Over-delivery As I said the other day, restaurants so often show the best and worst examples of how to do business, all in an hour or so. On our recent trip away, my wife and I visited another bar-restaurant for lunch, looking for a snack to leave plenty of room for dinner later. My…
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Riding for a fall My wife and I have been away recently, which has meant eating in restaurants rather more than we usually do. I love restaurant watching. So often one can see in a very short time the very best business practices and some of the worst. We ate in a hotel several…
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We have worked hard to be where we are. We have tried to learn all the demands of the business we are in. We keep ourselves up to date with every bit of news in our industry, every change in the law which may affect us or our customers and every social media tip to…
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Old chestnut I have been involved in an on-line debate covering the old chestnut of price versus value. This is a very important issue in most service businesses and particularly for smaller businesses., because we all need to think what market we are in and what our business model is. I come from an…
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It’s no secret that I believe in taking breaks from work because it helps me relax and be more efficient. Enjoying ourselves and having a bit of fun is good for us. What I find really frightening is when I see people so buried in fighting their business issues that they end up working all…
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The other day a doctor told me I shouldn’t work hard all the time and that I should take breaks and spontaneous time-outs. That is good advice, but actually I already do those things. It is true that some of what I think of as a break, others might consider work, but leisure is whatever…
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I expect you have seen so-called concession businesses within big stores. They are businesses within other businesses and they sell specialist items such as costume jewellery, scarfs, ties or food. Those sorts of concessions are usually themselves owned by large companies, but small businesses can run concession enterprises as well. Probably most small businesses who…
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For those who don’t know, Alltop is an article and blog aggregator, bringing in content from news stations, newspapers, magazines, on-line articles and blogs. Alltop was founded by the great Guy Kawasaki. And now it includes On Our Bikes. To get the best explanation of what Alltop is and what it can do for you,…
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It is a great temptation in business, especially for start-ups, to take the cheapest option when spending money on buying in services. It is very often dangerous to do this because some people just play at business. Often the really cheap option will be a part-timer who does not depend on the part-time earnings to…
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A lot of people who don’t have a business think that there isn’t a difference between a large one and a small one except in scale. But managing and running a small business is nothing like big business. I have had difficulties dealing with large businesses such as the telecoms giants. If I didn’t know…
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