found us

Friday 17th January and found us

Morning people. It’s is Friday 17th January 2025. I’ve a day off! Whoop whoop. Later on catching up with Claire for a coffee after she finishes teaching at the wonderful Western Isles Hotel.

Today I am going to attack personal resentments (actually business as well) that I still harbour. I intend putting pen to paper, fingers to keyboard and so remove them from me. I find that writing and typing such things out takes the power out of them. You see them in front of you, minuscule, unimportant, pointless.

I’ll also do a bit of work on my business website, www.foundus.co.uk, and lovingly write some interesting copy, even if it is only for me. At the moment I am on the hunt for consulting business and search and selection briefs.

But I am now up in Scotland in Tobermory, and have not chased or been in touch with people. And unfortunately the ad’ game likes to have egos massaged, and is notorious at not contacting suppliers like myself, and soon forgetting them to look at the new shiny thing (in this case fecking AI) that they think a) a customer needs, b) can charge for, c) or wax lyrical over, consuming reams of editorial on how it’s to be the next big thing to save the world. Yawn…. And it’s all BS and blah, blah, blah.

People are only really interested in attention being focused on them as they position self as an advertising expert, and in current climes AI. It’s all BS to be frank and the driving of Ego. Rant over.

You don’t need an ad agency to sell you what you don’t need.

Ad agencies in the UK are a waste of space in my opinion for the most part.

A pretty bold statement but one I believe more fully in as I’ve grown older. But like all statements has flaws.

A reputation for charging and piss poor service or Groundhog Day schedules does not endear many to ad’ agencies, and please do avoid them. They damage the institution of advertising and those agencies that do a bloody good job of strategising, implementing, and delivering on a company’s marketing, and quite rightly charge their rate.

And we too can be piss poor and live Groundhog Days.

Like the repetitive agency not taking risk and reinventing the marketing schedule, we can be creatures of habit or dangerous repetition. Dull, staid, and acting out the same narrative. But what we can do is launch a new marketing plan for ourselves as in one sense we are all like a limited company, maybe even a plc. We can at any moment change our marketing narrative to both ourself and world.

We can market of how we live in the moment, that the past is gone, tomorrow yet to come; and in focusing on the now our full attention is devoted to living life and enjoying each moment, not obscuring the next moment.

"Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment." - Buddha


Footnote

Avoid all the bollocks that is the newsfeed on LinkedIn. You are better than that, as is your business. Time spent on you and your business will attract customers and like minded people; not ego centric posts whose motives are questionable.

The found us office view - Thursday 16th January 2025

A panoramic view from the found us office over Tobermory and the Sound of Mull.

Today is a splendid day for found us. Glorious morning up until 1pm whereupon I catch a lift to Craignuire to meet up with some fellow islanders. Back for a nice dinner this evening.

I have decided to blog on petercobley.com and not foundus.co.uk, but talk about found us, my 10+ year consulting business in advertising, marketing, and media.

What the scores on the doors, found us?

Well the business is 10 years old since inception on 28th February 2014. I am now 53 and back then was 43. A lot indeed a lot has happened to me, the business, life, the world.

Me

As mentioned I am now older, more experienced, wiser (Claire my wife may disagree vehemently), and have over ten years of running a solo business through economic malaise, COVID, world disorder, and anarchy, a move to Tobermory, Isle of Mull from Saddleworth, and last but not least an advertising industry that was over staffed and bloated and needs consolidation.

If I am also honest, and I need to be, those ten years were plagued with deteriorating mental health due to progressive addiction to alcohol, my OCD, and childhood trauma that finally was brought to bear and dealt with.

So I am right royally pleased with myself for having survived when the odds were certainly stacked against me, of my almost losing myself, and of having to bear cruel judgement by others of my addiction and being ill from it.

But, and we don’t always see past out strife to and beyond the but’s, I have a peace and serenity I’ve never had, and a clear view of the seabed floor like a swim off Mull, where I can see all shapes and things in real time. And my being able to see, listen, and experience the moment, not the past or future, is a true gift. I can dip my head under the surf and waves of life to see my gentle and clear waters beneath, and it is my choice to choose where I look. My view is no longer opaque with my life’s turbulence sullying the water.

Life and the World

There has been a lot happening over the last ten years of business and I oft wonder that if I’d had a crystal ball whether I’d have embarked on starting a business. That said the decline my business has seen is self inflicted. But I’ve also been subject to some bad players I suspect, a downturn in the market over which I have no control, and the simple fact of running an advertising business whereby if you don’t speak to people you get forgotten about, with advertising adhering sadly to the old adage of he who shouts loudest gets heard.

Yet I am always a big believer that in adversity one can see great opportunities in which to prosper (and this does not purely mean money) and in this present moment as I type in the office I am blessed with having come to the end of a long period of upheaval and shittiness, and can now embrace the what next, the fun and challenge of change, being able to re-launch and enhance (not re-invent) what I am and what found us is. I also have the beauty of choice honed by experience so allowing me to not to have to work with advertising arseholes. And believe you and I they are plenty apiece.

So, please don’t forget my little but perfectly formed found us which can offer some absolutely (excuse superlative) honest hard graft to help you grow you business and people. I love it, love working with nice people and companies, and live life with renewed vigour and calmness, of which someone out there, a business out, there will benefit from.

Say hello to founds us. And have a marvellous Thursday.

Looking South from the found us office.

My business found us, and what it gives customers

I love working my business found us, set up in 2014 after a career in advertising working for a number of splendid companies. Have a look at the found us website. To be able to work the business out of Tobermory on the Isle of Mull is a dream come true, as are regular trips to Oban on the mainland.

I am updating the website for found us and have created some pages on a number of the consultancy’s services; which may be is of interest to my friends and business contacts.

found us client offering

And specifically

Executive search and head hunting

Business development and sales

Search marketing

Programmatic advertising

A panoramic photo taken from the Oban Esplanade