Are you guilty of not keeping in touch with family friends, extended family, old colleagues, or school mates? We all love our family and friends but sometimes life gets busy and sadly touching base with them falls down our priority list. Occasionally we’re lucky enough to find friends who are understanding and we can easily pick up where we left off with them, even though it’s been years since we saw them and perhaps…
How often do you leave work and wish you’d been more productive that working day? For quite a few of us not getting through much of our ‘to-do’ list or feeling like we don’t achieved much day-to-day can bug us…a lot. Our new partner PandaDoc can help. The solution? Find a new system, a new way of operating. But with so many systems out there, what’s the right answer? We’d recommend PandaDoc. It’s their mission…
In 2015 the British Standards Institute carried out a survey of 250 SMEs with between 1-250 employees. The survey revealed that almost 50% of them didn’t feel that their business was operating efficiently. 25% claimed that there was room for improvement and 20% of owners stated that they were involved in every aspect of their business. It is no wonder that 55% of SMEs don’t survive more than 5 years. Finding the time to grow…
Dear Business Owner, As a business owner, like me, you would’ve had to have spent money to make money at some point. This includes investing in different marketing methods, to attract customers to balance your books. Marketing is all about communicating your business message- but how do you decide what the best way to communicate with your target audience is? There’s often a stereotype that older people prefer tradition, whilst young people have an…
We all now juggle many job roles, spin lots of plates and wear several hats 24/7 so it pays to be able to enjoy freedom. To have the liberty to work anytime and anyplace we fancy sounds tempting and a valuable asset to many who have to fit the school run, checking on elderly parents or simply other commitments in their active lives. ‘Freedom’ might not be a word traditionally associated with ‘work’ but,…
In this busy 24/7 world, constantly connected via mobile devices that we perpetually have on our person, confronted with information overload, we bet you’ve had a daydream or two (or ten or twenty…) about working differently. Think about it, when was the last time you mused about the possibility of working in a different way- to give yourself more freedom, choice and the Holy Grail, more time…? …We guarantee it was fairly recently. That’s is why we…
A few weeks ago I shared the wonders and convenience of the Zoho Card Scanner App in a blog post, outlining how small business owners simply have to snap a picture of a contact’s business card and the clever app accurately populates the correct fields in the virtual business card contact on your phone within the app. The neat and nifty application’s wow factor then comes into play when you are welcomed by an option…
We all know a few cheeky life hacks– little secret cheats to make life easier. From running an old post-it note between the keys on your keyboard to gather mouldy crumbs and dust before you throw it away, to putting your smartphone in a glass to crank up your alarm’s volume to avoid over-sleeping. We all do them and we all like to share them because most of us want to make other people’s lives…
What do you expect when you start up your own business? You may expect it to be a stressful hard slog, require blood, sweat and tears and then some, and maybe (if you’re realistic) you anticipate that your new venture might not generate a profit during the first 18 months (unless you’re blessed with a bit of leprechaun luck). But you might also imagine your start-up to be rewarding, something your passionate about, enjoy and…
As I sit here with my cup of coffee relaxing after another vibrant networking event I realise how free I actually am from being tied to the office… I have my office right here with me – behind my mobile phone is a system that allows me to catch up on all of my clients, projects, emails, tasks, invoicing and even scanning the cards of the new people I’ve met straight into my CRM system….
