Columns, blogs and opinion from some of the UKs leading business opinion makers and entrepreneurs and small business owners
The other day I was being interviewed in connection with the Specsavers Everywoman awards – l was awarded Woman of the Year in the Retail category in 2011- and the journalist asked me ‘what do you think could be done to encourage more female entrepreneurs?’
When the call came asking the teams to meet Lord Sugar in the old cinema in Chiswick, everybody started guessing that this weeks task would involve creating adverts or movie trailers, they couldn’t have been more wrong.
Week three of The Apprentice say the teams gathered at St. Catherine docks to be told that they were challenged to create and manufacture a new condiment. A tricky task in my opinion and Jenna clearly agreed as she stood there looking bored and stupefied. After a little mixing of the teams, Lord Sugar sent them on their way to begin.
The task? To design and create a useful household product, pitch it to retailers and generate orders. The key word here, which seemed to have bypassed all of the remaining candidates, was USEFUL.
With so many individuals starting businesses day after day, how many of them are faking their credentials? Am I faking it?
The return of The Apprentice has disappointed few and with a line-up of sixteen, seemingly lively characters I expect we have twelve very entertaining weeks ahead of us.
Wednesday will see George Osborne present his third Budget since coming to office, one likely to be seen as the singularly most important so far of his tenure at Number 11.
So, does social media snobbery exist or is it an online fairy tale? Let me explain what I mean…
All human beings have a basic need for attention. We are hard-wired to want others to listen to us and care about us. We need it in our business lives as much as in our personal lives; in fact, it is only by customers or clients paying attention to us that we have any business.
For hard-pressed business owners who have poured blood, sweat and tears into building up a successful company, the stakes are particularly high when it comes to marriage. While it might not be romantic, a pre-nup agreement is a sensible – some would say vital – solution to safeguard everything you have worked so hard for.
I don’t usually get on my high horse when it comes to politics as I honestly think that most things work out well in the end. How naïve am I?! However, this week, there was something in the news that really made my blood boil.
Banks are rarely out of the headlines at the moment. The subject that has generated the most column inches has been their failure to hit their Project Merlin small business lending targets.
Has being a business woman made me a failure as a mother? I unexpectedly take stock but what do I find are the answers?
Almost a year after Start Up Britain was launched, there are still very few special deals being offered. There are thousands of startup companies – who wants to sell to them?
If you are looking to grow your company you need to build it in such a way that it can handle the gowth – just growing without the right foundations will inevitably lead to disaster. One of the most important areas is staff.
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