The “how” section of my blog is full of delicious and useful tips on how to run a successful business, all gleaned from my experience of running my own businesses, and the hundreds of different companies I’ve helped to grow over the years. Get stuck in…
This article is based on a talk I gave to some budding entrepreneurs at Sussex University’s Enterprise Thursday meeting last week. I called it Key Success Factors in Business but really it’s called Some Things I’ve Noticed Which Really Work. The students liked it, so I figured you might as well.
I’ve just run away from the television because my good lady wife is watching the Apprentice. Might as well write…
I like to share some of my bag of tips and tricks which I use with my clients, so here’s one which I suggest regularly.
I’ve noticed something about the way that I work. If I can concentrate on what I’m doing, I can get a whole day’s worth of work done in about an hour. Millions of items (well, about 3 or 4) can be ticked off the to do list when I’m in the zone. But if I’m not focussed, my productivity drops dramatically, and my day disappears. So I’ve been trying a new time management technique – the pomodoro technique.
I’ve noticed over the years that about 60% of my clients are women business owners. But this is far higher than the proportion of female business owners generally – about 15% of businesses are owned outright by women, and another 20% of businesses are co-owned by women. So why do I get more women than men?
Lots of my business support clients are busy people. We’re all busy people. But sometimes being busy stops us getting things done. There are lots of resources out there for managing your time better and I don’t want to just duplicate those, but to encourage you to do something other than work on your business for a change.
One of my lovely clients is ready to scale up his business model. Until now, he’s been the only full-time person in his company, and has been using freelancers whenever he’s had a big job on. Over the last 6 months he’s had an upsurge in business, mostly due to taking my sound advice to get out networking in his industry and to build a much better website to demonstrate all the great things he does.
Sometimes your customers aren’t on your doorstep or they’re difficult to reach. If you’re selling to corporates, or in a specialised area, you need an in depth strategy. And even if you are building up a good network around you, you still need to be able to target the right people. So here are some ideas on how to do that.
The Joy of Business