It doesn’t seem possible, but my business is ten years old today. Or, more accurately, yesterday, but Sunday is hardly a day to celebrate a business anniversary.
I’ve met a vast number of people along the way, and you may know nothing about the history of Nick Blatchley Copywriting. So here’s a quick rundown of how it all came about.
Employee or Business Owner?
Until late 2013, the idea of being a business owner had never occurred to me. I’d always been an employee, working in various sectors, most memorably bookselling and residential care. My last “proper job” was as a media monitor, which I used to describe as being paid to read newspapers and magazines all day. Also, of course, to identify cuttings on behalf of a wide range of clients.
Then the financial crisis of 2008 changed all that. Not at once, but the need to economise led more and more of our clients to realise all they needed now for the same service were the right Google alerts. Gradually, they left us, and the company ended up closing the department and making us all redundant.
That left me in a difficult position. The sector I’d been working in was dying, so I had to look for positions I wasn’t obviously qualified for. In my late fifties. In the middle of a recession. Unsurprisingly, my hunt wasn’t successful.
Then someone suggested I could start my own business. My initial reaction was based on the image that “business owner” conjured up for me at that time — a high-powered, ruthless boardroom type. That wasn’t me then, and it isn’t now.
But I remembered that my grandad had a newsagent shop in the East End. That made him a business owner and, as I now know, a far more typical one than my image. So I decided to think about it.
My first question was, quite simply, what am I good at? Well, I’ve been a writer since I was four. I’d had plenty published — novels, short stories, poems and articles — though without earning more than pocket money, and a bit of research suggested I could make a living as a freelance copywriter.
Turning an Idea into Business
Having an idea is easy enough, but turning it into a business is harder. Fortunately, as I was unemployed at the time, I was able to get help from the Jobcentre. It’s almost comic, the difference going to the Jobcentre as a jobseeker (treated as an inconvenience) and as a prospective business owner (treated as a VIP).
Anyway, I was referred to a start-up training firm called Wenta, who did a great job at equipping me with what I needed to start my journey as a business owner. I learnt, for instance, that I had the choice between being a limited company or a sole trader (I went for the latter), that I could apply for a start-up loan, how I needed to register with HMRC. And I learnt how to draw up a business plan — though it was only later I discovered difference between the business plan you show the bank and the one you actually follow.
There were lots of free courses, as well, on how to handle finances, how to prospect for customers, how to market yourself, how to use social media. And they also tipped me off about some local business networking groups — a new concept to me.
I was well equipped by the end of the process, but there was one thing I needed to decide — what was I going to call the business? I sometimes joke that it took me hours to come up with Nick Blatchley Copywriting, but that’s actually true. I thought about any number of much fancier names, but eventually realised that my brand is myself and my skills, so it seemed to make sense to stick with my own name.
The intention was to launch at the beginning of March, but unfortunately the 1st and 2nd were the weekend. So Nick Blatchley Copywriting was launched onto an unsuspecting world on 3rd March 2014.
Growing the Business
It’s one thing to launch a business, another entirely to run and grow it, as I found out in the months that followed. Clients were very few and far between at first, and I made two common rookie errors. Firstly, I tried to compete on low price. Secondly, I didn’t recognise what I should say no to, and in one case ended up waiting a year before the client got around to paying me.
I was continuing to network, though. I met valuable people through both those initial meetings, and through Wenta itself, including Tim Shortt of Webtex Web Design, who still looks after my website.
I started getting invitations to other networking groups, though, and the most important introduced me to 4Networking, which still makes up a large proportion of my networking. Not only did 4N bring me too many clients to count over the years, but also introduced me to many awesome friends and colleagues, from whom I’ve learnt a vast amount about running a business.
There have been ups and downs over these ten years. Surprisingly, the lockdown was a good time for my business, whereas (perhaps like for you) the past year has been challenging. But Nick Blatchley Copywriting is still here after ten years — and that’s a relatively small club for SMEs.
The Next Ten Years
So what will the next ten years bring? Well, according to my plans, these are among the main things:
- Increase my reputation to the extent that I can pick the work that interests me.
- Include more larger businesses among my clients — though I’m not going to ignore the micro-businesses.
- Turn the business into a franchise, so I’m mainly mentoring other copywriters.
- Work part time — hopefully spending some of the rest travelling.
And, of course, posting to celebrate Nick Blatchley Copywriting’s twentieth birthday.