Imagine my excitement, when little old me was approached to be INTERVIEWED! for inclusion in the business section of Penrith Today.

Interviews and Editorials can create an amazing boost for your business profile! it gives you the opportunity to reach out to a much wider audience. Local magazines and newspapers are a perfect medium for really getting your business ethos across to a much wider and engaged audience. And, contrary to popular belief the age of the local newspaper is far from over.

Paul Flint, Editor for Penrith Today, is a very good writer and a very good interviewer. I feel he really brought out the best in what I was hoping to achieve from my 15 minutes of fame. You can visit the Penrith Today website to learn more about this amazing and hard working husband and wife team.

An hour in the life of Glenn Bailey

Who is he? The answer is staring you in the face! Each month Glenn spends several days putting Penrith Today together. He designs adverts, lays out the text, ponders over front cover images, fizzes with ideas and bounces them off the editor, eats bacon rolls, helps with headlines and suggests changes in content.  In other words, he is an integral and valued member of the small Penrith Today team.

Glenn undertakes similar roles for another publisher who covers Grange, Windermere and Ulverston – but his work and life experiences are very much broader than designing community magazines.  It is this wider knowledge that Glenn ‘brings to the party’ and upon which he is able to draw to help small businesses that do not have in-house expertise in design, branding and marketing.

Glenn would be the first to admit that he lacks professional qualifications but, as I know from my own time in senior management, if I want inspirational ideas and solutions these are not the sole preserve of graduates – who may lack practical experience to underpin theoretical knowledge.

Many boys might dream about being brought up in a fish and chip shop.  Glenn found that the benefits of doing so extended beyond the taste of the food.  In his case this included an early introduction to customer service and long evenings of hard work frying fish and chips, plus the opportunity, at his request, to attend art classes after school.  By age 13 he had seen and drawn his first completely naked woman and at 16 years he left school to take up gardening.  What was left to look forward to?

Glenn’s ambitions soon outgrew the plants that he cultivated.  He returned to college and specialised in photography and graphic design at a time when Apple Macs and Photoshop were in their infancy.  Soon after, he was recruited to join the marketing department of the largest fire systems company in the world. At Tyco, to support bids for large contracts with the MOD and the oil and gas industry, he designed brochures, prepared presentations, helped to pioneer the use of intranets and digital solutions, and used CD ROMS to create interactive off-line ‘websites’.  He was responsible also for ‘policing’ brand identity, which is something close to Glenn’s heart.  Branding is much more than a logo.  It is the whole corporate image – staff attitude, appearance, reliability, quality, communications and service.

During Glenn’s 18 years with a ‘blue chip’ company, work practices evolved and the role of commercial artists and graphic designers changed.  Glenn’s aspirations also changed, as he placed more value on lifestyle and not just making money.  When an opportunity presented itself he moved five years ago to the Lake District to become a National Trust Ranger.  Soon after this he joined Grange Now – a community newspaper with a 25 year pedigree – to run the two roles side by side. Lakeland life, marriage, running, mountain cycling and a growing fascination with history have added colour and texture to Glenn’s experiences and helped to reinforce his desire to help small businesses.  “I prefer to be part of family-sized operations”, said Glenn, “where, if someone kicks you, we all limp”.  This view is consistent with his desire to bring to artisan businesses a range of experience that should not be the sole preserve of big companies.

It is tempting to say that the rest is history, but at 40 Glenn is still young – by the Editor’s standards – and keen to develop his interest in supporting small businesses.  “If you are setting up or running a business, it is best not to limit advice to close friends and relatives.  They will be inclined to tell you what you want to hear,” said Glenn.  “I am an ideas person, someone who asks probing questions, and tries to find out what an owner really wants to achieve.  I have a particular interest in ‘lifestyle’ companies that match my own interests – food, travel, adventure, outdoor pursuits, cooking – in other words, many of the things that align closely to living in the Lake District.  I am keen that companies should be sustainable and not outgrow their capabilities and resources.  You’ve got to be in it for the marathon, not the sprint,” he concluded.

For more information about what Glenn Bailey may be able to do for your business, visit: www.woofdog.co.uk