I've just realised that next week I need to be in Leicester (Monday), then London (Tuesday), Brighton (Tuesday), London (Wednesday), Hertfordshire (Thursday) and finally Derbyshire (Friday).

Am slightly terrified at this and fairly likely to be on my knees by next Friday. Fortunately, I have a family holiday to look forward to the following week, with a few days in Spain, away from phones, emails and, basically, questions.

I love my job - but having grown from one person to ten in eghteen months, I'm pretty excited about a break.

Now, the next decision, do I take Flashman or Dawkins in the suitcase...

Two other new posts today - on the Punch site and my personal blog - about buying art from US maverick cartoonist/thinker Gaping Void, speaking at the IoD and the last of the Next Stand to be demolished at Leicester Tigers' Welford Road Ground respectively.

Three Steps Forward...

Every day at present another friend or contact seems to have hit dire straits – it’s undoubtedly a shocking time. So, we continue to raise eyebrows by continuing to recruit.

In reaching ten people within 18 months, we seem to have bucked the industry trend – and what’s interesting is that not only are many of our clients not local, an increasing number are now international (with clients in Germany, Sweden, France, Romania, Belgium, The US and the Middle East in addition to those based in the UK).

Our SEO has kicked in at the perfect time and although the increasing number of leads hasn’t necessarily resulted in the same conversion ratio as when we relied more heavily on incoming enquiries, there has most certainly been an influx in web-generated business over the last six months, to coincide with our heightened presence in search results.

Whilst this is terrific, it’s hugely important to me that we continue to win business by referral, indicating that we’re doing a great job for existing clients.

On a different point, I’m about to break 300 twitter followers (299 at the time of writing) which, whilst no great shakes in the twitter-sphere, means I win the company challenge...

Welcome to the latest Punch Blog

As our PR Company continues to grow, we’re adding one blog after another, to ensure that each member of the team has a vehicle for voicing their views.

We nearly called this Phil’s Soapbox – and boy, can he rant – but initially at least, this is going to be a team effort and an unofficial place for the team to spout off online.

For me, I’m also keen to use this blogging platform as I’ve used Wordpress up until now in my personal blog and, being that way inclined, love to fiddle with these things. A chain has been started this morning asking the team for their thoughts on the most perennially misspelt words – so I expect something will be up on that in the next day or so.