As my last post focussed a bit more on our holiday, I thought I’d bring this one back to business.
Towards the end of Nov 09 and December, business was terrific. Growth was massive, and though I wasn’t getting much sleep, I had very big expectations already beginning for 2010.
The second week in December was (and still is) my best week in terms of revenue. I had tripled the number of drivers I had in just over a month, and business was good.
Then came the slump after New Years. January and February were as bad as each other. My cover while on holiday was a disaster and income in those seven days alone dropped to less than a third of the previous week! The snow didn’t help much – three drivers were off due to ill health, and a further five had problems with their vehicles.
A heavy dose of experimenting with Google Adwords and an unexpected bill for divert-to-mobile calls from BT (a little over £1k) led to a slashing of any profit that had been made.
On the plus side, Shaadi Stress and Leading Route have moved into bigger offices in Park Royal after a disagreement with the owners of Viglen House in Alperton. SEO activity continues full steam ahead, with on-page optimisation on the Leading Route Cars homepage, a satellite site being launched at Heathrow Airport Taxis, and hiring a team of article writers to write topical content on the sector and related stories.
Moving offices was fairly seamless, that is without mentioning the utter chaos caused by BT Business with our broadband connection. It has been 8 days now, and they still haven’t sorted our broadband connection out. I must have spent hours on the phone and have had at least three engineer visits so far but to no avail. Our gracious landlord has lent us their connection until BT sorts their mess out.
The office itself is far better than that at Viglen House Business Centre. Individually controlled radiators, hot water in the kitchen, better security, windows (yes!), daily cleaners and parking!
The property side of Leading Route have suffered quite severe delays too. Mostly due to lending criteria being revised by my primary BTL lender, but also due to vendor-specific issues. Hopefully, this will all be sorted in the coming weeks, and the current cash flow crisis will ease somewhat.
So on to the rest of 2010, what does it have in store for Leading Route? Well a raft of new businesses are planned for this year, and not all under Leading Route Ltd so perhaps it is time to change the title of this blog…..if you have any suggestions, feel free to leave a comment.
Some of those new businesses:
– Leading Route Couriers (for competitive next day delivery at home and abroad)
– www.WedStress.com (in association with ShaadiStress) for the UK Weddings market
– New online booking functionality at Leading Route Cars
– Investment property portal at www.leadingrouteproperties.com
…and some others which are not ready for the press just yet.
Watch this space…
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