Author: RC-Admin1

This year’s Remembrance Day is a very special one, marking the hundredth anniversary of the end of World War One. We’ll be remembering the countless servicemen and women who gave their lives in that conflict and of many more in the intervening century. 

Whatever your opinion of the wars, it’s impossible not to admire the people who sacrificed themselves for what they believed was right. It’s a good time to think about giving to the community — and that includes your business as well as yourself. 

What Can Your Business Give? 

Serving the community can be compatible with running a successful business. As long as you’re providing an honest, valuable service to your customers, they’re benefiting from your business, as are your employees and their families. 

It doesn’t have to end there, though. There are many ways in which you can actively engage in the community, from sponsoring charities to sharing your skills — and they can all be good for business at the same time. 

Sharing Your Skills 

You’re an expert. You may be an expert in the technical side of your business or in the skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur, but there are many ways of giving it back. 

Have you considered taking on an apprentice? You could be helping train the next generation, whether providing them with the skills to excel in their chosen sector or inspiring them to emulate you in creating a successful business. 

Alternatively, there are many not-for-profit organisations helping new entrepreneurs launch their businesses. Many would value the experience you can pass on. The odd hour would not only help build the businesses of the future, but also create good relationships for you. 

Supporting Good Causes 

There are too many charities to hope to support them all, but you don’t need to. You may choose a cause for personal reasons, or it could be one that arises through your business contacts or your interest in the local community. 

Besides simply donating or helping out, your business can engage with a charity in various ways. You could donate something, for instance, for a raffle prize, or sponsor an event. 

Of course, this will bring your business to public notice in an excellent light — but only if that’s not your main reason for doing it. Most people aren’t fools, and they can spot a cynical ploy. Support your chosen charities because you’re passionate about them, and the benefits will come as a side effect. 

You want to be successful, naturally, but that doesn’t stop you serving the community. Just like those we remember on the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

 

Autumn’s here — and it only seems like five minutes since we were looking forward to summer. Give or take a few rainy bits, we’ve had a glorious summer, and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

Businesses can be seasonal, too. Whether or not their seasons have anything to do with the weather, it’s important to pay attention to them and respond to their different needs.

What Did You Do This Summer?

Summer is often a time when businesses mark time, especially over the school holidays. You may have distractions, including going on holiday or day outings (and if you don’t, maybe you should be looking at your work-life balance). And that will also be true of your employees, if you have them.

Of course, there are businesses where summer means ‘all hands on deck’ — anything to do with tourism or outdoor events, for instance. In general, though, early autumn is a time to reflect on the plans you put on hold over the summer, or maybe the issues that came up which you set aside to deal with later.

This is later.

Sweeping Up the Leaves

The business world sometimes seems like something out of the Alice books — you have to run as fast as you can just to stay still. Things change, and certainly if you’ve had your mind on the beautiful weather over summer, the changes you need have probably stacked up. They might be outdated technology, unproductive marketing techniques, or even unprofitable customers.

It can be scary to let go of familiar things, but it’s an essential first step if you want to change for the better. If, for instance, you’ve identified that your marketing strategy isn’t bringing you the business it should, you can channel the energy you built up over summer into formulating a better one, and then let the old system go. It’s just fallen leaves to be swept up.

Winter Is Coming

Winter can have its dreary side — I wonder how many of us will be working hard to get our tax returns done in January. But it also offers the excitement of the Christmas season, and that can offer endless opportunities to businesses. Maybe you’re offering products that could sell well at Christmas. Or maybe you’re offering services those companies will need.

Either way, now is the time to start your marketing push in earnest to take advantage of these opportunities. Feel free to get in touch with me if the Resource Centre can help with that.

 

In Britain, we’re obsessed by the weather and the need for adaptation to it, and the last few months make it easy to understand why. From a big freeze at the beginning of March to heat-waves in May — interrupted briefly by storms and flooding — the weather always keeps us guessing.

We’re constantly having to adapt to the weather, even if it’s only planning what to wear. But perhaps that’s a good thing. Both in life and in business, adaptation is the key to survival.

Adapt to Survive

Ability to adapt is the single most important factor for the survival of a species in nature. The history of life on earth is littered with species that died out because the situation they were perfectly fitted for changed, and they weren’t able to adapt.

Sometimes this has been because the climate or the environment altered, but it can also be due to a new factor on the scene. The dodo, for instance, had the misfortune to be hunted to extinction before it had time to learn fear of humans.

Humans are no different, and we’re facing many challenges today that may require us to adapt quickly, if we’re not destined to go the way of the dodo.

Adapt to Thrive

Adaptation isn’t always about a life-and-death struggle — it can also determine how much success we have in life. We rarely have any idea when we wake in the morning what kind of situations we’ll be hit with during the day — any more than we know what kind of weather to expect.

Nowhere is this more true than in business. The biographies of successful entrepreneurs are full of opportunities that came from some totally unexpected quarter. Perhaps they were asked to do something that wasn’t their speciality. Some business owners would simply have said “No, sorry, I don’t do that” and continued on a mediocre course. It’s those willing to take a change and learn a new skill who are usually the successes.

This is especially important in the modern business environment. Of course, we’re faced almost daily with new types of technology. We have to attempt to judge which are going to be relevant and then try to learn how to use them.

In an even broader sense, though, we’re facing an ever-changing landscape of what it means to run a business. From the liberation of business from the office to the possibilities of the tiniest SME operating globally, the business scene is in constant flux. And it will be the entrepreneurs who can adapt to the new ways who’ll come out on top.

 

It’s not every year that we have a royal wedding, and certainly not one as unusual as this, with a meeting of different worlds. But it’s essentially what we’re doing all the time in the process of developing a business relationship.

Celebrating the Differences

If you regularly attend business networking events, you’ll appreciate the vast range of business types out there. I see it even more up close, since I work with a whole gamut of business owners and board directors — anyone from a personal trainer, accountant, CEO of national company to an American VP of a global business.

Even for those businesses who don’t rely entirely on that kind of relationship, understanding and being able to work with very different companies is crucial. If you’re B-to-B, anyone could be your client. And, if you’re B-to-C, you may still need their services.

Suppose you’re an electrician, for example. You might not be targeting other businesses as customers (though they could need you for their premises) but you may need them.

You may, for instance, need a business coach to help you find direction; a marketeer to develop your strategies; a website designer to create your online presence; a graphic designer to create your branding and business cards; a copywriter to create your written marketing; and an accountant to help you manage all the money that comes rolling in.

Business Marriages

Whether you’re dealing with potential clients, potential suppliers or the public, a great relationship is crucial — and it can become close enough to be almost like a marriage. No business can exist in a vacuum, let alone thrive, and the people you want to help you build your enterprise and to make money need to be courted, won and kept.

Remember that no business is unique, and your target customer always has the choice of going elsewhere. Unless what you do is so niche that no-one else has thought of it, in which case you’ll have to persuade people they need what you offer.

The best business relationships are like marriages. Both sides know they can rely on the other, and they’re in it for the long haul. There may be rocky patches; there may be rival businesses catching their eye; but, if you’ve worked hard to make the relationship strong and valued (instead of throwing everything at new prospects, as some businesses do) it will stand firm.

We wish Harry and Meghan all the best for their life together. We also wish all of you the best for whatever royal weddings you may be involved in. Don’t hesitate to get in touch to see if we can help.

 

We have quite an early Easter this year, and it’s nearly upon us. Whether your take on Easter is the death and resurrection of Christ, the rebirth of spring or just a time to gorge on chocolate, it’s a time for hope and new beginnings.

So how does this affect your business — assuming you don’t happen to be a chocolate manufacturer, of course?

Easter

Although Christmas surpasses it in secular terms, Easter is the most important festival in the Christian calendar, marking the time of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection. It was a festival before that, though. The Jewish Passover falls at around the same time, and pagan Europe celebrated the Spring Equinox. The strange, movable date of Easter is a legacy of the lunar calendar used by both.

Whichever interpretation you want to put on this season, then, it’s a time of new hope and new birth. And those are both things business needs.

New Hope for Business

You’ll probably be hoping that the “Beast from the East” is behind us, and we can look forward to warmer weather, at least — even if that doesn’t guarantee sunshine. Business has also had to cope with its winter, ever since 2008, and times have been difficult. Just in the last couple of months, familiar companies from construction giant Carillion to retailers like Toys R Us and Maplin have gone bust.

In some ways, though, it hasn’t been so bad for small businesses. SMEs certainly fail on a regular basis, but those with the skill to navigate beneath the radar of the recession have been able to thrive. It’s possible that we’re seeing the beginning of the age of the SME, where lighter, less-encumbered companies will be able to manoeuvre through the ever-changing requirements of the market more efficiently than the giants.

A New Beginning

Easter is a time for new beginnings and, whatever you think of Brexit or the way the negotiations are going, the post-Brexit business world will be just that. More important for any given business than what the landscape will look like is the agility to adapt quickly to that landscape, before your competitors do.

Part of that is having strong and flexible systems in place, but it also means having plenty in the pipeline, so that your options are wide open. If you need help with that, give us a ring and see how we can unclog that pipeline.

And a very Happy Easter to you.

February is the month of love — or even luuurve, if you prefer. In spite of the cold and damp of late winter, Valentine’s Day warms us up with romance. You might be celebrating a well-established relationship, enjoying the excitement of a new love or searching for that one perfect person, but the romance is the same.

But love isn’t always for a partner. Some of us are in love with our businesses, too, and Valentine’s Day is perfect to celebrate that.

Looking for Love

Falling out of love often comes before falling in love, and you may have fallen out of love with working for someone else. It’s getting boring, and you feel there must be something better. Then it strikes you — you could work for yourself.

But where do you find this new love? What business could you run? That’s when you have to search your own passions, find out what you really want from your new romance… er, business. It won’t be easy and can easily get too much if you’re not completely in love with it.

The Giddy Romance

The first weeks of a new romance can be overwhelming, not to mention time-consuming. The same is true when you start your new business. A million-and-one things need to be done. You’ll have sleepless nights because of everything that’s going through your head.

And you’ll love it. You’re finally doing exactly what you’ve chosen, following your dream. There are so many excitements, from seeing your website up and running to sending your first invoice; from meetings with clients to seeing their testimonials to a great job done. You’re in love with your business.

A Lasting Relationship

Falling in love is half the fun; staying in love is all of it. Just like your long-term relationship, your business is for life, or at least a substantial part of it.

But, of course, you can’t keep up that frenetic first flush of romance indefinitely. Just like any relationship, there’ll be times you find yourself taking your business for granted and forgetting the passion.

There’ll be difficult times, too. You’ll lose an important contract, have issues with employees, feel you’re stuck in a rut. But the passion will still be there, if you can find it. You just have to remember why you fell in love in the first place.

Happy Valentine’s Day

Enjoy Valentine’s Day with your significant other, but don’t forget your other romance. Whether it’s brand new or whether you’re rediscovering your passion, celebrate your love for your business.