Follow The Money
If you jump into a fast-flowing stream, and can stay afloat, you can become rich. During a course on small-business strategy at a well-known business school, the lecturer pointed out…
All these articles show how knowledge drives value. Being aware of the limits of your knowledge is very important in decision making, as is recognising and leveraging knowledge within a business. In a small business what you know is often your most important differentiator and an important driver of market advantage.
Problems Can Make Your Day
The problems you see in your business are evidence that you understand it. The UK’s largest insurer Aviva carries out a bi-annual survey of small businesses to gauge feelings among…
Xmas Dinner Can Be Harder Than It Seems
Getting drunk in a brewery (apparently, it doesn’t take much organising) is one thing, eating as well, quite another. On Friday night I attended a client's Xmas party. It was…
Watch Money Ball!
Understanding Billy Beane's success with the Oakland A's baseball team can help you build a better business. I went to see Money Ball last night at the cinema. It's a…
Why Strategy Is A Good, But Difficult, Idea
Do you have a strategy for your business? Well, many people and some quite significant businesses don't have very good ones, and some have none. They have various plans from…
You Want Customers Not Friends
It never ceases to surprise me how bad we all are at recruitment. People who seem great at interview often turn out to be flawed human beings, like the rest…
The “Second Shop” Phenomenon
One of my customers has a very successful retail business which has been trading for over a decade in a large town. Things had gone so well that, sometime before…
The Circle Rule™
Applying The Circle Rule™ is perhaps the most important adaptation to behaviour that an entrepreneur can make. If you apply it consistently, when faced with an important business decision, you will…
Know What You Don’t Know
Several years after I began to talk to people about The 5 Secrets of Business Success, Donald Rumsfeld of all people helped me to popularise the idea that knowledge comes in several…
The First Secret
People have been asking me when I am actually going to get this blog started, so here goes. "The 5 Secrets of Business Success" may seem a little corny as…