Electric Train(er)

Freelance or Small Business?

I had a great day on Friday at the BECTU Theatre Festival in central London. I was running two workshops, both for theatre freelances - one on setting up a web site to sell yourself and the other on business skills.

I meet a lot of freelances in the course of my training, and am always struck how many are reluctant to think of themselves as any kind of business. Some seem to view self-employment almost the same way as having a job, just without the security and with lots of 'down time' (aka poverty).

I don't believe you can be a successful freelance without taking on the mindset of a business. Of course that's different from being a 'company' and perhaps too many people confuse the two terms.

If you think I'm splitting hairs, consider this example: take two identical self-employed people, one a freelance and one a small business. When they're not working on a contract what are they doing?

Whenever I ask people this question the freelance is usually getting up late and watching daytime TV. The small business is out getting more clients or updating his publicity.

It may be just mindset and perception, but that can make all the difference.

The Power of Three

A friend of mine is always reminding people of the power of the three-word tag as part of business branding. In fact he's positively evangelical about it. He says we're all pre-wired  to remember things in threes. Any business that doesn't use a three-word slogan is - in his view - missing a trick.

A quick look up and down the high street - or at least the out-of-town retail park - shows he may have a point. Test your friends with these:

• every little helps
• have a break
• Beanz Meanz Heinz (a giveaway that one)
• never knowingly undersold

They don't even have to be in English - Vorsprung durch Technik anyone?

Sainsburys has the rebellious 'try something new today', and therefore (according to my friend) deserves everything it has coming to it. Though it redeems itself slightly by having a premium line called 'taste the difference'.

I read in today's Media Guardian that ads are having to get cleverer. It's something to do with the audiences getting more sophisticated, completely contradicting the argument for dumbing down.

I wonder where this leaves the power of the three-word tag or slogan. My suspicion is that it will never go away. Threesomes are so powerful they have been used for centuries, so I can't see them disappearing just because Asda decides to spot patting its bum.

Winston Churchill used the power of three all the time in his speeches. Even when he didn't that's the way we remember him. Blood, sweat and tears was actually 'blood, toil, tears and sweat'.

The earliest example I can think of is Julius Ceasar's 'Veni. Vidi. Vici.' (I came. I saw. I conquered.) After all, he could just as easily have said 'I came. I conquered'.  Just 'I conquered' would have conveyed the meaning, especially to the poor sods he'd just slaughtered.

And he was a man who understood the importance of branding.

New Year Greetings

Happy new year!

As another April 6th flies past more people are slowly waking up to the fact that Gordon Brown pulled a fast one on small companies in last month's budget. Big business gets a 2p cut in corporation tax. Small business gets a 3p rise in corporation tax. How's that meant to work?

I've been wondering why so many people missed it. David Cameron has been taunting Tony Blair about 'not seeming to realise that there were two types of corporation tax'. I get the distinct impression that he didn't realise either until one of his less well-off lackeys pointed it out some time in the week between the Budget and the next PMQs.

I'll admit it's a bit of a pain updating all our training materials following each Budget, but one of the pleasurable side effects for a news junkie like me is comparing the coverage in all the papers the day after.

Almost all talked about the 'abolition' of the starting rate of income tax - a phrase that the Treasury uses. Now in my version of English abolishing a tax is a thing to be celebrated. But in Treasury-speak abolishing the starting rate actually means turning it into the standard rate. This means doubling it - from 10% to 20%.

None of the broadsheets pointed this out in ways that you or I would understand. Which was the only paper to nail it? Step forward the Sun. And to prove it here's the clever - and remarkably simple - graphic they used.