simonh.uk - business

Letter to Netflix 2015

2025-01-25T00:00:00+00:00

As Netflix have jumped on the live sport streaming bandwagon, I thought I’d post an email I sent to Netflix nine years ago.¹ When they eventually do what I suggested back then, remember who they stole the idea from!

2015-03-15

Netflix Long Term View – Response

Dear Mr. Hastings,

I hope this email finds its way to you. I think the ideas outlined below would be of benefit to your long term ambitions.

TV is in a Mess

Here in the UK we have an abundance of choice when it comes to what to watch on TV. Not a comprehensive list:

Live TV: Freeview, Freesat, Sky, Virgin, BT, Talk Talk, Youview, Now TV, VUTV.

Streaming: Netflix, Amazon Instant, Now TV, BBC IPlayer, ITV Player, 4OD, Demand 5, Sky Go.

As time passes, Netflix will experience much more competition from other vendors. You know this well. You’ll also be at the mercy of content owners who’ll be more empowered than ever. Maybe everyone will suffer.

In your Long Term View document, you write about ‘moments of truth.’ I propose you think about this slightly differently:

Moments of choice.
Moments of routine.

We don’t want to think about what to watch a lot of the time. That’s why broadcast TV is so popular and has endured for so long. At 6:00AM, I don’t want to flick through an app and choose something to watch. Nor do I want to watch a film or a TV ‘show.’ When my partner collects the kids from school, she puts Disney Junior on. My daughter is happy to watch the same episodes over and over again. No thought is required. In fact, effort is required to leave that familiar platform (for all its faults). If you choose to ignore broadcast television, I believe it’s only a matter of time before a new, or an established player, focuses on it. As written in your Long Term View, “the linear TV model is ripe for replacement.” At the moment, services such as Netflix are only biting at its ankles.

Here is what I think you should do. Offer a second package which has live streaming TV. Broadcast TV. But, don’t offer us too much choice! And, do it better. We used to have a great show on in the morning; The Big Breakfast. It might have been my age, but I rarely missed watching it. I was in my late teens at the time. Too many mainstream shows are too safe nowadays. If anyone can push the boundaries a bit, it’s surely you guys. If you can dominate ‘light’ TV and create a platform which customers rarely leave once they have turned it on (as Sky have done), you will surely dominate.

I have plenty more ideas, if you’d like to hear them.²

All the best,

Simon Harrison

Footnotes

¹ I have no idea why I sent this email. Possibly so I could post about it nine years later? Time is strange (in hindsight).

² Ahhhhhh. Bless younger me. I never got a response. And I also had no other ideas to share.

Tips for Emailing Companies when Looking for Work

2025-01-23T00:00:00+00:00

Since I started my NDT company in 2017, I’ve received quite a few emails from NDT technicians, looking for a job. Enough at this point, that I feel offering some tips is needed.

Make Your Subject Line Attention Grabbing

This is your main chance to get your email read. We all receive lots of emails and if your mail subject isn’t thought about, you could end up in the trash bin without a second thought. Sticking with NDT people, the following would be good subjects:

Are you looking for a hard working NDT Technician?
NDT technician available for work
NDT Vacancies?

Your subject line must be relevant to the email content and summarise what the email is about. Simple as that.

Triple Check for Errors / Typo’s

If we receive a marketing email littered with grammatical errors and spelling mistakes, that doesn’t inspire confidence in you. Quite the opposite in fact. If you’re not sure if you’ve got everything right, get someone else to cast their eye over your email before you start pumping them out. Remember, you have one chance to make a good impression.

Do Some Research

Many of the job hunting emails I receive have obviously been found via a web search. If I were looking for a job, I’d try hard to find something on the prospects site to mention in the email:

I noticed on your website that you inspect pipework. It may be of interest to you that for the last five years, I have predominently been a pipework inspector!

Your aim is to try and make your prospect like (or relate to) you. Often, the easiest way to achieve this is to notice something that they do and mention that you have experience with that too.

Get Some Sales Training

What is a prospect? Simply put, a sales prospect is an individual who is a potential purchaser of your product or service. However, a prospect has not yet engaged with your company or entered the sales process. — Revenue.io

I’ve used the word prospect a couple of times already. That is how you should think of the target of your email. The product is you, and your service is your skillset. After all, you are attempting to sell both yourself and your time in exchange for money. Ultimately, this is a sales exercise and viewing it as such will give you far better results. If you want a book recommendation, I’d highly recommend Jordan Belfort — The Way of the Wolf.

Get a Website

As I wrote earlier, people are busy and don’t want to have their time wasted. Instead of listing your qualifications, work history and attaching your CV to your introduction email, far better to provide links to that information on your website. This has two main benefits:

It keeps your email short and to the point
If allows your prospect to get your latest information in the future

By having a personal website, you’ll also stand out from the crowd, which is always a good thing.

Ask for Referrals

I’ve never had anyone do this, and I find it astonishing. I suggest that at the bottom of your email, you ask if your prospect knows of anyone else who may require your services.

My Sample Email

Good morning / afternoon / evening.

I hope you are well and business is good. This is just a quick email to introduce myself should your company require additional inspectors, either now or in the future.

I’m currently living in Burton on Trent, but would be happy to relocate for the right opportunity. I have my work history and qualifications detailed on my website:

http://yourwebsite.com/about

If you have any questions that aren’t addressed on the above link, please ask!

By the way, if you aren’t currently needing additional inspectors, would you know of other inspection companies I might contact? Any leads greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,

Simon Harrison

Good Luck!

Keep sending the emails and hopefully you’ve picked up a couple of tips / ideas from this post for your next email campaign…

Dealing with Late Payers - for the Self Employed

2025-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

Here We Go Again

We self-employed types hear some whoppers over the years don’t we?

“Invoice? What invoice…?”
“We’ve already paid you!”
“Our accounts lady only comes in on Thursday mornings.”
“We haven’t had what’s on this invoice!”
“Our accounts person has left. You’ll have to wait.”
“We’ll pay you the month after next.”

My Approach to Late Payers

I’ve worked for myself since 2017. I’ve only ever not been paid once. It was partly my fault, partly the customers. I just learnt my lesson and moved on.

I’m writing this as I personally know quite a few self-employed people and often they’ll moan that they’re owed money. Quite often it’ll turn out they not bothering with one or more of the steps below. If this post helps, let me know!

Make sure to get a purchase order!

Step 1. Get a PO, before you do the job / sell whatever you sell. It’s amazing how many self employed people are lax on this. No business is going to be offended or surprised when you say:

“Ok, great. If you can email me a PO across, I’ll get that booked in.”

I do this for every job.

Have Terms & Conditions with your payment terms clearly stated (and agreed to)

When I get a new customer, I set them up on my system. Part of that is having them complete my New Customer Form with their company / accounts details. The second page of that PDF is my terms with a checkbox indicating they agree to those terms. The customer completes it and emails it back. So if there’s a dispute, sorry, you agreed to my terms.

Make it easy to get paid on time

When I first started working for myself, I used 30 day terms. I found that quickly got difficult to manage. Let’s say I do a job on the 15th of January. I’d put the due date as 15th February on my invoice. The thing is, most businesses (in my experience) pay and get paid at the end of each month. So I switched to net monthly which means all invoices are payable at the end of the month after invoice date.

So, the job I just mentioned that I invoice on 15th January would be due on 28th February. As would a job on 1st January or 31st January. I have one due date each month. Easier for me, easier for my customers.

Send invoices ASAP

It seems an obvious thing, but are you sending your invoices out promptly? I got into the habit of making it a rule to send invoices on the same day as I finish a job.

Have a robust invoicing system

Again, when I first started on my own, I had no system to keep track of my invoices. I’d just check my sent emails and check those against bank payments. Needless to say, that caused some issues so I wrote my own invoicing software. Even a spreadsheet is better than nothing.

Send reminders (and CC yourself)

I send an email summary of all open invoices to each customer in the last week of each month. I also have a copy sent to me. The reason I started cc’ing myself was when I got “no, I’m looking at my inbox now, and your invoice is not there”. Now, when that happens, I just forward it from my phone. If I’ve got overdue invoices, I send out the same email on the 1st of the month. This time I highlight that there are overdue invoices.

Weed out the worst offenders

Again, I have a simple but effective system. If I’m owed money by a customer and they phone or email about another job, I’ll just tell them that they’re on stop. It’s a lot simpler to just pay me than try and find another supplier (who might insist on proforma payment anyway). It won’t magically turn them into a prompt payer, but at least you’ll get what’s currently owed.

If they continue to misbehave, I’ll move them to proforma (upfront) payment.

Don’t take it personally

I’ve not figured out exactly why some companies pay late. I’m sure some of it is cashflow issues, but a lot of it I think is purely because they can’t be arsed. They’ll almost certainly be paying other companies late too. Don’t get worked up, instead improve your system.

Summary

Always get a purchase order
Payment terms agreed to by customer
Invoice net monthly
Ensure invoicing system is robust
Send invoices promptly
Send reminders consistently
Ditch the worst payers when you can

Updates

2025-01-05: Add Summary

Job Interviews are Idiotic

2021-11-10T00:00:00+00:00

README

I’ve always disliked interviews. Let’s be honest; pretty much everyone does, as they are:

Stressful
Unpredictable
Decided by God-knows-what-criteria
Peppered with idiotic and irrelevant questions (see below)
Likely to include “tricks” designed to trip you up
Nearly always handled by imbeciles (and / or recruitment agencies)

The whole experience is disgusting and foul and generally a waste of time.

Recently…

I’ve had the misfortune of having three interviews in the last few months. I’ll detail them below:

Briggs of Burton

Arrived at the interview, held in a board room, and it turned out that none of the idiots had any clue how to operate the conferencing software (as another idiot wanted to be there in a virtual sense). It was a complete farce that lasted about twenty minutes. Various staff members attempted to troubleshoot what might be wrong. It was quite hard for me not to just say, “fuck it, I’m off.” Eventually, they sorted their shit out and I was subjected to some really stupid questions that were completely irrelevant to actually performing the mediocre job they were hoping to fill. A few days later I was told by the recruitment people (and I quote) “They’ve decided to give the job to a woman because she’ll take less money.”

Terex Pegson (Coalville)

Interviewed by some bloke called Bryn Winkwart (or something similar). Had an hour with him asking mostly sensible questions in a conference room, but he looked a bit lost as the HR person was not there. He spent most of the time saying he was looking for someone to take over his role when he fucks off. The recruitment outfit called James Grace Associates didn’t even bother to inform me of their clients “decision.” I had to email an Elliot ~~Bellend~~ Beldon to find out that “they’ve decided to give the role to someone with more heavy industry experience.” Yeah, figured that out already, ~~Bellend~~ Beldon. I had no intention of travelling to Coalville every day anyway.

IG Masonry Support (Swadlincote)

In this interview, I was told that they were trying to replace a lovely woman who had left to go back to a company that was nearer to home and paid her more money (but they would miss her). Idiotic, obviously. They also told me that they had offered another woman the job, but basically, she’d told them to fuck off as she had found a better job paying more money.

As soon as I got there, I knew I was dealing with idiots (you get a sense), and sure enough, some geeky kid, James, dutifully asked a load of idiotic HR questions. Really stupid, most of them. His boss appeared about ten minutes into the interview with a clipboard and pen and some stupid questions of his own.

Had a tour around their small factory, and to be fair I could have added a lot to their pretty amatuerish setup. Incredibly, I got an email from the recruitment outfit, Stafflne, that they didn’t think I possessed enough 9001 / 14001 experience. That was a lie, they knew they couldn’t afford me was the honest answer.

The Wrong Way to Interview

All of these companies think they know how to fill a vacancy, but they’re deluding themselves. Most of these jobs have had to be re-advertised which I think proves how ineffective their approach is.

Below is what you should stop doing immediately

Stop asking stupid questions which have no bearing on the role advertised. If I go for a job in let’s say, Customer Service, does anyone care (including me) where I see myself in five years. And to the idiot who asked what I’d do if I won the lottery: stating that I don’t do the lottery is a perfectly valid answer to your idiotic question.

What’s my greatest success at work? Who cares?
What is the biggest failure? Who cares?
What things about yourself could you improve? Who cares?

And so on.

Just cut all the crap out. No. One. Cares.

The Correct Way to Interview

Two words: competence testing.

Q. You’re looking for a quality inspector?
A. Great, get them to check a part against a drawing.

Q. Recruiting for an administrator?
A. Get them to do some data entry.

Q. Need a manager?
A. Take them to a department with problems (you’ve probably got loads of them) and ask them what their ideas are to improve it.

Spend five or ten minutes having a chat about your company, the job you’re trying to fill, and then get to testing if the applicant is competent. That way you aren’t wasting everyones time.

The Future

We need an accreditation that lets applicants know if the interviewer is competent to conduct an interview. Just think about how much time is wasted by incompetent and ineffective interview techniques. The savings would be enormous!

Updates

2025-01-06: Tidy up a couple of things and add icons

How to Stop Your Business Email From Being Labelled Spam

2021-05-24T00:00:00+01:00

You have a business and you want / need some more customers.

According to the UK Government

You’re only allowed to send marketing emails to individual customers if they’ve given you permission. Emails or text messages must clearly indicate: who you are, that you’re selling something, what the promotions are, and any conditions

I dislike spam as much as the next guy, but how am I to get permission from someone I’ve never met, and am trying to introduce my company to?

My (New) Method

Let’s say I have the domain: “amazingcompany.com”. Instead of sending introductory emails from “info@amazingcompany.com”, I send from the address “amazingcompany@mail.com” or “amazingcompany@gmail.com” etc.

So now, my marketing emails are separate from my non-marketing emails.

There are lots of email providers, free and paid. A quick internet search will return lots of choices.

Tips

These are my golden rules:

When I send an email to a company that might be in the market for my services, I keep it short, professional and to the point

Make sure that you aren’t actually sending spam! Do your research and ensure that the recipient is a prospect

Don’t overdo it. I have a list of companies that I’ve emailed and won’t email them more than annually

If you get an unsubscribe reply, respect it

Check your domain spam status

Luckily, none of my domains are blacklisted, but to be on the safe side, I started using this new method last year. You can check the status of your domain using MX Toolbox or another similar service.

Basecamp Wokeness Drama

2021-05-03T00:00:00+01:00

Social Justice Warriors

There are a lot of angry people in the world. Some people are perpetually angry. They’re usually called social justice warriors, or the woke. Even Cambridge dictionary doesn’t seem to realise that wokeness is not a compliment.

Tech / software firms are generally biased in this direction, chiming in and signalling their virtue whenever they can. The problem is, not everyone agrees with the woke agenda. Not everyone thinks that tearing everything down will create anything better. Not everyone is so narcissistic to think they have all the answers. Not everyone believes in the existence of “The Patriachy” or “Systemic Racism.”

Enter Basecamp

I’ve been aware of 37signals, now Basecamp since about 2005 when Rails got big. I drifted away from Ruby and toward Python over the years. I’ve never used any of their software but they’ve written some interesting books and software, without doubt.

Reading between the lines, I think they let their employees drift away from doing what they were paid to do, and instead “fix the world” starting with Basecamp. I don’t think this went well for the owners.

And now, they’ve had enough. They don’t want any political or social commentary through company accounts. They’ve also retracted some employee benefits after realising that it’s none of their business what employees do in their own time.

The Aftermath

About a third of Basecamp staff (twenty or so out of sixty) have decided they can’t work at a company that won’t let them comment on whatever they want, whenever they want.

Good. Let them go and be more careful who you employ in the future, Basecamp.

Boundaries are good

Here on my blog, I can write whatever I want. I set my own boundaries. But if I worked for a company, I wouldn’t expect to use their reach for my interests and goals.

I think we can expect to see a lot more companies realising that what might be obvious to you or me, needs putting in the employment contract for others.

I’ll put money on Basecamp adjusting their interview techniques towards detecting these activists from now on.

And for anyone thinking that they would have a load of new job openings: nope not one on 2021-05-03.

The Future

Jason and David are clever guys who run a very successful business. They may have been surprised that a third of their staff can’t handle being told to pipe down and focus on doing what they’re paid for, but now they know that the two thirds that remain are happy with some sensible rules.

Plus, they’ve got a load of free publicity (again)!

Finally, the exiting staff who signalled their virtue by publicly stating their decision to leave, may have received some twitter likes, but they’ve also let potential employers know that first and foremost, they’re an activist.