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Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down

Blog-avatars-julieOK, OK. You need to be past a certain age to get the reference to Weebles. They were a 1970s toy which had a heavy base. When you pushed them, they wobbled… but they never fell over.

I was talking the other day to a business friend, Ben. He likened me to a Weeble (and I’m hoping it’s my resilience he was referring to!).

Ben and I were discussing just how resilient business owners have to be to cope with the daily pressures of running a business. I started thinking about the number of very large orders of our Essential Business Guide we have been asked to quote for over the past years. [Read more…]

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Independent retailer realities

We’ve just come back from three days in Birmingham. We were at the Convenience Retailing/International Forecourt Trader show at the NEC. The show’s organisers, William Reed had invited us to run their Business Solutions area for the show’s visitors. The area was really brilliantly laid out, with great branding and plenty of space, and the William Reed staff were fantastic. It was all very smooth-running and professional. [Read more…]

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Enterprising Croydon

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been working with Lorraine Bell, an experienced business advisor and mentor, and Tom Brooks at Croydon Business, in setting up and running business startup workshops in Croydon.

Unlocking potential

We’re doing the work for Croydon Enterprise whose aims include, “Raising awareness and unlocking the entrepreneurial potential of key target groups to enable them to capitalise on their potential and competitive advantages and identify new opportunities for enterprise.” (I think that means that they want to support entrepreneurial people to start up businesses which grow and thrive.) [Read more…]

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Changes to your business website and email footers

It’s been in every business newsletter recently, but just in case you didn’t see it, there have been important changes in the Companies Act which came into effect on January 1st 2007. These changes require that certain information needs to be put onto business websites and email footers. Companies failing to do this are in breach of the Companies Act and risk a fine. (Great, eh?)

From now on, every company must list its company registration number, place of registration and registered office address on its website (this information is already required on business letters but must now be added to websites, order forms and electronic documents, including email invoices). [Read more…]

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Creative business

Yesterday Jane and I were in Farnham, Surrey, teaching a Marketing Masterclass for the University College for the Creative Arts.

We spent the day taking a group of people — all of whom were involved in creative industries: design, photography, film, and so on — through the basics of marketing so that they could use it to underpin their business plans. We covered customer groups, competition, pricing, marketing research, outline planning and creating an action plan (all of which was taken from our next product: the Planning and Starting Your Business workbook). [Read more…]

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For more than twenty years, Essential Business has produced books, workbooks and training courses to help other business owners, advisors and educators with the practicalities and realities of running a business.

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