Issue #73 - Get your business festive ready 🎄
Another year (nearly) over | How to spread charity cheer this Christmas | Cloud computing for small businesses | HIITing it up with Gravity Health and Fitness | Words | Tunes | More
🦾 GO
Another year (nearly) over 🗓
Welcome to Issue #73 of The Backbone - the fortnightly newsletter from Bionic.
It’s hard to believe that we’re almost at the end of another calendar year, but here we are staring down the business end of a Christmas cracker once more.
It’s difficult to sum up the last 12 months without simply concluding that 2023 has been another tough year for many - although we saw the energy market stabilise and inflation eventually decrease, things aren’t really any less expensive (remember a drop in inflation means you’re still paying more but prices are rising less quickly).
If you’ve kept your business running through everything the last few years have thrown at you, then be confident that you can take on whatever 2024 has to offer.
Let’s make the most of this festive period. Let’s enjoy seeing friends and family, and letting our customers and employees know how much they mean to us. Let’s show appreciation for the hard work done by all those other local business owners. Above all, let’s just enjoy the break (and try to make sure you get one).
We’ll be back in a couple of weeks with our third, annual “It’s a wrap”, but until then, thanks for your support throughout the year and we hope you enjoy Issue #73 (and this Christmas cracker of a joke)
🗞 READ
How to spread charity cheer this Christmas 🎄
Christmas can be the (cue cheesy Christmas song pun) most wonderful time of year for some, but the loneliest for others. In the spirit of spreading cheer, we’ve decided to put together a blog packed full of practical ideas for small and micro business owners to get charitable this season. Read on for some hands-on tips.
What is cloud computing? The small business guide ☁️
A third of small and medium-sized businesses say they do not use the cloud — are you one of them? The cloud isn’t a trend - it’s becoming a key part of how small businesses store data digitally, and it opens up the doors for technology like VoIP which will have to become the norm for businesses in 2025.
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🗣 SHOUTOUT
#SmallBusinessStory - HIITing it up 💪
Bionic spoke to Mik Povall, who runs the Wirral-based gym Gravity Fitness with his sister. We found out how they started, how they coped with Covid and how they’ve been saving money during the cost of living crisis.
Bionic: How did you start Gravity Fitness?
Mik Povall: I started off working in Village Hotels, which was owned by The De Vere Group, I was effectively a cleaner but within three weeks, I got a chance at learning to be a gym assistant and I loved it. Three months later, I started an NVQ. Six years later I was the manager of the leisure club and eight years later I was cluster development manager for De Vere. My sister took Gravity on thirteen years later. She asked if I fancied going into business with her. So, I've been here for twelve years now.
B: Were you anxious to make that leap to being a business owner?
MP: It felt like the most natural transition, full stop. I never felt that it was a worry to take on because my heart is in the business. I feel like I've grown up in the industry anyway, so I was supremely confident that it was right for me.
B: What is the demographic like in the gym?
MP: We see a huge age range, from sixteen to our oldest customer who is 91 years old and still here daily. But it’s a different generation now. For example, we don’t have a huge number of customers aged 20-26. We get them coming in until they’re about 20, then they drop off and we’ll lose them. But then they’ll come back when they’re 28-32 and stay with us.
B: What has been your biggest struggle?
MP: I think just keeping the doors open during Covid was our biggest struggle, luckily, we have some amazing customers who stuck by us. Other gyms were hiring equipment out and keeping open that way, but we just didn’t have enough kit to do that. So, we tried to do weight classes outside in the car park, body weight exercises and challenges, things like that. We also did online classes where we’d go live to 60-80 people.
B: How have you been saving money during the cost-of-living crisis?
MP: As a business owner, you’re always looking to save energy and money. I actually made all our lighting LED during lockdown, lighting this place alone was quite significant so that in itself dropped our energy bills. In terms of energy, we’d already halved it during Covid, so when the energy crisis hit, it took us back to the level we were at before, which isn’t great but at least we weren’t losing money.
Read more of this small business story or watch our snapshot below 👇
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Chris had an eagle eye for our competitive quotes! 🦅⭐
Check out more ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Trustpilot reviews
Playlist 🎵
Are you well past Whamageddon? Have you had enough of the Kelly Clarkson/Ariane Grande Christmas stuffing that’s filling the airwaves? Our Chief Customer Officer, Glyn, certainly has. So he put together Prog Christmas - a playlist full of festive songs from not so seasonally-renowned names like Marillion, Rick Wakeman, Jethro Tull and, of course, Gandalf’s Fist.
Podcast 🎙
The Stay At The Top podcast is a great listen for every business owner. Aimed at the driven high-performer, this podcast gives actionable tips and hacks to help achieve goals, gain more energy, reach the top, and most importantly, stay there!
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🚫 STOP
Thanks for making it to the end of another Bionic small business bulletin 🤝🏻
Carry on the conversation at our Bionic socials 🤳
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