I took over a business in October 2010 and in that month it made sales of £126,000, whereas in the last month we acheived £271,000!

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.

Having just returned from a trip to the Red Sea in Hurghada, I am all too aware of the Egyptian hard selling style!

The strange thing is that this seemingly desparate method of selling really puts the punter off, well certainly if you are British, we hate the hard sell. I am sure no one likes to be put upon and forced into a shop or to buy something we don’t want, but the Egyptians don’t seem to understand this concept.

It dawned on me that, having read books and having been on selling courses, you are told that you must not come across as being ‘desparate’, as this will be picked upon by the buyer. This all made sense, but finally made complete sense in Egypt.

I was talking to a travel rep on my last day and she was asking us whether we would be coming back to Hurghada and, apart from the usual Pharos revenge which is almost as hard to avoid, I mentioned the hassling by the Egyptian shop owners….

Firstly, I apologise for my absence on my own blog – I have been away investing and would like to discuss with you what to invest in now, with interest rates still at an all time low across the globe.

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 and industry I don’t know, but also I have never run a manufacturing business!

The big topic and discussion right now is where to invest cash – it has been reported in the news that the Governor of the Bank of England is encouraging people to spend their cash!

So what are the options open to investing your cash?

- Put it in a deposit account and earn a very low amount of interest?
- Invest in property?
- Invest in a business?
- Invest cash in stocks and shares is a possibility?
- ISA’s, Pensions and other investments or what about government bonds?

The above are a few ideas of what can be done and in many cases for most people this is a bit of a dilemma! A colleague of mine is trying to raise a significant amount of capital for business investment purposes, and it seems as though the majority of the people he has approached are wary of the ‘Double Dip’ potential, so are holding on to their cash right now.

One of the problems with cash is that, certainly with interest rates so low, the amount you will earn with it sitting in a deposit account will not keep up with the rate of inflation, so that in the long-term the buying power of your cash will lessen over time.

However, this is not to say that you should rush out and spend it all, however, having said that I can quite understand where the Bank of England Governor is coming from, if people don’t spend because of their worry about a ‘double dip’, they will inadvertently bring about the ‘double dip’ anyway, as the result of holding back – a kind of self fulfilling prophesy as it were!

So if cash is not a good option, then what about the other options open to investors right now. Well the good news is that it is extremely cheap to borrow right now (if you are able to obtain the loan in the first place and if you shop around), so if you decide to borrow to buy property or to buy a business, then this is can be extremely exciting and highly rewarding.

Right now, that is exactly what I am doing – I am combing some of my cash with a loan from the bank (at the rate of just 4.59%!) to buy a business. The return on my cash investment is looking like 105% in the first year, which to my way of thinking is an excellent return on capital, and way in excess of what it will earn in a deposit account or in property and is well in excess of the UK’s rate of inflation right now!

I would always recommend that you do your homework, but don’t be blinkered – there are too many people that say I can’t do this or that, or I don’t have the money etc. Instead of telling yourself ‘I can’t do this or that’, ask yourself questions using the word ‘HOW‘; like how can I do this or; how can I do that; Your brain likes questions like this. If you ask the right questions your brain can set about to answer them, whereas if you tell yourself it can’t be done, well guess what – ‘It Can’t!‘ and you will be right.

This article is not meant to be about investment advice, as I am not regulated by the FSA, but it is about making you think about other ways of using spare cash to invest in other areas that you might not have done before.

It might be worth your reading my article about the ‘Power of the Subconscious Mind’  if you want help with your thinking on this subject.

If you are a business owner and looking for a good business development system you might be wondering what to look for.

This article is aimed at helping you make that decision, by firstly explaining what we understand by ‘Business Development’.

So what is Business Development?

- It involves profit improvement or profit increase.

- It involves improving business processes in order to reduce costs.

- It involves looking at the systems within the business and then reviewing ways of improving those systems together with adding in more and better systems.

- It means looking at the involvement of the business owners and how to help make them less involved in the day-to-day running of the business and of how to make the business less dependent on the owners, thereby making the business more valuable.

- Essentially business development is about creating value from an already existing business both in terms of profits and in terms of shareholder value.

Now that we have defined business development what is a business development system?

Simply answered it is a system that would help a business owner look at all or some of the above areas and one that is designed to help focus on different aspects of the business.

Some of the process might involve using business performance management software, whilst others might include employing business consultants or specialists in this field.

One important aspect never to be overlooked is the involvement of the employees of the business, as they are the ones on the ‘front-line’ as it were and possibly more importantly, are the ones that will be operating the systems to be implemented.

If you are selling your business as a going concern you are selling the business as an on-going trading activity.

If you are selling your business as a going concern rather than selling the individual assets of that business, you will need to be able to demonstrate to potential buyers that they will be able to walk into your business and take over without any major problems from day-one.

In accounting terms, “going concern” refers to a company’s ability to continue functioning as a business entity into the foreseeable future. If a company is not considered a going concern then it is required to disclose this fact in its financial statements or if there are any factors that may put the company’s status as a going concern in doubt.

So a buyer of a business will be extremely interested in the “Going Concern Value” aspect of the business, which is usually higher than the individual assets of the business, so long as the business is profitable and has good cash flow.

As a small business owner you might ask the question “Why should I sell my business through an agency?”.

You could easily sell your small business privately but in doing so you will be responsible for every aspect of the sale, including the valuation of your business, the marketing of your business, arranging the viewings and the final price negotiations.

The obvious saving you make by selling your business privately is you will not have any agency fees to pay and you don’t have to sign a contract giving anyone exclusive rights to sell your business.

However if you use a business transfer agent they will be able to advise you of the value of your business having regard to its size, profitability, its location, the industry in which it operates and any other factors they consider relevant.

Business transfer agents usually have business buyers already on their books actively looking to buy, so they will be able to immediately present your business to these active business buyers. Whether your business is sold to a registered buyer or a new buyer the agent will negotiate the sale of your business on your behalf and in some cases (depending on the business broker) they will attend the viewings.

Napoleon Hill talks about the wisdom the billionaire Andrew Carnegie shared with him some hundred years ago.

Napoleon Hill talks about his meeting with Andrew Carnegie

It is worth listening to this video and making notes about how to think yourself into a better and richer life,or as Napoleon Hill put it – ‘Think and Grow Rich’!

In order to have a good business you need to learn how to delegate tasks to your employees.

Delegation is one of the hardest things for business owners to do – the thought of relinquishing control and allowing someone to do your work is out of the questions – surely?

In fact it is not hard at all and is one of the best things you can do in business. There is a saying that even if your employees do things at least 80% as good as you do then this is better than you doing it 100% right.

Take a look at your work for the following week and decide on which day you want to take off every week and then stick to that. Then take a look at the tasks you would need to delegate from your work load so that things will not fall behind because you are now only there for 4 days instead of 5 (don’t tell me you work 7 days or even 6 days – if you do then take at least one of these days off and even better two of them).

Now decide which employee or employees you can then award your work load to. You may need to spend a bit of time training them – but you will soon find that they will be quite happy to take on your work and they may even do a better job!

You can then sit back and enjoy that day off each week and every week in the knowledge that your employees are working hard for you. If you choose a Friday as your day off, then you have just created long weekends for you and your family on a long-term basis.

Once you have got used to taking one day off for pleasure purposes you should then take another look at your work load. Review how to delegate another days-worth of work so that you can spend that extra day working ‘ON’ the business instead of ‘IN’ the business…let me explain…Working ‘ON’ your business involves looking at the bigger picture and strategic planning of where the business should be heading. You should be looking at ways in which you can expand the business and how to grow the business.

By learning how to delegate task in your business will give you more free time and your business will become much more valuable. A business is much more valuable if it is less dependent upon the owners and as you will be spending more time on strategic planning and on building your business it will also be more profitable.

If you are looking to print business cards for your business then be careful about using services that offer “free business cards”.

There are two things to point out to you about these so called “free business cards” and the first is to be careful of companies like Vistaprint! We needed business cards in one of my businesses and our manager at the time recommended Vistaprint tome. My manager told me that the cards are free, so I thought why not and agreed to let her go ahead and order some “Free” cards – well we did pay for them because we wanted to add some extra services.

The cards arrived, but and a BIG BUT – my business card started to get charged with £9.95 per month for some kind of subscription service, which I am still not sure what this is.

When we contacted Vistaprint, which was not an easy thing to do in the first place, as they seem to make it incredibly difficult for customers to make direct contact, they agreed to cancel the subscription and did originally offer to refund the money already paid out. However, nothing of the sort happened and I felt that I was simply told a lie, I also feel that this was simply a delay tactic so that they could then take yet more £9.95 payments. Vistaprint never did cancel the direct debit and when we tried to make contact again we found it impossible to do so – they also never repaid the monies taken from my bank that were never knowingly agreed to in the first place!

The only way to cancel this was to contact our bank directly, who stopped any future payments, however, we were left out of pocket and no refund was made. What apparently happens is that when you register for the free cards, if you want to upgrade the business cards, if for example, you want to have then delivered more quickly, then you pay for this using a credit card. Vistprint then automatically subscribe you to this £9.95 per month charge and you only find out when you get your next bank or credit card statement.

To me this is a shoddy practice and to be blunt - it is a “Scam” – if you type in “Vistaprint scam” to a search engine you will see many websites listed telling you not to use Vistaprint and quite frankly I agree with this. I would certainly never recommend a company like this and would never ever use them again!

The secondary reason for not using “Free Business Cards” is that when you give them out to other business people they look “Free” and people get to know the designs used by these companies – so you look “Cheap” in front of other business people. It is much better to have your own corporate ID and logo on your own business card design, which in most cases does not usually cost the earth to produce when you use a reputable printing company.