Author Archive for ‘elaine nester’
Learning to earn
My first taste of earning money, as opposed to receiving pocket money, was when I was given a Saturday job at age 11. Even in those days, child labour was uncommon in the UK but my mother asked the owner of a market stall if I could help out for a few hours on Saturdays. […]
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A Poppy Appeared in Winter You tossed your peachy skirts into the air, And stood, and shouted, “Look at me!” Through gales and rains and frost you still stood there November’s blasts made all the trees so bare But still you stood so proud and solitary You tossed your peachy skirts into the air. The […]
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I’ve been studying philosophy since a couple of years before I retired. Although much of the work was done over 2000 years ago, the thoughts of philosophers are as relevant now as they were when written with reeds on papyrus. Epicureanism is all about the pursuit of pleasure. A selfish lifestyle choice? Maybe not when […]
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There’s no place like it
I went to the garage yet again with my ageing car the other day. The mechanic said, “You’ve had it for 10 years – that’s a long time to keep a car.” As I reluctantly agreed to a batch of repairs to make it roadworthy again, because I still love it, I said to him, […]
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We started a chocolate business a few years ago to learn more about the retail food sector. An increasing number of our clients were in that sector and we needed to know about the issues they faced from the sharp end. Mission accomplished. Now that we are pretty much retired from Alpha (but please keep […]
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Am I hopelessly out of date?
This week I engaged in a discussion on LinkedIn about the type of interaction that is acceptable between new business connections. Is it OK to pitch your business at a new contact, or should you shield your true intent until you’ve wooed them with articles, wise comments and other displays of how brilliant you are? […]
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Is your time really your own?
Yesterday I passed the time of day with a man who was waiting in the reception area of a business where I also waited. The usual topic of weather came up and he remarked that, as a business owner, his staff holidays took precedence over his own and that he’d missed the best Summer weather […]
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A rose by any other name…
…might smell as sweet but unless it has name awareness, it could sink into oblivion alongside lesser known plant varieties. Finding appropriate names for brands is THE most favourite part of our work. It’s creative, of course, but there is also a clearly defined process that we have honed over the years to make it […]
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Could the creation of a product be key to reducing your dependence on your service business?
A business advisor once suggested that our business needed to create a PRODUCT in order to become more sustainable. This was an alien idea to us at the time – our business model was based on the supply of bespoke marketing consultancy and design services. We took the suggestion on board however and thought about […]
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