I am livid.

I have just driven home early as I am on half days at the moment, to see a door to door sales man trying to sell a conservatory to my wife.

Not too bad I guess but she was holding our two day old daughter and I could tell by looking at her that she was upset. She passed him over to me and I did my usual 10 second not interested pitch which did the trick.

I went inside to find my wife crying because she was breast feeding and kept trying to tell him so but he kept on selling.

Firstly, is she really that interested at such an important time? Secondly, what kind of idiot can not have a sense of perspective in those circumstances. I am okay with people selling, but COME ON!!!!!

So, I have now added Anglian Windows to my list of hated selling companies, joining 4 Com in the hall of infamy.

I may have mentioned before that I run a local Basingstoke Business News website. Well, thanks to some wicked colleagues, this has been upgraded to be a more generic Basingstoke Business website on a new domain.

It’s a really good website, if I do say myself, and I am looking forward to adding more generic business content other than news.

The old site used Wordpress and we added a directory database onto it, whereas this website uses our Escape CMS system with some extra added modules. We have also add more widgets with weather and a feed for local jobs available.

It’s a bit content light at the moment, but I am sure that will soon change.

Climate change is an emotive subject and one that I don’t really have a strong opinion. In my head, it would be nice to cut down on our reliance of things that churn out gases and will one day run out, especially when there are so many ways to make energy naturally.

But, I also know I won’t change my habits drastically enough to make a difference. Mainly because the motivation for me isn’t strong enough. For instance, if fuel prices rise, less cars are on the roads. I kind of like that, but perhaps it’s because I don’t do too many miles a year so it’s not hitting me (personally) hard enough.

But, if you can combine the two messages at the same time, perhaps you end up with quite a strong sales proposition. A bit like Al Gore’s latest speech.

“When you connect the dots, it turns out that the real solutions to the climate crisis are the very same measures needed to renew our economy and escape the trap of ever-rising energy prices.”

People are selfish and they will make decisions that seem right for them - not for you selling to them. If you can become greener and save money, then surely it’s a no brainer? Good for your pocket and good for your soul.

So, if you can address the selfish motivations of your customer, you may be quids in. Why not explore why people want or need your product or service?

Seth Godin’s post about Low Hanging Fruit got me thinking. Maybe not in the way it was intended but I have suddenly started to commoditise things I have done for free in the past.

At The Escape, I am running a workshop about writing for the web for clients. This information has value, so we decided to charge. It’s half subscribed after less than a week. Rather than do it as pure added value, we get some value back to the tune of £1,000.

Also, I have had a meeting this morning in London and discussed the need to a client to get to grips with their web strategy before implementing the ‘nuts and bolts’ of content and design. Rather than them come to Basingstoke for our free web strategies seminar, we suggested that we go to them.

They will share the cost between their various marketing partners and we get to prove ourselves for two hours. What’s more, they realise the value that the seminar could provide and will pay for my time to do it.

I’m all for educating clients, and, it does seem that if you start charging, even if it is a nominal fee, they become more emotionally involved in the purchase.

The double-bubble benefit of a motivated client base equals more successful websites out there - pointing back to me.

Back in March, I set up two Blogs. I enjoy the NLP one, it’s quite cathartic. The candle one was a reaction after spending quite a bit of money on a domain last year (I was going to go down the e-commerce route) and wanting to recoup some money.

But, candles are boring - they are for me anyway.

So, last week, I read this article on Site Reference (I really like their articles and recommend subscribing to their feed) and I thought I would try it out last night - hence the new candlebox.

It was so easy to set up (and I stll don’t know of the value yet) and for just $117 you can use up to 99 domains. So, I put a few others dead domains up there too.

Then, last night, I was watching the news, talking about recessions, etc. and started to wonder about setting up a whole bunch of topical domains - just in the short terms perhaps. So, five minutes later, I had Credit Crunchers.

I’ll let you know how I get on.

I heard that one of our competitors in Basingstoke has ceased trading this week. I guess I should be jumping for joy but I’m not. In fact, I’m a bit gutted.

KAG Design had been in Basingstoke for over twenty years and were central to the design community in Basingstoke. As young pretenders came and went, KAG were always there or there abouts. I envied them a bit I guess, and aspired to be as big as them when we set up The Escape in 1998.

At The Escape, we have aspired to many companies during our life and I can say, without hesitation, that although it wasn’t a destructive ambition, if was jaded somewhat when I learned the reality behind the facade of these companies.

It seems that KAG are not alone in shutting up shop. Design agencies are struggling across the board. As budgets get cut and new media changes the way that creative is delivered, traditional design is dying on it’s arse. But, it’s not as if we haven’t seen it coming.

About 50% of The Escape’s revenue now comes from an industry that was barely in existence when we set up ten years ago - the web. We changed, we adapted and that part of our business has grown immensely over the past five years.

And, as a business owner, I can’t help thinking that if it came that quickly… perhaps it will morph into something else within the next ten years that makes our current service offering obsolete. Content management systems may well be just an extension of a computer operating systems before long, who knows?

And, where does that leave me? I read once that the lifespan of a business is 25 years, so if that’s the case, The Escape is nearly half way there.

But I acknowledge that businesses change. Industries change. Whether it’s camera films, fax machines, video recorders or websites; nostalgia is one thing, making money is another.  The vision to succeed is different to the day-to-day delivery of a product and service. Any person in a small business must be looking at change. Not necessarily the risky end of cutting edge change, but at the very least diversification.

One last thought. 90% of the work we used to do, ended up being printed. Now, it may end up on the web, as a PDF, or on disk because the client is being offered print ridiculously cheaply and we won’t cut off our nose to spite our face. Hence, the change in revenue generators for The Escape.

The death of a business soon passes and people forget. Nostalgia doesn’t pat the bills. Change is the only constant.

A friend of mine, Darren, has just gone freelance, after being made redundant. He is a Senior Mac Artworker - and a very good one. He is based in Basingstoke but told me he is working all over Hampshire, up into Surrey, around Farnham way, and across towards Reading in Berkshire.The full SP is that he is Mac based and is very proficient using:

• Quark Xpress
• Adobe Indesign
• Adobe Illustrator
• Adobe Photoshop

Anyway, if you need a freelance artworker in Basingstoke give him a shout.

Just finished a small project for a local fencing company in Basingstoke. He is doing me some work, I did him a website.

I say I did it, my friend Steve Clark designed and built it from my strategy document. Now it’s live, I am now going in and tidying up the content, adding some words here and there to make sure the website gets some traffic that leads to business.

If you are a Basingstoke tradesman, you may want to bear in mind I do trades, and, I want an extension built next year and everything that goes with it.

The great thing about this website is that it has a really focused sales proposition, which makes it a much more viable commercial marketing  tool - my favourite.