Jeremy Hall – Confessions of a serial entrepreneur

Three years to build a company and then sell it for over £1m…follow the journey

01 November
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So Jeremy, did you hit the £10,000 in October?

Posted by Jeremy Hall in General Posts

People who read this blog have been asking me this question, “Did we hit that magical £10,000 sales target in October for our reincarnated division, WestWon.biz?” Well, no is the answer, we fell short. But do you know what, it was one of the best months we have had in years. In less than a month, we have created a product, developed a website, created some marketing material, picked up many new customers, renewed existing customers and made a net profit. Tell me, how many companies out there make a net profit in month one of trading and get a product off the ground that quickly??

31 October
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Fraud and the internet

Posted by Jeremy Hall in General Posts

So why is it that leasing companies do not focus on the internet? It is amazing to see the leasing industry, 99 out of 100 companies just have a shop window, not an interactive website. They are not working the internet for business opportunities or using pay per click advertising. There are two key reasons for this:
1. The internet will drag up a lot of low quality business opportunities that quite frankly go nowhere.
2. Fraud, fraudsters target leasing companies and there is no better place to start than Google.
So, as we proceed with our new website, we do so with our eyes wide open.

30 October
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Leasing companies on the web

Posted by Jeremy Hall in General Posts

It was an early start today to write the content for our new www.westwon.co.uk website. I have allocated a day to do this task. How wrong can someone be, after three hours I have only been able to upload a few pages.
Our new website has been created in WordPress, a universal development tool for websites and one that allows you to make daily changes with the touch of a button. My main reasons for choosing WordPress were:
1. When we had the serious snow last year, we had limited staff in the office. We urgently needed to get a message on the front page of the website explaining this.
2. For three years, our old website never had any changes to the content. Like most companies, our website is our showroom window. However, let’s think about this. Firstly, shop owners change their showroom on a regular basis and secondly if you want to appear on the front pages of Google, your content needs to be relevant and change regularly.
Our plan is to change/add to the content daily.

29 October
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Updating our website

Posted by Jeremy Hall in General Posts

It was an early start today to write the content for our new www.westwon.co.uk website. I have allocated a day to do this task. How wrong can someone be, after three hours I have only been able to upload a few pages.
Our new website has been created in WordPress, a universal development tool for websites and one that allows you to make daily changes with the touch of a button. My main reasons for choosing WordPress were:
1. When we had the serious snow last year, we had limited staff in the office. We urgently needed to get a message on the front page of the website explaining this.
2. For three years, our old website never had any changes to the content. Like most companies, our website is our showroom window. However, let’s think about this. Firstly, shop owners change their showroom on a regular basis and secondly if you want to appear on the front pages of Google, your content needs to be relevant and change regularly.
Our plan is to change/add to the content daily.

28 October
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Intellectual Property

Posted by Jeremy Hall in General Posts

I am not an expert here, but I do respect his is an important subject and an area where a lot of companies do not take seriously. A call came to me the other day asking for ideas for the name of a product. “Why, I ask, you already have a name for this product and have been promoting this product name for some time?” This individual was trying to get copyright for the name of a product they have and there was an objection. The seriousness of the objection meant that that they have to change the product name, a time consuming and expensive exercise.
So, if you are looking at a new company, product, do the research first and check to see if there are any similar products with a similar name.

27 October
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Read the papers dear boy

Posted by Jeremy Hall in General Posts

Think about this, you engage a design company to create a company logo, your company becomes successful, you make a few million then decide to sell the company. During the due diligence you have to prove to the purchaser you own the copyright in your company logo. Well of course you do, you instructed the design company, you gave them ideas, you even made the final changes and paid their invoice in full. Wrong!
The copyright on the logo could legally be owned by the design company unless you have a contract in place – or I assume some wording on the invoice – that clearly states they have designed the logo and have sold you the copyright.
Now I have never been caught out here, and you can send the logo into the copyright office and get it protected, but other than that, you could find yourself in a position where your company does not have legal title to the logo.
And the connection to £Read the papers dear boy,” this was a letter to the FT and their response.

26 October
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We are changing our name to Wyseleasing.com

Posted by Jeremy Hall in General Posts

The meeting room in our Bristol hotel was full up of us seven Wyse Leasing company directors. Item number one under the marketing section of the monthly board meeting was “shall we change our company name?”
It was about the year 2000 and the world of the internet was taking off. Our biggest client was Evesham computers, then a powerhouse employing 400 plus people. They had just changed their trading style to “Evesham.com.” Looking back, they may have had a website but certainly did no big business on the internet. Loads of other companies were doing the same, adding.com onto the back of their name like “Last Minute” just to show they were up with the times. Needless to say, the idea did fade away, a bit like these companies that now call themselves “i” this or that.

25 October
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Don’t put an” i” in your company or product name

Posted by Jeremy Hall in General Posts

We were having an internal meeting recently deciding on the name for our new credit information product – we have since called it “Dashboard.” My Sales Director came up with the idea of “iDashboard” At least he has some logic, what we have is an information dashboard so putting the letter “i” in front has some meaning. I quickly said no!
What is with all these companies that have either called themselves “i” this or that or put the letter “i” before a product name, (having just read the front page of the FT adverting idealing.com) It is just a straight rip off of Apple. Within a few years, these companies/brands (other than Apple) will have mostly disappeared anyway. Come on chaps, you can do better than that.

23 October
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An argument over social media

Posted by Jeremy Hall in General Posts

A few weeks ago I met with a friend who is sales director for a £50m plus company in the UK. They have in excess of 40 sales staff and circa 10,000 customers. They are one of the UK’s main players in their market. I explained that we are setting up a Twitter account and a company LinkedIn account – I am still undecided about a company Facebook account.
“Why, explain to me clearly how this will benefit our company?” “Well, social media is the new form of advertising, this is how a generation of people will learn about your products and hear about your company. ” I carried on listing the reasons why his company should have a social media policy, culminating with the fact it is potentially a low cost form of advertising. “I do not get it, I do not agree” was his reply. Now so we are clear, this friend of mine is very bright and highly successful and equally important, understands social media probably better than me.
He left me with an interesting thought, how powerful will social media be in the world of business to business communication.

23 October
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OK, how…

Posted by Jeremy Hall in General Posts

So how do I meet 50 top people face to face and speak to 500 of them within three months? What is the reason for the call, what am I looking to achieve? Why 50 meetings and speak to 500 of them? A few points…
a. When was the last time I put together a list of 1,000 people/companies I want to speak to? Never is the answer. I will put the list together, undertake a credit check on the companies, track their birthdays, and print off a quick synopsis of what their company does.
b. We will record conversations and actions on a database
c. I should be able to do 20 meetings easily in October and November and ten in December, hence the target of 50 face to face meetings
d. I have a reason to speak to them, i.e. Who’s Who, data, leasing etc.

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