The ups and downs of the new year!

Starting the new year off right is critical, I considered that I had done this by closing off several projects that had taken u a lot of my time during 2024.

This ‘clear out’ allowed me time to take on a bigger and more complex project – details of which will come in my next update. The innovative and revolutionary nature of the business model is something I can be proud to have worked on since being introduced to the team towards the end of 2024.

January therefore was a whirlwind of meetings, in Guernsey, UK, Spain, France and UAE. Being introduced to many household names who are behind the ambitious, yet infinitely deliverable concept. I can’t wait to take the wraps off this!

What I like about this new role is that I see the direct impact it will have on its target audience, whilst still delivering the technology and sophisticated monetisation strategies I love to work on.

Aside from this, I continue to work on the banxlocal project. This is my labour of love and continues to gather pace despite some setbacks. Notably, having thought some investment had been secured from a particular route, this has now taken a change of direction, and we must dust ourselves off and restart the process of finding a suitable investor.

February will be a month of change, and potentially one where I spend more time away from home. This may impact on the timing of the next update I write depending on where in the world I am!

2024 in review…

2024 has been a challenging year on so many levels, yet these challenges have largely been instrumental in laying the foundations for 2025 and what promises to be a fun filled, productive and busy year ahead.

The challenges in the crypto markets that have caused significant issues with delayed project launches, the continued problematic financial landscape (fuelled by fears around elections in the UK, USA and further political unrest elsewhere), and the seemingly increasing occurrences of scams, fraudulent and deceitful behaviour across the industry sectors I’m involved in all conspire to slow down, if not stop, real progress.

This said, there were some real steps forward and it’s important to remember the ‘wins’!

Often a barometer of success is how much travel I have done, as for me to need to get on a plane to meet in person usually means a firm opportunity to do business. My overseas destinations this year have included Singapore, Portugal and Italy.

The highlight destination this year being Lisbon, Portugal where I proudly represented banxlocal.uk at the European Banking Association ‘EBADay’ Awards in the Fintech Zone where the company was shortlisted in the last 16 to present at the prestigious annual event. As a disruptive business model, having the opportunity to explain our mission has led to many new connections and partnerships being formed.

I’ve mentioned before that a couple of long running legal disputes have taken a huge amount of my energy and effort trying to find justice. Sadly, there has not been the full closure of these I had hoped for (despite promises being made!) Therefore unfortunately, I am still carrying some baggage into 2025 on these fronts. I will continue to ensure that these weights I’m carrying don’t interfere with my work.

Many new opportunities continue to cross my desk, and as ever I have to be selective about the ones that either interest me most, or I will be most effective in.

Looking forward to 2025 I already have several engagements in my diary, including trips to Dubai and Spain in January, and then in February I’ll be on mainland UK and potentially India also. This is a really encouraging ‘fast start’ to 2025.

I’ll be announcing more of my work detail in the coming months, as things unfold, especially with the anticipated confirmations of the banxlocal branches opening, several crypto/blockchain projects going fully ahead once funding is achieved.

So, on this last day of 2024, I wish anyone reading this all the best for 2025, the fulfilment of their ambitions, hopes and desires.

12+12 = 24

I’m no maths genius, nor am I massively into numerology, however some dates seem to have a resonance and become noticeable to me.

Today, is 12/12/24 and this just seems to have struck enough of a chord with me to take 5 minutes out of what has been an extremely busy week so far to mark the day. I had several messages congratulating me on 6/12/24 (which again is a noticeable date), because it is my ‘Name Day‘ – so perhaps something in these numbers really does mean something.

Anyhow, following a busy week in Wales and England last week attending the Fintech Wales Investor Event and then a couple of interesting meetings with potential partners for banxlocal.uk, I sat at my desk on Monday catching up on a backlog of emails and messages. Suddenly the phone just started to ring, and WhatsApp started blowing up and before I knew it my day (in fact my week) was full!

Usually by this time in December I’m simply looking forward to a few days off across Christmas and New Year, this year I’m juggling things to see how best I can fit everything in! It’s looking like I’ll need to travel to Dubai ahead of Christmas, which is super exciting. The project this trip is for isn’t yet in the public domain, but I can say it fits my specific skill set and interest range combining technology, finance with real life. Once some meetings and handshakes are done, I’ll be updating more on this.

What has occurred to me and my parting thought for this post, is that again I realise I must focus on what I want to do, and how important it is for me to feel fulfilled in my work. I’m blessed to be connected to so many inspiring people in the various businesses I’m involved in, so as we head towards 2025 I will spend some time saying thank you to all those people. (They know who they are!)

Data protection woes…

I’m not professing to be a data protection expert, and yes, I know this could sound like a dry subject for a post, for which I apologise.

Very recently I had cause to request that a company removed a previous review I had given for them. This was simply due to the fact that their service, in my opinion, had deteriorated badly.

The specifics and the parties are irrelevant to this post, they know who they are. I’m certainly not a person to take any glee in running others down, no matter how badly they behave. My mother always said, “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all”, and I tend to live by this adage, thus not expending my energy on negativity…

To explain, I engaged a company for their service, and initially all was going well, during the initial process they were engaged and were responsive. At this point they asked if I would leave a Google and Facebook review on their pages, to which I said I would be delighted.

Over the next months their service levels slipped (dramatically) to the point that they simply did not respond at all. So, I took the action to simply delete the reviews I had previously left (As I said, I’m not one to leave a negative review)

It then came to my attention that they had posted my name and company name on the reviews section of their own website, and to make matters worse they had actually grossly misquoted me!. None of the words were what I had said to them orally, nor what I’d written on the now deleted Google and Facebook reviews.

So, I politely messaged the owner and requested that they remove the entry on their site. By this time I had ceased to be a client and had moved my business elsewhere, and so legally I do not have any ongoing relationship with them.

I then received a barrage of messages stating that they were ‘entitled’ to continue to quote (misquote) me as a satisfied client ‘because I was at that time’ (For the record; no dates were included in the mock review).

Now, Google and Facebook as examples of understanding a customers rights are well aware of the rules in terms of ‘rights of erasure’ and ‘rights to be forgotten’, that’s why they provide the ability to edit and delete reviews and it’s built in to their review mechanism. As it is in TrustPilot, and any other review system.

This company though seemed to think this didn’t apply, stating that because I had been a satisfied client once gave them the right to continue to quote (misquote) me!

Needless to say, I was taken aback at this stance, especially when they sent me a long message quoting an obvious ChatGPT output justifying their stance, as though it was some sort of legal defence!

I’m actually still waiting for a final outcome to this, but having worked in tech, financial services and retail a long time (yes I’m old) I have seen all this legislation come in to force over the years. Obviously, I feel, have a good grasp of things in this area, albeit I’m not an expert.

I have now written to them one final time to request they take my name and company name from their website and so I will wait for the next steps!

Anyone else had this happen? What did you do?

I said this quarter would be important!

My last post was 2 months ago and the only reason for such a gap is that I’ve been too busy! Writing the updates for this site is something I take pleasure in doing and look forward to providing my pretty regular monthly update.

October just seemed to vanish somehow, a blur of meetings, a few travel days and some serious volumes of actual work just didn’t allow for me to spend the necessary time to sit and write something.

As I wrote back in September, Q4 is often the ‘action period’ of the year, and the tough year that 2024 has been, it’s pretty much the same.

There are ongoing issues with a couple of my ‘legacy’ projects that have bogged me down and meant to a certain extent I have been playing catch up with the exciting opportunities I’m actively engaged with.

CoEfficient Limited is one project that is really moving ahead, having secured some key contracts over the last weeks I can say I’m really proud to be working with the team there.

I’m also delighted to have been engaged with a not-for-profit organisation here in Guernsey, which through my company Alnistar we have developed a launch program for their innovative solution. More on this when it goes live!

The next weeks are now a rush to conclude a couple of long standing projects and see successful outcomes, as well as diving deep into a new sport related project. More details on all of these outcomes when I write next month (all being well!)

Quarter four looms, time for action!

It’s interesting how every year we start out the new year with hopes and aspirations, targets and goals, and then all of a sudden, we get to autumn, and we start looking at the accomplishments for the year and for many a sense of panic develops that so many things we started out to do haven’t been achieved.

We all manage our diaries as well as we’re able, but the world we live in always has a tendency to try to pull us off course.

Whether it’s getting embroiled in ‘blind alley’ opportunities, spending far too much time on the problem clients and not enough on the ones we really should or want to work with, or simply scrolling our lives away on social media, allocating time to the real productive stuff and spending quality time at this, is increasingly difficult.

I block out huge chunks of my diary on a weekly basis to try to avoid distraction, but this year, working from an office again, as opposed to home, has been a difficult thing to manage.

in 2023, the distractions were home related, this year the distractions are office related. I guess the point is that there are always distractions, and it’s discipline and focus that are needed.

One thing that has been at the top of my list this year has been the work on banxlocal.uk. The project is now ‘ready’ and we go into Q4 full of anticipation of announcing the first branch openings.

My major distraction from productive business in 2024 has been dealing with two problem clients, both situations have caused a great deal of stress and ended up costing a small fortune in legal proceedings.

My main goal for Q4 2024 therefore is to close the book on these situations and head into 2025 with a clear head.

The autumn equinox this coming weekend marks the start of my focus being on bringing a difficult 2024 to a close. 2025 seems to have the hallmarks of being a great year, but for my sake I must enter the year with a clear head and a renewed ability to focus on what matters.

If you find yourself in a similar position to me, then I wish you luck too!

How is your summer going?

Since my last update we’ve seen some summer weather. Guernsey is a great place when the weather is good, it provides an ideal mix of relaxed atmosphere along with a business-like mentality.

My summer has been taken up with several work aspects. Notably a lot of activity on banxlocal.uk – a huge amount of market validation work, partnership negotiations and revisions to the financial model based around the increasing number of partners confirming terms. We’re well positioned now to get the first branches operational, and all the hard work is showing signs of paying off.

Alongside this, and as something of a distraction from the world of FinTech, I’m now headlong into the renovation/refurbishment project of the offices in St Peter Port. Navigating the worlds of planning, building control, engaging contractors, making decisions on styles and designs is very time consuming but really rewarding.

I have a steady deal flow of businesses seeking funding but given the state of the markets and the general difficult financial landscape, finding funding is very hard work. The UK elections didn’t help this, and the US elections will continue to ‘stress’ the markets for some weeks to come. These events alongside the unrest and difficult times elsewhere in the world all conspire to make this a difficult task.

I’m happy to be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel on a couple of things now which will ease my situation for the coming period. Could do with a couple of ‘wins’ in the next months though.

Looking forward to a few more weeks of summer hopefully, before the run into autumn is upon us…

The longest day of the year…

As I mentioned in my last post, just a month ago, my schedule for June was centred around a quite a lot of travelling. Couple of trips into London, then a week in Singapore followed by a few days in Lisbon, Portugal.
Singapore was a required trip for a confidential matter, all I can say is that the trip was successful and the objectives accomplished.

Lisbon was specifically for banxlocal.uk as we’d been shortlisted for the Finextra Euro Banking Association (EBAday) awards. It was a delight to put banxlocal on the global stage like this. 1400 delegates from the top banks in the Eurozone is quite an audience. Whilst we were not selected as outright winners, the reception from everyone on the floor to what we are doing was amazing. Everyone I spoke to, whether CEOs of established banks or startups like us operating in the fintech and banking arena, recognised that accessibility is a huge challenge and the solution banxlocal has addresses so many parts of the overall picture.

Looking forward, I have a slightly calmer agenda as we head into the summer, so as I write this on the longest day, I’m optimistic that I’ll bring great rewards from the effort spent with all the traveling!

Busy May…

We’re already two thirds of the way through May, and there is much to do before the month is out.

The usual disruption of bank holidays means that May does tend to fly past, especially in Guernsey as we have an extra bank holiday (Liberation Day) on the 9th.

The next couple of weeks though are busy, with a trip to London for banxlocal.uk to meet with some new partners and prospective investors, and lots to do with various other projects also.

I continue to receive new opportunities and am working specifically on a couple of exciting crypto projects just now. These mean that I’ll be off island quite a lot over the coming weeks.

Travelling for my work is something that I generally enjoy, but what I really need to do is get some travel plans together for a holiday, as the way this year is going the summer will be over before I know it! (I know, it’s not summer yet!)

More updates soon!

After Easter, before the May bank holiday breaks…

It’s always an interesting time of year, dependant on how the Easter and other religious holidays fall. This year we’ve have a couple of good clear weeks between them, and things have really moved on for me in this time.

I spend much of my day working on https://banxlocal.uk but being an entrepreneur means that I have other irons in the fire. Not least the mentoring and advisory work I do. Envestors is a platform that I specifically enjoy. Their investment opportunities appeal to me, but more so I enjoy connecting with the founders and entrepreneurs.

My main focus sits between sales, finance and technology. I encompass a wide range of disciplines between these key areas. Whether it’s go-to-market, marketing, tech development or forecasting.

It’s always good to meet new founders too. One thing I’m always amazed by is the breadth of oblique angles people look at things from. For example, I’ve never even considered that tattoos could be ‘non-vegan’ – I don’t have a tattoo and I’m not vegan, but when I heard about this ‘niche’ I was amazed that I’d not even considered it! Of course, in commercial terms maybe it’s limiting from the aspect of addressable market, or achievable sales. however, the niche is such that it needs consideration!

Having spent 18 months on banxlocal.uk I’ve finally realised that all good things come to those who wait, whilst we went ‘to market’ nearly a year ago, we were not ready and that, now, is plain to see. I will now say that we are now ready and will be attracting significant interest and our widening net of investor interest is going to make for an interesting few months ahead!

Until next time!