Archive for the ‘general’ Category

Start Up Business Surgery

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

Thinking of starting up in business in 2010/11?

Get the best start, drop into a free start up in business surgery on Tuesday 9th November from 10am until 12.00 at the Glossop Business Centre.

Business Link’s start up business adviser will be on hand to help you with any queries you may have about your new business and access to free courses and mentoring. There will also be other professionals from HMRC, First Impression, Aims Accountants for Business, Complink UK and HSBC to help with any tax, marketing, banking, accountancy and IT questions you may have about your business.

Simply come along to the Glossop Business Centre, 174 High Street West, Glossop, SK13 8ER. Or for more information call 01457 857111.

Moving house, having babies, getting married…

Tuesday, September 7th, 2010

It’s hard to believe that it’s over a month since I last blogged, shameful I know! Don’t know what happened to August or the summer for that matter. Yes I’ve been away but that only accounts for 2 weeks what was I doing for the rest of the time! In fact i’ve decided that we’ve all ‘gone to pot’ this summer. Our eye definitely hasn’t been on the ball..

As well as holidays, we’ve had a death (close family, not one of us), a divorce, a marriage, a birth and 3 house moves over the summer! Not bad going when there’s only 8 of us in the team to start with. So I suppose you could say we’ve had some pretty traumatic events to contend with and a good reason to have our eye off the ball!

Anyway excuses over and on with the blogging! But let’s say a massive congratulations to Rob and Laura and to their new baby girl, Freya, aaah!

Also a massive congratulations to Kim and Simon who are now Mr and Mrs Wathall after tying the knot in August!

And now it’s back to business. Blogs to follow….

Is your cup half full or half empty?

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

I was networking this morning bright and breezy at 7.30am which I do regularly and talking to someone about how people are in business at the moment. There definitely seems to be two camps, either the positive ones, those that are determined to get on with it, no matter what is thrown at them, and those that are quite down about the economic situation, about how tough it is out there and how it’s not going to get much better soon.

I’ve always been one of those annoying positive ones but yes there is no doubt it is tough out there and I think it’s tougher for some industries that others. The general feeling is that we are all working twice as hard just to achieve the same results as last year, if we are lucky. But we are all fed up of doom and gloom, we had it in the press well before we were experiencing it, so I say, let’s make sure our cups are always half full, always look for opportunies in every situation good or bad and we will come out of this recession much stronger businesses!

More disruptions in 2010

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

Well one of the reasons our blog has been so quiet is that I’ve been on holiday to Mexico and managed to get stuck for a further week because of the Iceland volcanic ash cloud. Sounds great doesn’t it, stuck in Mexico for 3 weeks, and it did the tan no end of good! But when you’ve got a business to run, it’s a bit worrying.

Fortunately I’ve got a great team who kept our business running beautifully so I needn’t have worried, but for many it’s further burden in what has so far proved to be a troublesome year. First there was snow to stop the year’s business starting at all followed by, what I’ve called inertia, where people seemed somehow paralysed to make their next move. We’ve had strikes and then ash clouds threatening to bring the country to a standstill once again. Not to mention the grip of the election…

Can we not just get on with business this year please! It will certainly test many businesses, many of whom will be struggling in this economic climate. And if nothing else it will test our resilience as entrepeneurs. Funny enough one of the books I did read whilst stuck in Mexico was Rachel Elnaugh’s Business Nightmares which portrays the many business failures of some of our famous entrepeneurs. An interesting read and ironically a positive one if you are in business. Many of these disruptions are out of our control but we can overcome them and many will see opportunities from them.

The key message is to stay positive, stay in control and lots of determination to keep going!