The business in you is bigger than you think

In the seventh installment chronicling his journey of starting a new business, Jeremy focuses on customer management. Looking after your clients is key to any business, no matter what sector you’re operating in. Throughout my business career, I have understood that managing expectations is the key to a successful client relationship, so the first thing [...]

Catrin MacDonnell, Director, Papadeli www.papdeli.co.uk As a business coach, mentor and company director, I know the value of advice and mentoring for a business. For the past week I have been answering questions on Barclays Connector, an online business community. I trained as a mentor four years ago after being coached myself. I could see [...]

Martin Turner started developing FreeIndex.co.uk – a Free UK Business Directory in his garden shed in 2003. Ten years later the site has well over a million members and is highly profitable. Martin had been involved in developing websites and content management systems for other companies since the early nineties. During this time he had [...]

In his second report to the Prime Minister -‘Growing Your Business’ – Lord Young highlights the increasing importance that micro businesses –  those which have less than 10 employees – have on the success of the economy. Making up 95% of all businesses, he identifies steps the Government can take to help them develop their [...]

An office search is a somewhat lengthy but should ultimately be a rewarding process for a small business. Few things make you feel more like you’ve arrived as a business than moving into that first office, so here are four things to think about that could help make the process go that bit smoother. Choose [...]

In the sixth installment chronicling his journey of starting a new business, Jeremy tackles a critical feature – managing cashflow. You’ve probably heard the phrase ‘cash is king’. With any business, no matter how large or small, the amount of cash you’ve got is the only thing that matters. You can have an order book [...]

This month sees mentoring as the theme of the Government’s Business in You campaign. With all of the benefits it has to offer small businesses and those thinking about starting up, mentoring is certainly a word worth spreading. My biggest regret is not finding a mentor earlier on into my journey. I put this down [...]

According to Zipcar and national enterprise campaign StartUp Britain, over half (55%) of start-up businesses regard sharing resources with other companies as ‘essential’ to survival. The findings are part of a report ‘The Smarter Business Blueprint: Insights from SME Trailblazers’ which is published today. The report surveyed over 1,000 UK start-ups to discover how they [...]

In the fifth installment chronicling his journey of starting a new business, Jeremy continues with the theme of when to take care of certain essentials. So, back to those essentials that I was talking about. The first thing I’m going to need before doing business with my new client is to put together some Terms [...]

Beginning Monday 29 April, Sue Hayes, Managing Director at Barclays Business gives you the opportunity to connect with Farida Gibbs, the multi award-winning CEO of Gibbs S3, Europe’s fastest growing technology staffing and resource project solutions company. This week, Farida will be answering questions posted by members on Barclays Connector (read the Business in You blog [...]