As I watched a gritter on my icy journey to work last week, I was reminded that just as an icy road can be treacherous with unseen black ice to catch out the unwary, so the road to success also has hazards to spoil the progress of the inexperienced traveller! In life as in business, […]
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You may have heard the phrase, ‘As a business owner, if you want to grow your business, you need to spend time working on it instead of just working in it’. But what does that mean – how do I know whether what I’m doing is right? Working ON your business involves long-term tasks like
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Do the words, ‘Performance Review’ fill you or your staff with fear? That usually means you have been on the end of poorly delivered feedback in the past. Giving (and receiving) feedback is a skill that you should learn and practise, and encourage your team to do the same. Imagine talking to a stroppy teenager
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Driving to work recently on a wet, drizzly morning, I came upon a queue of cars slowly moving behind a lorry. As I approached the traffic I could see that the road ahead was straight and clear and I didn’t understand why the cars hadn’t overtaken the lethargic lorry. I approached carefully, pulled out and
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Julian’s Business Tips: Looking Back to Look Forward Later on this year, I’ll probably be suggesting that you look forwards, and set your 2024 business goals. But you won’t be able to do that effectively until you have reflected upon, and most importantly learnt from, your experiences of this year. It’s important that you do
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Julian’s Business Tips: Running a Business at Home I’ve been talking to several people who want to set up a home business – so here are my ten top tips. 1. Have a plan – a simple one is fine. You can’t manage what you don’t measure, so maybe initially just define your market, how
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Julian’s Business Tips: Who is Number One? You may have rented a car over the summer, so I thought I would share with you one of the most famous advertising battles in the last 60 years. The US car rental companies, Hertz and Avis. Their rivalry had, in fact, begun in the late 1940’s with
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Julian’s Business Tips: The Train Is Leaving “I’m not going to train them and then have them leave for a better job!” That’s what an old boss of mine said when I suggested some soft skills training courses for the staff. He didn’t want to spend money and time on something that he didn’t consider
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Julian’s Business Tips: Stop Doing Everything A lot of people who start their own business try to do everything themselves. They’re wrong. Whilst that may seem sensible pragmatism at the start, it is essential that you move away from that model as quickly as you can. Why? Well if nothing else, to stop you being
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Julian’s Business Tips: Brand New Values Last month I heard a very interesting talk about the importance of branding. I don’t mean the corporate logo or colour palette type of branding, I’m talking true branding: the thing that separates your company from its competitors, your brand values. We used to call this your USP: your
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Julian’s Business Tips: A Right Royal Coronation This month lots of people will be celebrating the Coronation. There will be lots of events to enjoy and memorabilia to buy – some businesses will make a lot of money out of this national occasion! Whilst your business may not be crowning a new corporate Kingpin, there
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Julian’s Business Tips: Negative Feedback from The Apprentice As long term readers will know, I have a love-hate relationship with the BBC show, ‘The Apprentice’. Just like you shouldn’t use Love Island as a source of dating tips, you shouldn’t use The Apprentice as a demonstration of how to be commercially successful! However, whilst putting
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