Peter Mann

Marketing services – copywriting, graphic design and photography. 

Live in a hamlet in south Cambridgeshire, hobbies are few (I enjoy working too much!) other than washing my car, cutting grass (a losing battle at the moment in our two acre field) and taking Sunday afternoons off to watch the Grand Prix.  Experience?  Well, been in advertising / publicity / marketing since I left school in 1963.

How did you started to work from home?

From starting as a tea boy in Birmingham’s smallest ad agency in 1963 to becoming marketing manager of Norwich & Peterborough Building Society in 1988, I’d always worked for other people and never felt I had it in me to run my own business, although my boss at Loctite (I went from there to N&P) kept saying I ought to.

It was N&P which finally made me realise too many companies are shitty to work for and don’t give a damn about the employee.  At the time N&P was driven by a management by fear ethos – I left after 18 months and decided I ought to go it alone, so set up Buzz Associates in 1990.

When I told my old Loctite boss, who, like me had been made redundant by Loctite when they closed our profitable, but politically in the way, division, he invited me to look after the publicity for his own new company.  He also introduced me to a couple of other companies.

My initial idea was to be just a copywriting business – copywriting being my main strength.  It took about a day to realise giving an industrial client a sheet of copy wasn’t enough – it still had to be turned into an ad, brochure or whatever.

Fortunately, desk top publishing, although in its infancy, had been sprung on the world and as I’m hopeless at doing things with my hands and therefore useless at producing conventional artwork (it was in the days of Letraset) I took to it with open arms.  The way copy looks is as important as the words: if it looks easy to read, people will.  Good graphic design and good English wins readers.

In that respect I was very lucky, for the only equipment I required was a computer, scanner and a simple printer – the rise of digital photography has enabled me to add another key element to my portfolio.

How long do you work from home and earn a living to you or you must still go to work?

I’ve been working from home since 1990 and because I enjoy what I do, see no reason to stop.

What is your normal day?

Rise at 6.30 am, empty the dishwasher / set up my breakfast (cereal, why make life difficult?), jump on my bike to deliver newspapers to a dozen houses in our village (the papers are brought to me in bulk) – when it’s not raining / too cold, I make that a two mile ride around our local wood.

Then breakfast, read the paper and around nine take my wife a cup of tea and settle down to go through the overnight crop of e-mails and get on with whatever project / deadline is top of the pile (all the while accompanied by Radio 3).

Lunch is in front of the computer and I’ll usually work through until dinner around eight.  After clearing up (my super-wife is a super-cook), I’ll usually return to my PC (we don’t have a telly) and, if nothing else, file all the e-mails I want to keep, or, if the broadband is up to it, watch something on iPlayer.

As I’m on a small number of ‘charity’ committees, their meetings are usually weekday evenings, which at least drags me away from my PC, although there’s always stuff to do on my return – which I like to get done as soon as possible.  There are also occasional ‘professional’ marketing events to go to.

I appreciate that sounds as if I do nothing but work – in reality, the day is broken up by chats with my wife about the garden (she’s a keen plantswoman), family and local gossip, making the tea (my only contribution to cooking – and often to be delivered to the depths of our garden), visits to clients (or they come to see me) and fixing whatever I’m told to outside.

How often you work from home? 

Every day, weekends and evenings if the deadline demands it.  But nothing will stop me from going to a neighbour’s to watch the Grand Prix on a Sunday.

How to look your home office? 

Our small dining room became and remains my office.

What would you say to people who want to start working from home?

Try it.  The advantages are: no commuting, no politics, no tedious people to manage (or be managed by) never late for meals, listen to Radio 3 all day and watch your children grow up.

The disadvantages are: a skill which others want to buy from you, finding – and keeping – clients, a discipline to work, cash outlay for equipment, a degree of insecurity, no work = no pay, holidays are unpaid, provide your own pension, earnings likely to be lower than in ‘a good job’, have to do all your own tax, VAT and accounting stuff.

Thank you very much for your time!

             Peter Mann

www.buzzassociates.co.uk

Buzz Associates provides… creative ideas / copywriting / graphic design for corporate identity, logos, websites, PR / press releases, advertising, e-mails, sales letters, brochures, flyers, newsletters, posters, white papers, mail shots, booklets, case studies, data sheets, conferences, presentations, Powerpoint, exhibition display boards, binders, stationery, packaging, photography, speech writing and a ‘Better English’ service.