I found out yestereday that following my nomination for the award of Insolvency Practitioner of the year (Personal Insolvency) that I have been shortlisted for the award ceremony to be held in London on 30 October 2008. I find this whole thing a little overwhelming, as in truth I am a fairly private person and do not really welcome a large amount of publicity, but I am seeing this honour as a way of thanking my team for all of the hard work they have put in over the last couple of years to build our practice to enjoy the reputation we currently have in the marketplace.
So some of us are of to a professional photographers on Tuesday to get some snaps done to use on the evening of the awards and for publicity both prior to the ceremony and afterwards. I hate having my photo taken, and always end up looking like a beached whale! but I am told that sympathetic lighting and a touch of airbrushing can work wonders these days. So the photographer has been instructed to transform me to a Size 10!
In the practice we had a fairly quiet August, I think most people were concentrating on having their final holidays whilst the children are still off school, and then getting the kids back to school – and what an expense that seems to be these days. We are talking to a number of new clients in September now, and are noticing a trend of people with high value properties with high secured borrowings, wanting to pull out and find cheaper rented accomodation and then be able to deal with their other debts. I think that this is a trend which we will continue to see over the next few years.
Off to Frugal Friends in Slough this evening, which is being kindly sponsored by Vincent Bond – providers of a range of debt solution services with whom I do a little work on formal insolvencies. I hope that we will have a good evening, and whilst numbers are a little low for this outing, it seems like we will be having a bumper turnout for the Christmas Party on November 15th in Birmingham. When I think that the first meetings were only attended by a couple of people, it is amazing how Andy Davie has grown this into the success it is currently enjoying – and I shall be looking forward to seeing all of you on the day.
And finally on the subject of Mr Davie – how fantastic is it that he is now going to be involved in providing debt solutions through his own company. I have met Andy loads of times, in fact I now count him and Bev as close friends (remember the great Kebab race guys!!) and I cannot think of anyone better for confused and troubled debtors to go to to get first hand advice of their options. I absolutely know that Andy will be a great success at this, and look forward to supporting him wherever I can on perhaps the more technical aspects of our work.
That’s it for now – I am going to promise myself to blog more regularly over the next few months, especially having read some of the other inspiring blogs from other posters over the last couple of weeks. You never know – even I might win Blog of the Month one day!!!