Happy New Year. For most of us, January is a prime time for taking stock and making plans. These plans often involve needing hard cash to finance either a start up, or expansion of your current business. But what type of finance you need depends on how much you require and what you want it…
I for one can’t believe that we are already nearly at the end of November. The list of things piling up on my ‘to do’ list is growing at an alarming rate and that’s not even counting Christmas, which I know is just around the corner. As the rest of the world starts 2016…
The sharing of tips and service charge has long been a controversial issue for both the workers that receive the money and the tax man but the issue has hit the headlines again in the last few months highlighting the confusion surrounding it. Pizza Express, Cote, Las Iguanas, Bill’s, Draft House, Masala Zone, Polpo, Cau,…
We live in an unpredictable and volatile world. The only thing you can be certain about, is that life is uncertain. Be prepared. “Aon (provider of risk management) says that 80% of companies that fail to recover from a major disaster will go out of business”. Those are high odds which can be easily avoided if…
Average pay rises are to jump to 3.5% according to the DailyMail today. Compulsory pension contributions are breathing down our necks. And the government has announced a rise in minimum wage from October 2015. All in all, staff costs are on the increase putting even more pressure on small businesses. 3.5% doesn’t seem like much. So why…
If you are thinking of selling your business one day, even if it is in 5 years’ time, you need to begin boosting the sale value today. If and when you finally sell, your buyers, their lawyers, consultants and accountants, will all be looking through your company’s past history… in extreme detail. Possibly for the previous…
You’ve made the brave decision to go ahead with your business idea and work for yourself. This is great news. It also means your to-do list is endless. One item that needs to be on your list, is choosing the right legal structure for you. This process can be daunting. I outline below, in basic…
There are some simple things you can do today, to start increasing your profits without winning new clients. Making some minor changes to the way you do business will be barely noticeable to anyone- apart from you, of course, as you’ll know you are becoming more profitable. 1. Increase your prices. No really. A small…
Businesses are in the habit of measuring many things: customer satisfaction, financial performance, staff performance, market share and share value to name a few. And then there are hundreds of key performance indicators out there. David Parmenter has some books on the subject, in which he describes an endless number of them. But I think, one…
If you run your own business, no doubt you have had ‘writing a business plan’, on your to do list for some time. But who has time for that, when you are trying to get your business off the ground, right? Wrong. According to many sources, 90% of internet start-ups fail. You can lessen those odds…