Like most people, email has a tendency to take over my life. It’s how I most often communicate with people and I don’t want to miss out on what’s happening, especially if a client wants to ask my advice.

But email is the number one time killer – it will eat up your day if you’re not careful. Responding to emails as the priority means you’re responding to other people’s agendas, rather than developing your own business or doing the things which are important to you. And half the time, emails just need a quick scan and a fast “that’s fine” response.

So I changed my relationship with email and decided that I would only pick up email while I was between meetings, which, for me, means being on the bus. Travelling between meetings is dead time – I’m only staring out of the window or eavesdropping on strangers when I’m on the number 49 to Hove, so I might as well be doing something useful instead.

And it’s been great. I can catch up with what’s going on and my replies are much more brief than before, so I’m not hoovering up everyone else’s time. If it’s something complicated, checking email on my phone means that I’m much more likely to phone someone and have a real conversation.

Of course it doesn’t always work – I’m not on the bus every day for one thing but, on my other days, I’ve found that I can still free up my time for more useful and enjoyable things by only checking email at 11 am and 3 pm, rather than sporadically through the day.

Why not try taming the email beast yourself, and see if you can get a couple of extra hours per day?

I’ve just finished a session with one of my clients, looking at how she can be more productive by being in control of her to do list. This is an issue which comes up frequently and, while different methods suit different people, I thought I’d share some of the techniques which work for me.

Rule 1
• Anything which you aren’t going to do in the next 5 minutes needs to go on the to do list, even if it’s just a quick phone call. Otherwise it will be lost forever.

Rule 2

• Make sure your list is very specific and defined. For example “online marketing” is so wide and vague that you’re never going to get around to actually doing anything, whereas “spend 45 minutes reading the econsultancy report on SEO” is a clear instruction to do a very specific thing. That one is on my list for this week.

Rule 3

• Putting everything on your to do list will make it enormous, which can then make you feel dispirited and that you’ll never actually do anything. So you need to prioritise. I use Stephen Covey’s matrix to choose the things from my list which I’m going to do on any particular day, so that I don’t waste my time on trivia or get caught up in firefighting.



• Urgent things are the ones you must do in the next couple of days. Paying a cheque into the post or calling a client back would be an example of something which is both important and urgent, but reading a new email about how great the iPad is, might be urgent (because it’s a new email) but it’s likely to be unimportant.
• Important things are the ones which will make me and my clients money, maybe now or in the long run. The aim is to get the urgent and important tasks done first and then concentrate on the non-urgent but important things. If something is not urgent, and it’s not important, I just take it off the list and don’t do it. That probably chops out about a third of the list straight away – just don’t do these things.

Rule 4

• Each day, before you do anything else (including delving into your email) choose which things you’re going to do each day.

Rule 5

• Allow yourself time for people phoning you, getting distracted, eating lunch etc rather than filling your day to the full. Only put on the list for that day the things you can reasonably do, you can always finish off that day’s list, smile, and then get ahead with tomorrow’s stuff.

There are lots of resources to help you with your time management, and we can all do with getting more out of our day. In particular, I recommend some sessions with Clare Evans to support you in developing some excellent habits and talking to Susanne Barthelmes at All Sorted Consulting to make sure that all of your systems are working well for you. And of course, once you’ve done that you’ll be so productive that your business will be ready for the next stage, which is when you’ll want to chat to me about your strategy to develop and grow.

We’re all settling down after an interesting election and waiting to see how things will affect us. One of the changes which has been put forward is an increase in VAT, perhaps to 20%. The FT reports what is being proposed for VAT. This is a really bad idea for anyone who sells B2C (business to consumer). I’m going to rant a little bit now about exactly why this is such a dumb idea.

B2C businesses are unpaid tax collectors for the government. Anyone who sells more than 70k of stuff has to charge VAT on top of their prices. Of course, they take the VAT that they’ve paid for the goods off their VAT bill but this leaves a big cheque to Her Majesty, with no benefit to the business whatsoever.

VAT is a hassle

In terms of the transaction costs (or hassle, if you’re not an economist), collecting VAT at all is a major cost to businesses. How many hours are spent calculating VAT payments, filling in returns and making payments? Couldn’t we spend this time doing something which is of use to our customers or doing some marketing? Maybe we could do something real, instead of managing a complex tax system.

When the government decreased VAT temporarily for a year, the small retailers I work with had a huge job to change all the prices. Changing signs, checking all the copy on the website to make sure all the prices were accurate, amending prices to ensure that you weren’t charging silly sounding prices like £18.57 which don’t fit with pricing psychology principles. It took days, again, completely useless time. An increase in VAT will mean going through all of this again.

VAT makes things more expensive

An increase in VAT increases prices. This means that whatever you sell appears to be more expensive to the people you want to sell it to. You don’t have to be a genius to understand that increasing prices is going to put off some of the people you want to persuade to buy your lovely things. So by giving the government a bigger share of everything you sell, your business is at risk, because you’ll have to work harder for every pound you put in the till.

Less money in people’s pockets

Increasing prices means that everyone suddenly has less money in their pockets, so they’re less likely to spend it with you. Where consumers have less money, they’re less likely to spend – and this effect can be amplified, so that as soon as people think that they have a bit less money, they lose confidence and are put off spending altogether. Which affects all purchases, including B2B and non VAT rated items. Less money in the economy means a poorly functioning economy for all of us.

So we have higher transaction costs, more paperwork and hassle, a decrease in sales and a drop in consumer confidence. Could this lead us to the second part of the double dip recession some commentators have been predicting? Running a business is difficult enough at these times, without massive increases in VAT.

Phoenix by jurvetson

Since the recession began, I’ve seen an increase in the number of business phoenixes. A phoenix happens when a business closes down one day, and then opens the next day as a completely new company, but with the same staff, directors and customers. You can usually tell this has happened by a slight change of name, a different bank account, and the directors looking exhausted but relieved.

Businesses usually phoenix (if we can use it as a verb) because they are in trouble and have big debts around their shoulders. Ethically, the difference seems to be that some businesses phoenix because they would not survive otherwise with their huge debts to the banks and some businesses phoenix in order to avoid paying their suppliers. You can tell the difference because the second category (the unethical ones) phoenix again and again. They’re the ones where the directors have taken all the money out of the business before closing it down – you can recognise them when the director is driving a Lexus but telling you that they can’t afford to pay your invoice.

In essence, creating a phoenix company is fairly simple. You put one company into liquidation and open a new company at the same time. The new company now does whatever the old one used to do for the same customers, with the same staff, and a very similar name and brand. Quite often you don’t notice the difference – you could be sitting next to a phoenix right now.

Pros and cons

If you’re thinking that this might be a great way to ditch some of the hassles of business life, such as that troublesome loan which the bank seems to think you will pay back, or that useless member of staff, then do think carefully.

A phoenix strategy has some things going for it, but there are also some serious disadvantages.

• A phoenix has to be done properly and legally otherwise you’ll end up still owing the money but you won’t be able to pay it back because you’ll be in prison for fraud. Get the right advice, from an accountant who has done this before (many accountants haven’t) or preferably an insolvency specialist.
• A phoenix has major long term consequences. You could have that bird around your neck for the rest of your life. If you put a company into liquidation, you are unlikely to ever get a loan again and you’ll have difficulty getting personal credit, even for small items. Some people who have been through this have had difficulty opening bank accounts or setting up online payments, even years after the event.

When you might have to

I’ve worked with three businesses in the last year who have phoenixed. They all tried everything they could to keep the original business going but, when the banks withdrew credit, the directors had no choice. The only alternative was to close down the business for good, and make everyone redundant with no severance pay and walk away. The phoenix was the lesser of two evils.

When it’s bad

A bad phoenix, like most bad actions, has a malicious motivation. When a business owner does this because they have been reckless or greedy, paying themselves big wages when the company isn’t paying suppliers, spending money on lazy, crazy marketing activities such as PR to promote the owners’ egos rather than the products or buying expensive things like cars, or in one case I saw, a giant fish tank for the office when staff hadn’t been paid that month. The company’s assets get sold to the owner’s mum for a fiver at liquidation, and you see Mr Dodgy driving his (sorry, his mum’s) sleazemobile a week later.

How you can make it better

If you’re in a bad situation, and are thinking about phoenixing, or you’ve done it and are feeling morally icky about it, there are some things you can do to make it better.

Firstly, protect the little guys. If you owe your suppliers, and can’t pay them, unless you talk to them they will hate you. Make sure you know that the small companies you owe money to know that they’ll get their money later. A client once paid me the last part of the fees she owed me a whole 5 years after I’d done the work, and I respect her for taking the trouble to do this.

Secondly, ensure that your staff know what’s going on. Staff always have a good idea of what’s going on, and if you tell the truth it will usually be better than the worst case scenario they’ve been imagining. If you’re intending to take staff with you to the new company, this is especially important as you don’t want them to jump ship.

I’ve already written about using LinkedIn for business and this article is great for people who are just starting out with LinkedIn. Now I want to talk about using LinkedIn as one of your essential tools to really lift your business, and help you make the most of your networking.

You can use LinkedIn as a business development tool in many different ways. Here are the three I want to concentrate on here:

• Developing your status as an expert and a lovely person
• Reach out with your brand
• More direct business development

Developing your status as an expert and a lovely person

I’m assuming that you have already given some thought to your profile, and that you’re keeping it up to date. Lovely photo, you look good there, by the way.

The next thing to do is to develop a good number of testimonials on your LinkedIn profile page. I just had a look at a handful of my LinkedIn contacts, and they averaged 3 recommendations, which is not enough to form a decision on. 3 recommendations looks a little half hearted. Potential clients will be looking at your LinkedIn profile, and trying to decide if you’re the person they should work with. So you need to make sure that other people are telling them that they should give you lots of money. LinkedIn is the perfect place to get people to write good things about you.

Remember that you want a good handful of recommendations, don’t be one of those people that have hundreds of recommendations as no one will ever read them, and it’s either going to look like complete overkill, or like you’ve spent your life asking people to recommend you. I have 20 on my page, which is more than enough to tell you that I’m one of the good guys.

Reach out with your brand

You want people in your network to remember you, understand what you do, and think well of you. That way, they will recommend you, buy from you and create opportunities. And LinkedIn can be a fantastic tool for reminding people of who you are, and getting a chance to get your brand in front of some new people.

If you’ve only really been using LinkedIn as an online cv, and a way of collecting some contacts, you’ll probably have missed some of the great new features they’ve been adding. Have a look around at some of the LinkedIn groups and work out which ones apply to you, and are relatively active. By joining up, you’ll be able to see what other people are up to, and learn what’s going on. It’s better to lurk a little first to get the hang of things, and then start joining in debates or helping out with referrals and advice.

More direct business development

One of the things I often recommend to clients is to put together a hit list of the people they want to work with – your target clients. I’ve just done this with a client who wants to sell to businesses based in Brighton who do business outside the city, for example. We’ve now got a spreadsheet of names to start contacting. Now, I wouldn’t advise using LinkedIn to contact these people – you need to be a lot more subtle than that in your hunt. However, LinkedIn is invaluable in finding the people you want, and getting lots of interesting information about them.

Maybe you know that you want to sell something to Giraffe Ltd. You know from their website that Mr Frog works there. So you look up Mr Frog on LinkedIn, and find out that he used to work for Hippo Ltd, and where your friend Ms Lioness still works. So not only do you know exactly what Mr Frog and Giraffe Ltd do, and that he is the right person to talk to, you can also ask Ms Lioness to either introduce you, or if this isn’t appropriate (maybe Ms Lioness doesn’t know him that well) she can give you some more really valuable information, such as does he like phone or email, or where does he hang out.

This approach only works well if you’re looking for high value business to business sales, but in this area LinkedIn can be a remarkable tool.