Most business owners are passionate about what they do and want to do the best work they can. They want to keep their customers happy, do a brilliant job and build a reputation on the back of this. In my experience, successful business owners also treat their suppliers in a similar way, they [...]
We are always advising clients to cut costs and save on overheads - it comes with the territory, but sometimes spending your money can wind up helping your business immensely, protecting it from slower times. It might seem counterproductive to spend money when you want to put it in the bank - and [...]
We are often asked by clients if they should buy or lease capital equipment for their businesses. The answer, as usual, is not simple and it depends upon the nature of your business, but there are nevertheless a few guidelines you can follow to help you decide what you should do. Broadly speaking, [...]
Whenever we take on a client we tend to have very similar conversations with them, mainly because many of them have never been given any kind of explanation of how things work and are often left to their own devices to figure stuff out. We make it our mission to help them understand their [...]
I have serious mixed feelings about the upcoming referendum. I have listened to all the arguments, read the booklet that No. 10 kindly sent me and perused the various websites and while I am leaning one way, I am for the most part undecided. I can't help have an instant distrust of the fear mongering [...]
Ignore us at your Peril I was at a seminar recently, given by a Marketing “Guru” and he was pitching his take on how to get rich, which basically involved learning how to become an expert public speaker, achieved, in part, by buying and attending the course he was selling. And whilst I agreed with [...]
Surely no-one can dispute that small businesses are vital for the economy: In 2013, there were 4.9 million businesses in the UK, over 99% of which were small and medium enterprises. Small and medium enterprises employed 14,424,000 people in the UK in 2013. The European Commission’s SME Performance Review estimates the Gross Value Added of [...]
I was at a networking meeting a while ago and sat next to a fellow businessman who, during the course of our conversation said to me, “We are no better than anyone else”! I was a bit taken aback, “how so” I asked, “We have 3 or 4 larger competitors” he elaborated “when we do [...]
As we have seen recently with Volkswagen, big businesses can get themselves in all sorts of trouble. When businesses get big they can lose flexibility, lose control and sometimes lose their moral compass. Once a business is listed it becomes more accountable to its shareholders and the focus can move away from what’s best for [...]
If you happen to read HMRC’s website (and I do more than I care to admit) you would see that one of their key responsibilities is safeguarding the flow of money to the Exchequer through collection, compliance and enforcement activities. Which is to say they collect the tax that is due. Almost all income is [...]
