A brief, extra-self-indulgent post today. If you want to skip this one, go ahead. I won’t hold it against you.
So today is the last trading day of the lang catâ??s 2nd full year. the lang cat has had a pretty amazing year, doing close on twice the amount of business I thought it would.
2012/13 was the year ‘I’ turned into ‘we’Â with the mighty Sam Lynn (@langcatsam) and Carrie Bevan (not on Twitter yet, I’m working on her) joining to bolster the team. We’ll shortly be joined by a new #ninjacat after an overwhelming response to my daft ad, which seems to have gone a bit viral. Sorry to any agencies who find themselves getting asked for similar stuff by clients. Well, sorry-ish.
We’ve had a great if brutally busy time this year. We launched the original (and best, says my Mum, hi Mum) Guide to Platform Pricing. The next version of that will be out once we’ve got the platform paper, incidentally, no point, til then. We’ve done tonnes of proposition development work for all sorts of folk, helped some very cool people get their message out and done some hardcore technical work behind the scenes. We’ve re-written T&Cs, KFDs, guides, brochures and more for providers, IFAs and tech firms. We’ve helped IFAs keep better records of their decisions and helped more than a few make new decisions.
I’ve loved speaking at IFP and PFS events, and recently at gigs for AJ Bell, Ascentric and Nucleus. Sorry about the AI cow joke to anyone at the Nucleus conference. And we wrote (with some friends) the CII J11 study text, which made us precisely no new friends at all. Can’t have everything.
Although it felt weird and very un-British, we asked subscribers to the Guide recently how they felt about the lang cat. I’m conscious that our style isn’t for everyone. I have no intention of changing it, you understand, but I’m conscious of it. Anyway, 78% of respondents said they liked our shizzle a great deal, and 22% a moderate amount. No-one went for, you’re a complete bunch of arses’ and I’m taking that as a win.
So thanks to clients, readers, supporters, family, friends and even the haters. We’re having too much fun to stop. Lots more to come from us in 2013/14 and one promise – that we’ll do great work but never take ourselves too seriously. There are enough folk doing that already.
Onwards and, yâ’know, the other thing. Have a good long weekend.
Mahalo
Mark
