Just like Edison and his quest for artificial light.

While Word And Mouth doesn’t quite attain the same sort of Herculean success (yet) as Tom and his bulb, it’s been a long and winding road to get here.

And now we’re here, we ain’t going anywhere. Apart from up.

Candidly: Word And Mouth was conceived on Tuesday. That’s the ‘other day’, as in 10am on 15/09/09.

A mini whoop, a small investment in a virtual letterbox and WordAndMouth.com was born.

Word And Mouth is the product of a multimedia-trained consumer journalist’s dream to relinquish the corporate environment in pursuit of a goal: to discover his talents.

Working for The Man finished in October 2008. What followed was a prolonged bout of travelling, introspection and indulgence in the company of many, many inspirational people.

And finally that lightbulb moment. To harness the disciplines of writing and broadcasting to offer Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) the opportunity to reach out to their customer bases using dynamic, exciting and passionate communications.

We delight clients with incisive marketing content, product promotion, podcasting and social media tools. Wrapped up in sincerity and charm, as you’d expect from a company based in the cultural paradise of Liverpool.

Success used to be measured in the three Ps of persistence, patience and purpose.

As consumers we are losing the will to exert ourselves. We’ll snatch up the most convenient products, often snubbing the best. We’re time poor. And we don’t really know what we want, apart from conspicuous consumption.

Scratch that last sentence. We do know what we want: we want to be loved, we want to be pampered and preened. And we won’t – under any circumstances – settle for anything but immaculate customer service.

So business owners have to be smarter than ever. To be prepared, passionate and principled. For these are the three Ps that drive business today.

Word And Mouth lives and breathes Three Ps 2.0 in pursuit of achieving the modern SMEs goal of customer service, loyalty, delight and referrals.

And we think we’ve cracked it.

We leave clever communications to the big advertising agencies. We do straightforward, because no-one has time to rationalise confusing messages.

Word And Mouth is all about:

• Clarity
• Conviction
• Simplicity
• Measurability

To surmise – we reach out to your customers with your messages in their language.

As this site evolves, we’ll introduce case studies to help you figure out how Word And Mouth can work best for you.

Til then, look around. And don’t hesitate to contact us. Anytime. About anything.

Because communication starts with the heart. Like Word And Mouth, it’s a miraculous organ that never stops beating.

To be a leader, you have to make decisions. And take people with you.

Leadership is a fascinating discussion point and one that came to light today as I trundled (on feet, confusingly, rather than wheels or a monorail) to Liverpool University’s Management School for a taster session on a fascinating course called  Lead.

The concept is to incubate with inspirational leadership techniques, small businesses whose captains want to grow their share of the marketplace.

Through 10 months of mentorship (that’s coaching), round-table discussions and action learning, it is said that you can increase your annual revenues by £200,000.

All for £1,000!

I’m a journalist. I led millions of people a merry dance through newspapers, magazines and websites in my notorious youth. I’m a bit more sanguine about the whole thing now but I like to think I know a thing or two about leadership. Prof Tom Cannon does. He runs a business and teaches business.

But one thing I can’t overlook is this notion that great leaders are born, not made. Tom is a fantastic fellow and he elucidated that to be a great leader you need charisma and communication skills.

95% of the population would fail if these disciplines were tested in some form of freaky psychoanalytical sideshow presentation.

So I wonder how you can tutor an immersive course – 2 days per month over 10 months – with the promise of engendering leadership abilities in 25 people, known as cohorts.

I love the idea and I’d be super keen to dive on in and give it a go if a. I had the time, and b. I genuinely believed that I would get as much out of it as I would have to put in. But as anyone who knows me knows, unless my heart is 100% into something I’d end up taking a place that someone else could make more use of.

Fair play for starting this £9.5m course though. The more help small and medium sized businesses get this day and age, the better.

A link to the Lead course.