14% of UK’s workforce is now self employed!

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Posted on February 6, 2013 · Filed under: Macro, PeoplePerHour

According to data published by the Daily Telegraph today 14% of UK’s workforce is now self-employed. And this excludes all those second jobbers and moonlighters which, as I mentioned in my recent interview on the BBC ,  is in fact the highest growing sector within PeoplePerHour’s community of 350,000 freelancers .

According to data published by the Office of National statistics there are now 367,000 more people who are self-employed than there were in 2008.

I commented both to the Telegraph and the Guardian today on what’s driving that growth. The recession is not the driver of change, it has been the catalyst. In a recent poll we conducted on PeoplePerHour, more than a third said the reason was to get a better work-life balance, and a quarter said it was to pursue a hobby or passion.

Freelancing is not a recessionary fad. It’s a structural change in the labour market. As in many step changes in the economy over the last century, recession has been a great catalyst and awakening call to accelerating that change.

The next wave of internet startups

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Posted on February 3, 2013 · Filed under: Macro

The last decade has seen the birth and rise of internet behemoths dominating markets: eBay in second hand good, Amazon in commerce, Facebook in social media, Google in search etc.

It’s been a game of scale and winner takes all. Now there’s talk of Web 3.0 and big data.

I think the next wave of the internet will be about descaling  to address an increasingly discerning and sophisticated user. The next generation of successes will be the ones that pick and verticalise these behemoths bringing more choice and more personalization to the customer.  Focusing on quality content and taste rather than scale and.

And the reason is simple. Consumers want choice.  Sounds obvious. How is that different to 10 years ago you may ask?continue reading »

The people who really are doing things they believe in will keep doing them, and ye people who are just gold diggers will go away

Tim O’Reilly

its all about me me me me me

Leave the gun take the cannoli

What i would do if i was Prime Minister (not that i’d want to!)

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Posted on December 18, 2012 · Filed under: Macro

 

Not that this is any aspiration of mine. I think people who know me would probably agree that i am far too impatient and politically incorrect to run the country. Or any country for that matter.

I do however think that very little is done in terms of ‘out of the box’ thinking to solve our biggest problem here : Unemployment.

Here’s an interesting scenario:

There’s £4.6bn being spent every year on unemployment benefits. There are 750 Job Centres employing 78,000 people scattered around the country. A few of the most common jobs offered are sales rep, carer, call centre agent which pay minimum wage of £6.19 phour.

And then picture this. Of he 2.51m unemployed and able to work, a whopping 99% are literate and  82.7% had some higher education beyond.continue reading »

This IS what gets me up in the morning :)

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Posted on December 7, 2012 · Filed under: PeoplePerHour

Recently a PPHer Rebecca Walton wrote in to us with the following words. Its so moving, and exactly what motivates Team PPH. The fact that we make a difference to people’s lives. Thanks Rebecca ! You made my week 🙂

“I wanted to share my story with People Per Hour and express my utmost gratitude for the site that has helped me get where I am today.

My name is Rebecca, I am (very nearly) 23 years old and have spent years in the sales, marketing and recruitment business. I went through some very tough personal issues from the age of 18 which led me to have to deal with depression. I found keeping a job down very difficult as many of the employers couldn’t understand what was going on with me. Recently, my depression went from bad to worse and I was diagnosed with anxiety, panic attacks and agoraphobia. This means that I can very rarely leave the house, unless with a ‘safe’ person (my poor, poor partner)!

continue reading »

Top 10 Tips for Entrepreneurs by Entrepreneurs

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Posted on December 6, 2012 · Filed under: Enterpreneurship

Put a few entrepreneurs in a room and you’ll find the topic of conversation will inevitably gravitate to who’s done more screw ups than the other. I’ve been in that room enough times to know that after a while it’s the same record all over again. I share with you below the 10 most frequent, which also reflect my experience:

1.Hiring too quickly 

As an entrepreneur you are naturally eager to move fast and build a big business. Not only that but you are by nature impatient, no matter how fast you’re moving.  That’s partly what makes you who you are; and why you don’t fit into the normal routine of a corporate job.

Inevitably you make the mistake of hiring someone too quickly that you shouldn’t  have.  Not only that, you hire them against your instinct. That niggling hunch that there’s something about them you don’t like, but you are conscious of being too fussy, too slow, too much in pain to say no.

Every one of these cases backfires multifold. And in some cases can bring your business to a grind. Just don’t do it. Listen to your hunch. Take your time on hiring – it’s the single most important investment you make.  Do it carefully. continue reading »

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