Rob GossPerseverance

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Robert Goss

We had a frustrating few days last week and unfortunately some things that we planned on happening didn’t come to fruition.

These things happen, and the only thing to do is to K.B.O as Churchill used to write. It set me to thinking though about famous set-backs that lead on to bigger and better things. These tales often have something slightly apocryphal about them, but it is well to remember that they will always serve as inspiration.

JK Rowling

JK Rowling’s first novel was, famously, rejected by twelve publishing houses. The story goes that it was due to an extraordinary piece of serendipity that she was published by at all. The publisher who received her manuscript thought that it was too weighty, that it lacked pictures and wasn’t really a children’s read. However the publisher didn’t read it. They gave it too their eight year old child to read. The child devoured it, lack of pictures and large size regardless.  Those books have now sold over 400 million copies world-wide.

Steve Jobs

The late, great Steve Jobs was famously fired from the business he’d created in his parents garage. He was booted off the board and went to find new avenues to explore. He created Pixar and NeXt. Both were extraordinary successful and he went on to return to Apple and preside over its richest era of creativity helped cement Apple’s reputation as one of the most desirable brands on the planet.

Walt Disney

My last and possible favourite is Walt Disney. Despite opinion that he might not have actually been the most politically savoury of characters he managed to overcome some spectacularly good cock-ups.:

The Three Little Pigs was initially rejected for having too few characters. Obviously . He also had numerous set backs when trying to sell the idea of Mickey Mouse, mainly because the money men were convinced that an enormous mouse on a cinema scream would scare the women in audience.

But perhaps the best of all of these when he managed to arrange some short actors to sit on the roof of the Radio City Music Hall in New York- the idea being that they’d wave at the children attending the premiere of Snow White. It was a hot day and Disney plied the actors with wine and good food to make their stay up there was comfortable. Unfortunately the actors rather over-imbibed and the children were treated to seeing a lot of naked worse for wear dwarfs shouting obscenities at them.

He went millions of dollars in to the red at a time when the average family income was $1,500 per annum and at one point was apparently reduced to eating dog food. But somehow through dogged (sorry) determination and hard work he managed to make it all back.

I guess that the message is to keep on going and keep trying new things, if one is able to do this, regardless of the project or product then one is bound to eventually reap the rewards. As John Paul Getty said, ‘rise early, work hard, strike oil.’

Jon GossStreet eats of Soho and beyond

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Jon Goss

When I first started working in Soho, I was tremendously pleased by the fantastic choice of places to eat at lunch. However as time goes by and the interval for lunch seemingly disappears I’ve had to be more creative with my choices. It is very rare that anybody (especially not us) gets the chance to sit down to eat out, and this affects the selection of eateries enormously. It has to be something that you can ‘grab and go’ with.

Being a small business supporter and, more importantly, a lover of good food means that I’m loathe to go to the big chains. Snobbery maybe, but I just feel that as well as being unimaginative and boring they aren’t particularly good value for money.

So it was with some delight that I’ve witnessed the proliferation of good, cheap food stalls on Berwick Street. Its possible to have a fantastic Moroccan Tagine, or an authentic Banh Mi, from Banh Mi 11, stuffed to the gills with fresh pork or fish and liberally doused with sweet fiery sauce. Or if you are feeling especially naughty you can enjoy pizza from the fanatically passionate Pizza Pilgrims cooked from the back of a Piaggio no less.

This proliferation of cheap, high quality street eating is not confined to Berwick St; Kings Cross is home to Eat St, a once a week array of fantastic vendors. Brick Lane on Sundays also has some great spots including the ever ebullient Rib Man whose lovingly prepared rib sandwiches and wraps tend to disappear by mid afternoon, and the fantastic Abiye’s Big Apple Hotdogs with the brilliant ‘No brains, no butts, no bones’ tag line. Through savvy use of social media these guys are getting the word out about their great products without the need for launches or critics.

All these choices offer something different and more importantly something fresh, delicious and prepared with love. The future for small food business looks brighter every day.

Vive la revolution!

Rob GossBootstrapping

Posted on March 7, 2012 by Robert Goss

I had an interesting conversation on Friday with some gentleman from South Africa. After our meeting we got on to talking about how interesting and diverse working in London is. They were all very complimentary about the capital, except they felt that there was a certain laziness and complacency entering the workplace.

Primarily they were concerned with the graduates their company employed; they felt that they were indolent and acted with a dangerous sense of entitlement in a job that they had not yet made their own. This is neither the time nor the place to discuss the relative merits of further education or whether this plays some party in this perceived lack of motivation. However I would say that it reminded me of this wonderful Tom Wolfe quote which I think we would all do well to consider:

“Meantime, the notion of a self- a self who exercises self-discipline, postpones gratification, curbs the sexual appetite, stops short of aggressive and criminal behaviour- a self who can be more intelligent and lift itself to the very peaks of life by its own bootstraps through study, practice, perseverance and refusal to give up in the face of great odds- this old-fashioned notion (what’s a bootstrap, for God’s sake?) of success through exercise and true grit is already slipping away, slipping away… slipping away… The faith in the power of the individual to transform himself form a helpless cypher into a giant among men, a faith that ran from Emerson to Og Mandino is now as moribund as the God for who Nietzsche wrote an obituary in 1882.”

Tom Wolfe ‘Hooking up‘

Perhaps this is over dramatising slightly and Wolfe is known for his hyperbole but the fact is that it is this engendered complacency is one of every workplace’s biggest dangers, whether you are a small company or a multinational corporation.

One of the recommended solutions to this is to encourage yourself at work is to attempt something in the workplace or outside the workplace and title it an ‘experiment’. This tilting is crucial as it means that the goal of the experiment is not to achieve a perfect result but to learn and progress. This is allows you to push yourself outside your comfort zone but without the fear of failure.

So I would suggest that the key to maintaining growth and value in whatever your work entails is to experiment and never be too comfortable.

Elisabeth MeynardENGLISH SENSE OF HUMOUR…

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Elisabeth Meynard

It did take me a while to understand English humour and even now, after a good while living here, I am often left totally unamused by it!

Maybe it is because, unlike the lonely-hearts columns, I don’t have a good sense of humour? Or maybe because French sense of humour is different than English senses of humour?

French humour is unique in the sense that it can be described as ‘Grinçant’ a concept typically Gallic where the object of the humour is usually somebody else .The main aim of la “derision” consisting of mocking someone else’s weak point or naïve attitude. French don’t have the detachment that characterizes English humour. But if France is too emotional, too logical or too unsure of itself for humour, it can at least fall back on farce as a way of releasing the emotions. French humour is usually below the belt and fairly straightforward known as “l’esprit Gaulois” My own perception of French Gaulois humour is that it can be as naughty as English humour, the only difference being the way it is presented.

But British humour is be very clever and witty too, I must admit!

Where British humour has a lot to do with self derision – which is perceived as demonstrating low self-esteem in France. English humour is considered as one of the pillars of the English society. It tends to analyse a given situation and extract the most absurd sides in order to highlight the ridicule of the situation. This allows the person to distance him or herself from the situation, and enable them, in some cases, to take an objective decision.

British jokes tend to be subtle but with a dark or sarcastic undertone. There is usually a hidden meaning. For example English use irony all day long, and sarcasm but will excuse themselves by saying: “only kidding!” This way they have an excuse and also are able to give the impression they will not offend people! So many stands up comics or comedy TV shows are hugely successful in UK, because they portray a lifestyle that Brits can relate to.

To summarize: English humour or French humour??

I believe both have their defined role to play in their own culture. My personal choice would be a just mix of both of them, like “an English humour with a French je ne sais quoi!”

Jo HarrisonThe May Fair

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Jo Harrison

I often wander around the streets of Mayfair during my lunch hour and gaze upwards in awe at the elegant buildings and fascinating blend of architectural styles developed over almost three hundred years.  I love to look at a building and imagine the history it has absorbed within its bricks and mortar and the lives it has protected within its walls. I fantasize of jumping into HG Wells’ Time Machine and transporting myself back to a more gentrified Mayfair, to a time before the bustling lunchtime service of Heddon Street’s fine eateries, before Bond Street’s homage to retail therapy and before The Beatles rooftop concert at Apple Corps HQ on Saville Row. But as time machines are still only mad equations on a top secret drawing board somewhere and as the chances of them ever allowing me to be captain of their prototype are pretty slim, I decided to investigate the ‘old fashioned’ way and trawl through the internet to discover Mayfair’s past.

Apparently the Mayfair of a few hundred years ago would be almost unrecognisable from the Mayfair of today. It was mostly farm land, and the River Tyburn – now hidden deep below its streets and redirected through the sewers – ran through it. The area itself was named after the infamous fifteen-day fair which was established by James II in the 1680’s and took place on the site of what is now known as Shepherd’s Market.  Whilst it was initially for the sale of livestock, this fair soon expanded to include booths dedicated to mirth and merriment including theatres, jugglers, boxers, gambling tables, puppeteers and sausage stalls.

However, the gentrification of the area in the seventeenth century killed the festival off as many grand houses were built upon the site by a number of landlords, the most important of them being the Dukes of Westminster, the Grosvenor family. The Berkeley’s and the Burlington’s where also prominent landowners and developers and their names now grace the placard’s of Mayfair’s fine street’s and squares. I was elated to discover that Heddon Street was developed by a builder called Harrison who was granted a license by the King in 1672 to erect buildings that would not be of annoyance to local resident Lord Burlington, whose mansion was newly built nearby. The buildings erected during Harrison’s tenancy stood for about fifty years, after which they were swept away by the general redevelopment which affected the whole of the Pulteney estate from the 1720’s.

In 1811 when King George III stepped down, his son became the Prince Regent. As the prince greatly admired Napoleon’s urban planning in Paris he hired the architect John Nash to create a new, formal processional way from the Prince Regent’s Palace, Carlton House, in Pall Mall to Regent’s Park.

Nash’s vision was Regent Street and it took over a decade in planning and construction, cutting through the existing network of tiny streets. From the outset, Regent Street was conceived as a shopping street and it was intended to cut a clean path between the then slums of Soho and the fashionable streets and squares of Mayfair. The result, with the impressive curve of the Quadrant and the formation of Piccadilly and Oxford Circuses, was a masterpiece of town planning. Development of the area for commercial use continued well into the 1900’s. Today, Regent Street represents the largest concentration of value in The Crown Estate’s portfolio. It is part of the core of the Estate, both commercially and historically.

So, I pull the fast forward lever and three hundred years on from the infamous fair, Mayfair is mainly an exclusive commercial village within the heart of Westminster. Companies now inhabit the beautifully converted houses and executives entertain their clients in the numerous private members clubs and chic bars. Embassies, investment corporations, media giants and elegant hotels have replaced the street entertainers and the sausage stalls. But the rich architectural heritage remains and Debello House is part of this incredible structural tapestry. Our elegant serviced office building has been lovingly restored and maintained and I would like to think that Debello Group has reintroduced a rather large and somewhat extended family back into Mayfair.

Elisabeth MeynardIF YOU ARE FRENCH, YOU ARE BETTER OFF IN LONDON

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Elisabeth Meynard

I was reading my Evening Standard last week on my way home, when a small article caught my eye: “If you are French, you are better off in London”. This article claims that the wealth creators of France may be better off in London where their hard work and skills will be better rewarded regardless of who is elected President in the upcoming elections in France.

Strangely enough I was having the same conversation with my boss a few weeks ago about the gap between French and English culture. According to my English boss (who spend his early childhood in France), he explained that our misunderstandings come from our lifestyle!

Let me explain:

The French have a decidedly civilised approach to life, and appreciate the finer things — champagne, good wine, fine cheeses, artistic expression in music, art, architecture, literature, and conversation – especially when enjoyed with friends and family. French life simply oozes with “joie de vivre”. Although it has a similar size of population, the country is more than twice as big as the UK, so it has more space for its vineyards, mountain ranges, natural parks, coastal scenery, dairy herds, golf courses and vast swathes of agricultural land. As well as enjoying the space, the French eat well, engage with our communities to celebrate everything from French history to French music, talk passionately (and with a lot of Gallic shrugging) about everything from political philosophy to French wine. In short, French life, especially in the south, is enjoyed at a fairly slow pace and savoured. An expat in south of France even claimed: “I’d rather be poor in France than rich in England!”

Conversely in UK and especially in London, unless you have a good job or are pretty well off, you are constantly working to pay off your mortgage and don’t have the means to do things you enjoy! The house prices are much higher and the pace of life is like a racetrack. In the UK, people do not stop; it is a constant sprint to get things done and earn money quickly. I believe one thing English people will always envy is the French lifestyle

So why do so many French expats come in London?

Many young people, like me, have chosen to quit their beloved family, friends and country in search of a better life. Yes, France is a beautiful country, and very dear to our heart, but the business opportunities are not as good as in London. That’s the reason why we renounced the legislation for our 35h/week and sometimes work more than 60h/week.

In London, if you work hard, you can achieve and aspire to better work and better pay. Now it looks like young French people are willing to work harder, while more English people are considering spending their pensions in France!

 London is also a financial capital, which attracts more and more of young French entrepreneurs. And after the invitation from London Mayor Boris Johnson, I don’t see why we shouldn’t accept his invitation of:

“Bienvenue à Londres. This is the global capital of finance. It’s on your doorstep, and if your own president does not want the jobs, the opportunities and the economic growth that you generate, we do.”

 In some ways this is a shame. We should be able to stay in our beautiful country and still be able to do business, don’t you think? The attraction for London can be seen in plenty of different ways, especially in business. I am personally aware of several French companies who decided to have a presence in London, by staying in France! They used this amazing concept of virtual office, which is a concept still rather unknown in France! Basically, for a small monthly fee, you can use a business address in London, on your marketing materials, business cards & website.

This way, you have a business presence in London without having to move from your home in France!

So if you are thinking about setting up a company in London, or about expanding your current company to the foreign market, it’s the right move. Why abandon your country when you still can do business with the UK?

For more information about our Virtual Office, please contact Elisabeth on elisabeth@debello.com or visit our website: www.debello.com

Jon Goss10 reasons to work from home with a virtual office

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Jon Goss

According to a survey by Optimum the top ten most annoying work habits are as follows:

1. Grumpy or moody colleagues (37%)
2. Slow computers (36%)
3. Small talk/ gossip in the office (19%)
4. The use of office jargon or management speak (18%)
5. People speaking loudly on the phone (18%)
6. Too much health and safety in the work place (16%)
7. Poor toilet etiquette (16%)
8. People not turning up for meetings on time or at all (16%)
9. People not tidying up after themselves in the Kitchen (15%)
10. Too cold/ cold air conditioning (15%)

To my mind nine out of the ten of the biggest irritants in the workplace are due to other people, and all are due to circumstances out of one’s control.

Best off to work from home with a virtual office then!

Rob GossIs this a terrible idea?

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Robert Goss

‘Is this is a terrible idea’ I thought to myself as I left one of our many meetings to decide on which route we would take through Europe and which vehicles we would use. We had not yet decided on using black cabs for the rally. Other suggestions had included milk floats, old fire engines and ice cream vans. Madness. Sitting in that meeting with my blackberry’s little red light reminding me of e-mails, missed calls and forthcoming meetings, it suddenly dawned on me that we were proposing to go a very long way. About 2000 miles, possibly in a 1970s ice cream van doing an average speed of 50mph.

We had already promised the lovely people at Hope and Homes for Children that we would raise a substantial amount of money for their charity. We were already spending thousands on our website and other associated marketing. There was no way out now. I had vaguely gone over the details with my wife Jules but not covered any real detail. I hadn’t told her that we would be travelling through 10 countries in 10 days in a knackered old vehicle, possibly a milk float. Some of the vehicles we had been looking at on e-bay had done over 200,000 miles! Then I reconciled myself with the thought of why we were doing this trip and my own concerns paled into insignificance when I thought of the work our chosen charity Hope and Homes were currently undertaking.

Hope and Homes for Children work in Central & Eastern Europe and Africa working transform the lives of children currently in institutions by helping them to find a loving family. Hope and Homes for Children also work with families to prevent children from separation from their family when the family unit is at risk of breaking apart. This is most often caused by poverty, conflict and disease. So in my comfortable little world in London, worrying about how I would ever get to Odessa in a battered old taxi, I began to feel a sense of real determination that we would take 30 black London taxis to Odessa and give us just 10 days of our time to improve the lives of these children forever. No, this is not a ‘terrible idea’ it’s a brilliant one.

Jo HarrisonVirtual Insanity

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Jo Harrison

I recently decided to investigate whether I could coordinate my various social networking sites so that they work in tandem with each other. I wanted to see if one could successfully splice together one’s social contacts with one’s business contacts, to create an “Über list”. My only reservation being that one should never marry business with pleasure. An uneasy question kept pestering me during my Frankenstein-esque experiment, “How would my friends react if they knew that they had been piled in to an “Über list” with my professional contacts and how would my professional contacts react if they knew that they were now sitting comfortably alongside my chums”? I decided to investigate further.

As we all know, Facebook enables us to connect and share with the people in our lives. According to statistics site, Social Bakers, nearly 700 million people are using Facebook worldwide right now, and the number is likely to reach one billion later this year. Facebook is predominantly a social networking website intended to connect friends and family. You design a personalised page, share your thoughts in your status updates, your family photographs in albums, reveal your taste in music, film and television by “Liking” stuff and ultimately provide a great deal of information about your private life, quite openly, with those you “trust”. Would it be wise to carry these trusted contacts over to Linkedin or Twitter?

LinkedIn seems to be the business world’s answer to Facebook. LinkedIn operates the world’s largest professional network on the Internet with more than 135 million members in over 200 countries and territories. Upon joining you have the opportunity of creating a profile which is centred on your education and employment history. You can then tell the world what you are good at and how clever you are but you have to be honest, as you then invite past school friends and business colleagues to verify that they knew you way back when… Once up and running you can join special interest groups, take part in or create discussions and enthusiastically indulge in what is quite openly self-promotion by sharing an update. Would my Facebook friends really want to hear about the great TEFL course I recently took or would that sit more comfortably in Twitter?

Twitter seems to be a modern day, virtual version of Soap Box Corner with over 200 million registered users crammed into a cyberspace speak-easy. One designs a profile but it is far less personal than Facebook. You are allowed a tiny photo, a brief description of self and some wallpaper of your choice. You “Follow” people you find vaguely interesting and are alerted every time they “Tweet”. You can then tell the world what’s on your mind too in the “What’s Happening” box but, you have to make your point in less than 140 characters, including spaces! To self-market, you can hashtag a keyword or topic to align yourself with a group tweeting about the same thing. You then hope that others will find you extremely interesting and want to follow you too. This makes Twitter more news worthy and far more direct, with content aimed directly at your fixed selection. It is social but on an egotistical level. One could quite easily become a modern day messiah but as with most messiah’s, your followers may not necessarily be your friends.

So where does all of this leave me? Would it be beneficial or even wise to conduct a virtual marriage of these social networking sites and invite all of my acquaintances to the ceremony? To be honest, I can’t see that it would. Although there are some similarities between the sites, they serve very different purposes and the contacts contained within them work within the context of that relationship. Taking them into another realm, in essence asking them to perhaps be something that they are not, would not stand the test of time. It would be a marriage of convenience and I think a divorce would be on the cards before I knew it. I would ultimately lose relationships that I had carefully nurtured in the real world for some time. My conclusion… Mixing business with pleasure can be tricky enough in the real world and it is certainly not something that I would want to entrust to a virtual world devoid of actual human interaction. The possibility of misinterpreting intent is far too great and therefore, for me, the risk outweighs the possible reward.

Jon GossThe disappearing desk

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Jon Goss

Happy New Year! I hope that you’ve already shaken the torpor induced by too much Stilton and Tia Maria and are looking forward to a prosperous 2012.

On that note we’ve had a lot of enquiries about our Debello Virtual Office Service already this year and when you consider the package that is offered it makes perfect sense for those starting a business in 2012 to initially decide to use a virtual office. For a small fee it enables businesses to establish a presence in central London without the need for the associated costs that come with a full time office space.

It is a well-trodden route that many successful entrepreneurs have negotiated. James Caan is a famous example of someone who established himself with a virtual office near St James before going on become one of the most recognisable and successful businessmen of his generation.

But aside from these famous case studies I think that there is something of much more basic value in virtual offices. With today’s technology and portable mobile devices being as advanced as they are, there is very little need for small businesses to have a permanent office address. It obviously depends greatly on the nature of your product or service but for example if you are a web designer you are able to share your designs via online hosting sites and then talk through them with your clients using Skype.

Then you may ask, is there any point to having a virtual office address at all? In my opinion yes, and this maybe a personal preference, but I find it difficult to immediately trust companies who simply have a mobile number on their site or who have an address that is clearly not associated with their business. It is perhaps biased of me, but a company that has an obvious home address can sometimes suggest a certain naivety on the part of the owner. Again this depends on the nature of the business, but if you are offering a professional corporate service then having ‘The Old Rectory’ as your business address may put off potential clients.

Interestingly enough there appear to be a good deal of enquiries from larger businesses that are based outside of London but also would like to have an address with us. Reasons have ranged from a need to expand into the capital to the upcoming Olympics! Either way there has never been a more sensible time to invest in a virtual office in the metropolis.

I am not arguing that there will soon be no need for large offices, but for small start-ups a central London virtual office presence allows the flexibility of working from home combined with the professional look and feel of a central London address.