CallconX - BlogCallconX - Bloghttps://www.callconx.co.uk/blogsThu, 23 Apr 2026 11:56:42 -0700http://zoho.com/sites/<![CDATA[Self Care Week]]>https://www.callconx.co.uk/blogs/post/self-care-week

Easier said than done

If you are a working family (Wo)man then it can seem like you are the last on the priority list. Life seems to be a series of acts, Act one, is the young time when you are too stupid to realise how good you have got it. Act two is often the responsibility of caring for a family which brings the constant background hum of worry about your children or money. Act three involves trying to find out who you are and what you actually want again now that your children have left home. Whatever act your life is currently in maybe you should consider the next three points to give yourself a little 'Self Care" starting this week: 

Mental 

Work in progress
 Be a 'work in progress', this requires a lot of self honesty and introspection! Write a list of what you don't like about yourself and   work at home and work to change these bad traits bit by bit until you can look in a mirror and start liking yourself a little more. Self improvement brings it's own rewards

 Time for yourself
Take up a hobby, painting, flower arranging, construct plastic models or do a nightschool one night a week but it important for you to have a 'Thing'. Hiding on a toilet reading on your phone until your legs go numb does not count. 

Escape Technology
Take some time away from technology for a while especially an hour before bed. Don't have any blue flashing lights from charger plugs in your bedroom in fact make the bedroom a technology free zone. Buy an alarm clock instead of a phone as these distractions often hinder getting off to sleep and maybe how soundly you sleep altogether. 

Physical

Time for excercise     

 If you hate the gym or exercise in general (and many of us do) buy an audiobook and get a good bluetooth headset and walk five miles every week day. It is surprising how quickly the walk goes when you get a great audiobook. You get a double whammy in   that you get some mental time away from your day and you get some calories burned. If you have a dog trebble whammy!


Couch to 5K     

If you like the thought of running but you need morivation and you are overweight and/or unfit then try the national 'Couch to 5K' meeting groups in your area. These national meeting groups meet twice a week and you start by walking together in a group then you have 100 meter slow jog then walk again. Over the weeks you jog a little more and a little more until you are running 5 kilometers after 9 weeks. 


Static Excercises   

Try doing some pressups before you go in the shower in the moring. Try starting at 5 and adding one more every day so that after the first week you are doing 11 pressups. You can build up from there but if you are aching one day dont extend your number until you feel fit enough to do so.


Oportiunistic Excercises   

If you have the opportunity in the day to take some excercise do it. For example don't take the lift when you can walk up the stairs. Get off the tube or bus maybe one or two stops before you need to and walk the rest of the way home (Maybe listen to your audiobook)?   

Financial

Trivial debt 

 Trivial debt is the worst kind of debt and hard to get out from under. If you have multiple store cards and credit cards with debt   on all of them then you need to stop the rot asap. The hardest thing is to start talking about it as these debts are held in the '   'Taboo' talk area of your brain so if you don't mention it then it does not exist. The problem is that it does exist and it eats away at you until you do something about it. 

1. Stop living beyond your means and start a list of your outgoings and incomings and see what you can do without. Swap providers for utilities, stop eating takeaways, take sandwiches to work and don't buy coffee from an outlet even consider a move to a cheaper area with lower rent e.t.c as any reduction will help.

2. Get another form of income to help increase your ability to pay off your debts. Sell on ebay, work on Saturdays even start a dog walking service anything to bring in extra money.

3. Work out what the most costly card is with regard APR (Annual percentage rate) of repayment. Pay the minimum possible to all the other cards and concentrate on paying this one card off first. Once the debt is clear on this one card cut it up with a pair of scissors then start on the next highest card and then the next until it is all clear. 


Pension

None of us feel like we have enough money to put aside especially if you have a family. Maybe you don't have enough to put away for a regular pension so  the best you can do for now is pay your mortgage this is at least something that will guarantee a return over 25 years. Also, if you have a workplace pension scheme you may want to pay a little more each month as this really does add up over time and £10 or £20 extra a month can mean a lot to the end result as a pension. 

]]>Fri, 15 Nov 2019 18:20:47 +0000<![CDATA[Marketing Melts my mind!]]>https://www.callconx.co.uk/blogs/post/marketing-melts-my-mind

Frustrations of small business Marketing

General thoughts

If you are a small business or sole trader (like myself) then I will presume you are busy doing the work you do and the thought of allocating a 'wedge' of your valuable time for marketing fills you with dread and fear. There is not just the fear of finding time but there are a myriad of things to learn. I write this as a student who considers himself a 'Work in progress' and would welcome any advice from anyone who can add their 'two-penneth' to this blog.

Marketing Companies:

I have not had a good experience with Marketing companies in general (please let's be clear this is my personal opinion). The standard profile has been that you go to see them at their offices or they come to you. You get the standard sales 'tap dance' with 'white teeth and spinning bow tie' routine and they convince you that you have not been doing it right all along. You have not got time so just leave it to the professionals and somehow you convince yourself that you are inadequate and these people will change your fortune. They convince you that If you just start putting some 'pennies in the slot' then out comes a 2 pence return! so you take a ride and put a penny in the slot and 'X thousands of pounds' later you have very little return. They convince you again that "we are just not putting the penny in the right slots", and to keep pushing on with them, so you do. 'X thousand' pounds later you have done a little better but you are now 'X+X thousand' pounds in the hole and not knowing if you can afford to carry on or is it next week that things will pick up - Sound familiar? As I write this I realise that I do have many 'scars on my back' from these companies and I have taken myself into a quiet corner and had a 'little word' with myself and can now confirm that I have now stopped 'angry typing'!  

Going it alone:

So we have decided that we have to find the time and 'go it alone' however the first thing we have to realise is that this is going to be a marathon not a sprint. That itself is frustrating as you want sales 'NOW' and we will address this later. First we need to get educated and we need questions answering like:

Short term sales will be in the form of direct mail or advertising to the client. Don't confuse this with social media posting.

  1. 1. Posting letters or delivering Leaflets to clients directly.
  2. 2. Google click ads. (Caveat mentioned below)
  3. 3. Amazon, Ebay Etsy listings. 
  4. 4. Social media direct sales e.g. Facebook, Linked-in, Instagram

Long term sales must be a process that can be worked into your working week like blogging and social media posts. With blogging the content needs to be information that is genuinely useful to your clients and also with social media posts you need to spend many months taking clients 'hopefully' on this journey:


KNOW -->> LIKE -->> TRUST -->> BUY 



 

 If clients are seeing useful blogs and interesting social media posts about you and your work life, this allows the client to slowly get to 'know' you. If you are delivering content that is useful they may begin to 'like' what you do. If this content proves to be truthful and helpful you may be able to gain a small level of 'trust' and ultimately (and this may take years) when they next make their buying decision for the goods or services that you sell, they may choose to 'buy' from you!
Questions:
You probably still have a lot of questions such as:
Direct Sales
  • Should I do click ads, posting or sell on a platform like ebay?
  • What platforms to sell on?
Social Media
  • How do I deliver my content to these platforms?
  • When do I post?
  • What kind of content do I post?
  • How often should I post?

Direct Sales Answers

  • Should I do click ads, posting or sell on a platform like ebay?
    • You need to do a review of your product or service and if that product or service is better sold locally, UK wide or Internationally. If it is a local ironing service for example you will find huge benefit from advertising on Facebook groups for example and maybe Google click ads but only locally as you may have a driving radius of say 5 miles and ultimately networking through word of mouth or posting leaflets would prove more effective. A simple website usually gives clients a more comfy feeling about your company and if you can afford some sexy whistles and bells like a booking service online then crack on and more power to your elbow however beware the Website bandits! I may do a blog post on constructing websites - let me know if it is of interest to you by commenting below. 
    • If you sold electronic goods by comparison, click ads is too expensive. For example if you priced up people searching for Voip phones on Google 'click ads' these clicks may cost you over £12. If you sell a Voip phone for £49.99 the cost of sale is just too big. if you put in £1200 in a click ads pot that would get you 1000 clicks. Out of that you may get less than 1% of sales which means you sell 10 phones, so you have sold £499.00 worth of goods and it has cost you £1200. Be really really careful about click ads as in many cases you have to have big margins and be in a less competative industry for it to work for you. Add to that the companies who work for Google calling you up convincing you that if you spend £1000 a month you will get 3% click through rate but this does not convert to direct sales (in my view). The 3% is just Google getting people to your website and only a fraction of those will buy.    
  • What platform should I sell on?
    • This depends on your product. You need to do some research on the best fit for your product, for example if you sell craft Items then Etsy is quite good but if you sell computer parts then Ebay may be a great fit. If you sell a service then Linked-in may be a better commercial market for you so put some time aside to see what you sell, look at the competition and see how their route to market fits with your aspiration.

Social Media Answers

  • How do I deliver my content to these platforms?
    • There are many platforms which can deliver, we use a CRM software called 'Zoho' and this has a social media distribution add on which allows us to create one article or blog and post it to all the platforms at once. There are a lot of other stand alone services that do this and it will save you lots of time. 
  • ​When do I post?
    • I am not sure anyone really knows this but the general convention is 9am and 7pm Monday to Wednesday for social media and Blog posts can be any time really - I (like many if you I expect) read most blogs waiting for my wife whilst shopping, picking the children up from stations etc or even on the toilet when I have a few mins to myself so it matters less!
  • What kind of content do I post?
    • Social media posts should be about something pertinent to your office or industry but show you or your staff in their natural environment without being too personal. Blogs should be something that informs your audience and gives them genuine advice or an insight into another person having the same or similar issues as they are.
  • How often do I post?
    • Social media posts should be as many times as you want as long as it is pertinent but at least twice a week but remember bad content can make people ignore you for being annoying and repetative. Blog posts should be once a week but again must be like a useful gift to be appreciated. 
​

In Conclusion

Reasearch how your product or service is sold by the competition and what is the most affordable route to market for you. You probably do not have the resources to do what the competition do so you have got to get creative. Beware of the sharks who will promise the earth and deliver little however I am sure there are some marketing companies who can help you but just try the smallest budget you can afford to make them prove themselves. If you need any free advice (as I have no horse in your race) then comment below and maybe I can save you some of the same "scars" that I have on my back!

]]>Fri, 08 Nov 2019 18:34:17 +0000<![CDATA[Stress and the Sole trader]]>https://www.callconx.co.uk/blogs/post/stress-and-the-sole-trader

Business and mental health

On the 10th of October every year we have 'World Mental Health Day'. It seems that in an age where negative press sells that our metal health is suffering the 'death of a thousand cuts' where each new negative news spin adds to the general malaise of life. Throw in some kids,  some mortgage debt and the 'problem management' that work brings every day I am genuinely intruiged to know why most of us are not rocking in a corner sucking our thumbs! 

 All that is true but to use Mr Donald Tusk's words 'There is a special place in hell' for the sole trader. The amount of work involved in running your own business is immense and not for the faint hearted. The up sides of success can be great but the down sides are 'Oh so down' and mental health is always a risk especially in the first five years. If you have decided to start your own business here are some tips to help you reduce the stress:

1. FOCUS

It is tempting to run at every apparent opportunity and be 'all things to all men' when starting off. Write a tight summary of the scope of what you do, keep it simple and brief and if you can't sum it up in a sentence then you have not got enough focus. 


2. JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN DOESN'T MEAN YOU SHOULD!

Remember you are only one person and you cannot do it all. There are a lot of freelancers out there on sites like Freelancer, upwork, Fiverr and many more that you can pay to help you with websites, admin or marketing. They will probably be cheaper than the cost of what you get paid and more importantly they will free up lots of time for you to get the business rolling.


3. BEWARE OF SO-CALLED MARKETING EXPERTS

Now I am not suggesting that all marketing companies are taking money for nothing but its a tricky one ......I am sure that if you are Coca Cola and you have a $2billion worlwide marketing budget you are probably going to have no problems and their success speaks for itself. Conversely billions of dollars in losses were endured by Gillette after their 'Toxic Masculinity' adverts concocted by a huge New York based marketing company! 

    You do not have the budget for such luxuries as large marketing campaigns. Look at direct routes for selling your product on Amazon or other platforms or try the mushroom selling approach i.e. sell into your local area (Maybe on facebook local groups if you sell a service) and work your way out to further fields. Once you have sold some product or service you can work out what the cost of sale is and then replicate or amplify this. 

Beware of anyone telling you if you spend X we will guarantee you get Y in sales, In fact run a mile setting off at the work 'Guarantee'!. Nobody can guarantee anything and as a small business' you will always have this Marketing dichotomy;

                                                                             You can't afford a marketing budget until you have lots of sales 

                                                                                                                                     VS 

                                                                                     You can't sell anything without some kind of marketing.  


I may be tempted to do a whole blog on this alone!


4. BEWARE OF THE SEO SCAM

SEO or 'Search engine optimisation' used to be a 'thing'. When I say 'Thing' I mean there was some skill with interpretation of the google algorithm for how it ranked your site. This is near useless now as Google does not look at just keywords or metatags but looks at the content of your site and how interesting or pertinent that is to the person searching for what you are selling. They look at the changes in content from the last time it searched your site and how active the social media links are that route back including how easy all the content pages are routed from your home page. Don't get me wrong the keywords have to be correct and the alt text on your images needs to be meaningful but this is not something I would pay for. There are various free sites out there that will do an SEO health check and report back to you.


5. BE NON-GEOGRAPHIC

When I say 'Non-Geographic' I mean do not use any system in your business that roots you to an office or location. If you have an email system make sure it is office 365 or gSuite or equivalent that allows you to have your documents in the cloud. If you have gSuite you have the whole office software like Sheets (Excel), slides (Powerpoint) or Docs (Word) equivalents. If somebody steals your laptop or your hardware breaks then you have not lost any data. The same thing goes for accountancy packages, choose something like Xero, Quickbooks or SageOne do not use software that you have to install onto a computer. The final area is telephony, use a Voip service that allows you the flexibility to move handsets to different sites or twin your desk phone with your mobile when your clients ring your landline number. It will give you freedom from your desk and will enable you to never miss a call.


6. CRM or not to CRM

CRM means 'Customer relationship management' and this is a system for managing your sales leads and keeping a list of your clients and managing sales all the way to invoice if needed. You may not need a CRM system as there is a lot of overlapping scope now with accounting platforms such as Xero. You may just want to keep a list of your clients in Xero accounting and keep a diary and/or notes in your email system like Google Gsuite. The only circumstances that you would need a CRM is when you are starting to grow or you have such a complicated process that you require procedural management. There is a miriad of CRM platforms out there some are priced reasonably and some are astronomical so don't dive into a CRM lightly. 









 

]]>Mon, 28 Oct 2019 13:26:26 +0000<![CDATA[What is all this VOIP stuff about?]]>https://www.callconx.co.uk/blogs/post/what-is-voip

VOIP Explained

We hear a lot of 'Buzz' words like 'SIP' and 'VOIP' but many people do not understand what they are or how they will affect your life. I am writing this blog article to explain what this 'Jargon' means in simple terms.


WHAT IS DATA FIBRE?


Unless you are on top of a mountain in Scotland, the wildes of Wales or in an unfortunate 'Black' spot for broadband coverage then many of us will be seeing the roll out of Fibre 'like' products such as BT 'Infiniti' or Virgin Fibre. The reason I say 'Like' is because these broadband connections may be delivered to your homes as pure 'glass' fibre cables (FTTP - Fibre to the premises) or the fibre may be connected to your local telephone cabinet which services your street and you connect the rest of the way over your normal copper telephone line (FTTC - Fibre to the cabinet).  




Whichever fibre or fibre 'like' connection you have the upside is that you are in a growing number that can 'surf' the internet at speed, ask Google or Alexa devices to do your bidding and generally fit more into your day as web pages now load quicker and files download without the need for a single 'thumb twiddle'. 


WHY USE VOIP TO WORK FROM HOME? 


With this new 'Motorway' of broadband connectivity comes with it some great opportunities and these are mainly in the form of communications which  give you greater flexibility and freedom. Office 365 or Google 'Gsuite' for example allow teachers and office workers to spend their 'Inset' days at home as they can now access documents freely. This flexibility may extend to people with growing families who want to work but need this kind of fexibility to drop off and pick up the kids from school and work in between. A Stanford two year study showed that there was an "Astonishing Productivity Boost of Working From Home" - we agree!


HOW CAN VOIP SAVE YOU MONEY?


 Which brings us to the most literal flexibility form of communication which is Voice. VOIP (Voice over IP) or 'Voice over the internet' for us mere mortals uses a VoiP phone. The VoiP phone is ostensibly a 'phone shaped' mini computer just programmed for connecting to a voice server somewhere and it takes the sounds that you make in the handset, turns them into data packets and sends them to the other person's phone at the other end. Because it does this over the internet and not down copper wires (for most of its journey) then this saves money for the provider and you.


HOW CAN USING VOIP CAN SAVE YOU TIME?


 Reduction in cost is not the main event however for most people. These new VOIP phones can offer the home worker one or more telephone numbers that can call into this new desk phone. They can have the same voice menu setup that big companies have i.e. 'press 1 for this' 'press 2 for that' and they can also now have 'mobile phone twinning'. 


WHAT IS MOBILE PHONE TWINNING?


Mobile phone twinning is when a client rings your office landline number and it allows your new desk phone to ring but it can also simultaneously call your mobile phone as well- genius! Whichever phone picks up first gets the call allowing you freedom from your desk which is an important factor for small business. 


If 'Twinning' is not your bag you can setup a Voicemail to email service which takes the voicemail and emails the sound file to your mobile for you so that you may call back at your earliest convenience i.e when the kids have stopped throwing things at each other in the back of the car.

   

 (Now the slightly salesy bit!) This is the reason we have developed the 'CallConX' product as there is no setup just 'plug and play' and off you go! 


WHAT DO YOU GET WITH YOUR CALLCONX PACKAGE?


* You pay one price for the year currently £203.33 +vat ("£244 and no more")


* You can choose a telephone number from any town in the UK. 


* You get mobile phone twinning, voicemail to email and voice menus should you require it.


Also , You get unlimited UK landline and mobile calls for one year. Thats right for 'one year' with no bills! We have done this as we understand that when starting your 'sole trader' business you have a lot to worry about and so having no phone bill at the end of the month no matter how many calls you receive or make is just one less thing you have to worry about. We are also available on our website livechat if you need help and we are real people in a real office in Cheshire in the UK! 


 If you are just reading this to understand what VOIP is and you don't want a phone then that's fine too but a new age of communication is upon us and you are now aware of the possibilities that this can bring so 'carpe diem' (Seize the day) and as BT used to say 'It's good to talk'.

        






[picture thanks to Tom Goskar' website] 

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