Are you dreading Christmas? As a business owner, you’re likely dreading more than the present shopping and food prep for the big day. For a small business, cashflow is king, and the December/January period is often challenging financially. It’s no secret that smaller businesses are often in a more ‘hand to mouth’ scenario money wise, […]
Author: Graeme Bratty
How can you maximise your revenue generating time?
Many SME’s are one person or Husband and Wife operations. The owner/operators often work much more than a standard work week, particularly when you take into account the administrative functions such invoicing customers, paying suppliers, and so on. Some of these owner/operators are also self confessed control freaks so try to do absolutely everything themselves. […]
The Challenges of being in business.
The challenges of being in business Recently I was involved in some Business Mentors New Zealand training with about 30 other mentors. It was great to meet others that were part of this organisation and to share experiences. There were widely varying stories of how some businesses were struggling post Covid 19 and how others […]
Cupcakes are a good thing!
Last month I participated in Movember. The funds raised by Movember go into aiding the improvement of a number of men’s health issues. It is worth the aggravation of a tickly upper lip that for some reason I cannot stop touching. The one issue closest to home for me at this point in time is […]
Business owners need to pay themselves!
Money… the magic word on every business owner’s lips. You may not go into business with the sole purpose of making money, but it should be one of the things you strongly consider. What you earn can feel like a bit of a taboo subject and is not talked about publically. But, it should be […]
Riding the Wave
When I was starting my business I started from a zero base. That is, no customers. I needed an accounting system but I did not want to spend very much as I needed to protect my cash as much as I could. This is always wise no matter how early or late your business is […]
Positive Relationships
Throughout my career I have built many business relationships within the organisations I worked in, as well as outside of the organisation with suppliers and customers. This had always been while I was employed by someone else. I did not have to worry too much about building the business as that was not my role, […]
Pricing Proposals for Success
A Proposal Success story I was recently helping a client to price a proposal for a significant contract. She had done everything right. The team she assembled had read the evaluation criteria and addressed all of the items that required addressing in the RFP. She had enlisted the right expertise to help her define and […]
The recipe for business
My girlfriend recently shared with me a facebook post which was about a man from the UK that had made Lemoncello for the first time and clearly did not follow the recipe as he had a very unsatisfactory result. If you don’t mind a bit of rich language view the clip at this link. This […]
The Importance of Forecasting
Why Forecasting Is So Important! A number of years ago I asked my youngest daughter what she thought the weather was going to do the next day. She asked what the weather forecast had said. I said I did not know. Why did she need to know that? She said that most of the time […]