A successful event at Workhouse Studios….and probably the best canapes in the world!

Last night, we held a networking event at Workhouse Studios, and I have to say it was thoroughly enjoyable, and by all anecdotal evidence, everyone who attended seemed to enjoy it too. The event was put on by a client of ours CXL, in conjunction with Live Ribble Valley magazine, primarily to promote the genuinely excellent leadership programme called LEAD to SME’s in the Ribble Valley.

At the end of the evening I was chatting with one of CXL’s Senior Mangers discussing why they felt it was one of their most successful events. I think a number of reasons. There’s the location, hosting an event in a working Photography Studio is a lot more exciting than in any bland Corporate Hotel. There’s the fact we offered to take free portrait photography of the delegates. There’s the fact it was hosted in the Ribble Valley, maybe identifying a need for greater networking opportunities in the Ribble Valley. And just maybe there was the right mix of people who hit it off!

‘Jones the Gob’ in action.

Networking at Workhouse Studios

Pam from CXL presenting the Lead programme

Shot last night and…..ooooooo! yummy!

Shot….and eaten last night!

The canapes were amazing!

The sensational canapes (probably the best canapes in the world!) were supplied, prepared and presented by the fabulous Freemasons Arms in Wiswell. Tedd Walmsley and his team from Live Ribble Valley Magazine, and Ben Briggs the talented young editor of the excellent Lancashire Business View were present, with everyone keen to raise their profiles by chatting to ‘the media’. A great mix of delegates were in good spirits possibly winding down for the Easter holidays. The presentation was also short and to the point so no boring ‘ long windedness’. All this added up to a good night, lots of business card swapping, and the feeling it was very worthwhile. A good feeling heading into the Easter break. Have a good one.

Mark.

Live Ribble Valley Magazine is hosting a free event at Workhouse Marketing

Live Ribble Valley is hosting a FREE introductory event for the LEAD programme, a hands on leadership course for senior business leaders and entrepreneurs.  LEAD courses are delivered by CXL. a social business based in Lancashire that offers a range of careers and employment services, including business improvement products. Come along to Workhouse Marketing and find out more about the programme and the funding available, whilst mixing with other Ribble Valley business people.

The event will be held in our purpose built photography studio. Attendees will enjoy locally produced canapes and a glass of wine, whilst having a professional studio-shot portrait taken free of charge!.

Date – Wednesday 31st March

Time – 6pm till 7.30pm

Venue – Workhouse Marketing, Blackburn Road, Ribchester, PR3 3ZQ.

To register for the event please contact Kath Clarke at Live Ribble Valley Magazine

kath.clarke@live-magazines.co.uk or ring 01200 442830

Workhouse Photographic Studio where the event will take place.

no time to blog….too busy eating raw leeks

The talented young Welshman Aaron Ramsey. I hope he makes a full recovery from this horrific injury

When I started this blog I thought it would be fairly straightforward to rattle off  a few hundred words every day, and so on my e-mail footer I proudly invite readers to ‘follow my daily blog’. However, it’s been almost a week since my last post, so clearly I’m either too busy or too disorganised to have any semblance of a routine. Instead I’ll do a summary of what’s been happening since last week…( it’s not through lack of things to write about, all of  the things below could be a blog post in their own right!)

Two visits to new web developers in Manchester (promising), a management meeting (positive), Live Ribble Valley MD Tedd Walmsley in the building (larger than life!), CXL event organised for Workhouse Studios (exciting), 9-man delegation from The Holiday Cottages Group at Workhouse (brilliant but overdue),  Wales v France on TV (aaargh!), an intoxicating win at Blackburn Rugby Club (hallelujah), The Boyfriend at the Parochial Hall (sterling effort), booked our summer hols (cruising), last minute Wine Shop legals(frustrating), Ben moved into flat (at last), Aaron Ramseys broken leg (soul destroying), Wayne Rooney (awesome), a family Sunday dinner (delicious), Ice Hockey (unbelievable!), CXL photoshoot (good fun), Rib Cricket Club AGM (status quo), no oil at home (very cold), St David’s Day (daffodil-less),  catching up with blog (here and now…..)

Talking of St Davids Day, when we were at school, you were allowed to wear a daffodil OR a leek, and it became a lads thing to get the biggest leek you could find, wear it on your lapel….then eat it raw! Here’s some grown-ups doing the same thing!!!

Mark.

Lancashire – what an amazing county….

We recently finished producing the Lancashire Visitor Guide 2010, and last week the first printed copies arrived in the building. Sometimes, even though you’ve been working on a job for a long time with a lot of intense effort, (all credit to Heidi and Graham for terrific work) it’s only when you have the printed version in your hand, do you fully appreciate the scope of what you’ve been asked to do.

When I read the brochure I was literally gobsmacked. What an amazing county Lancashire is. It’s got the lot. Beaches, countryside, cities, food, heritage, sport, entertainment, there’s just so much variety, so much going on, so many fantastic people doing so many fantastic things. We were delighted to be asked to produce the Visitor Guide, but sitting here reading it, only now do I realise what an honour it is to be asked to represent the people and places of such a fabulous county. Lancashire, we hope we’ve done you justice.

You can check out the Visitor Guide in it’s e-mag format on the following link…

http://www.digipages.com/showMagazine.php?mag_id=qaKknpqip6aXYn51hnVkY2Nj

From a personal perspective Nita and I moved to Lancashire 23 years ago with two toddlers, and it’s the best thing we’ve ever done. The Lancashire people are so friendly and instantly made us feel welcome. We’re lucky to live in the Ribble Valley surrounded by fabulous countryside. Sometimes, when you’re in the garden and the sun is shining there’s no place on earth you’d rather be.  We’ve made some great friends, and received nothing but support and encouragement from everybody, including the business community, as we have developed Workhouse Marketing and Workhouse Studios here by the River Ribble in Ribchester. Lancashire is an amazing county and we are privileged to call it home.

Mark Jones, MD Workhouse Marketing.

Oh no, not again…

Here’s our car park at 4pm….

The drive at Workhouse Marketing

Workhouse Photography Studio

Five nice pics from our in-house photographer…

It was Workhouse Marketing’s in-house photographer Andy Woodhouse’s birthday recently and he turned the ripe old age of 22. I asked him to choose 5 photographs he’d taken in the last few weeks, which he really liked, to put in this blog. One shot at Workhouse Studios, our own photographic studio,( that’s Becky, wonder why you like that one….?), the rest on location….and here they are… (Oh and thanks for the cakes)

Becky photographed at Workhouse Studios

Clitheroe Castle

Opposite Twistleton at sunset

Imperial War Museum in Manchester

T2000’s Welding Centre in Nelson

Some snowy pics

A snow covered Workhouse Marketing

Lancashire dry stone wall

The edge of the Forest of Bowland

Over Jeffrey Hill

Workhouse Photography Studio

A snow covered Workhouse Marketing

L-R my brother Gareth, his wife Nan, and yours truly on Boxing Day 2009.

Our patio just before Christmas!

Tuesdays pluses and minuses….

Plus. Our bank is Nat West, and our bank manager is Simon Gill, and we had a meeting with him this morning. He is by far the best manager we’ve ever had. Makes us feel he’s always on our side, always up to date with what’s happening in our business, always straight with us, always polite, pleasant and nice to deal with, gives sound advice too.

Plus. We’re on the High Growth programme run by Winning Pitch. Our consultant is Jed Hassid. We had a meet with him this afternoon, and despite conspiring to thwart him at every turn and suck him into the minutae of our business, he manages to keep pointing us in the right direction and we’re making good progress to achieve good growth next year. It’s going to be an exciting year for Workhouse Marketing.

Plus. Finished a room set shoot today. All credit to Ange, Nicky, Woody, Rob, for making it happen and the pics look superb. Workhouse Studios doing the job it was built for.

Plus. New Stax gardening catalogue. Got first copy today, 164 pages, looks great!

Plus Plus. Heidi. The Studio. For working like Trojans.

Plus Plus. A couple of quick halves in the Ribchester Arms on the way home.

Plus Plus. Wins for both Welsh teams in the Championship Swansea City and Cardiff City. Both promoted to Premier League?

Minus. Calder Services. Came out to mend my boiler which was cutting out, changed a part and said it was fixed and off they went. Wrong, boiler still cutting out. Came back again today and changed a different part, and fixed it. Still charged me for the visit that didn’t work and the part I didn’t need…..a bit miffed.

Minus. The Lurgy. David Hibbert, Andy Constantine off sick. Hurry up back boys we’re missing you.

Minus. Holby City. Sat in Living room at 8.35 with piece of apple tart, looked up to see woman on operating table with chest cut wide open and all insides on view. Not needed BBC, honestly it adds nothing to the show.

Minus. Rain. OK God, enough’s enough.

Four room sets? Can we build it? Yes we can!

It’s been really buzzing at Workhouse Studios this week. We opened our photography studio just a year ago with the boast that we  can build 5 room sets at any one time. Well, this week, I think we’ve exceeded our boast, as the set builders have been in and built four double room sets in just one day! (At a push we could claim that’s 8 room sets!)  I have to say they were professional, quick and applied their trade really well.

They take a big empty space, work with the photographer to understand the angles of the shots, build the wooden frames, build plasterboard walls, plaster the walls ready for wallcovering. Then come the stylists and prop the shots to get the required feel, and within a few days we’ve created exactly the pictures that photographer and client set out to achieve. Here’s some shots of the set being built yesterday.

up go the frames

overhead view

frames for walls

walls being plastered

photographer surveying the sets

So much to say, so much to do, and long live the Queen!

When I started blogging I thought that it would last about three days then I’d run out of things to say. But at the moment there seems to be so much going on that I don’t know where to start. We’ve just purchased a brand new, all singing, all dancing, software system that will basically run the entire business and we’ve started the training process. Nightmare or nirvana, no doubt all will be revealed in due course. We are on the High Growth programme run by Winning Pitch looking at all aspects of the business so we develop effective strategies, structures, procedures and policies to enable us to grow.  We are in the process of changing our accountant, they don’t know it yet but they show so little interest in us, I doubt very much if they even know we’ve got a blog let alone read it. What’s more they have cocked up the wages again this month (it is virtually every month now).

We have the Christmas do to sort out (delegated!), and the relatively famous Workhouse Christmas video to shoot that’s if we can come up with something which is better than the previous five. I’m amazed it’s five years since we started e-mailing video Christmas cards, ahead of the game or what!  I’ll try and retrieve the old ones and put them on this blog nearer the time.

We also have an important photo shoot in the photography studio this week and next, set build, classy styling, the works. We are heavily involved in the launch of Blackburn Youth Zone (Nicky is doing an amazing job), and we’ve just nailed the massive 164 page Stax Trade Centres garden catalogue (Our Stax team are equally amazing).This is on top of the fact that most of our existing clients are active and busy, and we’re winning a fair few new clients. We shouldn’t be surprised though, we have good people at Workhouse Marketing, and they’re doing a good job.

To switch subjects very quickly I didn’t expect to say this, as I’ve no strong views on the Royal Family either way, but I’ve been watching and enjoying ‘The Queen’ on Channel 4 this week.

Emilia Fox and Samantha Bond as The Queen on Channel 4

It started on Sunday and is on every night for 5 nights I think. It’s a sort of drama documentary incorporating a bit of modern history, and is really good mix of original footage, interviews with people involved, and a little drama with five different actresses playing the Queen at different stages of her life. It’s incredible to think that she has been on the throne for 56 years. Many things have happened during our lifetime, but the one celebration many of us have yet to experience is the coronation of a new monarch.

As a 12 year old I do remember the Investiture of Prince Charles as the Prince of Wales at Caernarfon Castle in 1969. In Briton Ferry, the town I was born and brought up in, in South Wales, we were given the day off school, we had this amazing street party and fireworks (mainly bangers) and the house was decked out with bunting, everybody was in fancy dress, it was just a fantastic occasion. I really hope we don’t have a coronation for a long time, but when it comes, I hope the country has just as good a celebration.

Investiture of Prince Charles