Tag Archives: entrepreneur

Why now is the time to add quality content to your company website

With hindsight, the arrival of generative AI a couple of years ago is beginning to closely resemble the short-lived phenomenon of peer-to-peer filesharing. Emerging from a cloudless sky in the late 1990s like a lightning bolt to the creative industries, P2P filesharing capitalised on the burgeoning number of personal internet connections by offering a sudden – and almost violently reactive – democratisation of access to media content.

For consumers who had been price gouged by music labels and DVD sellers over many years, the ability to grab free music and download pirated films often felt like a blessing. And in fairness, some artists actively supported the concept. Radiohead and The Offspring were among the high-profile bands to champion platforms like Napster, or make free music available to swell their fanbase and encourage purchases of their album archives. There are artists around today whose reputation was forged in P2P sharing, just as tape trading propelled some musicians to stardom in the 1980s.

Bursting the bubble

Yet P2P filesharing proved to be a short-lived phenomenon which attracted a swift and brutal crackdown from the industries whose creative content was being illegally shared en masse. Many uploaded files were of poor quality or not as described, while it was impossible to escape the fact that talented artists weren’t being paid whenever their content was stolen. Platforms like Napster were quickly suffocated by punitive lawsuits, and when legitimate business models failed to take flight, the entire P2P industry collapsed in on itself.

Today, we can expect similar things to happen with generative AI. Indeed, the parallels are uncanny. Once again, entire swathes of digital content (this time mostly written forms) are being systematically plundered with no respect for copyright. Once again, high-quality content is being repackaged with diminished quality and distributed with no royalties or recognition of the artists responsible for creating it. Once again, the legal industry is creaking into gear with enough IP lawsuits and litigation to keep the world’s lawyers working overtime for years to come. And once again, consumers are beginning to turn against the low-grade slop they’re being served up, recognising belatedly that ‘free’ doesn’t mean ‘ethical’, ‘quality’ or ‘dependable’.

The impact on small businesses

What does that mean for a company here in 2026, wanting to add new content to its website, compile a tender document or produce a business report? In theory, being able to add quality content to your company website for free sounds great. Free looks good on the balance sheet, especially in these economically straitened times. However, there are numerous drawbacks to commissioning a generative AI engine to repurpose existing content and attempting to pass it off as your own work:

  • Generative AI is derivative. All platforms like ChatGPT and Grok do is regurgitate what already exists. They might use different phrasing each time, but their output will be predictable and stale, making points any of your competitors could also make, without acknowledging your firm’s USPs.
  • Generative AI is unimaginative. A professional writer will add features no AI algorithm can replicate – humour, warmth, emotional heft, lived experience. When you need to add quality content to your company website, a person can inject urgency, passion and excitement in a way algorithms can’t.
  • Generative AI is effectively theft on a mass scale. I’ve seen my own work presented as an AI ‘answer’ to search engine questions. I never granted permission for this to happen. Do you want your own company to be guilty of plagiarism or copyright infringement when the lawsuits start raining down?
  • Generative AI is likely to be downgraded by the very firms promoting it. Google AI is infuriatingly unreliable, and Google itself will eventually have to acknowledge this. Once it does, sites with AI-generated content are likely to plummet down ranking results, below those with authentic content.
  • Generative AI won’t be free for much longer. The vast data centres and endless arrays of servers used to power genAI tools cost an absolute fortune to build and run. Sooner or later, their owners  will seek to monetise them, turning off the supply of free content in favour of paid business models.

It’s immediately obvious that AI-generated written content isn’t going to stand the test of time. Consumers can tell the difference, just as they can look at an AI-generated photo and instinctively tell it’s fake. And if its content is fake, why would the company that published or promoted it be genuine, or trustworthy? Do consumers really want to hand over money to a company that’s obviously cutting corners, and taking so little pride in its own achievements that AI produced its brochures or blog? Are they likely to receive personalised service or bespoke support from such a company?

The old ways are still the best

If you want to add quality content to your company website in 2026, look beyond the superficial temptations of free, instantly generated text or images. This is the year when quality original content, imbued with the nuance and lived experience only creatives can call upon, will rise to the top of search results and propel companies to the top of their market sectors. AI has many valuable uses – finding specific terms among cluttered inboxes or summarising presentations – but its days of indiscriminate content production are almost inevitably numbered.

When the litigation comes, and the generative AI machines retreat behind paywalls to justify their astronomical running costs, don’t let your company’s online presence be downgraded and ostracised by low-quality AI slop. Instead, ask G75 Media to help you and your business find the right words for any situation. Conference slides, bid writing, marketing copy, recruitment literature, website blogs… whenever you need to add quality content to your company website or marketing materials, we’re here to help. Get in touch with us to find out why paying for premium media content beats stealing it off the internet.

Tips for reducing your small business’s expenditure

Being your own boss is never easy. I founded G75 Media just weeks after the run on Northern Rock, and a few months before the global financial crisis began to sweep across the planet. Since then, I’ve steered my tiny business through two ages of austerity, Brexit and its myriad consequences, the interminable Scottish independence referendum, a global pandemic which saw us locked in our homes for most of a year, and – most recently – a double-fisted assault on small businesses from the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Hard times in an age of quarrel

In living memory, it has never been harder to run a small business, or less profitable to try:

  1. Companies are paying ever increasing amounts of corporation tax, employers national insurance and other mandated levies, in exchange for dwindling amounts of state support.
  2. Generative AI and search engine algorithm changes have disembowelled the advertising-funded business model of many websites, rendering much of the internet economically unviable.
  3. Swathes of the HR sector have collapsed under a tsunami of speculative and specious applications.
  4. Hiring new staff has become a scenario to avoid wherever possible due to soaring taxes, day-one employer commitments and questionable legal rulings. Describing a serial absentee as ‘disorganised’ led to a company last year being found guilty of disability harassment, disability discrimination and unfair constructive dismissal.

As a result, individuals and businesses alike are choosing to spend less money and not grow their businesses. The consequences for entrepreneurs – often at the sharp end of such economic shifts – have been little short of catastrophic.

Nonetheless, many of you reading this will be self-employed or small business owners. Listing the myriad challenges we all face is less productive than considering ways of mitigating and tackling it, which is why the rest of this blog focuses on ways of potentially reducing business expenditure. Some are industry-specific while others are universal, but they might all help to shave small amounts off your annual outgoings – which could make a material difference to your prospects of surviving another year…

Scrutinise your monthly outgoings

This sounds obvious, and yet a lot of entrepreneurs couldn’t tell you how many standing orders come out of their business bank account – if they even have a dedicated business account to differentiate work-related funds from personal ones. If you don’t receive paper copies of bank statements, print out your three most recent ones. Highlight outgoings which are essential to the existence of your business, like Companies House statements or accounting fees.

Slash non-essential purchases

Next, study the non-highlighted bank deductions and consider how many of them really needed to be made. It’s easy to spend money on unnecessary things – stationery which sits in a cupboard, subscriptions you don’t get much benefit from, support contracts you haven’t called upon in the last year. It’s often surprising when you study bank statements how many superfluous items have been paid for, especially if you have a company credit or debit card.

Minimise advertising costs

I spent many years paying money to Google every month for online ads. In the final three years, I didn’t obtain a single paid piece of work from Google Ads enquiries. What I did get was a steady trickle of spam calls and junk emails. Perhaps advertising is essential for your company’s survival, but perhaps it’s not achieving what you hoped it would – or enough to justify its impact on your bottom line. Review the new clients you onboarded last year; did any of them come directly from an advert?

Work from home full-time

It’s tempting to have a dedicated office for your business, which then incurs rent, rates, heating costs and factoring charges. It’s desirable to spend part of each week in a co-working suite, sharing space and ideas with other people. Yet clients won’t pay you more, travelling soon becomes costly, and you probably won’t get any more done. Even working from your local café incurs costs you wouldn’t have at home. You can hire spaces specifically for meetings, but WFH where possible.

Renegotiate contracts

We’re all familiar with the annual increase in car or home insurance premiums – the loyalty penalty existing customers pay to fund new client discounts. There are likely to be many aspects of your business’s service provision where you could obtain a cheaper deal by renegotiating. Industry-agnostic examples include website/email hosting and broadband contracts, business insurance policies, bank account fees, tech support services and media or magazine subscriptions.

Only sub-contract to experts

G75 Media has spent almost two decades supporting companies and charities who wouldn’t be able to generate premium copywriting and marketing copy in-house. We’ve also worked with firms who simply didn’t want to carry out certain tasks internally. When every pound matters, an easy way of reducing business expenditure is to work longer hours and complete more tasks yourself. Yet content production is often worth outsourcing to experts – contact us to find out why…

The importance of taking time off over Christmas

We’re familiar with the concept of emergency service workers spending Christmas Day on shift or on-call, and yet many freelancers will also be squeezing in turkey carving and watching The Snowman around work this year. Running a business is an exhausting process which can consume any available free time – and I speak from experience, having spent much of Christmas Day 2008 working from a temporary home office as I tried to establish my fledgling business.

However, working over the Christmas holidays is potentially damaging. It can lead to frustration and resentment, as well as meaning you don’t start January feeling refreshed or ready for the new year’s challenges. With only a few weeks until the end of Advent, I’ve written a blog on the importance of taking time off over Christmas – and why it can avoid far worse eventualities…

Burnout revenge

Burnout isn’t something the self-employed like to talk about, because it implies an interruption in service, which might potentially scare off clients. However, like mental health, burnout is a topic which needs to be addressed, primarily to reduce the stigma surrounding it. Burnout happens slowly and then quickly, as your mind and body begin to buckle under the cumulative strain of insufficient rest. I’ve previously written about how after fifty weeks of solid work, I drove into the back of a parked car at traffic lights, because my exhausted brain simply couldn’t function properly. Ever since, I’ve forced myself to take a few weeks off each year (which is always stressful in itself) so I don’t have to endure that level of mental fatigue again.

Freelancers face different pressures at varying times of year depending on their industry and client base, but nobody will expect you to be working on Christmas Day or Boxing Day. Ebeneezer Scrooge has thankfully been left in the Victorian age. Many people take a week or even a fortnight off over Christmas, and others will only work on one or two days between the 24th of December and the 5th of January. In the meantime, inboxes will be empty, meetings won’t be scheduled and deadlines are rare outside industries like print journalism.

Christmas represents a unique opportunity to take time off, since many other companies will be closed for most or all of a ten-day period. My first job was with a major car dealership, and they required one member of the marketing team to be present in the office each non-statutory day over the festive fortnight. We split the days between us, and I spent two very pleasant days each Christmas driving to work along empty roads before eating homemade quiche and reading books. I certainly wasn’t expecting anyone to email me regarding important work issues, and I wouldn’t have needed to respond until January even if they had (which they never did).

Tips for taking time off over Christmas

Back to the present, and these are my recommendations for taking time off over Christmas with a clear desktop and a clean conscience…

  1. Stockpile work. If you have clients who require work over the festive period, produce and submit it in advance wherever possible. Unless it has to be topical, this will keep them supplied while you rest.
  2. Write a to-do list. List all the things needing to be done in December to enable an orderly shutdown. Monitor progress every day to minimise the prospect of last-minute panics or missed deadlines.
  3. Highlight forthcoming absences. Tell clients the dates when you’ll be unavailable a few weeks in advance. Use social media (LinkedIn, Instagram, etc) to do the same, so everyone gets the message.
  4. Schedule things for January. Meetings, deadlines, presentations…it doesn’t really matter. If clients know they’ll have your focus in January, they’re less likely to contact you in mid to late December.
  5. Set out of office messages. Email remains the main method of B2B communication, so ensure any new enquiries or messages are politely acknowledged with the date of your return while you’re off.
  6. Clear your to-do list before Christmas. January will be less stressful if you only have to deal with things that arose over the holidays, and you’ll be less inclined to check emails or ‘just do an hour’.
  7. Tell friends and relatives you’re taking time off. It’s harder to break your vow of abstinence and work if your family are expecting you not to. Plan activities which will allow you all to connect and unwind.

Help when you need it most

Although G75 Media shuts down over Christmas for the reasons outlined above, we are dedicated to helping our clients throughout the other 50 weeks of each year. Get in touch with us to discuss our award-winning copywriting, journalism, proofreading and editing services.

Docking stations – every freelancer’s best friend

Any freelancer, entrepreneur or small business owner needs a computer to run their fledgling empire. And while some choose a laptop for its portability and simplicity, many will favour the increased performance and durability of a desktop computer. These are available in many guises (from affordable home workstations to high-end gaming machines) and usually at affordable prices. They offer more processing power and far greater support for peripherals like monitors and external speakers.

Ideally, entrepreneurs and creatives would be able to have the best of both worlds – a computer which can act as the centrepiece of a productive workstation during the working day, yet slip into a rucksack for easy transportation and use on the move. In fact, there is a way to combine laptop flexibility with desktop technology – by installing a docking station.

Plug in baby

A docking station is basically a giant plug adaptor, into which various computing peripherals are plugged. Different docks have varying numbers of ports, but these are some of the devices they typically accept inputs from:

  1. DisplayPort and/or HDMI and/or VGA ports, enabling you to output your laptop’s visual display to a larger external monitor (or two, if you’d like a multi-screen display).
  2. USB-A and/or USB-C ports, ideal for wired peripherals like keyboards and printers.
  3. A 3.5mm audio jack, supporting external speakers.
  4. A power input, ensuring a laptop battery can charge while connected.
  5. An Ethernet port, creating a hardwired broadband link to either a WiFi router or a Powerline adaptor.

A laptop can be connected to the docking station via a single USB cable, at which point every peripheral wired into the station will automatically connect to the laptop. External keyboards will spring into life, monitors will begin displaying visual output, the battery can recharge and sound output is displaced from the weedy speakers found on almost every laptop to external ones – though you may need to adjust your sound settings before this last change takes effect.

Why doesn’t everyone use a docking station?

One barrier to widespread adoption is the issue of technical complexity. Although docking stations aren’t complicated, the profusion of wires sprouting from them may confuse less tech-savvy entrepreneurs. Some docking stations prove to be simpler to set up than others, while it isn’t always desirable to have a box with loads of wires on display (especially if you can’t hide it in a cupboard).

Docking stations occasionally fail or become temperamental, and they don’t increase the performance or processing power of a laptop, which is typically inferior to a comparably priced desktop computer due to the limitations of space and the cost of building a compact machine. No docking station can add multiple fans, water cooling or a second graphics processor unit card to a desktop PC. Meanwhile, Apple users may need a specific type of dock to handle advanced features like multiple monitor displays.

What are the advantages of fitting a docking station?

If you’ve already got – or plan to buy – a laptop, docking stations may be transformative. In daily use, they bring all the benefits of a desktop computer, with the ability to bypass features like fiddly trackpads and small screens in favour of whatever accompanying hardware you want or need. You can hardwire printers and scanners into your computer instead of relying on wireless connections, and if a keyboard or mouse gives up the ghost, it’s easy to replace.

Durability is another factor to consider. Unlike the integrated components in a sealed-unit laptop, freestanding peripherals can be replaced on demand. Also, not using your laptop’s screen/keyboard on a daily basis should ensure these components operate perfectly whenever you’re working on a train or in a conference centre.

Sitting on the dock of the bay

At G75 Media, we’re big fans of docking stations, having used them for many years. Get in touch with us to discuss the award-winning marketing, journalism, proofreading and editing services produced through a docking station every day.

Tips for reducing procrastination at work

Have you ever had one of those days when you just can’t be bothered? You sit down at the computer, coffee in hand, full of good intentions…and somehow the work won’t flow through your fingertips as it normally does. The flashing cursor on a blank word processing document begins to seem taunting, and oh look, the neighbours are getting a parcel delivered. They really need to wash their car. Now where was I?

Procrastination has always been part of the human condition, but over the last five years, it’s been indulged as never before. When South Cambridgeshire District Council decided to introduce a four-day working week for their staff, one of the key benefits the council reported was that their employees spent less time procrastinating and more time actually working. In other words, they could have done their jobs in less time all along, had they applied themselves.

With alarm bells ringing throughout the economy and companies shedding staff or cancelling expansion plans, even the bloated public sector is belatedly having to consider productivity. In the private sector, procrastination often means the self-employed and the owners of limited companies simply don’t get paid. Yet it’s easy to drift off, put things off or clock off early, especially if a particular piece of work seems dull, unpleasant or complicated. We can’t all spend our days being motoring journalists.

Based on personal experience and professional best practice, here are ten tips for reducing procrastination at work – starting with something we could all do with taking on board…

Ten easy steps for reducing procrastination

  1. Do the hardest or worst things first. If an unpleasant job needs doing, get it out of the way as soon as possible. You’ll be grateful later on when it’s been wiped from the to-do list, and it’ll allow you to do easier things later in the day when tiredness is becoming more of an issue. Speaking of which…
  2. Keep your energy levels up. It’s far more tempting to procrastinate if you’re also battling a carb slump after a stodgy meal. Try to eat lighter things during the day (this doesn’t have to mean fewer calories or smaller portions) and space out caffeinated drinks strategically for maximum impact.
  3. Turn off the radio. I spent three years working in an office with Radio 1 on all day, discussing how good Evanescence were, or whether Mark and Lard were better than Chris Moyles. In the meantime, we weren’t working. Background noise acts as a natural impediment to concentration.
  4. Keep the TV off. Even worse than an aural soundtrack is an audiovisual bombardment of programming, adverts and (worst of all) live news. Don’t think muting a TV solves anything – few sights are more compulsive than a picture with no sound. TV is for non-working hours only.
  5. Close email packages. Email is the lifeblood of sole traders and small businesses, but there are occasions when it distracts you and breaks your concentration. Close email software while tackling complex or challenging jobs. No email needs an instant response, so deal with your inbox in batches.
  6. Take regular breaks. Giving yourself five minutes away from the screen will reduce vision-related headaches and allow your mind to wander in a healthy, structured fashion. You’ll return to work more focused and less likely to become distracted. A five-minute break per hour is ideal.
  7. Use workflow boards. A Trello board gives you instant oversight of your workload, enabling you to prioritise and structure your week. Having daily and/or weekly columns relating to deadlines focuses your mind on what needs to be done, reducing any temptation to waste time or dither.
  8. Set yourself rewards. If you can finish work by 4pm and you don’t need to do anything else until five, working hard will result in a bonus hour which can be spent on enjoyable activities. Having a goal like this banishes the temptation to slack off, keeping you focused and more productive.
  9. Create an informal time sheet. If you’ve spent the last ten minutes thinking vaguely about updating your website, what would you put on a timesheet? Some clients expect work on their accounts to be recorded, and it tends to focus your mind if you can only charge for things you’ve done.
  10. Sleep well. My final tip might not seem directly related to productivity, but it’s generally harder to concentrate when you’re tired. Banish phones and tablets from the bedroom, go to bed before 10pm, keep the room cool and dark, and avoid caffeine after teatime to boost efficiency tomorrow.

Sometimes reducing procrastination isn’t easy

One reason why you might be struggling to motivate yourself to do something is because it seems (or actually is) difficult. Many people find writing challenging – coming up with content for a website, drafting up a business plan, preparing a speech or compiling a report. These are services G75 Media undertakes on a daily basis, and we’re always happy to discuss how we can simplify new clients’ lives by tackling the jobs they don’t feel able (or willing) to begin. Get in touch with us for more information on our pricing and turnaround times.

Ten things I wish I’d known

I left Scotland on Monday. Not in a going-on-holiday sense, but in a moving-away-forever sense. After 34 years living in the central belt, I am now a resident of England for the first time in my adult life. G75 Media remains a Scottish company (headquartered in a gorgeous Georgian office in Glasgow), but I’m no longer there with it.

My extended family’s departure from Scotland has been caused by a combination of political, professional and personal factors. And while we’re all in a better place now, I really wish I’d known this would happen. I would have been a less anxious person over recent years if I’d spent more time savouring the present, and less time worrying about the future. Does that sound familiar?

Don’t look back in anger

Looking back, I wish I’d known a lot of things when I was younger – especially things about running a business, which was never something I intended to do until freelance work kept landing in my lap. For anyone thinking about making the frightening yet exhilarating step of becoming an entrepreneur (or for anyone who already has), here are ten pieces of advice the me of 2021 would pass onto the me of 2005 if he could. Feel free to add your own suggestions below…

  1. Setting up a limited company beats being a sole trader. It took me two years to register G75 Media in 2007, and I wish I’d done it sooner. A limited company is more professional, provides greater legal indemnity against prosecution, and simplifies mortgage applications.
  2. Choose your accountant with care. I picked a local guy who promptly retired and left the business to that’ll-do junior staff. I then switched to a remote accountancy service, who invented a director’s loan account to save me some tax one year. It took five years to repay.
  3. Pick a dependable web hosting firm. If you want to switch web hosting company, your email account could be offline for days as the server repropagates. No small business can survive that, so choose an established UK-based firm with a 99.9 per cent SLA and rapid servers.
  4. Build networks. I have diligently applied for thousands of jobs over the last 15 years. Yet most new work today comes from people I’ve worked with in the past, LinkedIn connections or word-of-mouth recommendations. It’s not what you know…
  5. …Except it is. I’ve met so many people trying to bluff their way through roles they didn’t really understand. They always got found out in the end. Your business should also be your hobby or specialist subject. If it’s not, learn it inside out before sending out any invoices.
  6. Say no occasionally. Constantly saying yes saw me working myself into the ground trying to meet deadlines, or doing work I didn’t enjoy. As a lifelong vegetarian, I still wish I’d turned down that 2011 assignment to write about an animal by-products processing factory…
  7. Hold back before being negative. I was impetuous in my twenties, but I learned to wait overnight before reacting. Reviewing something with fresh eyes gives you a chance to make a message more powerful and effective. Plus, you might change your mind the next day.
  8. Never descend into bickering on social media. Some people thrive on arguments, while the professionally outraged revel in self-righteous indignation. Plus, you never know who might read your responses later on, when topicality has passed and the context seems different.
  9. Keep detailed records. I worked from a drawerless desk for three years, losing paperwork I needed and tax receipts I should have kept for six years. Box files were my saviour, and they’ll be yours as well. File everything unless and until you’re sure it’s not relevant.
  10. Don’t spend too much time worrying about the future. This one comes from the heart. I had a really poor 2013, but 2014 was lucrative. My income halved during the first lockdown, yet I ended 2020 with record turnover. Focus on the here and now, not what might be one day.

Finally, and I felt this was too important to include in a bullet-point list, give yourself some credit. I was quite harsh on myself in the early years of G75 Media, constantly feeling I could be more professional or working harder. I gradually abandoned the elusive pursuit of perfection, focusing instead on keeping detailed records and ensuring I didn’t send out anything bearing my name until I’d proofread it twice. Providing you act professionally at all times, maintaining a calendar or Trello board of deadlines and appointments, clients can’t ask more of you. And they won’t. They’re also struggling to remain professional in an age of home working and incessant multitasking. Being good at your job makes their lives easier, and they’ll be grateful for your competence and diligence.

Ten years of copywriting excellence

Ten years ago today, G75 Media Ltd was officially incorporated under the Companies Act 1985, becoming Scotland’s newest media company. And without wishing to lapse into cliché, the intervening decade has been quite a journey…

 

G75 Media was founded by Neil Cumins with a three-figure budget. It was based in the spare room of a house in East Kilbride, where an antiquated PC perched on a second-hand dressing table. There was no website, no income and no budget for advertising, and work had to be fitted around Neil’s day job as a property journalist.

 

Little did anyone know on that chilly November day that the global economy was about to enter the most protracted recession for a century. Setting up a new media company in the midst of the Northern Rock bailout (and an unexpected decline in British house prices) was clearly not a ideal for a property-based copywriting agency. Throughout our first five years, clients regularly went out of business and new custom was often frustratingly hard to acquire.

 

Nevertheless, G75 Media has survived – and even thrived. We’ve worked with clients on four continents. We’ve become experts in industries as diverse as optometry, tourism, computer networks and mental health blogging. And Neil’s contacts throughout the housing and automotive industries have ensured a steady flow of motoring journalism and property writing, for local and national media clients.

 

While it’s tempting to make predictions about the future, the last ten years has demonstrated how events can change a media company’s direction. G75 Media was named after a postcode in our home town of East Kilbride, and intended to serve local businesses, yet most of our copywriting clients are based in England. While our plans to offer services to ex-pats in the United Arab Emirates didn’t bear fruit, we regularly work with high-profile companies in America and Australia. And we certainly didn’t expect our white label copywriting services to be as sought after as they have been, with constant demand for technology blogs and brochure/website content.

 

Here’s to ten years of copywriting excellence. And if you’d like to join us for the next leg of our journey, why not get in touch to see how we can help with journalism or content production?