What Impact Will Mayor Khan Have on London’s Business Rates?

Two months after he was voted in as the Labour Party’s candidate for Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan tweeted about his intentions regarding the capital’s impossibly high business rates:

Sadiq Khan tweet

Sadiq Khan set out his stall on London’s businesses early, and his pledge to be “the most pro-business Mayor London has ever had” was a cornerstone of his campaign. He spoke out about business rates and stated that, as “small businesses are the lifeblood of London’s economy…it is vital that control of business rates is devolved…in such a way that it doesn’t simply result in more cuts for London [over other parts of the UK].”…

Continue reading →

4 Ways CEOs Can Effectively Build Their Personal Brands

As a CEO, you have a lot on your plate. All of the responsibilities in front of you make thinking about anything other than the company seem downright impossible. Furthermore, thinking about yourself and your own career can seem like a ludicrous proposition. But that’s exactly what forward thinking CEOs do – they think about themselves from time to time.

Super CEO

4 Ways to Build Your Personal Brand

Regardless of whether you anticipate staying in your current role until retirement, or feel weary about your future with the company, it’s imperative that you build your own personal brand. Not only does brand building open up future job opportunities, but it also exposes you to things like paid speaking engagements, book deals, and industry recognition.…

Continue reading →

Looking To Sell Your Small Business? Here Are Things You Need to Do

If you’re a typical entrepreneur, you have a habit of jumping from one idea and project to the next. When you find something that works and you build a successful business out of it, you’re already looking for the next thing to sink your teeth into. You get easily bored and can’t do the same thing for too long. That’s the reason you’re in the line of work you’re in. Entrepreneurs innovate. They don’t sit on successes of the past. They create the success of the future.

Sell a business

If you’re an entrepreneur anxious to move onto the next project, but you have to offload the current one, it’s not always easy.…

Continue reading →

3 Tips for Assessing Your Financial Needs When Starting a Small Business

Starting a small business requires a great deal of complex planning. Not only do you have to come up with your business plan and method for success but you need to consider financial funding. Many small business owners may take funding for granted and only look for it at the last minute. Unfortunately, this methodology could leave you in an unstable position as you approach opening day.

Assessing small business finance

Funding for small businesses can come from a variety of sources, depending on your business model, ideas, and needs. Failing to adequately assess your needs could leave you with a larger debt than necessary, or not having enough funding to get your business off the ground.…

Continue reading →

How to Choose the Perfect Company Car

When you have the responsibility for buying a car for your company, the choice can be even more difficult than when you buy one for personal use. Whether you run your own small business or are in charge of an extensive fleet of vehicles for a larger company, the basic elements are still the same – you need to get good value for money and you have to make sure the vehicle will be up to the task.

Businesswoman and her business car

Business professionals can find it difficult to access reliable advice on how to choose the perfect company car, simply because manufacturers and sellers can make confusing claims, which might not always be able to be taken at face value.…

Continue reading →

Careers: The Most Popular College Majors

High school seniors certainly feel the pressure when it comes time to decide upon what colleges they’ll be applying to and what majors they’ll be declaring upon receiving those acceptance letters and completing their enrollment at their chosen colleges and universities. But, as with everything else, when it comes to college majors, there are those that are certainly more popular than others and that attract the most students for a variety of reasons.

College students

If you’re on the hunt for a great college, but you’re not quite sure what major to declare yet, read through the following list of some of the most popular college majors today.…

Continue reading →

4 Ways to Make a Small Business Feel Like a Big Business

Many people dream of owning small businesses. Unfortunately, not all of them realize that small companies often have a hard time competing with larger businesses. Perhaps that isn’t such a serious concern, since you can use these four tips to make a small business feel like a big one.

Hipster workspace

Build a Professional Website

It doesn’t matter whether you own a farm or a travel agency, your company needs a professional website that gives visitors valuable information about your business, products, and services. If you don’t have a website, a lot of consumers will assume that you’ve gone out of business. Despite this, about 60 percent of very small businesses don’t have websites.…

Continue reading →

Freelancing Tips: Building Long-Term Relationships with Your Clients

So, you’ve decided to be a freelancer, and you’ve successfully acquired your first set of clients. You were able to negotiate the payment rate that you want, and you’ve worked on a contract and terms of conditions that detail the responsibilities of both parties. Give yourself a pat on the back, you’re well on the way to independence.

Freelancer working on a cafe

Of course, things don’t stop at this point. Successfully closing a deal doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be plain sailing for you from here on in. You’re just about to get on with some real work, so it would be good to learn a few pointers on how you can forge long-term relationships with the people you’ll be working with.…

Continue reading →

Using a Meeting Room Manager for Increased Efficiency

Do you think of meetings as a waste of your company’s time and energy? Meetings can be the backbone of any well run organization. They can also be a time waster that leads a good business down the pathway to disorganization and lost opportunities.

Meeting room

How you as the captain of your small ship use the time spent in meetings can have a huge impact on the entire organization in the long run. Having the right tools to keep meetings on topic, on time and a way to solve problems instead of creating them goes a long way towards turning meetings into a key part of your business instead of a time waster.…

Continue reading →

The “Drilling Down” Principal – Do One Thing Well

Steve Jobs quote on doing one thing well

Do not try to do everything. Do one thing well. – Steve Jobs.

It’s Hard to Do Less

As business owners sometimes the hardest thing is doing less. All sorts of opportunities can present themselves to us and with that can come the temptation to take on work that’s beyond the original business plan.

If we aren’t careful we can spread our resources so thin that we end up doing nothing really well.

There is incredible power in drilling down and focusing on one thing and doing it with excellence. Drilling down and offering a superior product or service can lead to the following benefits:

  • Consistent Demand: The law of demand means your product or service will always be in demand if it is superior
  • Higher Revenue: A superior product or service will attract a higher price because of higher demand
  • Lower Costs: By focusing on one product or task, you can better optimise your resources towards it

Sounds like the ideal business model.…

Continue reading →