Stress Release

08:00 - 17:00 work work work, think think think

17:10 get bike out

17:10 - 19:00 play play play, play play play

12 things

Saw a challenge to write down 12 things your want your business to be/want from your business, in a minute, this is what I wrote….

To create a successful sustainable business which has a positive impact on the environment.

We’ll help people to be better at what they want to do.

It’ll be a great place to work, full of opportunity, fun for all involved including our customers.

It will be brimming with enthusiasm and opportunity.

We’ll be different if we need to not because we have to be different.

People will want to work for us, we’ll pay well and value our staff.

Our values will remain key to who and what we are.

Work will be hard but rewards will be earned.

We’ll support local economy

We’ll challenge where we have to and do so with respect.

We’ll lead by example and learn from our mistakes.

We’ll be proud of what we’ve done and what we’re going to do.

Here comes the sun?

Optimistic weather predictions, I can see the point but I think I'd rather some realism, everyday I check and every day I see the sun with clouds and rain, everyday I ride and see the clouds and rain! Anyhow we should have our new rain coats back from the sponsors soon, fancy new kit designed to be worn in the rain is sure to bring us some sun!

Holiday for the right hand man

Luke goes on holiday today, he needs it, he works hard, never complains, embraces the spirit of the company and more than that he's a great laugh to be around. However one thing I wont miss are his shorts

A word from our sponsors

Life is Complicated. Sport is Simple from howies on Vimeo.

We WON! Best Carbon Positive Micro Business in the West Midlands!

So last friday I made my way on the train to Birmingham to the C+ Carbon Awards ceremony. We'd been nominated in the Carbon Positive Micro Business Category, small businesses making big changes, an exciting place to be!

The event was on the eleventh floor and was attended by a lot of very smartly dressed high flying typesThey had been there all day for a number of workshops on carbon reduction, unfortunately I couldn't make it for those. So as the tension in the room mounted we were all asked to take our seats (one had been reserved for me near the front - a good sign) and things got underway.There were a few awards given out an then we were on to the Micro Business Category, after a bit of build up we were announced as the winners, we got a great round of applause and a lovely plaque for the wallI hung around for a while and we linked up with Prince Charles who said well done and that sort of thing, but more interesting was the live link with Pen Haddow an arctic explorer who was out measuring the thickness of the ice
He said that ice is about 1.5m thick at the mo and usually it's 3m so they don't think it will survive the thaw, really interesting stuff.

Anyhow, what a day, I was back in Hereford and on the bike by three o'clock whilst the other winners were swigging champagne, but I wouldn't have it any other way!

West Midlands C+ Carbon Positive Awards

So looks like this one might be a big one!

It's hosted by business in the community who mobilise business for good. They are on of The Prince's Charities.

Soooo we're nominated for Carbon Positive Micro Business, out of the whole of the west midlands... As we mentioned the Awards are organised by Business in the Community, with the support of Advantage West Midlands, Sustainability West Midlands, Birmingham Environmental Partnership, Midlands Environmental Business Club, and Argent.

Nice way to end the week hey!

Dolly Parton, new kit and good skills..

So as we stride in to our second year, confident we are following the right path, and of course enjoying ourselves the whole way, it's good to know that we're not loosing any energy!

Recently we completed a carbon audit for all of our customers, the plan now is to issue them all with a window sticker to tell their customers how good to the environment they've been, it'll look something like this What's missing from that is of course the company name, just for now we're keeping it a big secret who's been our number one carbon saver! We are making an award and of course giving a prize to each and every one of our customers. Local great and green company Reprodux are offering to improve the green printing credentials for our customers. Sourcing them quality papers which are more friendly to the environment, teaching them about vegetable based inks and generally looking at saving them some cash on their print production.

It's been an interesting project to look at how much carbon we really have saved, our recycling operation alone is close to saving 600 tonnes of Co2 eq. !

With lots of new business on the horizon we've had to order some new uniform to keep us operating to our full potential and of course keep us looking good.. Howies have supplied us with some jackets so now we're looking at getting them printed up locally. We're going to stick decals on the forearms and back in a reflective material. You'll also notice that the drawing shows we're having a decal on the back of the hood. We thought we'd harness the imortal words of Dolly Parton and stick them on the back to cheer folk up when it's a bit drab... We'll have to see how that one works out...

Lots more updates to come (we can't really say what about at the moment) but in the mean time why not try some new skills out on your bike:

Pretty cool stuff.

So, on Monday, the company will be two years old, 2!!, which is really exciting. But just for today we delivered one of our busier clients 30'000 item. That's not all of the stuff pedicargo have done, just the stuff for one of our clients! Amazing. It doesn't seem anytime since we delivered our 10'000th item! We also figured it was about time we got a clock for the office which displays P.M.T Pedicab Mean Time, Luke insisted on setting this 5 minutes fast until I told him he'd be five minutes late for work everyday.

Anyhow, what better way to be celebrating things than to have 4 days off! So have a great Easter, eat plenty of eggs, do all the things you haven't had time to do and soak up all that lovely spare time.

Adios

The Team

Happy Holiday

So no blogs for a while as I've been on holiday, which has been great, I was able to leave the running of the company to Luke who did a fine job! I was spurred on to going on Holiday (in Wales) by the ongoing battle of Sun Vs Winter that seems to have finally gone the way we want it to..

Wales was great we avoided doing any of this..

Whilst scrambling up plenty of this sort of stuff..

And when I finally returned to work having rested for a week I was greeted by a picture of my new 'rested' look as seen and drawn by Luke..

Very flattering, but now it's back to work, today I've been servicing brakes and trying to source some unique brake pads, can anyone help..

So that's it for the moment, it's good to be back and great to be riding in the sun, things are still going strong with a new couple of contracts looming and cashflow looking healthy - all in time for the tax man to have his share..

Enjoy the sun whilst it's out!

Work scooter...

I want to work where you need one of these to get about...

Vote Bionic Books

So a while ago I mentioned a great new company who we were doing our accounts with, Bionic Books In short they are an online accountancy package for small businesses and they have been totally brilliant for us. Essentially they have enabled us to take full control of our accounts, with out having to pay a fortune or upload new software all the time. They have nice simple graphs to explain things like profit and loss and you can manage all your invoices and that sort of thing, and best of all at the end of the year you can simply print off your accounts!

So Bionic Books are growing and I recently saw an online poll for them so ladies and gentlemen please help out a great company who have helped us by going here and clicking on the vote thing!

Bread Matters

I attended a great workshop held by the bulmer foundation last night about bread making and why it's important. So what's it all about? In the words of the campiagn for real bread:

'Bread is a fundamental part of our diet – in the UK almost three quarters of us eat it every day.

So our bread should be an essential part of our diverse food culture, with skilled bakers being central to our local communities. Unfortunately, much of our daily bread is produced by a handful of industrial bakers using methods that have little regard for its nutritional qualities or the environmental impact of its production. Clever marketing tempts us with low prices or ‘healthier’ loaves laced with artificial additions. But almost all bread made today is based on similar, questionable ingredients and methods.'

Now if it all sounds a bit far fetched you should maybe find half an hour, make a cup of tea and sit down and watch this

You see it's really important, slow food is good food. Real bread is as simple as flour, water and salt, that's it. I guess another way of looking at all of this is if you haven't got the time to feed your family and yourself well then maybe your priotites are out of balance. So tonight why not turn off the tv and make some bread, by hand, share the making and share the eating.

Slow food is good food - Bread Recipe

Welsh Rugby Team on the Cabs!

So I wasn't about last weekend, but it turns out that on Saturday we had none other than Welsh internationals James Hook and Lee Byrne on the Pedicabs! Next time we'll have to get a photo of our own!

Maybe it's time for a 'As used by the Welsh Rugby Team sticker'..

Something nice for Friday

Short Film

We've got a student in today who's making a short film about what we're doing, he's out with Luke at the moment (following some recycling) and will be out with me later to film some cargo, then later on today he'll be back out to film the pedicabs in town.

Lets hope it's good, he's working hard!

WE GOT THE GRANT!!

A VERY BIG THANK YOU FROM ALL OF THE STAFF AT HEREFORD PEDICABS TO THE TEAM AT RE:THINK
It means that for us there are going to be some fantastic changes, we'll be able to disconnect from the grid and rely on just the sun and the wind for our power. We'll have sunpipes to light the offices and batteries to store all the energy we need to run computers and power lights when it gets dark.

For us it is also part of a much bigger project, if this is successful it will mean we have shown that if you start with the right ideas that you can create working profitable businesses which produce no carbon. It also means that as we expand we'll have a great modular root for our expansion that dramatically reduces the business overheads of electricity and gas. This means we need less money to run which in turn means we can charge our customers less than our competitors!

Great times at the moment! We're still progressing quickly, lets hope we can keep it solid in the coming months.

Finger Crossed

So next Tuesday we will know whether or not we are receiving a grant for 50% towards the cost of making our own energy for the business.

We've been doing some really interesting work with the marches energy association, they sent out some energy assessors and over some time we've been establishing if it will be possible for us to produce enough energy so we don't have to draw any from the grid for our office based operations (computers, battery charging, lights, heating, that sort of thing).

The plan is to instal some of these..One of these (not sooo big..).. and then we can keep this chap here on top of the ice and not swimming in the water..

It's not been as simple as we thought it might have been in the first place in fact we are going to have to change everything at our offices, so we use less energy and thus need to produce less to meet our needs. But that is a small price to pay for doing things the right way. Very soon we'll be pretty much Carbon Neutral. We already help lots of other people reduce their carbon footprints and we are somewhat in credit, the last piece of the jigsaw is to find out power from the energy which surrounds us.

It's a great project, so fingers crossed for next Tuesday when we find out if we have the grant or not!

Have a great weekend.

Will

Whatever the weather..

I snapped this photo yesterdayI thought it was an opportune moment to snap a bit of 'Pedicab Spirit, out riding in the blizzards, on the snow, snaking through stationary traffic, making our deliveries and collecting our recycling, nothing holding us back, no cold engines, no snowed in vehicles, just efficient bikes and procedures being operated by a team of dedicated staff determined to get the job done whatever. So whilst out and about we noticed a lot of trade waste around, uncollected, when I got back to base I checked the web and sure enough, the Council had cancelled:

Maybe we could teach them a thing or to about seeing a job through!

Good bikes...

Built to last

The thick of it.

We are right in the thick of it at the moment, busy but aware of how so many of our customers are having a tough time at the moment.

Earlier in the week I met with our local chamber of commerce to discuss how we could help more businesses to save a bit of money, there are a few projects we've been involved in recently which we had a chat about. Whilst I was there I filled in a questionnaire for them from Business Link... and I couldn't help thinking whislt I was filling it out that I was staring at the reason why some businesses wont survive the year.The question - Do you know where you're going? The answer on a sliding 1-10 with 10 being the best possible and your answer being something like - 'We have a clear picture of where we're going along with a set of clear targets and the plans that will help us to achieve them'. Now I don't think there is anything wrong with that answer but it certainly doesn't fit with how we tend to do things and does that mean that we don't know where we are going? Not at all. In fact our major successes have been built on the flexibility to adapt to change and create new products hence our answer - 'Yes (we know where we're going) but we're going to explore a bit on the way'. Surely getting there is part of the adventure!

The next question was really the icing on the cake - Q - How do you ensure that everyone gets behind the plan? A - We involve everyone in the process of planning and setting targets, and allocate responsibility downwards by the implementation of those plans. OUR ANSWER - 'We only ask them (our staff) to work if they believe in our vision'. Sometimes we feel things can be complicated. The real way to get people behind your plan must be for them to believe in it. The rest will come hand in hand with that, processes wont necessary fix problems hey. In fact, who said we had a problem.

This was page 1 of about 10 so by the end I felt cleansed in the feeling that we are different, but not because we want to be, because it's what feels right. Whenever we have a hard question to ask, we just see where it fits with our values, is it Fun, is it Green and is it Honest, the rest will work itself out.

Whilst I'm here I had this picture mailed to me from this years awards ceremony this morning, we must be doing something right..

Onward and upwards we hope, enjoy your weekend!

Will

Another busy week of cargo

Do lectures film..

So I've been banging on about the Do lectures, well here's a film about it.

Amazing time, amazing friends, amazing memories.


The Do Lectures 2008 from The DO Lectures on Vimeo.

Cracking morning on the bike

Amazing

Because three miles with one crank is nothing really

Emergency fixes

Because three miles with one crank arm just hurts.

Economic climate. .

I thought I had a handle on it, people not spending money, businesses closing. . And then this week we did our busiest week ever!

Yours Truly

A friend pointed me in the way of this image he saw on the web, from the Do lectures but being used as a header on something else, it was a good week that one, pop to the sight and have a look if you haven't seen or heard it.

Will

2009.. fine times!

It’s the start of another exciting year for us, last year we really established ourselves and the three core strands of our business, this year the plan is to go from strength to strength!

We’ve got a few resolutions for this year, mostly to keep the good work up and keep strong in these tough economic times. Fortunately most of our business operations enable people to save money but we want to also make sure that our customers can make the most of the environmental benefits of our services too.

So this year will be a year of hard work and commitment to put ourselves in an even stronger position, potentially embracing expansion and further diversification but never forgetting the core values on which all of our enterprise exists, being fun, green and honest.

So what really happened in 2008?

In January we made moves to start an inner city recycling scheme.

In February we picked up our first recycling trial bags, took delivery of a new bike and delivered our 10’000th item!

In March we took delivery of a second shipping container to operate from.

In April we had our 1st Birthday!

In May it was sunny and we launched a new bike on the road, the recycling scheme took on a new dimension with the sale of advertising on the bike.

June and July saw the beginning of the high speed war that would take us from 36mph to well over 40mph!

August – Pedicargo celebrated a year in operation and 30’000 items moved! We also visited GSK to talk about what we do.

September saw an awesome staff party, cider making and of course an invite to go to the Howies Do lectures, a gathering of inspirational speakers and exciting new businesses.

October- We won a Pride of Herefordshire award!

November – We grew moustaches for The Prostate Cancer Charity and continued to work very hard in horrible weather!

December – We wrapped up the year with over 40’000 items delivered and with a recycling scheme on course to prevent over 300 tonnes of waste going to landfill in it’s first year, Pedicabs is still thriving with over 20’000 people using our service to get around the town.

So all in all an eventful year, but this year needs to be bigger, better, quicker and more importantly needs to extend the work we are doing to more people!

Exciting times…

P.s, I have a personal resolution to blog more… certainly more photos…

Merry Christmas and HAPPY NEW YEAR

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL FROM HEREFORD PEDICABS!

Watch out for some fancy dressed antics tonight..



See you all in the new year.

Will, Ben, Luke, Ad, Daz, Matt and Tom