Guest interview - Bruce Philip of Scotsites.com
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I discovered Scotsites.com when I was stumbling in the Scotland group and asked Bruce if he would do a guest interview for the blog.
1 What is the aim of your business?
The aim of ScotSites is to bring together the best of Scotland on the internet. To be honest that sounds like an impossible task, but having seen so many web directories that list Scottish sites I thought that something better could be produced. Using the idea of different categories I thought I could create my own version of the web directory, but with a twist.
2 What prompted you to start your own business?
Having set up one site about travelling around Scotland, I already had a lot of information on the country. So incorporating this into a site more specific to Scotland, rather than just travelling, I set up ScotSites. The impossible task isn’t quite that, but it will remain a work in progress for some time to come… hopefully it will provide links to a variety of useful and interesting sites on Scotland in a logical manner!
3 What has been the hardest aspect of having your own business?
The work load has to be the worst part of this sort of thing. Mainly working alone means that there’s no one else to boss around and make do all the work. However, when you are doing something that you enjoy then its not quite as bad! The other side of the coin is “meeting” people with like-minded interests through various forums… and sometimes even meeting up in person as myself and my partner did with a couple of friends from the Netherlands last year (and my partner did so again!)
4 What is the funniest thing that has happened to you running your own business?
It wasn’t actually something that happened to me, but something that I made others believe. Imagine if you will the the proposed line of super-huge pylons to run from Beauly to Denny. I made my protest clear especially as part of the route was to go through the Cairngorms National Park and another across Sheriffmuir battlefield. I’m actually against the pylons running across the hills spoiling the views as it is, but on the 1st of April last year I announced that I was due to start working for the company that was actually responsible for constructing the pylons. As a result I was doing a U-turn as far as my viewpoint on the actual pylons was concerned. Of course, being the 1st of April I figured that everyone would get the joke, but I had an Ace up my sleeve. My partner announced the same day that the discovery of polar foil was going to help reduce the amount of melting currently being experienced at the North Pole. Obviously everyone spotted the anagram (polar foil = April Fool) so my own was greeted by a group of people that were sympathetic to my position and agreed not to discuss the proposed pylons any further… the web master also offered to remove the topic completely so I wouldn’t get in trouble with my future employer!
5 Is there anything you would do differently with the benefit of hindsight?
With the benefit of hindsight I would have started ScotSites first and created a travel site from that rather than create ScotSites from what was supposed to be a travel site. However, there’s no real regrets as the whole web site idea started through travelling around Scotland in the first place and wanting to share what we’d seen and discovered along the way! Ultimately, either site would have been a logical progression from the other anyway!
My comments - It is a big task to bring together the best of Scotland on your site but then why give yourself an easy challenge. I know all about the workload when you have your own business. However, Bruce, as you say, if you are doing something you enjoy the time passes so quickly, except perhaps when I comes to things like doing tax returns and trying to grapple with IT, in my case.
