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 [...]

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 [...]

Whenever I hear advice from successful entrepreneurs the most consistent mantra is “always hire the best people you can afford”. But how good is “the best”, how do you measure that? Also, if you are in a young company, with very limited resources, how much can you really afford? Let’s step back for a moment [...]

Every experienced Investor develops a sixth sense when looking at potential business opportunities, but even so it can sometimes be difficult to put your finger on what is the key ingredient in making a new venture successful. Over the years of working with start-ups I’ve seen companies grow rapidly and then fall away, great businesses [...]

A few days ago the office of the Prime Minister sent a letter to many small businesses and SME organisations explaining that a new online tool called Contracts Finder has been launched that will show all government tender opportunities. At the same time he said they would eliminate the prequalification questionnaire (PQQ) for low value [...]

There’s a common misconception of the typical entrepreneur being a charismatic individual business person, not needing or wanting a partner’s help in driving forward his all conquering venture. Think Richard Branson, Bill Gates, or the latest film idol, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame. Yes they were the front men and there’s no doubt that they [...]

Business gets ever quicker and there’s never a time now when we aren’t connected and “on-call”. It used to be that if you were on a train or car journey, there was valuable down-time where you could ruminate on life and free your mind to come up with new ideas. It’s good to keep busy [...]

I originally put a similar article to this in our resources section, but we continue to get questions about what to do if you have invented a new product, so I’ve also put these 7 tips here in the blog to reach a wider audience. 1. Work out whether it is an “invention” or a [...]