How to Spot a Good Business

Something I have learned over the years, from working with agencies, employers and business clients is that work culture really does matter. Work culture begins at the top and trickles down. It can be largely defined by how the boss behaves including the words they pick, the questions they ask, the emotions they choose to […]

Gender and the Future

I am grateful every single day that I have two children, my son and my daughter. One thing that has elevated in my priorities, is what challenges they will both face growing up and entering the working world. The challenges are very different. Relentless fear and bias For my daughter, there are obvious issues she […]

The rising demand for content unicorns

In a world with so many channels and formats, are businesses demanding too many skills per hire to find the best seasoned specialists? Too often, content is seen as a bucket to fill rather than a chance to celebrate what you know and love. I keep hearing small business owners expressing exhaustion with the amount […]

Remote Working: Keep Your Senses Nourished for Better Results

If you work from home, it’s easy to lose yourself in isolation. You should break free, and often, if only to give your brain the boost it needs, to be better at work. Around 16% of the whole UK workforce now work exclusively from home, according to Office National Statistics data and YouGov data found […]

Why be a Ghostwriter?

Often there are ghosts in articles. Ghostwriting, and for clarity I mean writing AS someone else who has commissioned you, is a literary artform that many writers have in their repertoire, and which let’s face it, rarely gets them any publicity or credit by its nature. The person who commissions a ghostwriter often does so […]

4 Reasons Writers Should Not Fear Chat GPT

Chat GPT is the ‘talk of the town’ for all content creators and many businesses seeing an opportunity to cut corners. Am I worried? Not really. Here’s why. Whilst the initial dazzle of generative text on demand is gratifying for those who like to write about tyre fitting in the style of Shakespeare (with hilarious […]

I Will Remember

Last night I cracked. A fissure opened up inside, and at the same time a scar was hardening. I realised I carry everyone, friendships and family, I carry them in my veins, all that love is stored. I didn’t know how my old friend and flat mate had died and for various reasons, I wasn’t […]

New Tricks

Career-wise, being 51 is a difficult age. As a contractor, life experience means something for clients, but hiring a 51-year-old into a company tribe is not something many fresh-faced, entrepreneurial companies make a recruitment priority. People associate energy and commitment with younger ages – which is nuts when you see me hit the dancefloor. The […]

Hardwired For Expression

I was recently happy from a realisation that art, that self-expression is one of the defining qualities of being a human. We thought it was tools, but art, art is the thing that really separates us from other beasts, it’s our unique value proposition to the world, a sense of reflection and interpretation – a […]

writing Is Seeing

As a way to unleash and sharpen my creative storytelling I long ago pledged to write a dystopian short story every month and publish it at a site I bashed together called dystopiandays.com, this is since the days of the pandemic lockdowns, in early 2020. From being true to this dedicated ritual, I have also […]

Smiling through rain

You can feel it in the air, the nervousness of finances. Everyone can sense it, that creeping cost to exist; to eat, to be warm, to get around. After Brexit, Covid-19, war in Europe and political chaos, the everyday certainties of price and process we took for granted are eroding like a crumbling sea wall […]

The story watchers

Earlier in the year I took a break and visited my parents in Cornwall. It was the same time that Storm Franklin, a potent whirlwind, clattered about the UK pushing over bins and uprooting trees and making a general mess of things. Just beginning to relax into a day off, we drove to the local […]

You are what you read

You’ve heard the expression: ‘you are what you eat’. Similarly, ‘you are what you read’. During the pandemic lockdowns, every politician and talking head on TV proudly displayed their enormous, crammed bookshelves in their backdrops. There is pride in what you learn from books, it’s often a statement of identity. The same applies to what […]

Spell my name right

After eight weeks of filming, Spanish Inquisition-style interviews, and a house full of filming gear, the day before our episode of Eat Well For Less was being broadcast on BBC1, my family’s documentary was replaced by the special unscheduled programme, The Downfall of Boris Johnson, who had for the umpteenth time in his career crashed […]

Less and meaningful

So many times I have been at networking meetings and someone has tried to articulate their business offer. After a weird monologue of business buzzwords, I am left with an awkward blank expression, sipping my coffee defensively to fill the void. People struggle to communicate their offers succinctly. Don’t mistake talking a lot for making […]

Being the audience

In a Zoom call for ‘fit’ I once talked to someone who asked me ‘what’s your tone of voice?’ for writing. I replied, ‘the question is, what’s yours?’ but I don’t think she got it. If you are not a niche specialist writer, you are going to write in a whole range of sectors and […]