We dug out our winter kit & prepared for a bleak mid winter

As you know, I am a very enthusiastic cyclist. In the summer, when it's nice and warm. Preferably abroad, somewhere like Majorca where drivers are polite to cyclists and you can find a place in the sun for a frothy beer at the end of your ride.

Well, listen up people. Today I discovered riding in the Autumn. And guess what, it's just as much fun as the summer, in some ways even better, provided you have the right gear. Yes, as long as you've given it some thought, done your prep and sourced the right equipment, riding in the cold can be just as satisfying as riding in the heat.

Here we are at our coffee stop, 60km in. Don't we look happy!

How to Survive A Recession

I've been thinking about this topic a lot. I run a small business and it has become patently clear that the economic environment has changed. Confidence is evaporating, everyone is being super-cautious, there are tales of layoffs and hiring freezes ... not the best time to be running a recruitment consultancy. Especially one which focuses on women coming back after a long career break.

And yet.

I reckon it's just the same as riding a bike in the winter. Provided you do the prep and have the right gear, you should be able to steer a business through a downturn. Here's my plan, for what it's worth.

1. Focus on the money. Sounds obvious but it's easy to get distracted by the peripherals - keeping up with social media, checking out what the competition are doing, perfecting your website, looking for PR opportunities & the like. All perfectly reasonable but none of them actually deliver ￡￡. Luckily for us, we don't have hundreds of people doing thes jobs for us, so it's not a question of laying anyone off, it's just about keeping sharp focus on what will keep us in business. Finding people jobs.
2. Keep your promises. But only the right people. Our mission is to help female lawyers navigate "non-linear" careers. That could be back to work after a break, stepping up after time treading water or even finding a less pressured role for a time if that's what they need. We do not just poach people from firm A to put them in firm B. Now is not the time to drift, however worried we are. We only exist because we do something different.
3. Be loyal. Who has stuck with you through thick and thin? Who trusts you and who do you trust? It's not that you can't court new customers or clients, just make sure it's not to the detriment of those who you know you can rely on and who, in turn, may rely on you.
4. Get out more. It's NEVER not worth that face to face meeting, lunch, coffee. Now is not the time to sit at the computer waiting for new business to roll in.
5. Team up. When you're small, like us, it's easy to feel as though it's hard to make your mark. How can you do business development when the BD team are simultaneously your careers consultants, PR, accountants, admin assistants, HR and social media managers? Easy. You draw on support from your fabulous network of supporters, friends and clients. If you do 2, 3 and 4 you'll find that they do your BD for you.

I also have a bold new idea but that's top secret at the moment. Don't worry, you'll be the first to hear once I've worked it out in more detail.

What's your plan? I would love to hear any other practical suggestions.

Tweets and Turkeys

I had a boss once who was vey fond of saying "In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly" by which I think he meant that when times are good even businesses with a flakey business model can be successful. This was 1999 ish, towards the end of the first dot com bubble and right before the first dot com crash.

For the youngsters amongst you, basically, the late nineties saw tonnes of money flooding into tech startups. Previously boring investment banks, as well as the new venture capitalists on the block, could not get enough of internet based businesses (anything with dot com in the name) which were very good at telling the world how they were disrupting traditional industries but not so good at explaining to the same world how they would actually make any money. Oh, and debt was cheap.

Sound familiar?

The 2000 crash was partly caused by the Fed raising interest rates to calm inflation (Groundhog Day?) and investors belatedly realising that their money was at risk, to say the least. All helped along by the disastrous AOL Time Warner merger.

Well, guess what, here we appear to be again. How can a company (e.g. Twitter) shed almost half its workforce and still be operating? What did all these people do? How did their activities lead to the company actually generating any revenue?

Apparently, as well as sacking half the workforce, the problem will be solved by charging users $8.99 per month for a blue tick.

I'm not at all confident Twitter will survive.

Meta?

No company has a God given right to last forever. Remember when everyone had a Nokia phone?

Talking of Turkeys

I went to buy a chicken the other day from my local butcher, the Ginger Pig. (My late departed father used to call it the Golden Pig on account of the prices). They set great store by the produce coming from a farm in Yorkshire (which still didn't appease my dad).

The only chickens they had were from France! Scrawny little things. Looked like they survived on black coffee & cigarettes. The butchers blamed avian flu, which had meant they'd had to cull thousands of locally reared birds. There may be no turkey this Christmas folks.

The Red Wave that Wasn't

So, it's official. Sanity has returned to the US. Trump backed candidates failed to deliver on his bombastic promise and it just looks as though we might be spared a return of the Donald.

Although, it does feel a bit like "a plague on both your houses." No-one seemed to really get a ringing endorsement except, perhaps, Ron Desantis. Please please please can someone tell the Democrats that Joe can now bow out gracefully. I really don't think we need an octogenarian in the White House. Not in the top job, at any rate.

I reckon he won't stand. He left it open this week, saying it's going to be a family decision. Jill seems quite sensible, perhaps she can talk him round. Though having said that it's not at all clear who the alternative would be.

How do political parties get themselves into such a mess???

Navy Seal versus Venture Capitalist

I was only keeping half an eye on the mid-term elections but this caught my eye. 58 year old Mark Kelly is an ex Navy Captain and ex astronaut who has been into space 4 times. His wife, Gaby Giffords, survived an assassination attempt a few years ago, and part of his campaign focused on gun safety and also abortion rights for women.

His rival was a 36 year old Trump backed Venture Capitalist, Blake Masters, whose campaign was backed by a Silicon Valley billionaire.

Like I said, sanity seems to be returning.

How not to Lead

Did anyone take up my recommendation and watch SAS Rogue Heroes? If you did, you may recall a scene where Paddy is training the French. He divides them into two teams and has them compete to build 30 feet scaffolds and in order to encourage them, goes up to a hill overlooking the building site and takes pot shots at them. He fires his gun if they stop to take a breath, make a wrong move, pause for a rest ... any reason he chooses really.

Interesting choice of leadership style and it seems to be one that Suella Braverman seems to be adopting. This week she roundly criticised the police for not doing more to stop the Just Stop Oil protesters who were chaining themselves to gantries. A "firmer line" was required, she ordered.

In response, Sir Mark Rowley, seemed bemused at exactly what a "firmer line" might look like, saying:

"We can't take snipers ... to people who tie themselves to gantries. When we use the angle grinders, we have to just take off the locks, we can't take off their limbs at the same time. There are limits to how you can do this at speed."

Seems like they have a solid working relationship then.

I'm not watching Matt Hancock in the jungle. Refuse. Point. Blank

I'm watching and it's poor: The Crown. Oh dear. It seems to have descended into very expensive sets featuring actors doing pretty poor impersonations of well known royals, most of whom are not long dead. Feels tawdry.

I'm reading: As many guides to Paris as I can get my hands on. Taking my mum and daughter for the weekend. We have a lot to pack in, so need a plan.

I'm listening to: My Therapist Ghosted Me with Joanne McNally and Vogue Williams. My daughter introduced me to it and it's very funny.

I am not providing any Christmas gift recommendations this week, partly because I can't think of any and partly because a friend who works in retail and reliably informs me that the sales are going to be early and huge this year.

Apparently everyone is sitting on far too much stock and they can't afford the rent on the places to store it all so it's going in the sale. You heard it here first.

A bient?t.