Last week I looked at the preparation needed to write your business plan, now we are laying out the structure of the plan. Not all of the following will be needed for every plan and you must decide what to include based on the use that the business plan will be put to. For instance [...]

Firstly do you need a business plan? Many small businesses have never had a formal business plan. Think of your corner store, or the self-employed tradesman that came to fix your heating, they almost certainly don’t have a written business plan. But then again they probably aren’t thinking of growing very much either. If you [...]

If you’ve got past the headline then you obviously have a hankering to be your own boss. The arguments for going into business are well rehearsed – you can make your own decisions, choose who you work with, enjoy the fruits of your success and so on – but, arguably, the paths into entrepreneurialism are [...]

It’s a New Year and the entrepreneurial juices are flowing. It’s time to start the business that you’ve been talking about for years. What’s stopping you? Or maybe you’ve already got a business but it’s not growing as fast as you had thought, what has to happen to make this year the year it doubles [...]

Non Executive Directors (NEDs) are a valuable asset to any growing company, but although they may be very experienced in their market area, for some it’s the first time that they have acted as a Non Executive Director of a business. The business also may be new to taking on an NED, so between them [...]

1. Get free PR If there was an unlimited amount of money to spend, advertising would be easy, but normally there isn’t. So what can you do? Well this is where free PR comes in. PR is of course short for Public Relations and was the remit of large corporations, but has now become a [...]

I was lucky enough to go to the dress rehearsal of the Olympic Games opening ceremony and was hugely impressed by the hard work, energy and enthusiasm of the volunteer dancers and actors. When the full version of the opening ceremony was shown on Friday the overall story became clearer. Much of the ceremony was [...]

Just back from giving a business plan workshop to a group of MBA students, many of whom were keen to start their own business. So naturally the subject of how to fund a business came up. One of the areas that regularly seems to cause confusion with the students is the difference between Private Equity, [...]

As promised the chancellor has confirmed in his March budget documents that there will be a Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) starting from 6th April 2012, although it didn’t get a mention in his actual speech. Just to clarify for anyone confused by the similarity of SEIS with an existing scheme, there is already an [...]

Am I the only one that is getting confused by the increasing number of initiatives that the government is rolling out to encourage entrepreneurship? Or frustrated because they don’t actually seem to make a difference?   We had Business Link, then we didn’t, except it still exists as a “business advice and guidance service portal”. [...]