment of the Olympics (so far)… Have you seen how swimming coach Dean Boxall reacted when Ariarne Titmus won the women’s 400m freestyle competition? His enthusiastic (to put it mildly) celebration has made him an Internet sensation. You can watch the video here. Here’s what he had to say afterwards: “I can’t […]

What would you do if you got to work one day… …And discovered that your company has been over-deducting national insurance payments for your employees, for the past few years? That’s the exact situation in which one acquaintance of mine found himself last year. Instead of focusing on growing his business, he’s been forced to […]

How important is having a good accounting platform for your business? For Paul Goodman it was critical. Earlier this year, he was appointed Finance Lead for Narrative Entertainment UK, a major new company in the broadcast industry. He was tasked with finding an outsourced finance department that could help them implement excellent financial systems and […]

Over the past 15 years, lots of professions have changed dramatically. For example, being a journalist in 2021 is very different to being a journalist in 2006. Thanks to the Internet, journalists have to publish their reports much faster… They need to pay attention to videos and tweets posted in real-time by regular citizens on […]

I still remember the days when I had to buy my kids’ school uniform – admittedly quite a while back! Thelma and I would take them to the uniform shop, where they’d get strangely excited about a uniform that, a couple of weeks later, they actively resented… And at the end of our shopping trip, […]

There is a shelf unit in our office, which is packed full of files. For the past few months, they’ve been lying empty. When our team returns full-time to the office, one of the first things I’m going to do is ask someone to clear out all these files – or give them away! The […]

This significant date that probably passed you by… On June 1, landlords were finally allowed to evict tenants again. This right was suspended for many months, during Coronavirus. The courts are about to be inundated with landlords rushing to begin proceedings. It will take a few months to filter through, but before the end of […]

Years ago, I was talking to a client who boasted that he never paid the first price he was quoted for anything. It was a point of principle for him. So when we needed to raise our fees, I quoted him just a bit more than usual… …And allowed him to negotiate us down to […]