Secure Your Talent, Secure Your Future. Don’t Make These Mistakes...

As an entrepreneur chances are you just want to get on with the job of taking your disruptive product or service to market.  After all it’s what you started up to do.  The problem is as soon as your business starts to motor you need to hire.  Recently, though, I’ve observed a series of entrepreneurial companies repeatedly making a total hash of their people hiring and management, and,...

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Staying Motivated – How to Rise Above the Daily Grind

For most of us, running a business is about a lot more than just making the numbers.  If that alone was the sole reason for turning up at work then I’d wager most of us would find it hard to get out of bed in the morning.  We spend a lot of time doing it so work should be enjoyable – it should be a creative pursuit, it should be personally fulfilling and it should keep us growing. ...

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An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Recruiting Successfully

As the owner of an entrepreneurial business, it’s easy to feel that the dice are loaded against you when it comes to competing for top talent. After all, large corporates have all the advantages don’t they? Starting with hoovering up prospective employees on the University milk rounds and offering work on internationally recognised brands, industry-leading salaries, career progression, attractive...

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David and Goliath - A Quick Date or a Long-Term Relationship?

Much as these days many corporate Goliaths are actively looking for entrepreneurial partner Davids, it’s often the case that entrepreneurs have to make the first move in developing a strategic relationship. The right kind of relationship with a Goliath and its customer base can be transformational for a David, providing the rapid growth at predictable margin that other early-stage companies can...

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You Can Fool Some of the People Some of the Time...

During my childhood Monopoly was omnipresent, I was fascinated by the board game.  Rainy Northern days, of which there were plenty, would see me indoors gleefully piling plastic property onto the blue strips of Mayfair and Park Lane.  Usually mortgaged up to the hilt, the idea was nevertheless to speedily deliver a fatal financial coup de grace to whoever was unlucky enough to be playing...

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Are You Sitting Comfortably? Now You’re Talking.

Ever been in a situation where you have met someone for the first time in a business meeting and you just can’t warm to them? But they’ve said, or done, nothing unpleasant yet you are left feeling uncomfortable and fighting with yourself to play nice? I suspect we all have. And the reason is we were tuning into the wrong things.  It’s not what the person said, or even how they looked,...

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Yahoo! and Alibaba: David’s No Longer Dancing with Goliath - He’s Writing the Tunes

Despite its continuing travails, the near 20-year-old web search company Yahoo! appears still to have a market capitalization of just over $40 billion. Not bad, you might think, considering its history of decline that mirrors the inexorable rise of Google. But there are lies, damn lies and statistics. I’d estimate Yahoo!'s core value actually is only about $4 billion.  Why?  Because...

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Be Honest, Drive Change, Man Up - Dealing With Tech PR’s Perennial People Problem

I was recently a judge of `Employer of the Year` category of the UK National Business Awards.  That entailed spending a long day hearing ten successive presentations from a shortlist of firms derived from all sectors of the economy and all parts of the country justifying why each deserved the prestigious award.  By the evening I could not be anything other than hugely  impressed...

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The Numbers Count – How to Spot a Great CFO

Sooner or later as the founder or leader of any entrepreneurial business you are going to need to hire a CFO.  Whether you hire full-time or part-time help, the necessary skills of a chief financial officer are not to be confused with the book keepers you have probably retained to keep tabs on the numbers early in your businesses growth or even the finance manager you may currently employ. These...

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One, Two - That’s Creativity for You

One of things I like about the precious two weeks most of us reserve for our summer holiday it that it gives me some time to be alone. Being no diva-esque Greta Garbo in my search for solitude, I do this best by climbing up and down Greek mountains on a bicycle or by being out in the Mediterranean hanging off a catamaran.  Occasionally, it’s just lying about catching up on a few books...

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