Having found ourselves at the ripe old age of 42 and - through a variety of poor decisions - at the bottom of the food chain, my partner Linda and I first came up with the idea of a pub and bar search engine one Thursday evening back in September 2001.
Living at the time in Earlsfield, London we had been searching for a pub where we could go and listen to a karaoke and maybe get some Thai food. After an extensive search, we were unable to find anything and ended up staying home, eating whatever junk food was available in the tiny kitchen of our one bedroom, first floor flat watching friends on TV.
How many people do that? Whether at work or home - discuss going out for an evening, maybe to try somewhere different, looking for food, sport, music etc. Well, we gambled both of our futures, - which, if we were honest, was not looking that great at the time anyway - on the answer being that there were a lot of people in the same boat. Didn't know how many until later but it would seem that from the popularity of Citypublife over the years we guessed right.
Previously, Linda had spent most of her life bringing up her family and worked part-time for 13 years as a karaoke jockey with her sister in law. They mainly "gigged" at private parties and entertained the likes of Terry Venables and Andrew Lloyd Webber. She's not a bad singer, I must say, but don't tell her I told you that.
I spent 8 years in the Kent Coalfields, 6 years cleaning swimming pools in California, 7 years selling life assurance, 4 years studying for a Masters Degree in Business and Finance, (which I failed to complete by 6 months), a disastrous 2 years spell in Denver, Colorado as an Internet car salesman for Dodge & Toyota, a further year as a Business Development Manager for a pharmaceutical recruitment company before finally finding my passion with Citypublife and now the Pub & Bar Network.
We regard ourselves as two normal people (whatever normal means) with great ambition and drive for the new pub & bar network. I personally study extensively almost every waking moment to find better ways to make the site better for licensees and visitors. Linda takes care of the finances and all the stuff I hate to do.
We don't mind admitting that our path is guided by a number of mentors who don't even know we exist. We purchase their books and their tapes to find out how they became successful and what their philosophies are. Jim Rohn is one we take note of and his book of tapes entitled "The Power of Ambition" is a great inspiration and treasure trove of insightful ideas and solutions which we try to put into practice.
We follow his leading principle that "success is achieved at the service of others and not at their expense". A philosophy that could help many of our subscribing licensees find their own success.
We are very open - some would say too open - but that is our own personal nature and the way of the Internet. It gets things done and it builds trust with our subscribing licensees and site visitors. If we screw up, we admit it but we try everything in our power to put it right. We make mistakes every day, who doesn't? The trick is to not keep making the same ones.
We understand that if we give our site visitors and our subscribing licensees what they want, we'll get everything we want. It doesn't work the other way around.
Over the years we've been breaking new ground and still, with the network, we are trying new ideas in a niche market where we have nobody else to benchmark.
The new pub & bar network has been designed and developed to raise the standards of pub and bar information on websites, help potential venue customers find what they are looking for anywhere in the UK and help licensees promote their venues cost effectively.
Extensive efforts are made to keep the site current as licensees are penalised if they don't keep their venue websites up to date and their sites are removed automatically, for example, if they are not updated within 90 days of their last visit, regular events are removed automatically if not updated within 6 weeks and sporting events, theme nights, posters etc. are removed automatically after the specific date of the event.
We encourage feedback and will always look at fresh ideas from anybody to improve the site and I'm sure we will add to the about us page over time, so please revisit periodically.
