4 years late, my first book finally has an index

A book that happened by accident - and what went wrong

Back in 2022 I wrote and self-published my first book.

I did it because other people said I should.

And I did it all by myself, because I wasn't in a position to be able to afford to buy in the book editing, design, etc services that would have helped me spot and avoid any 'rookie gaffes'.

And just like anyone else who's ever self-published their own book, it was only after it started to appear in other people's hands that hindsight arrived (late as always) to point out to me all of those 'rookie gaffes' that I'd somehow failed to spot, before pressing the button to release it onto the wild and onto bookshelves.

My mistakes didn't impact on its success - but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be fixed 

Encouragingly, none of these gaffes which loom large for me seemed to have been spotted by the hundreds of readers all around the world who've bought copies of it and passed them around; they've not stopped the book from winning an award; and they've not prevented interest in it's ideas continuing to catch interest (4 years on, and people are still buying copies of it - without paid for advertising most self-published books stop making sales within a year, but I've never paid for any adverts for it).

But one of those oversights has always niggled me - I omitted to include an index to help readers navigate it. And I have an idea that indexes are also important because they reveal some of the insights and sources of inspiration that the author has drawn on in drafting their book: 

A novel approach to getting the missing pages in readers' hands? 

So 4 years on from when it originally appeared, I've now gotten to creating an index for it - and I'm taking what I think may be a world first approach in how I'm sharing this:

Most people would probably assume that the easiest thing to do would be for me to update the book's manuscript and send this back to the printers. But to my thinking, there's 2 problems with this:

1) it means that everyone who's already bought a copy will miss out on these bonus pages;

2) it means that I'm retrospectively editing the history of the book so that how it's read in the future will be different to how it was read in the past. That somehow doesn't sit well with me: the book as it currently has been that way for the last 4 years in its original form. And its in this form that its generated so many unexpected outcomes that I'm working on a sequel volume to it. To change it now would mean that future readers have different experiences of it, creating inconsistencies in it's own story and history as a book.

So instead, I'm choosing to make these extra index pages freely available to download and share as a 'print and stick in the back of your copy' approach.

This feels far more in keeping with some of the book's ethos in encouraging people to take a more hands-on approach to trying new ways of doing things - and for anyone who's wondering if it might be worth spending a few pounds to get their own copy, it offers an insight into some of the different themes and references I drew on in writing it.

To get your copy of the missing index to 'Loving Your Doubt' -

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NCYAIF6Fu63W2-USxP5tMtg_aM7w3hXA/view?usp=drive_link

And for those of you who grab these pages, I'd be interested to know:

1) if you're a previous reader, has it changed how you now think about the book?

2) if you haven't read the book yet, how far does getting it's index influence the likelihood you might get a copy in the future? 

Why the 'endings' chapter doesn't come at the end my book

'the end' is never 'The end'...

We often think of "the end" as being the final point in something, after which there is nothing more - the end of the movie, the end of a book, the end of a relationship, the end of a business...

But endings don't actually signify a finality of things stopping and not continuing. They're just a transitional stage (albeit sometimes a bumpy on) that leads us into the next thing. After all, if nothing ended, nothing new could begin (because there wouldn't be enough space).

Endings are also not an automatic sign of failure - I've referenced elsewhere how my business has outlasted 90% of all others who started out at the same time as me 20 years ago. But just because they're not still trading like I am, doesn't mean that we should see them as having failed: some may have been designed with an intentionally limited life as part of a stop-gap for people; while for others the world may have changed too much for them, and they decided that they didn't want to twist and subvert themselves for the sake of carrying on being a part of it.

And that's why when I was putting 'Flushed!' together, as part of marking the 20th anniversary of my business, I deliberately didn't make the chapter titled 'endings' the last part of it - to highlight that things can, do, and should, still happen after 'the end' has been announced by someone.

If you want to dig more into this idea about endings not being what most people think they are, and how to approach them better, you should check out the decelerator -https://decelerator.org.uk/ 

After 20 years, people's love affair with CICs seems to waning (or, did anyone else spot that CICs are now becoming rarer in the wild?)

I've always had a personal interest in the government's flagship legal form for social enterprises, the Community Interest Company (CIC), for lots of different reasons.

And I find myself regularly revisiting various published data sets about them - not (always) for idle curiosity, but usually because at least once a year I'm asked to write a feature article about them, or offer comment as part of a national programme or event. And I always try and make sure I'm speaking/writing from a place of actual fact, rather than regurgitating truth illusions about them...

Now, if you know my reputation in relation to CICs, then you may be thinking that I'm about to talk about the data published by the CIC Regulator into how many investigations they've opened in response to complaints and concerned raised with them about the conduct of CICs. Sorry - I'm not, although this number (and trend) is worryingly still zero, despite public frustrations shared by the Fundraising Regulator earlier this year about complaints people are making to them about CICs; and the BBC, Police, and others publicly raising concerns about CICs last year...

I'm instead looking at trend lines - those things you can draw on a chart that show a pattern between a set of numbers that keep changing each year.

I've been tracking data annually, as published by the CIC Regulator, about how many CICs they register each year, and how many they agree to wind up (spoiler: the closure rate of CICs is broadly the same as for all regular private companies, and always seems to have been). 

This is a pretty chaotic chart at first glance, but when you ask excel to plot the 'trend line' (the overall year on year average based on all the numbers across all the years), then there suddenly appears to be a tipping point emerge:

Somewhere around 2023, the average rate at which new CICs are forming (their year on year % growth) became less than the average rate at which they're being wound up (how many are wound up that year as a % of the overall total).

Which means that unless something shifts (and its hard to see what, after the announcement earlier this year that the CIC Regulator will be being wound up itself before the next general election, with no real detail of what this means for existing or future CICs), then CICs will become increasingly fewer in number (based on more of them will be being wound up than are being registered to replace them).

I wondered aloud several years ago if the honeymoon for CICs might be over in light of the exponentially growing number of complaints people were making about them to the CIC Regulator (none of which were ever acted on) - but this data which now shows how people are now choosing them (or not), seems to suggest that 20 years after they were launched as part of a government policy agenda, the honeymoon for them really is now over?

Half way through the year; missed most of my goals so far; but still feeling ok

So we're officially now in June - half way through 2025, and only 6 months to Christmas! 

And tied to our collectively reaching this calendar milestone, seems to have been a recent small flurry of emails, posts on social media, etc from lots of people encouraging us to reflect on how well we've been smashing things for these first 6 months of 2025.

Except when I look back over my shoulder at what I've 'smashed' since January, I find myself at serious risk of giving up on the second half of this year:

- as part of marking the 20th anniversary of my business I wanted to publish my second book out (a retrospective of these first 2 decades). And although I've somehow managed to get the manuscript done, there's still the getting around to sorting out and completing final details that keeps eluding me...

- I wanted to get my website redesigned (I can't remember last time I did it); similarly as part of the porcelain anniversary this year. But I've not yet started that conversation with my web-hosters, SmartBear (but maybe by being so openly public it'll help me be more accountable?).

- I signed up to a few on-line/self-paced courses, which I've not even opened session 1 of yet (I'd hoped that paying actual cash for them would help me better follow through, but turns out not).

Now, none of these involve training to climb a mountain, staging a global conference, or creating a new on-line course, so what have I been playing at to let these things slip so much? After all, if you break them down, they could all have been easily be covered off if I'd devoted just 1 combined hour a week to them all.

Which brings me to the crux of this post - it's easy to set ourselves the goal, and equally easy to miss it (kudos to Douglas Adams for the sound effect of when we do), and when we see it happening we get disheartened, and so are more likely to leave things unfinished. Worse, we're probably also less likely to even try to set a future ambition as a result.

But here's the trick that I'm using to keep my motivation going: what the hell have I been doing in these last 6 months which which meant that I missed achieving these otherwise very achievable things?

Professionally - the start of this year saw the end of a lot of funded business support programmes of various types; and I found myself being approached by several to help them make sure that they'd hit all their targets, had all the audit paperwork trails in place, and enterprises being supported by them were in the best possible health as they cut the (financial and support) cord after March. Anyone who's managed funded projects knows how hectic the last few months of any can be. Multiple that by 3 to 4...

Personally - my unpaid caring roles were notably ramping up (and continue to). I'm not going to share details here, because the stories about the immediate family members I support are theirs to share, not mine. But for context, the government's (and most carer support services') support for carers is based on the assumption that you only care 1 for person. Recent research is starting to come out that's helping to highlight the different and more stressful experiences of the 'sandwich carer' (someone who cares for 2 people who span different generations). I'm in the next camp of being the sole unpaid carer for 3 people. Added into this, I'm self-employed (which means I'm not recognised in law as a carer), so I'm needing to spin the plates of supporting them, keep my business running to help keep the rent paid, and all with no support for myself in these roles...

So maybe missing my targets is OK - because I can see that a lot of good stuff has still been happening in wider communities, and for those closest to me. And that only happened because I didn't stick to my goals and pursue them above all else, (and there's still another 6 months for me to catch up with them, right?).

Just as I shared earlier this year about giving up on a dream that I'd been chasing for 20 years, maybe we should also hold the goals we set for ourselves more lightly too - and try to recognise that sometimes not achieving them can serve a greater purpose?    

Whatever happened to Social Firms England?

When I first started working in the social economy (a time before the likes of Social Enterprise UK, Locality, and Unltd), there were already some well established bodies - including what become known as Social Firms UK.

It emerged in the 1990s, when there were a series of European funded programmes across the country that explored how businesses could create and sustain employment for people with a disability as part of their ongoing business model - at that time, a revolutionary concept.

And it its early years, it undertook pioneering research, lobbying, and policy work that's influenced the rules we see today that mean there's greater recognition and support in the workplace for people with disabilities; quality standards such as the disability confident employer; and also that bodies such as Social Enterprise UK now exist (Social Firms UK was one of its founding members).

Ultimately, it's responsible for the recognition that a legitimate purpose for any social enterprise is to create and sustain employment for people who find themselves disadvantaged and discriminated against in the labour market through no fault of their own or choosing (the 'social firm' model of social enterprise). It also amassed an enviable resource library of case studies, research, and guides, for any 'social firm'; were involved in some of the first national programmes to deliberately create social franchise models to help scale the reach and impact of the sector; and also developed one of the first national sector toolkits for reporting social impact.

But in recent years, its fortunes have waned - it launched its own accreditation standard, the Social Firms Star, which few enterprises adopted; and as part of the devolution agenda, separated itself into Social Firms England, Social Firms Scotland, and Social Firms Wales.

I realised recently that I'd not had anything land in my inbox from Social Firms England for a few months, so looked them up, only to find that it has been dissolved in March 2023 - with no announcement to their email list, social media pages, or any other media outlet. Looking at their last accounts, it seems that it had increasingly struggled financially to be able to maintain itself.

Across the other regions, Social Firms Scotland merged with SenScot (the Social Enterprise Network for Scotland) in 2021, although SenScot itself now seem to be struggling on the basis of their last filed accounts, and that their website domain is no longer is use?;

however Social Firms Wales still seems to be actively continuing to offer support to the social firms model of social enterprises.   

So I'm left wondering, whatever happened to Social Firms England - it was one of the pioneers of the modern landscape of the social enterprise ecosystem today, and also held a lot of valuable research, knowledge and learning that would still be of interest to individual ventures, as well as bodies looking to better support the sector as a whole.

Does anyone know where those resources may now reside, and why, unlike with other social enterprise infrastructure bodies, there was no announcement, reflection, or celebration of the impact it had had on the wider sector over its lifetime? 

why freelancers are so (unnecessarily?) self-critical

Reflecting with fellow freelancers as part of a recent networking get-together, we all shared and identified that we're really self-critical and unforgiving of ourselves when we get things wrong - yet are often far more understanding and accepting of others when they do...

My idea about the usual way we can reconcile this, is to do with our not being part of regular teams (in the ways that our salaried counterparts are) - in not having access to appraisals, regular training activities, or all of the other ongoing feedback that can come on a daily basis in micro interactions, we're lacking the perspective to make more sense of our own experiences. And we're more tolerant of others because we don't have the job security our salaried counterparts have, so are more concerned to maintain and protect relationships with have with clients. 

But I think there's actually something else that's equally, if not more, important in understanding this apparent contradiction: because we're not part of a regular team/workplace, we don't get to see all the mistakes other people make everyday that they're either getting away with, or turn out not to be that much of a problem after all.

Without the openness about mistakes and failures, we surely risk entrenching ourselves in echo chambers of our own mistakes - with no recourse to judge how far our errors and lapses really are that 'bad' in comparison to other peoples', we'll increasingly and unnecessarily chastise ourselves to our own detriment?  

How, as freelancers, we sabotage ourselves without realising it

Being self-employed/freelance is often presented as an aspirational lifestyle: with freedom from bosses, the ability to choose more of the work that makes us happy, greater flexibility to work when and how we prefer, and such like.

I'd written elsewhere about some of the downsides to this model of employment (no sick pay, precarious income, etc), but this time I wanted to explore a possible blind spot that many of us haven't thought about which means that we're likely going to trip ourselves up without realising it.

As freelancers and sole traders, we live and work in a bubble.

You may be aware of the risk of 'bubbles' from things you've read about social media: the algorithms show you more of what you like, and so it creates an echo chamber of your own exiting preferences and biases.

And in being self-employed/freelancing, that bubble can easily start to form without our realising it - unlike our salaried counterparts, we don't have any line management, regular appraisal, or desk buddies. These are the people and systems who might help otherwise highlight potential self-limiting beliefs or emergent prejudice within ourselves before they become a major problem.

In the absence of such 'relatively safe' professional challenge to our thinking, it becomes very easy and automatic to start to entrench bad habits and practices, missing opportunities, and not recognising options we otherwise might and should.

Fortunately, the way to mitigate this risk is actually quite easy - we should form and become part of groups that will allow us to share our stories of "is it just me...?", and equally have people who we can trust as our peers, constructively challenge us over our thinking, attitudes, and approaches.

Whilst this may sound like a 'nice to do', surely it's better to identify and 'air any dirty laundry' with friends in private, than publicly with our clients or HMRC, etc?

And the good news is that such places already freely exist - Freelance Heroes, Being Freelance, IAF meetups, etc are all good starting places to start to create ways to have sanity checks for yourself, and to start to create 'accountability buddies': people who can take the place of a missing line-manager in helping you make sure you're actually getting on with those things that you keep saying/meaning to, but somehow never seem to get done... 

could legal company forms help protect my mental wellbeing?

The date of my publishing this post on my blog (Oct 10th) marks World Mental Health day - a time when there are floods of other posts, tweets, emails, etc being circulated, so I don't expect that this will catch too many people's attention, but I've always stated that this blog is in part my 'thinking aloud space' - and this post relates to me 'thinking aloud' about an aspect of my mental wellbeing, and how I try and best manage it.

Firstly - as background to to the title of this post, I've always said that I prefer being a sole trader instead of incorporating myself as a limited company (as conventional wisdom would suggest I should). 

This isn't just because I try and be unconventional, but also in remaining a sole trader, I have to pay more tax on my income and earnings that a company director or salaried employee would (and I think that paying tax is actually a good idea). It also means that technically, I've unlimited personal liability - I can't easily "wash my hands" of a problematic contract by simply dissolving a company (in whose name the contract etc, would be, meaning that nothing of the fall out would legally stick to me). As such, it forces me to try and take greater care in how I approach my work and also hopefully sends a message to those I work with that in seeking to establish trust and rapport with them, I'm willing to make myself very vulnerable personally. This element of personal risk is something I also try and further manage through my professional insurance policies, and how I seek to structure and maintain relationships with each person and organisation I find myself working with.

But it's world mental health day, so I'm taking this opportunity to revisit the above position about my not being incorporated to review it from a new perspective - my mental wellbeing.

As a sole trader, parent, carer, etc etc (we all have multiple identities - some of which are more secret than others...), I'm very conscious of trying to best manage my own health and wellbeing, including my mental health. And this list of roles I hold each brings its own tensions, stresses, anxieties, etc that aren't always easy to 'turn off' - but I've always sought to harness what some might see as negative or harmful emotional states that arise from them, to generate responses that help motivate and keep me moving forwards.  

Now, from time to time, I try and take stock of how I'm doing in managing the above - always with a view to trying to see if there might be ways to change a practice or habit that could help  further mitigate or reduce a recognised stressor in/on myself.

And it's the idea of company forms that I'm currently trying to consider to this end - a limited company exists as a 'person' separate to me. It's therefore that person, not me, who would sign contracts, agree terms and conditions, etc - so in the event of the worst coming to pass in my delivering a piece of work (the client decides to sue me), then I could give notice of dissolving the company, and not be concerned about the spectre of potential personal bankruptcy.

However... that's something of a 'nuclear option': I'd only be able to use this fall back position once, because if so 'activated' in that worst case scenario, then all my other business activities linked and associated to and through the company would also cease to be.  And if I then recontacted everyone in my current/original guise of being a sole trader, it would look like I was trying to duck responsibilities, be unethical, and generally exhibit the sort of behaviours that as a society, we decry when we see some larger corporates doing...

And then there's the question of how I'd mitigate the risk that having such a legally distanced structured from the people I'm working with might mean in terms of my becoming complacent in my relationships with them - one of the main reasons I'm currently maintaining my status as a sole trader.

 

So, on balance, I'm not sure that having identified this option I can actually adopt it - in theory it would offer me an assurance against the 'worst case scenario', and so help reduce a stressor and anxiety. But in practice if I ever needed to enact it, it would mean that I'd have to shut all my work down and not be able to easily restart working in the way I am now - in much the same way that if I were sued as a sole trader (and my insurance providers felt I'd not acted with sufficient degree of professional conduct with the upset client in order to cover the claim), I'd not be able to easily restart working in the way I am now. 

'Killing' a company that I owned could also impact on my personal credit rating (in the same way that getting personally sued might also) - so that consideration also balances itself out.

  

But it's an interesting perspective on the question that every sole trader and freelancer faces at some point - of whether to incorporate themselves as a limited company; but from a very different starting point. A perspective that seems timely with it being world mental health day.

However, as will all of my 'thinking aloud' posts that I make here in this blog, I'd be interested and keen to hear what holes people might be able to pick in my above 'workings out', and if there's anything that I've missed in thinking this through?  

Is the growth in CICs actually damaging the wider social enterprise movement?

Some people may be aware that I've always questioned and challenged the Community Interest Company (CIC) legal form (see previous blog posts here) - largely because I've found that most social enterprises who've incorporated with this form have subsequently learnt that it wasn't actually the 'best fit' for them and their business model, and because what they're usually presented/'sold' as it being, doesn't actually stand up to scrutiny when looked at by evidence and research...

However, there are several social enterprises out there that I've supported to gain this status - I've always seen my role as an adviser to help people make better informed choices, not to tell they what decisions they should be making.

And it's in that vein, that I come to be typing this latest blog - prompted in part by a recent article by Pioneers Post on the 'explosion' of CICs during the pandemic: https://www.pioneerspost.com/news-views/20210825/record-number-of-community-interest-companies-amid-rise-of-grant-funds and CIC regulator wind up extent and causes

My concern about this sudden 'blossoming' of CICs is that rather than being a good thing in showing the growth of social enterprise in general, it may actually be more damaging to the sector in the long run...

Let me walk through through my thinking here, so as to try and help clarify and explain this rather bold assertion - and as always in my blog posts, you can leave comments to refute or challenge any of these:

1) Social Enterprises should be trading businesses, but most CICs aren't

In the absence of an overarching legal definition of what absolutely defines a social enterprise, the sector bodies have reached a consensus on what their defining characteristics should be (interestingly, none of which specify particular legal forms). Front and centre in these is that a social enterprise should be (or be clearly moving towards) generating most of its income from trading activities - but there is no requirement for CICs to need to trade, in order to generate their income or achieve their social mission! 

• when you apply to be a CIC, the application asks "if" you make a profit, not "when" - so the CIC Regulators' assumption is that most CICs' default business model will be that they expect to them lose money each year and/or will be reliant on grant funding to achieve their social purpose (you can't make a profit/surplus from grants);
• according to the CIC Regulator in their own published annual reports, most of the CICs they register will be wound up within 18 months - usually because they were unable to access the grant funding that they thought this legal form would enable then to be awarded.

2) Why are social entrepreneurs being encouraged to set up social enterprises in ways that mean they don't need to trade? 

As this legal form seems to be oft promoted to start-up social enterprises and social entrepreneurs as being the 'best form' for them, but it doesn't actually require them to act in ways that facilitate them to better meet the qualifying criteria of being what they say they want to be - how do we reconcile this apparent contradiction?

3) Are the public now seeing CICs as another form of charity, creating confusion about what social enterprise really 'is'?

If the most feted legal form for social enterprises to adopt therefore doesn't encourage the 'social enterprises' using it to act as social enterprises (with some evidences finding that CICs are actually more reliant on grants than charities are!) - it's going to cause confusion amongst others (who are already confused about what social enterprise is from the lack of a legal definition). If CICs are seen as not trading to achieve their social purpose - how will this not confuse people as to the need for social enterprises to trade: are social enterprises therefore just another type of charity, rather than a revolutionary/innovative/transformative way of doing business?. And this confusion will surely mean its harder to create more consistent messages about what social enterprise is and can do, in order for the sector to realise its full transformative potential.

However, as will all things, there are exceptions to the above - there are social enterprises out there who've never taken a penny in grant funding; who have found clever ways to harness what many feel to be 'too risky' elements of the CIC form with regards to the powers of the CIC Regulator over them; and who are trailblazing for the wider sector as a result.

My interest here isn't to decry this specific legal form wholesale, but rather to try and contribute to a wider ongoing discussion that means as a sector we can be more coherent, and ultimately make it easier to achieve the things we aspire to.

When video calls make you feel like a failure before you've even begun

2020 has brought in a new age where video calls have become the default norm for meetings.

But even before the pandemic and the first full national lock-down in the spring of this year, I had committed to seek to do more meetings remotely through this marvel of technology back in 2018, (and been annually reporting on how far I'd been able to achieve this within my impact reports on myself). So in some ways, I've had a head start, but the move to video over in-person seemed to be a trend that was already growing - Covid-19 has simply accelerated it to force us all to start doing it sooner than we might have done otherwise.

However, it strikes me that (as with many things), it's very easy to undermine ourselves in this new format - not just in front of our colleagues, but also damaging our own self-beliefs and sense of worth, in having not fully worked out and adopted what the 'unspoken rules' of this way of meeting are:

1) "you're still on mute" (the tag-line of 2020)

I don't know what the exact figure is, but most video calls would probably be about 10 minutes shorter if we weren't all muting and un-muting ourselves when we want to speak, and forgetting which setting we'd last toggled the mic to. 

I get that in some instances, there's good technical reason for having mics off (some people's laptop's have the mics next to the speakers, and so inspire ear-splitting feedback). But in the main, telling people to turn their microphones off if they're not speaking is akin to being back in school and told you have to raise your hand, and hope that the teacher decides you have something relevant to say. Hopefully we're all a little more adult now than we were in school, and can be trusted to act accordingly - after all, how many physical team meetings have you sat in, where the rule was you couldn't speak without raising your hand, and the chair granting you permission to open your mouth? It doesn't really instil a culture of openness, trust, and respect; and, if our hand waving doesn't get spotted by the person running the video call, we feel invisible and not important.

2) "where have you all gone?"

For people not used to there being options whereby the arrangement of how people's faces are laid out on your screen changes, it's easy to accidently minimise or change the whole view so that while the rest of us can still see and hear the person, they're desperately panicking that they've lost us all and can't find how to 'get us back'.

Once we've done a few calls, and had this mishap ourselves, its easy to avoid, but for the un-initiated, making what feels like a novice mistake can be a serious dent to our confidence in ourselves: after all, if we can't manage to keep a window open on our laptops, how can we be trusted with anything more involved?

 

3) "please ignore my laundry"

Working from home is a mixed bag - I video blogged about this recently, whilst laid under my duvet... not everyone has the luxury of a space in their homes where they can easily set up an office, or have a wall that isn't covered in their kids drawings, or has an airing rack in front of it.

As part of instilling confidence in others, we strive to create a professional image for ourselves (after all, we wouldn't have normally turned up to work in our dressing gowns, would we?). Having to apologise for what people are seeing of our lives, before we can even start to address the topic of conversation for the call puts us on a back foot in questioning our own value and importance (especially when we see how beautiful some other's people's kitchens appear to be...).

4) "I'm sorry about my kids"

Even physical meetings were never completely immune from occasional interruptions (people confusing room numbers, lunch or drinks being delivered, and such like). And most of us also had our phones on in case our kids' schools needed to contact us in an emergency. So why do we feel we have to apologise for our kids now, when they're not doing anything they wouldn't normally do, and neither are we? 

If I'm leading any call where someone's kids wander by, or try and get their parents attention, I'll either invite them into the call, or use it as a prompt for a short break for the rest of us. Treat kids like human beings, and they'll have a better chance of growing up like ones we can respect and be proud of.

Parents shouldn't be made to feel guilty for having their children in their lives.

 

5) "try turning your camera off"

Just because everyone is now doing video calls, doesn't mean that everyone lives in an area where there's sufficient internet bandwidth to handle it smoothly (only 12% of the UK has access to fibre broadband). Similarly, not all video conferencing software is the same - there can be notable differences between things like Zoom and MS Teams as to how much internet speed you need to be able to hold a call.

And there's also other factors, like what sort of magic computer chips live inside your computer, if your home Wi-Fi router shares its signal between how many people are on-line at once, and such like - all of which means that in any given group call, there's usually always at least one person who can't be visible because to turn their camera on would mean that everything freezes for them. And to be the only person in a meeting that's essentially 'hidden' in this way, when everyone else has managed to remain visible, means that they can be easily forgotten and overlooked. And they'll usually feel it's their fault for having chosen to live in a poorly digitally-connected community, or not having been able to buy a laptop that's able to handle streaming video calls.

All of which point to video calls being potentially very damaging to our belief in ourselves as being able to be taken seriously as a 'working professional', before we've even opened our mouths to say hello and introduce ourselves. And this only further damages our belief in our own competence, and undermines how we build (or maintain) working relationships with other people.  

So perhaps the next time you're on a call and someone's background looks a little cluttered, they're struggling to be able to share their video, or they need to find how to re-size the window on their screen, you can remember how it was for you when you started doing video calls. And you can offer them some encouragement and validation that they're not the failure they think they are, just because no-one thought to explain to them where all the buttons are?

 

having your accounts audited doesn't prove they're correct - so why do we keep thinking it does?

Lets get one thing clear from the start here - there are a lot of accountants who will be upset with me for writing this.

But at the same time, there are hopefully a lot of groups and businesses who'll now start to save a lot of money and stress after reading it...

There's a commonly held belief that I want to correct with this post - namely that an awful lot of people (including commissioners, grant making bodies, government officials, and the like) all think that if you have your accounts audited it proves that they're accurate.

It doesn't.

The process of auditing is simply someone giving an opinion that the way you've approached adding up your receipts and invoices (based on what you choose to reveal to them) is sound. 

An audit does not guarantee that the accounts are fully correct, or that you're a sound business proposition - and if you don't believe me, just go back and read what it says on the certificate that you pay an auditor to give you (the below extracts are from the auditors certification to the 2019 accounts for Arrandco Business Services):

• "Our objectives are to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements as a whole are free from material misstatement...  Reasonable assurance...is not a guarantee that an audit...will always detect a material misstatement when it exists."

• "We do not accept or assume responsibility to any party... to any body, for our work, for this report, or the opinions we have formed"

So if the audit process doesn't guarantee it will spot mistakes in your accounts, and if there is subsequently found to be an issue that the auditor missed, then the auditor isn't responsible for that - so what do we pay for..?

And to add to this question on the validity of the audit process, let's also remind ourselves of a few recent 'audit failures' - 

Patissie Valleirie - when asked why the auditors to this high street retail chain didn't spot the £40m fraud that spanned several years, their auditors said they don't look for fraud as part of their audit process... 

Carillion - not just one, but two firms of auditors missed the signs of a greater than £1bn hole in the accounts of this national construction firm that was a one-time darling of government commissioners, as well as ongoing signs of insolvent trading...

Kids Company - the flagship charity that suddenly seemed to run out of cash in 2015, was having serious concerns raised about apparent financial reporting and management irregularities to its Trustees as far back as 2002, yet still had accounts signed off every year...

RSM Tenon - one of the leading accountancy and audit firms found that it wasn't even getting its own accounts right after they were signed off...

the Charity Commission - last year openly said that about half of the accounts filed with it aren't being properly examined or checked by the auditors who are being paid to do so, which calls into question how far we can trust the accounts of any charity in general...

So - back to my opening question: if the process of auditing accounts doesn't guarantee that they're correct, and the auditor has no responsibility if its subsequently found that they didn't do their job properly:

(1) why do we pay for our accounts to be audited?

(2) and in light of the above quick example from across different sectors, why do we still keep asking for accounts to be audited as proof of assurance that the organisation is trading legally and is not insolvent?

how social impact reports sometimes tell us more about ourselves, than about the changes we've created for others

To my knowledge, I'm sill the only freelance/self-employed consultant to openly publish a social impact report on myself - and this year marks the 13th one!

And this year I've taken a different approach to how I present the findings of the indicators that track my 'social performance' from the stance of economic, environmental, and social themes. As well as continuing to benchmark the results externally where I'm able to source relevant comparisons, I'm also now using them to consider how far I'm contributing to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. After all, small enterprise and freelancers make up the overwhelming majority of all the businesses in the world, so the best chance of being able to make progress against these goals is through our collective efforts, right?

And while this take has been widely lauded so far (some even referring to me as 'genius' in doing so!), it's not this new format which is my stand-out takeaway from this years impact report.

Instead, it's the footnotes and narrative that I add where the results seem to be significantly different to the previous year - a sign that somethings not played out as I'd hoped, or, as has been the case in the past, actually an indication that the quality of my provision is actually far better than might have otherwise been expected in the circumstances (one year learner satisfaction fell 15% on the previous year, but digging into it, I found that over 1/3 of all learners on courses I delivered that year had attended under duress, so the satisfaction scores should have been correspondingly much lower!).

And during the period that this impact report covers, I had a significant change in my personal circumstances - as well as the tail-end of recovering my business from the impact of the massive flooding that hit the Calder Valley at the end of 2015, I also moved out of the family home and relocated in another town (don't worry - I'm still a Northerner in the Pennines).

My professional self felt that I'd be able to manage this transition pretty well, and client feedback has shown that my standards of delivery haven't been affected by this change. However, what this latest impact report shows is that the way in which I try and manage my business has been perhaps more affected than I might have otherwise hoped:

• I've not been able to continue to use public transport for business travel to the same extent;
• my ability to procure from other social enterprises, co-ops, and charities has been lessened;
• the amount of pro bono support I was able to offer was down.

And these are perhaps to be expected during a period of family change and upheaval, rethinking priorities about life, and no longer living in such close proximity to rail and bus terminals as I used to. 

However, these things aren't an excuse not to try and rethink how I adapt to my new circumstances in trying to maintain my commitment to working out my values in how I work - and to that end I'm looking to change how I offer to meet people, seeking to make better use of video technologies: something I'll be adding to my reporting matrix next year.

And I think that that's something which is often missing from many impact reports I read from others - as well as the lack of external benchmarks and previous trends to help make sense of just how far achievements are worthy of recognition, an openness in committing to change their business models as a result of what they show.

(by the way - my full impact report for the year 2017/8 is now available on this link)

who in their right mind would be self-employed?

I've been self-employed for over 13 years now (although more by accident than deliberate design), and I increasingly hear arguments being made everywhere as to why more of us should set up our own businesses, become self-employed, or start a career as a freelancer. 

But in all the hype and excitement, I can't help but feel that people aren't being given the 'full picture' of what they might be trading off in not pursuing more traditional employment options, and as a result, rushing into something that makes their lives harder and less happy than they might potentially have otherwise been.

Don't believe me? Well, what about these various published researches that highlight the 'dark truth' about self-employment that very few (if any) of its advocates share with us:

less earnings and more poverty - 

- as a body of workers, we're increasingly likely to be earning below the minimum wage, and the trend is that this will be true for majority of us within the next 2 years: 

https://flipchartfairytales.wordpress.com/2016/03/22/self-employed-slide-further-into-poverty/

and

https://flipchartfairytales.wordpress.com/2016/10/26/why-low-paid-self-employment-is-everyones-problem/

and

http://businessadvice.co.uk/hr/employment-law/government-urged-to-protect-freelancers-with-self-employed-minimum-wage

- compared to our 'employed' counterparts, we're actually earning less now than we did 20 years ago: 

http://www.resolutionfoundation.org/media/press-releases/typical-earnings-of-the-self-employed-lower-than-20-years-ago/ 

- and compared to those same employed counterparts, we're also paying more in tax on the earnings we can make than they do on the wages they're paid:

https://flipchartfairytales.wordpress.com/2017/03/10/self-employment-whos-dodging-the-tax/ 

- changes to our benefits system by government, means that for those of us who qualify as being eligible for some type of income support, we'll now be about £2,000 a year worse off than before...

http://businessadvice.co.uk/hr/payroll/universal-credit-leaving-self-employed-over-2000-a-year-worse-off-than-employees 

- all of which means that many of us have very little (if any) cash savings to fall back on in the event of a 'rainy day':

http://smallbusiness.co.uk/business-savings-strains-self-employed-2542586/ 

more sickness and worse (physical) health - 

- we're not entitled to sick pay: if we get sick, we can't earn or claim anything in the way that our employed counterparts can:

http://businessadvice.co.uk/hr/payroll/self-employed-demand-statutory-sick-pay-ahead-of-any-other-benefit

- as a result, over 80% of us who fall ill will work through it, as we can't afford to stop earning, placing further risk to our long-term future health:

https://www.moneydonut.co.uk/news/self-employed-risk-health-working-through-illness 

more loneliness and worse (mental) health - 

- working for yourself means you're more likely to suffer from loneliness and the anxiety that's associated with this:

https://www.fastcompany.com/3059317/how-ive-learned-to-thrive-with-the-loneliness-of-freelancing

longer hours and less time with / more stress for our families:

- if the main household earner is self-employed (as was my own experience for 12 years), then not only are their relationships with their family increasingly likely to suffer, but their family will also begin to feel more stressed as well:

http://businessadvice.co.uk/insurance/health/pressures-of-self-employment-creep-into-family-life

- we also work longer hours (typically 13 hours a day), with less time off for holidays:

https://www.sectorsdonut.co.uk/news/forget-balance-self-employment-about-work-life-blur

- and women in particular struggle to be able to maintain a semblance of controlled hours if self-employed, juggling multiple family responsibilities which lead them to have extremely elongated days with little (if any) time for themselves and their own well-being:

https://www.startupdonut.co.uk/node/120747 

retirement?

- less than 1 in 5 of us is able to save into a pension (unlike our employed counterparts whose employers make regular monthly contributions into one on their behalf on top of the salary they pay them..):

https://www.ipse.co.uk/our/news-listing/self-employed-pensions-the-ticking-time-bomb.html 

So the research shows us that to strike out as an entrepreneur means you're more likely to be poor/in poverty; suffer long-term ill health; have worse relationships with your family; and never be able to retire...

and you what makes this even worse? Government is aware of all of this from the official statistics it collects and openly publishes, yet somehow doesn't seem to be able to get around to doing anything about them: 

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/trendsinselfemploymentintheuk/2018-02-07 

If I've made it sound like self-employment is a bleak landscape that only the wretched and foolish would dare to venture into, I apologise. My interest in collating and presenting these various and multiple researches is, as always in my blogs, a desire to share knowledge in helping people make more informed decisions and being able to spot/avoid hype - it's not all doom and gloom for everyone. After all, 15% of us do it. And we do it for a variety of reasons: the unavailability of other forms of employment, the need for flexibility around family/caring responsibilities, the desire to use a personal skill or passion that outweighs the apparent cost of maintaining it as a sometimes hobby, and similar.

And in light of our Government's apparent disinterest in us, we're also increasingly finding ways to support ourselves:

Facebook groups like Freelance Heroes - https://www.facebook.com/groups/freelanceheroes

Campaigns like MicroBiz Matters

- https://microbizmattersday.rocks/blog/

Pooling of financial support for each other through co-operative initiatives such as 'Bread Funds'

- http://breadfunds.uk/

The current state of self-employment and freelancing may therefore be very precarious, but we can perhaps have hope of a brighter future if we start to take more action in all of our interests by working together, and supporting each other more..?

and the least sustainable legal form of social enterprise is...

Anyone who's ever asked me for (professional) advice or guidance will know that I always try refer to what published research has to say about your question - I'd much rather offer option and direction on the basis of objective evidenced knowledge, rather than any personal preference or other bias.

And many know that I also seem to be able to make sense of all the options around legal forms for social enterprises here in the UK (at my last count, 14 options that fall under 7 regulatory bodies depending on which you pick) - something which has led me to be invited to develop and deliver training courses throughout the wider sector, be interviewed for webinars, and also offer some of my famous beer/cake mentoring in relation to as well...

Historically, when helping people navigate these choices as to their legal form, I've always referred to the legal powers of the respective regulators, what published research shows about their apparent success in being awarded grants, and their relative 'popularity' based on sector mapping studies.

But today I add another dimension to this referencing and research about social enterprise legal forms - how they affect your future financial performance!

Given the complexities around understanding and mapping the wider world of social enterprise, there's scant research or monitoring around how any enterprises' chosen legal form may impact on its future potential for success in financial terms - and while there are lots of other contributory factors which means that we can never look at the legal form as the sole indicator of this performance outcome, I felt it might be useful to take an initial look at what the studies that are starting to be published might be suggesting.

To this end, I'm indebted to Power to Change's research team, who have started to track and publish bench-marking data for social and community enterprises around a number of themes, but also a couple of other bodies too. There's not many sector mapping studies that look at the performance of an enterprise correlated to its legal form, but the initial ones I've been able to draw on are:

• Follow the Money (2017), Power to Change
• CIC 10 year survey (2016), CIC Association
• Open source economic data set (2017), Co-operatives UK
• Charity Register Statistics (2017), Charity Commission

And yes, the data from these will be subjective - for example, Power to Change will only be reporting on data from social/community enterprises that it has directly engaged with and supported; but as I said already, this is a first go at seeing what might be gleaned and identified from cross-referencing what these studies and mappings appear to be finding.

And what they seem to show is:

1. Charities are consistently the best performing legal structures with average turnovers having the least variance of all legal forms between the different studies (£450k - £650k); they also seem to generate the highest profit ratios from trading activities (averaging 11%)
2. Companies limited by guarantee have the lowest reliance on grant funding (averaging 48%), but also a lower profit ratio of 4% of income
3. Co-op Societies seem to struggle to generate profits (2% of turnover), but in having the largest average turnover of all the legal forms (£7.2m), this equates to far larger cash amounts than the other options do

The biggest surprises though, come in relation to CICs - the Power to Change study shows them to have an average turnover of nearly £2m, but the CIC Associations own mapping found the vast majority generate less than £10,000 a year. This clearly shows that there's HUGE variances between individual CICs that are trading: there are a few 'unicorns' out there, but most are 'zombies'. 

And I use the phrase 'trading' loosely, as these various studies also highlight that CICs are the most grant reliant and dependant of all the legal forms (58% of all income is grants - for comparison, it's 53% for charities; and grants are used as the main route by the majority of CICs for raising any investment). Worryingly, they are also the only legal form whose average enterprise seems to be generating a loss - Power to Change's mapping found that the average CIC makes a loss every year of -1.5% against its income...

I've blogged before about how the 'honeymoon' for CICs may be waning, so does this add further weight to my concerns about the viability of this legal form to best enable social entrepreneurs to achieve their vision? (especially when 1/3 of all CICs also report that this legal form has been a hindrance to them doing so...).

I don't know, and I don't think that this quick snapshot across a handful of others' published data can offer any real answers. But what it hopefully does is to help further add to our knowledge about the best routes through which social enterprises can best realise and fulfil their potential. Hopefully it will also generate more and more useful questions for those undertaking future studies into this wider sector.

social value - more impact or more talk? (reflections from Social Value 17)

Part of my approach to my CPD is to tweet from events I attend to capture my thoughts and reflections from them, and then subsequently turn to my blog to try and crystallise my learning from them, and what difference it will subsequently make in how I support clients in the future - and my attending Social Value 17 is no exception...

The conference is one of a series of events that Social Enterprise Yorkshire and Humber stage throughout the year, in response to interests expressed by its member social enterprises in the region. It was designed to look at how social value is being introduced into the sector and public commissioning, and subsequently, how social enterprises might better approach identifying and reporting their impact to aid in their winning public sector contracts.

And against that agenda, I personally found it to be something of a mixed bag (as anyone who was following my tweets on the day would have likely already surmised...)

Having now 'slept on it', I think my overall impressions remain what I left with on the day:

• probably a bit too much of being 'talked at', rather than sharing stories and facilitated networking (if you do a picture search on twitter for the events' hashtag, all the images are of people holding a microphone and standing in front of a powerpoint screen)
• there wasn't really much given by way of reason as to why as a sector we should be getting more serious about reporting our impact, beyond the fact that some public sector commissioners are starting to write it into their tender specifications - but in my experience, this is usually the weakest (and least relevant for most) reason...
• given that the main focus of the event was on how social value strengthens the commissioning of public services, a conspicuous absence of anyone from any health bodies
• a lot of gaps with regards to practicalities for attending enterprises and charities to be able to follow up on to support themselves with identifying and starting to report their social impact (Social Value UK's free webinar series, the Global Value Exchange set of standardised outcome indicators, and the Inspiring Impact self-help resources to name but 3 that no one made any references to...)

but there were also some moments that were encouraging:

• the open recognition that most private companies are shaming the sector in being able to better report impact than many local social enterprises and charities can
• in the workshop, hearing local commissioners share some of their frustrations and hopes for social value commissioning, (and being open to learning from previous strategies and directives from the last 15 years that I shared with them)

What I also noticed is that despite this being an event about social value, there were very few examples of impact reports on show (with the exception of the 3 social investment bodies present - Key Fund, Charity Bank, and Unity Bank) - but I also took a handful of copies of mine and left out on the tables, and all of which were taken with interest and enthusiasm when people realised what they were...

So - overall, a disappointing day in terms of being able to learn anything new that I didn't already know (and in fact, it turning out that I knew more than some of the keynote speakers during opportunities for questions I put to them, and the number of people subsequently approaching me after the formal event to the conference...), but also encouraging to see that commissioners are becoming more open and wanting to progress the debate and discussion. And also useful in helping me better understand the messages that clients I work with are being exposed to, in being able to better structure and direct my support for their future benefit.

What I also took away from the day was that there's also more appetite to be open in taking about when we make mistakes, recognising that there's great value in the learning we can all benefit from through such openness (however embarrassing and fearful we might feel in admitting it...)

(and as an additional 'personal highlight' from the event - my most popular tweet from it was a picture of Key Fund's Dave Thornett apparently playing some bizarre 'social value' game...)