Once again it is that week when Darren Atwater and I both turn one year older. Last Monday the pizza hardman turned 47. I stop being 46 this Monday coming up and as it is the start of the year you naturally think about what you have achieved and what you want to achieve.
We are getting older. Perhaps as importantly our parents are getting pretty old now – Darren’s in Canada, mine in Shipston. As they all head towards eighty you have certain thoughts. I guess both Darren and I are also contemplating that we are closer to retirement age than to the start of our careers. In his quiet way he still has a bit more hunger than I do to achieve and conquer. I think I’m well past that now.
Professionally we can look back two years with some satisfaction. We have turned a heavily loss making restaurant into a profitable and well liked venue despite the hate campaign directed against it by certain Bulletin Board Morons. From scratch we have created a media operation which is profitable and whipping the “old factory” hands down. Just go to Alexa.com and check out how ShareProphets compares against any of the titles asset stripped from RSH. In fact this little site on which you fund this article also appears to be ahead of all of those titles as well in terms of how much traffic it attracts which really is saying something. Our annual show (UK Investor Show) now has 101 stands booked, the old place is on 32 (nearly all connected to its proprietor). So we have made a point. We have won. And the whole of the City knows that.
And we think that we can be rightly proud of the content on both sites, saying what others fear to say and, on ShareProphets, exposing financial wrongdoing on an industrial scale. We have not budged from our principles or flinched in the face of bullying and threats, legal and illegal from those who do not like what we publish.
Sticking to our guns is – as it turns out – a profitable business. Having been worth minus £250,000 two years ago following my departure from RSH my finances are now sorted out.
But it is hard work. After a while the abuse and harassment gets to you. Yes there is great satisfaction when you get a clear win as we did on Friday when shares in the fraud Naibu were suspended but there are times when you feel very much in the trenches and under constant hostile fire.
And there are just the hours as well. I would have no problem spending hours writing an article that I really enjoyed writing – like the Charlie Hebdo piece last week – even if no-one read it. Receiving praise from journalists who I really respect for that article is a bonus. But even minutes spent subbing the work of others can be minutes I regard as time that I am wasting. Call me arrogant, if you wish, but I do not feel that my role in life is to translate the work of others into English particularly when the core message is not really very interesting or new in the first place.
The job of journalists should be to question, to probe, to make folks think. It may not make you popular as my friend Gary Newman found when penning a piece on a BB fave LGO Energy. It is all too easy to win short term friends but Gary gave a view which was negative. I am not certain that I take that view or take it as strongly as he does but he challenged folks to think about their assumptions. That is good work. I am happy to spend a few minutes subbing his material for he makes people think.
But there are other articles we run on ShareProphets which seem to me to add little. I am wasting minutes of my life generating internet fish paper that has no value. And there is more to life than that.
I know that Darren has other business matters that interest him. I have other projects too. Rebuilding the hovel. A non-financial book. And I still want the time to devote to busting frauds on Aim which I enjoy.
Does this all mean that there are New Years’ resolutions of dramatic intent? No. we have started the process of making small changes and that will evolve. But each small change can be painful. Telling a writer that we will not publish his or her material is not a pleasant task but now that we are 47 we are going to start acting more selfishly and putting our needs first.
The intent is to ensure that there is less and less hamster wheel type activity as the year progresses. Essentially the business model should evolve but be recognisable for at least sixteen months. But as Christmas 2015 approaches then bigger decisions must be made.
The New Year’s resolution 2015 is thus to make a firm resolution by the end of 2015.