Get yourself noticed!

My eye was drawn recently to a story in the paper about the famous North West business Daisy Group. No. I’d never heard of Daisy either but the name of the entrepreneurial founder Matthew Riley did ring a bell somewhere. As I read on I realised where I’d heard the name Matthew Riley before – he enjoyed a bit of fame via Dragon’s Den. Or perhaps the word should be notoriety as hid job was to shatter the dreams of some young hopefuls by pouring a great deal of cold water over them and their dodgy CV’s.

Great TV, if you like that sort of thing, but also great marketing by Matthew Riley. What he did on the show by using edgy language – one candidate was told his business plan made the reader feel sick and their growth strategy smelled suspiciously like bulls**t – was to establish himself as someone with a personality and the chutzpah to show it off. Now that’s not rocket science but it established Mr Riley as confident, knowledgeable enough to criticise firmly and probably having a good sense of humour as he was clearly using hyperbole for dramatic effect.

By this simple means and getting himself on TV via his pal Lord Sugar, Riley has ensured that I was hooked enough to read on when I next came across his name in the media. In best Californian tradition, his business was launched from the garage and he is now aiming to become a Northern telecoms champion with all the job creation opportunities that no doubt brings in its wake.

We don’t all have the possibility of getting on national TV but we do have the means to work on our business persona and get it noticed. That really tired old expression about people buying people is coming to mind as I write these words.

Take some risks; get some PR out there even if you do it yourself. As the world gets busier and messages proliferate at a rate of knots it still makes perfect sense that standing out is a good idea if you need promote your business.

Mr Riley is a good example to follow in many other ways too. He left school at sixteen, prefers hard work to a flash lifestyle and professes to “like all the boring and mundane stuff like cost cutting” which he carries out from his base in Nelson. This is not really a celebrity image – rather someone who knows how to use publicity methods often favoured by celebs but in this case to drive an acquisitive business empire founded on solid growth plans.