All Blog Posts (783)

I'm a free Member of Marketing 'Guru' Robert Craven's Director's Centre Business Club (signed up for the 'Lite' Membership). 

It's a great way to get free access to tons of practical, growth-focused …

Join us from Saturday 22 to Sunday 30 June for nine days of workshops, lectures, discussions and performances. From creative writing to storytelling, puppetry to theatre, music to dance, there is something for everyone interested in the arts. You can see the full programme for the week at Kingston Connections to find out about daily workshops for writers, the Big Sing for singers and a whole…

Every business needs to be marketed to some extent, whether it’s word of mouth or a full-on marketing campaign.

Businesses need marketing because even if you have a fantastic product or service that would be very useful to a certain group of people, if they don’t know you exist they’re not going to come looking for you.  Posters, adverts and mailshots all have their place but they’re not necessarily seen by your target audience. Telemarketing, on the other hand, is…

Having attended numerous Investor and Property events, I’ve heard numerous rules of investments. One that particularly stuck in my mind was hearing Terry Smith, of Fundsmith, a City Fund Management Company. It got me thinking, the rules are really no different to buying overseas property and here’s how…

1. “If you don't understand it, don't do it” - the same for overseas property as for other investments

Most people understand Bricks & Mortar, which is why many people are…

The past few years have brought about substantial change for small business owners who have taken time to adopt new and unique methods of thinking that are actually transforming their entire business strategy. This includes the implementation of digital marketing strategies and tools that are helping them to build their customer engagement as well as actually rival the larger…

The Globe in Landore, Swansea, is a community pub but this particular community is sports-mad. So it's no surprise that licensee Christine Bray decided to go with the flow. This enterprising publican sponsors no fewer than nine sports teams - four football teams, three darts teams (two ladies', one men's), a pool team and a snooker team. All of the Globe's sponsored teams play in their local leagues, which of…

Do you find you've lost track of what’s in your wardrobe? Got items that you have had for years? Are you almost afraid to sort through as it seems such a big task? Worried you’ll have that horrid feeling of wasting money when you see unworn items with their labels still on? Don’t worry, you’re not alone!

How much could you save buying only items you would wear?

On average, a woman spends £453.60 a year on clothes excluding underwear. However, that is an average…

So you borrowed money from the bank to expand your business a few years ago, well done and good timing as things were certainly easier and cheaper back then.

But do you know what you are in for? What you are committed to?

The Car Analogy

Let's say you buy a car from Nissan (no reason why Nissan, just because..). You know whether it takes petrol or diesel, you…

OK, Hoffmeister may have told you to follow the bear, but I believe in following the crowd, especially when it comes to looking for business funding options.

CrowdFunding, or peer to peer lending is a rapidly growing means of raising business finance. The most common question I get asked is 'what is it' and 'how does it work', so let me enlighten you...

What Is It

Remember when you used to pay money into your bank, and your bank would then lend…

OK - there's a guy called Darren Shirlaw I saw about three years ago presenting at a Refer-On Networking Jamboree at Mercedes-Benz World (about 200 yards from where I'm sitting typing this now, in fact). It was the early days of the downturn and he was forecasting the progress of the coming economic slump, based on looking back at past recessions and identifying the patterns on financial charts.

Yep, I thought it sounded pretty…

The arrest of four people following a raid on a restaurant in Leatherhead in April is a timely reminder of the importance of immigration status checks by employers. In this case, four Bangladeshi men were arrested for over-staying their visas, and a fifth was escorted from the premises pending a decision on whether or not he had the right to remain in the UK.

You may think you have nothing to worry about – all your employees are British nationals so it’s not…

According to the 2012 Skills and Employment Survey, feelings of insecurity and pressure at work among UK employees have reached a 20 year high. Worries over the possible loss of their jobs are highest among public sector workers, who are also anxious about being transferred to less well-paid, less interesting work, with less autonomy. This probably reflects the effects of the Government’s austerity programme on public sector budgets. But the…

I was watching a video last night by “Brian Tracy talks about the Keys to Success” and it got me thinking about one of my boys. He is 11 years old and currently going for his grade 7 music exam which by any standard is amazing.

He has passed all his grades with Distinctions, again, amazing. So after listening to Brian Tracey, who, explains how being an expert and…

The irresistible rise of LinkedIn continues... although I suspect that around 200 million of those with a LinkedIn profile rarely visit the site!  It has become a major player on the networking scene, and certainly the most important forum for career advancement and headhunters.  

Whether it can move on and realise its plans to become a general purpose business forum, and thus generate massive revenues, is an interesting question - especially as Networking in Surrey is a kind of…

More evidence that Google+ is aiming for the Facebook market?

At the Google I/O conference this week, Senior Vice President of Engineering, Vic Gundotra, announced new photo features for the Google+ social network, which he claims "sets it apart" from other social networking sites .

"Our goals are to make people happy and get technology out of the way," Gundotra told ABC News. "You know what makes people happy? Great photos…

One day . . .  two frogs called Norman and Bertie were enjoying a day in the barn sheltering from the hot sunshine outside when suddenly . . . 



The wood shelf they were on broke and they both slipped and fell into the farmer's bucket of milk below.



Total nightmare!! They were trapped and couldn't get out . . .



They kept swimming around to keep from drowning. Every once in a while they would try to climb out,but the side of the bucket was…

Negative online reviews are no fun. Receiving one for your business is like a swift kick to your pride. They can linger in your online directories and search results, and cause potential customers to run for the hills.

(Nielsen says... 70% of customer only trust a business with 6 to 10 reviews.)

However, these reviews can also be used to your advantage – as long as they are surrounded by a plethora of positive feedback.…

On the face of it, you’d think resigning from your job was pretty straight forward. You just pick up the phone or walk into your manager’s office and say “I’m leaving. Bye bye!” Simple, right? Wrong! As with most things in employment, there’s more to it than that.

I just received a link to a blog post which I thought you might find interesting about websites and how we use them. What does it say about the NiS website, I wonder? Read the first two tips here, then there's a link to read the rest of the post on the…

Hello NiS friends,

I love reading Sheryl Sandberg's"  book "Lean In".

Sheryl is Chief Operating Officer at Facebook and was previously on the Board of Starbucks, and Vice President of Global Online Sales and Operations at Google.

In December 2010 she gave a TED speech…