Entrepreneur Diaries

Friday, 16th May 2008

I started work at 9am today.

I have been working on & off in the last few days, although I have not updated my daily diary. I have spent the majority of my time with my wife & daughter, who have sadly now gone back to Turkey.

I am now focused 100% back on the business. I've got loads to do today. As explained in 12/05/2008 diary entry, we are soon to start working with Venture Finance in a number of different ways. It looks as though we will be starting work together on a new invoice discounting client within the next 2 weeks. I am also very busy preparing for the start of our consultancy project with a large firm of Barristers called "Hardwicke Building"

We started a temporary 1 month outsourced credit control job with "The Icebox" on 17th April 2008. We have now reached the end of this project and I am currently in discussions with them as to whether or not they wish to extend the project.

I also received an e-mail (see below) from Hamza of Encoded (one of our newest customers). So impressed is he with the quality of our service, he is already looking to give us more work! What better testimonial could you possibly have from a customer?

-----------------------------------------------------------

From: Hamza Whitmore [mailto:h.whitmore@encoded.co.uk]
Sent: 15 May 2008 11:14
To: 'JAMIE O CONNELL'
Subject: Sales Ledger

Hi Jamie,

Hope you are well and that you had a good time in Turkey last month.  I need to discuss with you handing more of our sales ledger management over to you guys; primarily I’m thinking of handling cheques and BACS payments (I’m getting the invoicing automated as much as possible) but there may be other ways you can help.

Kind regards,

Hamza Whitmore. Managing Director

Encoded - the interactive voice experts

-----------------------------------------------

On our Credit Control blog, I have started up a Bad Payers Blacklist - if you have any bad payers that you wish to notify us about, please take a look at the blog and post details.

I have had a very busy day today - most of it has been spent preparing for the consultancy job on Wednesday.

Thanks for reading.

Jamie - Credit Control Solutions Ltd  ---Making your cash flow -

Monday, 12th May 2008

I got up at 7 am today. I had a meeting with Venture Finance at 10am in London today.

The meeting with Venture went very very well indeed and it looks as though we are going to be working together on some of their Invoice Discounting Clients. Venture are one of the biggest invoice Discounters in the UK with over 1300 customers. Venture are also interested in launching a new factoring product with ourselves on a joint venture basis. I can't go into details about the new product at this stage, but, needless to say; if, between us we pull it off, the contract will be worth in excess of £1,000,000 to CCS! Our website is performing miracles at the moment - we are receiving lots of good quality enquiries from medium & large companies. It just goes to show you that investing a relatively modest sum of money in a decent website that has been optimised so that you rank highly in Google is money well spent. Our web company are absolutely fantastic and I recommend them whole heartedly and without any reservation - if you are interested in having a good website that is found by all of the major search engines you can do no better than go to world wide creative (please mention Credit Control Solutions and you may even get a discount). As well as designing fantastic looking web sites they are also specialists at web marketing and optimisation.

I also received another enquiry today from a large firm of Barristers based in Lincolns Inn, London called "Hardwicke Building"  They have around 100 barristers working for them and deal with 7,000 cases a year. They have issues in getting paid on time like all companies do. Traditionally, solicitors, barristers and accountants (in fact most professional service providers) are not very good at chasing customers for payment. With barristers firms there is a particular issue in so far as, many of their cases are paid for through insurance claims. These claims can often take years before they are paid out. "Hardwicke Building" have appointed us to help them out on a consultancy basis to improve their "debt turn" (time taken from raising an invoice to receiving payment). We are starting work with them on 21st May.

Today has been a fantastic day for us - the future is looking very Rosy indeed.

Oh well it is 7.30pm now and I am absolutely shattered - today has been very exciting, but very draining.

I will not be working tomorrow, I am going to spend some time with my wife & daughter before they go back to Turkey on Thursday. I am taking them shopping - roughly translated, this means they will be shopping & I will be spending most of the day in various coffee shops on my mobile phone talking business!

Thanks for reading.

Jamie - Credit Control Solutions Ltd  ---Making your cash flow -

Friday, 9th May 2008

I got up at at 11am today and before you say what a lazy sod, I went to the airport at 2am this morning to pick up my wife and daughter. The flight was slightly delayed and we never got home until around 6am!

I arrived at the office at 12.30pm to catch up on paperwork etc. I have not been to the office for about a month. Surprisingly there was not much paperwork to do. I keyed in a few supplier invoices. Telephoned the publisher of Essential Business, as they are trying to renege on their deal. I received an invoice from them today asking for payment within 30 days. The arrangement I had with them was payment was due after publication in August 2008.

I will be finishing work very shortly to spend time with my wife & daughter.

Thanks for reading.

Jamie - Credit Control Solutions Ltd  ---Making your cash flow -

Thursday, 8th May 2008

I got up at 8.30am today.

Got loads of bits and pieces to do today - another annoying day really.

I followed up a couple of new consultancy leads and have a meeting fixed for 14th May @ 9.30am to give them a demo of our "Sage Line 50 Service"

I followed up our banking consultant for news on our "Small Firm Loan Guarantee" application. For those of you that don't already know; the small firm loan guarantee is a government backed scheme that allows you to borrow monies from a bank without the need to provide a personal guarantee. The Small Firm loan guarantee is ideal for new start ups that do not have any capital, or for existing businesses with little or no capital that wish to expand etc. If you are interested in discussing this with the consultant that we are using, please e-mail me.

My advert for Essential Business Finance has now been finalised and has been sent off to the publishers.

I spoke to Graham Card today from Corporate Liquidity. I met Graham through BNI about 6 years ago. He is a great guy. He is a Factoring/Invoice discounting broker and we are looking to do lots of work together in the future. I have a meeting fixed with Graham on 30th may to discuss opportunities. I also got the low down from him on Venture Finance. We have a meeting with Venture Finance on Monday 12th May. They are looking to outsource their credit control to us. If we can pull this one off it will launch my company into Orbit. Venture Finance are one of the largest Invoice Discounters within the UK, with circa 1,000 clients.

Thanks for reading.

Jamie - Credit Control Solutions Ltd  ---Making your cash flow -

Wednesday, 7th May 2008

I got up at 5.20am today to go to BNI. I have been a member of BNI for 6 years now. It has had a very positive impact on turnover & profitability. In fact, I would go as far to say that without my being a member of BNI we would have gone bust long ago. Outsourced Credit Control as a service is still very niche. Niche ideas are very hard to market. The structured approach to networking at BNI is very good and allows you to build long term relationships and trust with members. Once you have built the trust and demonstrated that you are good at what you do, external referrals soon follow. BNI is by no means a "get rich quick scheme". It took around 3 years before BNI started to work for me. After all the word "Networking" is effectively 2 words in one. There is the "NET" part being the members and the "WORKING" part meaning that referrals will not fall into your lap you have to put in lots of work and effort.

In my view if you run a business and are not a member of BNI you are mad! You are missing out on a huge opportunity to market and "brand familiarise" your business. There are hundreds of BNI chapters in the UK and thousands worldwide. Please visit The BNI website for further info on the chapter nearest to you.

I have finally finished my bank reconciliation and am about to start my VAT return.

I received another nice e-mail today from Danny @ Printing.com - Ashford. Danny has been an outsourced credit control customer of ours for just over a year. It is always great to hear from satisfied customers.

-----Original Message-----
From: Ashford [mailto:ashford@printing.com]
Sent: 07 May 2008 10:04
To: 'Louise Green'
Subject: RE: Bad Debtor

You little beauty! Very well done, thank you for all the work on them, the moneys in the bank!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Just finished my VAT return - surely I can't owe them so much money! Oh well I suppose I will have to do a cash flow forecast now.

I've done my cash flow forecast and things are looking fine (Phew). Hopefully, tomorrow I can get back on with selling.

Thanks for reading.

Jamie - Credit Control Solutions Ltd  ---Making your cash flow -

Tuesday 6th May 2008

Hi folks - I'm back in the UK!

I got up at 8.30am today - very busy and loads to do today

For the last hour or so, I have been speaking with Danny @ printing.com and Alice @ Windmill Communications in relation to our advert and editorial within The Sunday Times publication entitled "Essential Business Finance". Danny is designing the advert for me and Alice is putting together the editorial. The copy deadline is 10th May, so this is a bit too "last minute" for my liking (completely my fault, I should have sorted this out weeks ago). Danny is great though - he has promised to have a proof over to me by close of play today. Alice is also a star the copy that she put together for me is superb!

I am doing all of my sales/prospect follow up calls at the moment - I have about 40 calls to make, so, I expect I will be doing this for the rest of the day. I must confess that selling is a job that I love doing - it is tangible and "results driven".

I am also having to do my bank reconciliation (something I hate doing). I haven't done it for 3 months. I normally do my bank reconciliation just before my VAT return is due. Talking of VAT returns - I hate doing them too!

3 hours later and I'm still doing my bank rec (aargh!). I have also spent some of the afternoon liaising with Alice (Windmill Communications) and Danny (Printing .com - Ashford) re my advert. We are nearly there. Both Alice and Danny are wonderful people, they have both really helped me out no end.

We got a fantastic testimonial from one of our newest customers - Hamza Whitmore from Encoded. They have only been a customer for 4 weeks and we have already had a significant impact on his cash flow.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Hamza Whitmore [mailto:h.whitmore@encoded.co.uk]
Sent: 06 May 2008 17:29
To: 'Pam Nye'
Cc: 'Jamie O'Connell'
Subject: RE: Monthly Management Report

Many thanks Pam,

A £20,000 drop in overdue balances is a wonderful testament to the work you have done in the last 4 weeks.  Thank you ever so much,  I am very impressed!

Kind regards,

Hamza

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is 7pm now and I am whacked - enough for today.

Thanks for reading.

Jamie - Credit Control Solutions Ltd  ---Making your cash flow -