Opinion and thought leadership from freelancers, small business experts and solo entrepreneurs shaping the UK’s independent economy.
Global IT monster Google will pay only £6 million in tax this year on a turnover of £395 million from its UK operation. Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt says the company could pay more but British tax law won’t let him! When can it be right for off-shore companies not to pay UK tax?
There is an old saying in business, as true today and it ever was; ‘There is no such thing as standing still; if you don’t adapt, innovate and change then you just go backwards.’ John Leigh investigates.
Top business coach urges SMEs to turn to ‘above the board’ guerrilla cash flow tactics.
Joblessness and youth unemployment are at record lows. Thriving exports are creating a massive balance of trade surplus. Entrepreneurship is booming, fuelled by the lowest personal and corporate tax rates on the planet. Britain sets the benchmark on innovation, growth and education, and our economy is admired the world over. Sound familiar? Perhaps not yet.
Our member panels are used to gauge small business owners’ opinions on a range of key topics – this time it is training and skills to coincide with the A–level results and, shortly, GCSEs.
According to reports, the Tories face an almost certain defeat in the upcoming bi-election in Corby, following the recent departure of writer turned politician Louise Mensch. Chris Parke, CEO of Talking Talent looks at whether senior roles & family life are good bed fellows.
Is the decision to switch rail provider for the West Coast mainline service a bridge too far in terms of risk versus reward asks Daniel Ball, director, Wax Digital.
The time-honoured tradition of relying on good relationships to make sales is a losing strategy according to a study from CEB, the member-based advisory company.
Simon Hartley is a sports psychologist, author and performance coach. After working with athletes such as double Olympian and Commonwealth champion swimmer, Chris Cook for 7 years between 2001 and 2008, he also helps businesses to implement the techniques of world class sportspeople.
Business is not like sport. The 100m race is over in just a few seconds and even a marathon only lasts a few hours, whereas business has to succeed year in year out. Because most athletes have never tried to run a business the links they make in their “motivational presentations” to business are tenuous and somewhat naïve. Quite frankly, they’re not much good.
On Monday the office got a call to tell us that we’d won one of the four June Shell Live Wire Awards; a £1000 grant and business mentoring. In the excitement, we got thinking about how we had got so far in sixteen months.
David Sturges, CEO of WorkPlaceLive, believes that the flexible working hours introduced during the Olympics 2012 could have changed the attitudes of employers for good allowing employees more flexible working patterns.
Small business structures are almost always drawn with leaders at the top, and leaders are expected to inspire followership among ‘the people ‘below’. Too often, I come across that dreadful word ‘subordinates’ in smes, which further perpetuates the unchallenged notion of leaders being on top directing their minions who cater to their every whim. And when leaders talk about ‘cascading’ their vision within the sme, there is only one direction anything will ever cascade!
That is the rallying cry from British Entrepreneur Will Davies who believes that fellow business owners who are branding the Olympic Games as a disaster for business thinking far too short-term.
Everyone in business knows that it’s much harder to win sales during the months of July, August and September.
