Hello!
Welcome to this week’s blog and thank you for reading and sending me your feedback and positive comments. It makes everything worthwhile.
Before heading down to London for four days this week I managed to get some quality family time in and it was a pleasure watching my six-year-old play for his Sunday league team Norton and Stockton ancients. This week they played 21st All-stars from Bishop Auckland. They lost the match but I was extremely proud when Harvey scored an amazing goal and celebrated in style sliding on his knees and getting high fives from his team mates.
The team only got together last October and its fantastic to see them growing in confidence week on week. Whether they win lose or draw it’s a great journey for the team and much of the credit goes to the dedication of the team coach James Thwaite who is doing a sterling job. Keep it up lads.
On Monday morning I headed back to our London HQ, this time for a four-day stretch so plenty of energy was needed. A good job Kelly made one of her famous Sunday lunches to keep my strength up.
Monday is always the hardest as I’m trying to work on the train with limited Wi-Fi so I don’t get fully operational until about 1pm when I get to my desk. I also had a few appointments planned in to scope out three website projects plus some pretty interesting design briefs. I stayed in the office until around 8pm then headed to my favorite restaurant on White cross street called The Jane Row Kitchen http://janeroekitchen.london/ where I enjoyed a nice freshly cooked stew.
It was an early start on Tuesday for an appointment in a Mayfair restaurant who were looking to save money on their menu printing and also marketing support for web, social media and creative design. The meeting went really well and I hope to be working with them in the near future.
Whilst I was in Mayfair I needed to get my mobile fixed so I called into Apples flagship store on Regents Street where I was greeted at the door and ushered to the tech team downstairs who fixed my phone and got me back up and running within ten minutes. It was a masterclass in customer service and something every business should spend more time on getting right. I’m sharing this story as customer service is very close to my heart and one of the core values of JAK Inc. but even I came away with lots more ideas to share with my team.
On Wednesday I had a meeting with a culture change business who work with companies such as KFC and Costa and are looking for JAK Inc. to produce design and print for training manuals, monthly quota of creatives for online and offline marketing material and a full brand audit. As you can imagine the rest of my day I was kept busy writing up meeting notes and working on quotations not to mention an ad-hoc trip to Bristol for an event.
I travelled back on Thursday lunchtime but not before I squeezed in one more meeting at Carluccio’s restaurant in St Pancras http://www.carluccios.com/restaurants/london/st-pancras where we discussed website projects, design and printing for a client in Spain.
I joined the team in Chester-Le-Street on Friday for some much needed facetime and also get some progress reports on our ongoing projects. On the afternoon I had a great meeting in Sunderland that could develop into some big, big work for JAK Inc and secure some really big projects for the next few months. Watch this space.
I would also like to recognise our product manager Tara Seaman who performed an outstanding gesture within the community this week. So much so that we received the following letter of thanks: –
Hi there, I hope I am contacting the correct place, but I couldn’t go without trying to thank this person. My elderly mother goes to the town rarely on her own because she gets quite frightened, but today she decided she needed some supplies and went. She started feeling a little unsteady and worried and found a bench to catch her breath when a young girl asked if she could sit next to her and asked if she was ok and they ended up chatting for quite some time. My mother thinks her name was Tara, and remembers her saying she had just left university and had just started an apprenticeship and was on her lunch hour. My mother really enjoyed the company and it gave her a real confidence boost. She doesn’t remember much apart from that the company make websites and business cards so I’m hoping this is the correct place. I just wanted to say to the girl in question, a huge thank you for calming her and listening to her stories as she gets very lonely. There needs to be more young people like you in the world.
Many thanks Michelle Smith
Well done Tara. I’m so proud to have you in the team.
Have a great Valentines weekend everyone and I look forward to sharing my thoughts with you next week.
Anything is possible,
Andy Knowles
Managing Director
