About Small Business Podcast — One Year On

Nice to be back on the podcast. It's been about a year since I was on last, and honestly a lot has changed. Northern's grown, we've taken on bigger projects, and I've learned a load about myself and the business along the way.

So where were we last time? I think we were talking about how I started Northern, the whole Citizen M Amsterdam story, coming back to the North East. And at that point I was still very much in the mindset of doing everything myself. Design, marketing, client calls, invoicing, the lot. I was a proper one man band trying to play every instrument at once.

The biggest thing that's changed this year is I've learned to let go a bit. Not in a bad way, but I've started using AI and automation to handle the stuff that was eating up my time. Things like invoice follow-ups, content repurposing, CRM management. All that admin that was taking me hours every week, I've automated most of it now. And that's freed me up to focus on what I actually love doing, which is the creative stuff, the strategy, working with clients face to face.

Like we've built these automation workflows for clients that are saving them four, five hours a week. One of my clients is an estate agent, right. He used to spend hours uploading properties to his website, to Rightmove, to Zoopla, all manually. Now we've got a system that scrapes the data and populates everything automatically. He just hits a button and it's done. That's the kind of stuff that properly excites me.

And the podcast work has been massive as well. I was on a panel at Podcast Paddock talking about AI in podcasting, which was brilliant. Got to chat about how we use AI responsibly, not to replace creativity but to amplify it. Because that's the thing, right? AI can do the grunt work, but it can't do the thinking. It can't replace the human spark.

We've also been doing more speaking at events. I did PlatformNE twice, which was incredible. The first time I was absolutely bricking it. First ever public talk. But it went really well and I got to demo some of our marketing automation stuff live on stage. The second time I did a full talk on branding and the pink prison effect. Did you know they used to paint prison cells pink to reduce aggression? And Sunderland AFC painted the away changing rooms pink to mess with the opposition? That's proper brand psychology, that.

Client work wise, we've been smashing it. Worked with some amazing businesses this year. Gentoo, which is the biggest housing association in the North East. Law Debenture, a massive financial institution. Safecall, who do whistleblowing hotlines. And we've been doing loads of photography work as well through Growth Lab. Event stuff, food photography, personal branding shoots. The variety keeps it interesting.

But honestly the thing I'm most proud of is the reputation we're building in the North East. People are starting to know Northern. They're recommending us to their mates. We're getting invited to speak at events, to be part of supply chain programmes. It feels like we're becoming part of the fabric of the business community up here, and that means everything to me.

Because at the end of the day, this was always about more than just making money. It was about building something I'm proud of, helping local businesses grow, and putting a spotlight on the amazing stuff that's happening in the North East. We're grafters up here. We work hard, we look after each other, and we build things that last. That's what Northern is all about.

So what's next? More of the same but bigger. More events, more clients, more creative projects. I'm looking at doing more video content, maybe even starting my own podcast properly. And the AI automation side of things is only going to grow. We're just scratching the surface with what's possible there.

But yeah, it's been a belting year. Cheers for having us back on. Always good to have a proper catch up and reflect on how far we've come. Here's to the next twelve months, eh?