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Not a problem Rebecca, I can't talk, I'm like the Scarlett Pimpernel 

Reall sorry to hear about your daughter but I'm glad to hear you are finally getting the right support, even if you are having to pay for it yourself  

It's a tough call with the NHS, I've seen it from both sides, to amazing support when our youngest was admitted with a meningitis scare, to pretty awful geriatric care for different grandparents, and everything in between.

The majority of staff are awesome, most nurses do it as a vocation and not for the money, but there is and will never be enough budget for everything. Whoever has the awful job of deciding priorities can mean hardship or even a death sentence for some. Successive governments from all flavours have routinely interfered and meddled with the running of the NHS, wasting billions in restructures, strategies and failed IT projects. 

I think it should be 100% non-political, with an extra NHS tax paid by all, above National Insurance, £2 a month of everyone. There are around 30 million working adults. Few would miss £24 a year, which would give an extra £720 million. Make it a fiver and you've generated £1.8 billion extra. But plenty will oppose and say that's not fair, until of course they need it.

Looking forward to a meal out with the folks tomorrow and drink down the local! Normality slowly seems to be coming...

It's been a strange/interesting/horrific/awful/incredible 18 months depending on what day it was and what stage of lockdown we were at.

Homeschooling for me was the low point. We soldiered on when I know many gave up, to the point of turning the lounge into a makeshift classroom with a whiteboard and fold up desks, then packing away at tend of school. But keeping to the same school routine, including breaks, although incredibly hard, I think in hindsight worked out pretty well.

But it only worked with 2 parents tag-teaming, and to be honest, my wife was absolutely incredible. Help from the school, particularly early on was definitely below average when compared anecdotally to stories around the country. The kids have been amazing and resilient. Behaviour has without dipped and screen time has been more than I'm comfortable with, but we are now reducing back to normal screentime levels and digital discipline.

Business-wise, we abandoned the office in March 2020 and haven't been back. Early lessons became very apparent around technology, and relying on employees to provide their own computers isn't the way forward, with issues around data risk, virus's, and slow older machines not designed to be work machines.

So for the cost of a bunch of laptops and utilising the office PC work application licences and a very cheap remote support app, productivity has actually increased. Luckily we had IP phones in the office, so we all took our phone home, plugged it in and it's like we are still in the office! Feedback is the lack of travelling to the office is appreciated and the greater flexibility this brings. Face to face interaction is handled by 2 weekly zoom team meetings, which has now become the norm and works really well. It's now hard to imagine us in the office.

I appreciate not all industries can work from home, and for those that can, not everyone wants to. I'm also very aware of the devastation of many industries, from tourism to hospitality, and have been dealing first-hand with issues from some of our Trusted Trader members who were unable to work, particularly due to tighter rules around non-essential home repairs in Scotland.

For me, lessons have reconfirmed how key it is to diversify and not be reliant on single revenue streams and to expect the unexpected. As revenue for one business plummeted, revenue increased for my other, balancing things out. Things are now picking up again and from the coalface, we seem to be heading to a post covid world, regardless of what the Government or media tell us.

I'm glad the worst is over, but for me personally, it has been incredibly challenging, very stressful at times, but I think I've come out the other side with a different and more balanced perspective around flexibility and work-life balance, and a much more robust business ready for the next inevitable brexit/covid/recession/catastrophe...

I am looking forward to going aboard again though! At some point... 

Never say never, I was quite surprised by the type of people on there. I assumed it was mainly argumentative brexiteers or people mainly wanting to rant. But among the noise there are a lot of interesting groups with some surprising demographics, including execs, business owners, airline pilots, engineers etc.

It's one I may come back to in the future, as their model is still in its infancy, but that also means it's very cheap if anyone wanted experiment/punt.

Originally Posted by Rebecca (PayforPrecision)

“What a humble brag! ”

VATs a funny one and more of a curse. If you're a builder, after about 2 jobs you will hit the VAT threshold.

Take a lifestyle business such as a social media bod or web designer with little overhead and maximum profit, then keep under the £85k threshold and you have a decent income for flexible hours that you choose to work. Plus you can undercut the bigger competition, so what's not to like!

I've got 2 VAT registered businesses and all the hassle that goes with that, then a fabulous VAT free business with next to no overheads. I know which one I prefer 

Great article about this from Marketing Week.

Anyone who missed it, Ronaldo, a former Coke sponsor, shunned 2 bottles of coke in front of him, moving them out of shot and reaching for a water.

Allegedly this saw Cokes share price slump and marketing agencies around the world seem to go hysterical.

In the Marketing Week article, written by the genius and straight-talking Mark Ritson, he introduces some perspective and common sense. In reality, the share price was already reducing from other factors, and actually increased slightly from the publicity.

Plus the age-old adage, all publicity is good publicity. It might have upset a few coke fans or made a few people turn away from a horrible sugary teeth rotting drink and move to water. But it would have increased far more sales due to the free publicity and increased air time and exposure, on the back of a footballer moving a couple of bottles out of shot, and a media frenzy then kicking off.

It goes to show what a bizarre world we live in. I'm sure there are plenty of more important causes to get emotional about, but everyone loves to shout an opinion and jump on the band wagon.. Like I've just done 

I'm not even a fan of football, let alone a Man United supporter. But this Marcus Rashford bloke seems to break every stereotype going.

Far from being a self-indulgent pampered overpaid young footballer, he seems to be on a one-man mission to change the world. He is clearly using his celebrity to do good, while keeping his feet on the ground and being aware of his past.

He appears to have more integrity and achieved more than any of the current rabble in Westminster, and is only 23!

I reckon once he's given up this football hobby, he'll get a proper job and sort out British politics. Judging by the comments on Twitter, plenty would vote for him! 

100% agree, nobody gets it right all the time. And as we regularly tell businesses who get the hump after getting a bad review, prospective customers like to see how a business reacts and deals with an issue when problems do inevitably occur. A negative review can actually work in your favour if a reviewer was overly harsh and you have the opportunity to leave a professional response, and let the visitor make their own mind up.

My biggest beef is the unmoderated rubbish that allows someone to leave a negative review /feedback, which is published, but clearly is just spam and is actually nothing to do with genuine feedback. Most of it originates overseas and a lot of the time, they leave random feedback just to build up contributions and influence, so they can spam their own product service later on.

It's a problem that's getting worse, and Googles drive to more reliance on automation, as shown above, clearly doesn't appear to be the best of solutions  

Anyone who has managed a team or has employees will be familiar with the sandwich approach to giving critical feedback.

Be polite, non-confrontational, tell them what a fantastic job they are doing, then maybe ask them if they could just try getting out of bed a bit earlier, then finish with isn't everything going well and have a great weekend. 

In reality, the only bit the employee remembers is you fumbling around having a dig about their timekeeping and then gets the hump, potentially creating a toxic environment as they gossip to co-workers about your weak leadership style.

There is a different approach attributed to author Joy Baldridge called the velvet hammer, and I must admit I think it works so much better than the traditional s**t sandwich approach.

"gossip to co-workers about your weak leadership style"

Taking the poor timekeeping example (but can be applied to anything), the approach goes something like this. Start with a positive icebreaker, eg "can you help me with something?" Set the scene that this is an exchange where you need their help and assistance. Few people will be put off by this.

Then go straight for the kill, outline the issue then invite joint discussion to resolve it, removing confrontation and turning it into an opportunity to acknowledge and resolve.

"Hi Frank, you've been continually late getting to the office, and I have had a few clients saying you have missed calls. I was wondering what's causing the problem, because it cannot continue."

According to Joy, the word "because" is one of the 30 most persuasive words, as everyone wants to know what comes after it. Joy then continues:  "asking what the person suggests we do is powerful because people are persuaded most by their own words. The approach is designed to be non-threatening, compassionate, and open-minded. It finds positivity in the way you communicate, manage, and lead, especially when you need to correct problematic behaviour."

"because" is one of the 30 most persuasive words

So rather than trying to disguise bad feedback in between thinly veiled sugar-coated praise, you address it head-on and try and find a solution and fix the issue. There is no skulking around the office or tiptoeing around an issue, just positive action, with a declared outcome.

If it's a serious issue that is unable to be rectified, then that outcome will be obvious and can be managed appropriately, such as 1 to 1 meetings, performance reviews and if required, managed out of the business. But better to be a leader that addresses things head-on, rather than avoids and stores up problems for tomorrow.

What kind of leader are you? 

I often find myself stuck in a Quora rabbit hole, and from the occasional nuggets of useful info, there is a sea of idiots, jingoism, dumb questions, trolls and antagonistic bots.

But occasionally you see a bizarre question with a proper laugh out loud answer and makes you proud to be British 

If there is one thing we are Olympic gold champions at, it's sarcasm and irony

Anyone running a business should be on top of their reputation management, from making sure any customer-facing staff are professional and presenting your company in the best light, to monitoring all sources of possible feedback.

But unfortunately, not all review sites are made equal, and I'm well aware of how hard it is to tread the tightrope of review moderation, looking after the interests of the reviewer, whilst ensuring the reputation of a business isn't unfairly tarnished.

So let's look at Googles approach to negative reviews, how you report one, and what sort of outcome you can expect.

Reporting Negative Reviews

You have two options, you can log in to your Google My Business console:

Select reviews and go to the review you are not happy with. Then select the three little dots and you have the option to flag the review as inappropriate.

This then will give you the following options.

Choose your reason and follow your nose, all pretty straightforward.

Alternatively, you can select the review in question on your Google Maps listing (right-hand side of Google search if viewed on a desktop )

Select your reviews, then choose the review in question and this time if you select three little dots, you have the option to report the review.

Now we have different options, compared to before, so you can choose from the following.

Choose your option, press report and job done.

Google Moderation Time

Now it gets exciting  Regardless of how you report it, you will get a notification that Google has received your request and they are on the case.

So all very slick and we have an SLA. But in reality, we know this will all be automated due to the sheer volume of requests they have to deal with.

So how good a job does the algorithm do?

I filed three reports, all of which were one star reviews, none of them was known to us, two had no comments, one simply said "Work on" which didn't leave much to go on

So from acknowledging our dispute to giving us an answer for each review, took around 20 minutes. But the verdict was a little strange, so see what you think.

Request 1 - removed, excellent

Request 2 - The computer says no

Request 3 - the computer says no to this one as well 

So there we have it, automated review moderation in action. 3 reviews, all of them spam, 1 is removed, but 2 are deemed to be acceptable and don't violate any policies. Other than being unknown to us and leaving no comment or clue as to what any perceived issue is.

After falling foul of a circumventing systems policy violation recently, which turned out to be triggered by one of Googles own adverts, and now seeing review moderation in action, I'm not fully embracing the drive to more utilisation of artificial intelligence and algorithms. I'd quite happily stick with semi-intelligent humans thanks