From bold new start-ups to established small companies branching out, meetings and interactions are increasingly virtual.
In some cases, due to distance and the global reach, you may never meet in the ‘real world’, only ever online. So to help create a good impression, now more than ever, is the time to invest in developing your small screen skills.
Whether you are hosting a virtual meeting, pitching to a potential client, running a webinar, conducting online training, or even interviewing a prospective new employee, how you present yourself on the small screen matters. So, here are 10 tips to ensure you put your best foot forward on the small screen. Continue…
Being able to get on with other people is important for anyone, but especially for small businesses and start-ups.
There is very little you do alone – for most things you need to work with other people, (staff, suppliers, customers, advisors, government agencies, and so on) – and you need to get them onside.
The first step in getting on with other people is to build rapport with them. If you don’t get this right, you won’t get much further so we asked author, Catherine Stothart to outline tips and techniques that will help you to quickly establish rapport with anyone. Continue…
Starting your own business isn’t plain sailing. It throws lots of new challenges at us, each with their good, bad and ugly dimensions. And registering a patent is no different.
A lot of inventors with incredible ideas have fallen along the wayside, simply because they didn’t invest the time needed to successfully navigate the patent system.
Make a mistake at this point and you could end up doing all the hard work only for someone else to exploit later down the line. So if you want to protect your business idea or invention, you need to take the patent process seriously. Continue…
Increasing cash flow and being tax-efficient are usually near the top of every small business owner’s agenda.
One way to achieve both these aims is to tax advantage of some of the various tax incentives available to businesses. However, small businesses often miss out on these tax breaks because they either don’t know what they’re entitled to, or can’t find the time to make a claim.
So to help you save time and money, here are five tax incentives and tax relief opportunities that small businesses can take advantage of;
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With age comes wisdom, but all too often in the business world, hubris can come along for the ride too.
After finessing business decision making for decades, executives naturally begin to conclude that their specialised knowledge, expertise and business skills mean that they always know the best way to solve a client problem, to win a major account, or to drive a workplace innovation.
After all their past successes confirm this. Subconsciously survivorship and confirmation biases are at work; good decisions are reinforced, and poor ones are forgotten – which distorts their real importance.
So, can these experienced executives learn something from Millennials? Absolutely! Continue…
UK exports to Asia are now worth 18% of the UK export market – that’s £98.6 billion. China is now the eighth largest export market for the UK – with India and Singapore being among the UK’s largest trading partners in the commonwealth.
Trading to Asia offers an entirely new world of possibility for UK businesses to export their products and to build a global brand – and with Brexit fast approaching and the future of British trading unclear, exporting to Asia is becoming increasingly popular. Continue…
Look around at the world’s many unpredictable events and it could not be clearer that our political, and social, tectonics plates are shifting.
Fueled by the digital revolution of young technology adoptees who are now reaching adulthood, it is in many ways unsurprising that the connected generation is rejecting old leadership paradigms, and favouring the peer-to-peer model over outdated intermediaries.
As the plates shifted, crowdfunding has been able to blossom, and its societal impact is far more radical than you might realise.
My prediction is that by 2030, all worthwhile ideas will be brought to life via crowdfunding. Continue…
The common perception is that you need to be a bit of an extrovert to be a good public speaker.
However, that needn’t be the case. With a few simple tricks, as Kay Heald explains, introverted entrepreneurs can become excellent public speakers.
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Small Business Minister Andrew Griffiths unveils a new £8m Business Basics Fund in a speech to the CBI today.
The Business Basics Fund aims to boost the productivity and performance of small businesses in England. Continue…
Hiring the right people is vital for the growth of your company. It is likely to go some way in contributing to the development of the business and helping it to become successful.
The task of recruitment varies across different industries depending on their nature. For example, recruitment in hospitality is seasonal and finding the right people can be difficult.
Moreover, recruitment can be even harder for startups, so here we take a look at some of the main challenges facing startups when it comes to looking for people to join their team. Continue…
Nowadays, everybody knows that social networks play a significant role in the promotion of a company.
That’s why having an engaged and active community on Facebook can make all the difference to your business.
But if you don’t know what you’re doing, building Facebook friends can take a lot of time and effort. So to help you to quickly build your Facebook fans, here are 5 simple steps you should take. Continue…
As a business owner, it’s likely that you struggle to find time to do the performance appraisals for your team.
You are not the only one.
Surveys have indicated that owners and managers hate doing performance reviews and as many as 58% think it is a waste of time. Continue…
If you’re starting to employ people in your business, mastering payroll is going to become an essential part of your business. Get it wrong and you risk unhappy employees and potential penalties from HMRC.
There’s a lot more to it than simply paying staff money. So we’ve put together this guide to help you get it right and stay in line with what HMRC expects. Continue…
The GDPR gives people more control over their personal information and requires organisations to clarify exactly where Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is stored – and how it is used.
Less well-documented than data protection regulations, but no less important, are data retention regulations. To outline what your legal obligations are when it comes to keeping business records, we asked Paul Ravey of Access Records Management to explain.
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Organisations tend to be fairly poor at defining their projects in terms of criticality and risk. Yet these are key attributes when it comes to deciding how much management and governance a project needs.
Instead, the importance of a project is often seen as directly related to how large it is, how many people are involved, how long it will last and how much budget is assigned.
Yet it’s often the small projects that get completely out of control, experiencing scope creep, or eating up resources before it gets onto the radar of the project’s sponsors. Continue…
From IT and recruitment, to marketing and sales, it’s safe to say as a startup you have a million and one things to do to get your business up and running.
Finding time to devote to accounting and financial matters isn’t always at the top of a startup’s list of priorities. Nonetheless submitting annual accounts is mandatory for any business and being on top of your finances will help your new business succeed so it’s something you want to get done quickly and efficiently. Continue…
A failed business can have a devastating impact on a business owner. However, the lessons learned can also make an entrepreneur stronger, wiser and more determined to succeed next time.
Author and international speaker, Jonathan MacDonald, was floored by a business failure, but after the initial despair, he picked himself up and used the experience to shape his future success. Here, he shares his story and explains how to bounce back from a start-up failure.
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According to the latest Zurich SME Risk Index, almost one in six UK SMEs have fallen victim to cyber attacks in the past year, costing a fifth of victims over £10,000 and 1 in 10 over £50,000.
It’s clear no SME should gamble when it comes to cyber security, especially with the new GDPR regulation in force. Delaying action will put your business, your employees and your customers at risk.
It may seem like a challenging task but as Adam Louca, Chief Technologist – Security at Softcat explains, there are simple and affordable ways small businesses can strengthen their cyber defences.
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VAT is one of the more complex accounting practices you’ll have to undertake as a business, which is why it can help to make it as simple as possible.
The Flat Rate VAT scheme does exactly this and, if you’re eligible, could save you the headache of unnecessary work. Continue…
It would be fair to say that employment status has been a contentious issue in recent times as business owners and staff in various sectors dispute the true nature of their respective working arrangements.
As a business owner it is important that you are familiar with the differences between the three main categories of employment (employee, worker and self-employed) as this will help determine the rights of the individual and the obligations you have towards them. Continue…
