Customers; are they really all that? Sometimes when you’re running a business it’s easy to get caught up in the daily ‘noise’ of unending activity. Occasionally this can lead to you overlooking some of the things that are very important in terms how you got to where you are now. By this, in particular, I… Continue reading
Home, or remote, working has really impacted both the employment and productivity landscape, particularly since COVID changed everything. Technology is a real enabler for this, and the availability of high-speed internet has allowed businesses to morph their employee and team pools into an ever-broader set of working patterns including both wider geographies and time-zones. There… Continue reading
Keeping and managing a happy crew is a tough gig when you’re running your own business. In time, as you get bigger, maybe you’ll be able to have full-time staff to handle the everyday ups and downs of what needs to be done, but, for now, all the hiring, onboarding, cajoling and firing is down… Continue reading
How would you rank yourself on a Control Freakishness scale from 1 – 10? Are you borderline OCD or the human equivalent of a family of chimpanzees? Either way, no matter which end of the scale you’re on, your business needs to be organised. Why? Because if it’s not you’re likely to have a serious… Continue reading
This may seem like an odd question but it’s one that I quite often have to ask within small to medium sized businesses. Everybody has their strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes, we ‘big-up’ our strengths and play-down our weaknesses because it either suits us to do so, or maybe we might be a little embarrassed or… Continue reading
‘I don’t have time to think’. There are a lot of myths about being busy. I’m sure you’ve heard this one; ‘If you want to get something done, give it to a busy person’. The idea here being that someone who’s busy and used to working under pressure will ‘find a way’ to make what… Continue reading
Mergers & Acquisitions (or M&A as it’s usually described) is a very colloquial term and doesn’t much represent how business sales and transactions happen today in the real world. For instance, when was the last time you heard of a true merger? Me neither. Acquiring or selling a business is a large undertaking, no matter… Continue reading
Ahh Strategy, what a grand word it is. Used in everything from chess to the ‘Art of War’, it oozes sophistication, intellectual superiority and entrepreneurial prowess. Clearly, it’s easy to see why every large organisation needs a comprehensive, multi-tiered and detailed strategy for every component of its corporate existence. But what about small businesses? Surely… Continue reading
How would you describe yourself? Are you a ‘let’s make a plan’ kind of person? Or do you just go with the flow and hope it all comes together in the end. More than perhaps you realise, your personality and personal traits map directly into your business practices. It’s hardly surprising if you think about… Continue reading
Well, with a few very rare exceptions, zero. Does this come as a surprise? It might do, if you didn’t realise that you were actually running a lifestyle business. First of all, let’s start with some clarification. It doesn’t matter what vehicle you use for your business i.e. whether it’s a limited company, a partnership,… Continue reading