Dragons’ Den boost to entrepreneurship wears off
A dramatic fall in the number of would be entrepreneurs has thrown in doubt the private sector’s capacity to drive the recovery in the economy.
Only 3.8pc of the population expects to start a business in the next three years, compared with 5.9pc in 2004, a survey of 30,000 people in the UK, called the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, has found.
For the first time since the survey began in 2003, fewer than half the adults surveyed thought that starting a business was a good career option and that they saw successful businesses covered in the media, suggesting that the so-called ‘Dragons’ Den‘ effect may be wearing off.
Only 3.7pc of women were involved in what the researchers from Strathclyde and Aston Universities defined as entrepreneurial activity, compared with 7.8pc of men.
However, the gap between male and female entrepreneurial activity narrowed in early stage companies, the researchers found, raising the prospect that a higher proportion of female owned businesses fail to become established.
The number of people having to set up in business to earn income rose sharply between 2007 and 2008 but eased off last year in every region of the country apart from London, where the number of people forced into self employment tripled.
The Government said it was “well aware of the challenge it faces to raise enterprise awareness and start-up activity in the UK”.
Mark Prisk, small business minister, said: “We will meet that challenge by making this decade the most entrepreneurial and dynamic in our history.”
He said the Government would develop “a coherent and comprehensive strategy for enterprise”.
This would include:
– “Challenging aspirations and capability – embedding enterprise awareness and business management skills into mainstream education: schools, further education colleges and higher education institutions.
– “Modernising business support – ensuring the support, information and advice provided to businesses is fit for the 21st century.
– “Supporting cash flow and access to finance – ensuring individuals and businesses have the skills, tools and networks they need to understand the options and to access finance, and that Government identifies and addresses market failures.
– “Reducing burdens – making it easier to start and grow a business by delivering long-term certainty and stability in the tax system, and pushing ahead with the promise to reduce regulation.
– “Transforming opportunities for individuals and their communities – a radical change in the support offered to workless people through Work for Yourself and providing access to mentors and small loans for the most disadvantaged”
Source – The Daily Telegraph, 15th July 2010
Top Tips From Entrepreneur Ed Reeves
Ed Reeves is the founder of Moneypenny – an answering service with a difference! Based in Wrexham, North Wales, it turns over £7m per annum and has 250 staff.
Says Ed “whatever business you do, make sure it is scalable. That is where everyone goes wrong. And stick to your convictions”.
He also recommends recruiting staff based on their attitude rather than their experience.
I am totally with Ed on his tips. As a business adviser I see so many businesses that start a business but it’s not readily scalable. Typically the business is totally reliant on them, the product doesn’t lend itself to growth/spin-offs or the premises are not able to cope with expansion. Could this be your business?
Recruiting staff is always an emotive issue. Michael Gerber, author and small business guru, will talk about recruiting staff with the right attitude and will even go so far as to say he doesn’t want staff with experience. I am not so sure I go quite as far as Michael on this one but I will always put a prospective employee’s attitude and willingness above experience or qualifications.
Author – Paul Stanford
Got A Sweet Tooth?
It was reported today that Hotel Chocolat, the upmarket chocolate retailer, has raised £3.7m from an innovative “chocolate bond” to help fund future business growth.
This is how it works – customers invest in a 3 year bond in the business and in return they get paid in deliveries of chocolate over the bond term. Bondholders can redeem their chocolate bonds in full after 3 years and they will receive their first delivery of a chocolate tasting box next month.
Could you do something similar to fund growth for your business? I think this is a great example of thinking outside the box (a chocolate one in this case!) and goes to show that such ideas can and do work in practise.
Author – Paul Stanford
Warren Buffett on the economy
Warren Buffet has recommended an out-of-print book written by a little known government adviser on the collapse of Germany into hyperinflation in the 1920s.
The book is called When Money Dies. Written by Adam Fergusson in 1975 but now being released by Old Street Publishing. When Money Dies describes the economic collapse in Germany after the First World War that helped pave the way for Adolf Hitler to take power. It is being seen as a warning of the dangers being posed by Europe’s current financial crisis.
The book has become a cult among top-level investors because it describes in detail the devastation hyperinflation has on ordinary people. Also, It shows that the idea that hyperinflation comes slowly is wrong. Within a single year, in 1923, the value of money was utterly destroyed and, as Adam Fergusson rightly says, “if you destroy the value of money, you destroy a cornerstone of society”
We have been warned…
Author – Paul Stanford
Body Shop to rival Avon and Ann Summers?
The Body Shop has announced plans to double the size of its Body Shop at Home division. It wants to recruit an extra 3,500 consultants. This is a great opportunity for stay-at-home mums to earn extra cash from home through parties and the like in a similar way to Avon and Ann Summers. Home consultants pay a sign-up fee of £30 for a starter pack and receive 25% commission on sales, plus bonuses. Consultants can earn up to £25 per hour.
Body Shop has denied that it wants to do this because it intends to reduce its high street presence.
I’m sure that like many things in life there are two sides to every story. Whatever Body Shop’s plans to reduce its high street stores, I believe this is a good way to get started in running a small business, to earn money from home, be your own boss, work flexibly and earn more per hour than you would if you were a shop assistant.
Author – Paul Stanford
What’s the future for Small Business Advice?
Small businesses used to be able to get free business advice from Business Link but it seems it wont be around for very much longer..
Mark Prisk (business and enterprise minister) said the network, subject to speculation about its future for several weeks, is to be shut down due to the amount of money spent on telling entrepreneurs where to get advice.
“The regional Business Links have spent too much time signposting and not enough time actually advising,” the MP told Real Business. “We’re going to wind down the Regional Development Agencies, and as part of those, we’ll be winding down the regional Business Link contracts.”
Prisk said the service, which operates throughout England, will be replaced by a state-funded online platform plus greater use of the private sector. As well as being available via desktops, the new internet offering will be accessible on mobile phones and supported by a call centre.
Business Link’s closure is part of the government’s decision, announced in the Emergency Budget, to abolish England’s nine Regional Development Agencies and replace them with Local Enterprise Partnerships between local authorities, chambers of commerce and private companies. The change is due to be completed by March 2012.
About the author. Extract from an interview with Real Business www.realbusiness.co.uk
Business Link Website Cost £1.5 Million For 3 Years!
What would it cost to create and run a government website for three years? How does £105m sound? Rory Cellan-Jones reports….
After we covered a couple of stories about government spending on websites and iPhone apps someone got in touch to suggest we take a look at one particular site, businesslink.gov.uk.
The correspondent said this site, run by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), had cost £35m a year to build and operate for three years and suggested that it had been poor value, delivered an unsatisfactory service to users and proved technically shaky.
I could not quite believe that figure – it sounds an awful lot of money for one site
but it turns out to be true. Businesslink.gov.uk was among the sites singled out last week by the Cabinet Office as very expensive in terms of cost per visit.
When I went to the lengthy document [941.60KB PDF] in which the Central Office of Information (COI) examined central government websites, I found that £35m staring out from a table.
Only the NHS Choices site, at £21m, comes anywhere close. But it has around six million unique users a month, whereas the Business Link site, which offers all kinds of advice to businesses, has just over a million.
The site is the work of a major outsourcing company called Serco, which has sub-contracted the technology to a little business called BT. So how do the costs break down?
The COI report has some detail – £6.2m on strategy and planning, £4.4m on design and build, £4.7m on hosting and infrastructure, £15.3m on content provision and £4.5m on testing and evaluation. What I can’t work out is why that cost is repeated for three years.
But I freely admit my knowledge of website development is sketchy so I consulted a couple of experts. One had helped build a customer support website for a major retailer, to cope with similar traffic to that experienced on the Business Link site. That had been built in-house but a supplier had quoted roughly £1.5m to build it, plus £150,000 in annual running costs.
Then I went to Sean O’Halloran at a firm called Hoop Associates which builds websites, mainly for public sector clients. So what was his reaction to that £35m?
“It’s a completely unfathomable number, I can’t imagine how that could be spent.” Mr O’Halloran had an interesting theory though, he claims that government departments are still locked into a big supplier, technology driven way of thinking when it comes to building websites.
“Most of the big sums go on the technology, which is wrong. They should first work out what they want to deliver, then source the technology.” He said that these days there were plenty of cheap or even free sources of technology that did not involve going to big companies, but that civil servants felt more comfortable dealing with the kind of suppliers who have always been involved in major IT projects.
Explode Your Business – Workshop 10 September 2010
“Explode Your Business” – a dynamic action-orientated workshop for start up and growing Businesses from 4Momentum with special guests Julie Lawn & author, speaker & Internet Marketer Nicola Cairncross.
Venue: Ropetackle Arts Centre, Shoreham
Investment: Only £47 for the day for Early Bird bookings.
Life Coach Directory
Life Coaching for your business may seem an odd idea, but many Life Coaches offer business and staff coaching. They may not be able to sort out all of your business worries but a life coach can help you find out what you want from your business. A life coach can help keep you motivated and helps you set realistic and achievable goals. It may seem pretty straight forward but sometimes it helps to have an outsiders point of view. A life coach can help boost staff morale as well. Life coaches listen to each individuals needs and worries and help them feel more appreciated and valued, meaning a much happier and productive workplace.
If you think Life Coaching for business and staff will help you visit Life Coach Directory today.
Psychology and business success
Over the years I have visited many entrepreneurs and business owners. Have you ever thought why it is that one business can do so well and another is so mediocre when they are both in the same line of business? Well one insight that I want to share with you as to why this may be the case is to do with the psychology of you, the business owner.
How true it is that if you think big then chances are you will make it big…conversely if you think small then chances are you will remain small. Similarly if you think your business won’t succeed then you are likely to fail and your business will fail. On another level it is interesting that if you don’t value yourself and your business highly enough then you will undercharge for your products and/or services. This may be OK in the short term but it will mean that you will have to sell more products/services to make the same level of profit to your competitor that is charging a higher premium. In addition, the psychology of the customer often says well if that company is charging X and that other one is charging Y, then X’s product/service must be inferior to Y’s. Therefore I will buy Y’s. So not only are you selling less because your pricing is less but your margins are also lower. Plus in the long term when you wake up and realise that you need to raise your prices in order to survive your client base wont accept the huge price rise that you need to make in order to put you on a par with your competitor that started off charging higher and has been able to make small regular price increases along the way without alienating his client base.
So be bold, think big, think confidence, think value – your value and that of your product and service if you want to give your business a better chance of success!
About the author: Paul Stanford http://www.paulstanford.co.uk/blog has provided practical advice to hundreds of entrepreneurs for the past 5 years helping them to successfully start-up, transform and sell their businesses. Get in touch to see how his business http://www.4momentum.co.uk can help do the same for you. You have full permission to reprint this article provided this box is kept unchanged.
Copyright 2009 Paul Stanford
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