Mensia

30/08/2026

They felt bad for messaging on a Sunday. We'd already shipped it. 😅

Elvins asked a simple question this morning: "is there any way of removing employees?" A few of their team are heading off to uni soon.

Eight minutes later, it was live.

That's the bit people don't expect. Not the big launch, the small stuff, handled fast, without a ticket queue or a "we'll look at it next sprint."

We've built Elvins a custom back-of-house system that quietly handles the jobs every hospitality business dreads:

✅ Morning temperature checks and daily compliance logs, no more clipboards
📋 Staff rotas, built and managed in one place
📅 A booking system that fits how they actually run the shop
👥 Full staff management, add, remove, done

None of it is glamorous. All of it eats hours every single week if you're doing it on paper.

Good software isn't just what you build. It's how fast you respond when someone needs something changed.

Want tools built around how your business actually works? Drop us a message. We might even reply on a Sunday. 😄

28/08/2026

A very cool recent project I have worked on ❤️

25/08/2026

Bank holiday Monday is a week away. If your hours are wrong on Google, that is the day customers find out.

Next Monday, 31 August, is the summer bank holiday. If you have not set special hours, Google shows "hours might differ" next to your listing, or worse, shows your normal Monday hours and sends someone to a locked door.

Fixing it takes about two minutes:

1. Search your own business name on Google, signed in to the account that manages the listing.
2. Tap Edit profile, then Hours, then Add special hours.
3. Pick Monday 31 August and set what you are actually doing. Closed counts too.

A customer who turns up to a shut door does not come back to find out why.

If you cannot find where to change it, ask below and I will point at it.

19/08/2026

There's padel networking in Lytham on Thursday afternoon and it's a better use of an afternoon than a breakfast meeting.

Chamber on Court, Thursday 20 August, 1pm until 4pm, Ace Padel in Lytham St Annes. It's the North & Western Lancashire Chamber of Commerce, so it's businesses from round here.

You enter in pairs, so grab somebody. A colleague, a customer, whoever owes you a favour.

I've got no stake in it and I get nothing if you go. I'm posting it because standing in a function room with a name badge on is nobody's idea of a good afternoon, and knocking a ball about with somebody for an hour tells you more about whether you'd work with them than any amount of small talk does.

Tickets and the details are on the event page:
https://gbshared.co.uk/county/lancashire/events/chamber-on-court-padel-networking

Swap the boardroom for the court and join us for Chamber on Court - a fresh, informal way to meet fellow local business contacts while trying one of the UK’s fa...

18/08/2026

Tax reporting went quarterly in April. HMRC wrote to over 864,000 sole traders and landlords about it.

From 6 April, if you're a sole trader or a landlord with qualifying income over £50,000, you report to HMRC four times a year instead of once. The first quarterly update was due on 7 August. Reports in July put around 85% of the people affected as not ready for it.

I'm not an accountant and I'm not going to pretend to be. Ring yours about the tax.

The bit I do know about is what it does to your week. One year-end scramble has just become four, and marketing is always the first thing dropped when the admin stacks up. If your enquiries have gone quiet since spring, that might be the whole of it.

The threshold drops to £30,000 in April 2027, so this gets bigger, not smaller.

If the marketing half of that is what's slipped, ring me and I'll tell you what I'd do first.

17/08/2026

The question under all the AI hype: "will this replace me?"

Honest answer: no. AI won't replace a good electrician, a good accountant or a good chef. But a competitor who uses it well might quietly out-quote you, out-respond you and out-book you.

The edge was never the technology. It's being the business in your town that uses it first, and uses it properly. That's exactly what we help local firms do. Want to be that business? Get in touch.

16/08/2026

Honest Sunday question. You know your website needs sorting. What's actually stopping you?

A — Cost
B — No time
C — Don't know who to trust

Comment your letter. I ask because every one of these has a straightforward answer, and "don't know who to trust" is the one I hear most. No hard sell here — just tell me which it is and I'll be straight with you.

15/08/2026

A quick thank you to the patch. In a few short months we've built for a street food name, a football club, an electrician, a martial arts gym, an accountant, a Thai restaurant and more — right across the Fylde and beyond.

Restaurants, trades, clubs, shops, professional firms. Different worlds, same story: brilliant local businesses that just needed to look as good online as they are in person.

If you're a Lancashire business and your website isn't pulling its weight, you know where we are. Real businesses, real websites, real prices.

14/08/2026

The jobs that eat your evenings? Most of them shouldn't need you at all.

With the right automations: quotes go out the second an enquiry lands, booking confirmations and reminders send themselves, and a review request goes to every customer after the job's done — so your Google rating quietly climbs while you sleep.

You didn't start a business to do admin at 9pm. Let's take it off your plate. Message us.

13/08/2026

"My Wix site does the job for now." We hear it a lot. Here's the honest bit.

DIY builders are fine to start. But they load slowly, they look like a thousand other businesses, and to a customer choosing between you and a competitor, they whisper "hobby, not a real business."

Custom doesn't mean expensive anymore. For not much more than you're already paying, you can have a site that's actually yours and actually works. Want an honest look at yours? Send it over.