This is something that is increasingly cropping up in conversations from those asking how to set up their own shop so thought it might be useful to explain. I regularly get phone calls or visitors all excited because they have this dream of setting up their own shop and are bouncing away telling me all…
As an employee you will spend a large percentage of your day seated and if your chair of choice isn’t carefully selected then this can have a major impact on your working life. Think of it like this – the average office based employee works for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week resulting…
Let’s face it, in the current economic climate we are all looking for ways to cut back on our expenditure and save money. This is true whether you are spending as an individual or on behalf of a small company. One of the things that might be top of the list for cutting back on…
In the last 5-10 years, the way in which businesses have communicated with their audience has dramatically changed. No-one could have predicted the new technological advances that have made some of this communication possible. We now send messages to companies in real-time, from wherever we are in the world, and expect an immediate response too.…
Welcome to the latest in an ongoing series of entrepreneur interviews for The Small Business Blog. These short Q and A sessions are conducted by myself and feature some of the most exciting figures in the business world. Our latest interviewee is Malcolm Trotter. Since 2001, Malcolm has been employed by the IAB (International Association…
Last week in my Top 5 Tips column we talked about becoming a better boss. This week I want to discuss some ideas for how to choose the right people to fill the roles in your business. Recruiting someone to fill a role in your business can be difficult, so here are our Top 5…
The last week belonged to the US dollar. It strengthened against the whole field, with the commodity-oriented and emerging-market currencies bringing up the rear. The euro lost just over a cent to the dollar and sterling fell even further behind, leaving the euro half a cent firmer against the pound in the foreign exchange update…
The topic of the quote this week is “Teams”. Team-building exercises are now an important part of many management strategies and in fact a lot of organisations place so much value in them that they allocate nearly as much (or more!) time and money on team-building as they spend on training. “One man can be…
Marketers and advertisers all around will tell you that packaging sells. With high consumerism rates and a plethora of almost identical products on the market, attracting people to what your SME has to offer means having packaging to support it. Along with an appealling product together with attractive packaging, there are other significant factors that…
Have you ever started a workday with a whole list of tasks that need to be completed and instead spent the whole day working on part of your website? Or perhaps you were sidetracked by doing your bookkeeping? It’s easily done and once that time is gone, you’ll either need to work for even longer…
