Hi my name is Paul. Founder of The Neon Greenhouse, a business consultancy helping businesses negotiate the pitfalls, strengthen their brand and maximise their potential. So just another digital agency looking to part me from my cash with bamboozling jargon I hear you cry, well no, think again.
The Neon Greenhouse like most of the best things in life was started by happy accident. It all began when my girlfriend decided to start her own e-commerce business. She had great difficulty in finding affordable practical web design to meet her needs as a small start-up business. She found companies would either dismiss her as unimportant or quote hugely inappropriate and expensive designs for her needs as a small growing business. No one seemed to understand the practical and graduated start she needed to get her business up and going. Confused with the jargon, hidden costs and general lack of understanding these companies seemed to love she turned to me for help.
With this in mind I decided to try to set up her website for her.
Much to my surprise I found it was far from the complicated minefield these companies had portrayed and I quickly got her new site up and running at a tiny fraction of the cost we had been quoted. As the orders began to come in and her business grew this one-off gesture snowballed into many hours and then days of writing new code, taking product shots, designing brochures, streamlining manufacturing processes, running social media and online advertising campaigns. As word got around people would often compliment her on her site and ask who had set it up for her. Suddenly I had a line of people wanting help starting-up and growing their own businesses. Before I could so much as pause for breath I was working designing their websites, creating their logos, doing photo shoots, setting up business and social media accounts and much more. I really enjoyed the process of helping fledging businesses and watching them grow into exciting new brands.
I found myself helping more and more in a wide field of areas, learning as I progressed about new industries I had never worked in. To do this I had to draw on my eclectic and at time bizarre experience across many different jobs and found I had many of the skills that were perfect for this type of work. Whether it be obvious ones like my time as a staff trainer for a bank or more obscure like designing virtual furniture! I found myself writing sites for everything from beauty therapy to online marketing, helping businesses from body jewellery to home decor. Whatever the industry, whatever their plan, however big or small their aspirations I found I really enjoyed the process of helping them realise their goals.
I realised there was a clear demand for this help, especially in the new small business market and so I decided to bite the bullet and set up The Neon Greenhouse. I had found there was a myriad of people offering to run people’s social media campaigns, websites, marketing and blogs but very few who would train you to do it yourself. I also found that companies would often try to bamboozle their clients with jargon and figures to sell them things that their businesses did not really need. My aim was to start a one stop shop for everything a small business would need, helping them grow on a timetable and budget that would best suit them, tailored to what they actually needed not what others wanted to sell them! I gave up my job as a trainer at the bank where I had worked for the last 10 years and threw myself full-time into The Neon Greenhouse.