ROI, or Return On Investment, is a powerful metric for so many aspects of business and, sometimes, when it’s not just a case of a simple financial return, it can be a hard figure to measure. For instance, when it comes to web marketing, with the likes of Google Analytics, do we focus too much [...]
Continue Reading →Pulling The Rug and How Your Business Model Could Go Overnight
One aspect of running a small business that fascinates me (and keeps me on my toes) is the idea that the way you make money now could change overnight. I have just finished the book The Black Swan, a complex read (for me) that adds concrete to my belief that we are fools if we [...]
Continue Reading →Business Flexibility
A few business models have come into my awareness in the past few weeks. Like this logo design company and this guy applying Photoshop filters to photos and selling them back as canvases. Both aren’t ‘the right way’ of doing it according to many of the people I speak to. Why is this? Not highbrow [...]
Continue Reading →Creating An SME With Balanced Income
On Twitter, Anna, guided me to an article about the need for SMEs to balance their client portfolio. Business analysts have warned that a worrying number of small firms — typically service companies in the business to business sector — are relying on income from one or two main clients. It is a sad fact [...]
Continue Reading →
Keep Calm and Carry On
Jason Twittered about a World War II Poster story on the BBC Website: Millions of copies of the “Keep Calm and Carry On” poster were printed on the eve of World War II, but never displayed. Now the message has taken on a new lease of life in our troubled peacetime. It seems that during [...]
Continue Reading →The value of developing your own council
I saw a speaker call Gary Bertwhistle a couple of years ago at a Leadership Conference. Nothing special but he did mention an idea about creating your own council – a collective of people for different areas of your life who you can share ideas with, be it work, hobbies or shared interests. Different councils [...]
Continue Reading →Will you be hit by the extinction of business services?
I had lunch with my accountant in Basingstoke today and I was explaining how being in the tech industry, I am seeing a massive shift coming that I think many peers are not taking too seriously. It’s to do with the commoditisation of services. He’s an accountant I thought, his business is run of the [...]
Continue Reading →Stripping business back to basics
Now that Christmas is well and truly out of the way, the cold light of day will no doubt hit people bang in the face when it comes to the world of business. Already this morning, my news feed talks about Adams closing, Woolworths closed and Wedgewoods going into administration. Even at The Escape, we [...]
Continue Reading →What happened to British Bulldog spirit?
When I was a kid, I often heard talk of the “Stiff upper lip” and the “Britiush Bulldog spirit”. Great stories of people mucking together and making a real effort when it was needed. What ever happened to that spirit? At a time when global competition has never been so fierce; when the constant flow [...]
Continue Reading →