I attended an interesting event at the RSA yesterday which focused on the needs of self-employed people in the UK.
The event was attended by a wide array of individuals, from MPs and economists to micro-business owners and freelancers.
There were a number of panel events during the day, and some enlightened discussions, but one issue stuck out for me throughout. All of the rhetoric and statistics around self-employment focus on the business, not the person who runs the business. [Read more…]
I was a child of the eighties, and I can vividly remember Harry Enfield’s character ‘Loadsamoney’ shaking his wads of cash at me while I watched him on my parent’s 9-inch, full colour TV screen. I can remember the news being full of stories about Yuppies who drove Porsches, drank champagne and worked in advertising.
I can also remember feeling ‘inspired’ by the thought of having loads of cash and driving a fast car. But I had absolutely no idea how to achieve it. [Read more…]
“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…]
I’ll never forget the first time I understood the importance of money in business. That, in fact, it’s all about money. Oh, of course, I’d vaguely understood the notion before then — after all, I’d been running my own successful business for many years — but I hadn’t really thought it about in any depth until this particular day.
I was sitting talking with a retired bank manager when he suddenly mused aloud,
You know, Julie, without money and profitability, isn’t a business just a glorified hobby?
That evening I thought more about what he’d said. About the wider meaning of what he’d said. I started to understand why many businesses falter, or even fail, in the early stages. [Read more…]