We have all had the builder that does not turn up on time. We also know how annoying it is when we take the day off for a delivery that does not turn up.

What happened to me the other day was to go to have my car serviced and to collect a curtesy car to find out they had forgotten to book it in!

Things like this really annoy your customers so please don’t do it! Things in business can and do go wrong, but try to make the experience as nice as possible for your customers and always where possible ‘Under promise and Over Deliver!’

The articles I have written so far have come from my own experiences either in business or from the property I have owned or sold or for that matter, businesses I have bought and sold. Leading from this I did also set up my business forum, which I now feel is gaining momentum, and interestingly, this has taken on its own ‘life’ as it were and heads off in very different directions and is more user driven, whereas this blog is ‘me’ driven.

I do find it difficult to get inspiration sometimes, and I prefer to write articles from the heart, rather than taking an article from someone else with my own spin on it, however, when I look at other business blogs, it always amazes me at how prolific they are in their writing and how many articles are pushed out.

I do get many comments on the blog posts I do and I take an interest in what people have to say about what I have said, which inspires me to continue writing. However, the comments I would encourage on this article, would be to see if I have the balance right on my business blog, or questions on business that you might like to hear about or ask about and I will set about writing these articles.

My personal view is that a good business blog, is one written by a person that has actually been in business or by someone that runs at least one reasonably sized business, so that the articles are experience led rather than theory and text book led. I know for my own part, I always love to speak with or to listen to fellow entrepreneurs about how they  do business so that I too can learn more.

A new venture I am embarking on myself, which is totally new, is to put together an investment syndicate for the purpose of investing in another business, once I have achieved this, I will be writing an article on how I went about it and what it achieved. This is something I am really excited about and I am hoping that I will help to make money for the investment syndicate. I am also hoping that articles of this nature are what makes a good business blog.

This article is about the decision process and what I see as the pros and cons of both types of let.

Property as a holiday let

The good thing about holiday lets is, if the property is in a good area, then you get good occupancy and you get paid quite high levels of income on a weekly basis. However, there are some downsides – depending on the agency you use to get the bookings (unless of course you get the bookings yourself), there will be a fee to pay, which in my case was 20% plus VAT.

The other things to consider are, as follows:

- Having a house-keeper to do the turn-arounds each week to change bedding etc. which is not cheap.

- You have to pay the council tax on the property.

- You have to pay the light and heating bills – which as we all know, if the person staying is not paying the bill, they will not care about wasting heat etc.

- You will have to pay for the TV licence, assuming you provide a TV, which is normally a minimum requirement.

- You will need to keep updating and buying new linen for the beds etc.

- There will be a percentage of people that stay who will wreck the place and despite having a deposit system, it will cost you in both time and money.

- If you go over the VAT threshold you will need to charge VAT on the income.

- There is more administration in dealing with a holiday let business.

Property on a tenancy let

Usually, with a tenancy let you get a tenant who will sign a 6-month tenancy agreement and apart from the usual repair bills, the other property bills become those of the tenant (I am ignoring things like mortgage interest and property maintenance, as these will be the same for both scenarios, except for different lending criteria). There will be a deduction from the rent from the agency, if you use one, but apart from this there are limited other costs associated with the property. The administration time is less and on the assumption you get a reasonable monthly rent with few voids, the profitability is likely to be similar or more than a holiday let and less hassle.

Time to reflect…

2011 was a good year for me and the business I purchased in late 2010, which had the best year it has ever had with two absolute record months for October and November 2011! I am looking forward to 2012 and taking this business forward.

I have also started to look at property again and just had an offer accepted for a property in Poole, which will be my second Dorset property, so this is a good start to the New Year.

Best of luck and I look forward to your comments over the next 12 months on my business blog, plus reading your threads in the business forum.

Is it time to look at what you could do to expand, by looking at your business plan and preparing new cash flow forecasts. Keep in mind that you should take a positive outlook on things and see things how you want them to be rather than how you don’t want them to be.

Think about getting yourself a mentor for 2012 – most people who mentor do it for free because they enjoy it!

Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year from in-business blog, Russell Bowyer.

I acheived this by applying some of the 7 ways to grow a business and, just in case you are reading this and thinking turnover is all very well, it is not just about turnover, as within this larger turnover figure, I have increased prices also (sometimes by 40-50%) to make the business more profitable also.

I am looking at putting together a business seminar on how firstly to go about buying a business and then on if you have one, how to grow it by applying the 7 ways to grow a business and will be titled ‘Success in business’.

If you are in the UK and are interested in these business seminars please post a comment on this article or email me at info@in-business.org.uk.

Good luck with your business in the present economic situation.

Please don’t let fear of failure stop you from starting a small business or from buying an existing business.

I am convinced the biggest thing that stops people from going into business is ‘The Fear of Failure’, this is usually dressed up as ‘I don’t have the money’; ‘I don’t have the time’; ‘I don’t have the experience or tallent’; or ‘I’m not very good at selling.’ But in reality these ‘excuses’ are no more than fear dressed up. Look a bit closer and delve a bit deeper inside your thoughts and I’d be willing to bet that a stronger reason always emerges to the top ‘FEAR!’

Other comments that people say are “I’d like to start a small business but I don’t know if there will be enough people that would buy my product.” Or “I have a mortgage to pay and a family to feed and I don’t know if I could make enough money to live on.”

All the above obstacle to starting a small business are all about fear of failure and, whilst fear is designed to save us from physical harm, such as an attack by a grisly bear, it will be holding you back unnecessarily. The primal fear of an animal attack is a good thing, but the fear that prevents you from doing things that you want to do are not.

So if the fear of failure is what is preventing you from starting a small business you will need to overcome this and use some positive thinking. This fear is usually broken down into two halves:

 - If I fail I will be a loser and others will look down on me.

 - If I fail I will lose all my money and my home.

Let’s take a close look at these two…

If I fail I will be a loser

You will only be a loser if you tell yourself this, whereas in reality you are not at all. Most people will admire your spirit and hold you in higher esteem than you might think. I know when I bought my last business people would say to me how they admire what I have done. Of course if your business were to go wrong you might not feel good about it, but it is all about what you tell yourself, as to how you will feel about it. So tell yourself a different story and you will feel different.

If I fail I will lose all my money and my home

You might well lose the money you have invested within the business if it fails, but if you set the business up in the right way in the first place, like incorporating your business, you will protect your personal assets, so you will not lose all your money nor your assets. The only exception here is if you have secured any of your assets on any loans you might take out to set the business up.

If you never try you will never know and something I heard Sir Richard Branson say “You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.”

This might be true and you might have to approach business in a different way, but I believe that there are too many business owners that are focusing on the present economic conditions too much, and if we become what we think about most of the time, then what’s the betting, if you worry about your business then your business is likely to reflect this.

I recently wrote an article about the power of the subconscious, which explains just how powerful the subconscious mind is, but also you might be interested to learn that where your logical mind is in conflict with your imaginative mind…imagination wins through every time. If you don’t believe me then explain that to the millions of people who suffer the fear of spiders or the fear of flying etc.

In reality (or the logical way of thinking) a spider is thousands of times smaller than we are, so to be scared of such a small creature is not logical, except for some healthy weariness of the really poisonous spiders of course. Which points to something much more powerful at play in the mind, which is partly linked to the persons imagination. This irrational fear (or imaginative fear) can be totally debilitating at times, so to underestimate it would be foolish.

However, this is the good part…

If you harness the power of the imagination by thinking about good and positive things happening, for example - imagine your sales going though the roof; imagine record sales and a healthy cash flow; imagine your business growing over the next 12-18 months and beyond; etc. You will find good things starting to happen, as your brain goes to work to find a way.

You might find this difficult to believe, but in order for this to work you need to keep focused and to remove any negative thoughts. Spend say 90% of your time thinking positive thoughts and you will be guaranteed to have a positive outcome. I say 90% rather than 100%, as I appreciate that even for the best of us thinking 100% positive all of the time might be unrealistic.

Another thing to realise is that the brain loves to solve questions and let me also explain this by way of an example:

You will probably have come across many people (which might include yourself) who use the expression ‘I can’t afford it’. This phrase is extremely negative and in itself is extremely limiting.

However, if you were to replace this phrase with questions like: how can I afford it; what can I do to make the money to do it; what would I need to do with my business or what money do I need to earn and how, in order to afford it; etc. your brain will want to come up with solutions. If you do this in a brain storming session, you’d be surprised at how many answers you will get.

What you will find is that most people will then be either too lazy to go ahead and do any of the tasks listed, or use further negative comments like, I can’t do that – which in many instances will not be true.

So to truly find success in business then harness power of your imagination and ask yourself some powerful and searching questions..then act upon the solutions and answers to your questions today!

The strange thing is that this seemingly desparate method of selling really puts the punter off, well

I have just invested in a new business and this has taken up my time – I bought a new business back in October 2010 and will admit that it has taken all my focus for the last 6-8 months. The industry was completely new to me and the learning curve extremely steep – the business designs, manufactures and installs fitted furniture, mostly built in bedrooms and home offices – so it is not only an industry I don’t know, but also I have never run a manufacturing business before!

So if you were to ask me – “What to invest in now?” – I would have to say ‘Invest in a business’, which can either be existing or a new one you start from scratch, which is a continuation of my last post ‘where to invest cash’ and to show the readers of my business blog, I put my money where my mouth is!

You could spend your time looking at the best money investments - the banks; premium bonds; property etc. but ultimately, one of the highest returns you will make is when you buy a business…let me explain further:

If you were to use an ‘investment return calculator‘ you would enter certain information – the period of the investment, the amount of the investment, the return and so on. At the end of the investment period you would achieve a certain level of ‘Return’.

With a business, there are two investment returns to calculate, the first is the ‘cash’ generated from the business each year, which you might choose to take out by way of salary or dividend. Secondly, you have the ‘capital growth and so long as you make the right choices in your new business and it grows over the period of your ownership, then if the amount you sell it for is higher than what you paid for the business in the first place or more than the money you used to set it up from scratch, this represents capital growth. So for example:

If you invested £100,000 in a business and receive a £20,000 annual dividend from it your annual investment is 20%, however if after 10 years you sell the same business for £500,000 your capital investment is 400%, but if you add the two returns together your total return would be 600%, assuming the dividend you take out from the business over the ten years remains at just £20,000, which is unlikely. There is no bank, pension or ISA that would give this level of return on the market, and that is not simply because interest rates are low right now, but this will never be the case.

You will have to do some hard work though – running a business is not for the faint hearted and the risks are much higher, but you can’t expect to get a high return without higher risk and without a bit of work.

The other consideration is that, of the £100,000 used to set up the business or to buy it from another owner, some of this could be borrowed money from a bank. So if for example, you were able to secure a 60% loan on your investment, your own personal capital outlay is now just £40,000.

This makes your return on investment much higher, because you have leveraged your money – which in this case the total return of note above of £600,000 would mean a total return on investment of a staggering 1500%, which might make the answer to ‘What to invest in now?’ much easier.