Julie Stanford

January 19, 2015 by Julie Stanford Leave a Comment

Starting a business is no box-ticking exercise

Over the last few years, there has been a fundamental shift in the options available to people who want to learn how to start up and run their own business.

Alterations to funding in business support have encouraged some organisations to offer qualifications for business start up, some of which are funded by the Skills Funding Agency.

For eight years, our own business start up workbooks have successfully been used by individual start ups, and by enterprise agencies and Chambers of Commerce to deliver their own funded training programmes. Now they are also being used by training companies, work programme providers and colleges across the UK for people looking to gain a qualification. [Read more…]

January 6, 2015 by Julie Stanford Leave a Comment

Business and money … and sleepless nights

“Business is not just about money!” I just read in a post on LinkedIn.

To a certain extent, I agree with the author. There’s still that popular misconception that all business owners are greedy ‘fat cats’ who live off the toil and sweat of their underpaid, beleaguered workforce. In a few, usually large businesses, or businesses in certain sectors, that may well be true. In reality, of course, in most micro and small businesses, the owner is often last in the queue when the money is being apportioned. [Read more…]

January 5, 2015 by Julie Stanford Leave a Comment

Pay attention to the small stuff

This blog is longer than my usual offering but worth it, I hope, for the point it makes.

If you don’t have the time (or possibly the inclination!) to read it, you can listen instead:

I’ve just come back from a week away, travelling around the UK on business. I stayed in three hotels on my travels. The first two failed with their customer service in such small, easy-to-put-right ways — the third showed them how to do it. [Read more…]

December 3, 2014 by Julie Stanford Leave a Comment

How to get the best out of the people you meet

Whenever I’m asked speak to other business owners about the day-to-day experiences of running a business, the more I think that those of us who are doing it should be proud of ourselves. There’s so much to do and to know! As I stand with of business owners who give up their precious free time to gather more information about running their businesses, it hits me again and again how much the focus, the core of business is people. [Read more…]

December 3, 2014 by Julie Stanford Leave a Comment

Perfection paralysis

Those people who know me will smile in recognition when I say that I have a tendency to want everything to be perfect. (To be honest, it’s more likely that they’ll gnash their teeth and grimace…)

Well, it was my turn to smile in recognition today whilst reading the excellent Selling the Invisible — A field guide to modern marketing by Harry Beckwith. In the section, ‘Planning: The Eighteen Fallacies’, Beckwith writes, ‘You can easily get stalled in the shift from strategy to tactics because you are paralysed by your desire for excellence.’

Doing something you care about more

How right he is. So often, I have fiddled and tweaked pieces of design work — in books, brochures, logo designs — in an effort to make them perfect. In my design company I would spend hours trying to produce the perfect design for our clients. I would work into the early hours of the morning in my efforts to get the job ‘just right’.

[Read more…]

Starting a business is no box-ticking exercise

Business and money … and sleepless nights

Pay attention to the small stuff

How to get the best out of the people you meet

Perfection paralysis

Doing something you care about more

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