Small business startup advice – SmallBusinessVoodoo.com

Business Credibility: Achieving Great Things In Stages

“A thick tree grows from a tiny seed.  A tall building arises from a mound of earth. A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step. Contriving, you are defeated; Grasping, you lose.” - Laozi Ancient Chinese philosopher

So for Man City, the bubble has burst. For the time being at least. Ka Ka has turned down a £500,000 per week salary and Robinho has gone AWOL.

It has been mooted that Ka Ka turned the offer down on moral grounds but I have a sneaky feeling that he has more business sense than the whole Man City board put together.

Ka Ka realises that if a business (in this case a football club) aspires to great things it needs to map out the journey in believable bite sized chunks. It needs credibility. And business credibility needs to be earned and not bought.

Ask a horticulturist and they will tell you not to plant a seed in a pot that is to big. Better to replant it repeatedly into pots that are progressively bigger.

If you’re launching a new small business into an already crowded market then aim to beat the competition in steps. Prioritise building business credibility. Find an energetic and competent intrapreneur to drive your business, but don’t throw money at Stuart Rose (CEO at M&S) and expect him to either say yes or actually be a good fit anyway. He may be right for a few stages down the line but not now. Read more »

Business Stripped Bare – Richard Branson

How did Virgin Mobile become the fastest business in United States history to reach a $1 billion turnover? (Yes, Faster even than Microsoft or Google)

How did a man who set out to sell records in the 70′s become one of the world’s most influential social entrepreneurs with friends to count on such as Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton and the Dalai Lama to name just a few?  Business Stripped Bare provides the answers.

Before you even make it to the opening credits you get a flavour of what being a truly global entrepreneur looks like. On the inside cover in rough handwriting (presumably Branson’s) are notes detailing some of the things he managed to achieve last year: Ordered 6 new 747 400’s; Opened a game reserve in Africa; Bought 5 miles of Majorcan coastline for new hotel; Secured site for largest cinema in the world in Tokyo;Opened first megastore in Beirut; Richard Branson is without question a truly global entrepreneur. Read more »

Christmas is a great time to pause for breath and that’s something that we small business people find difficult to do.

So in this enforced pause for breath let me use it as an opportunity to wish great things in 2009 to all people who’s business is business.

To those full of hope incubating an idea that has yet to blossom into a successful business: I wish that you ask yourself two questions: 1. Is your idea going to change the world and 2. Has it been done before? If your answers are yes and no then it is only you that lies between its success and failure.

To those in business for whom business has become a metaphor for pain, hardship, suffocation; for whom the promise of eternal financial and social freedom has become a distant footnote: I wish that your 2009 resolution be that you break out at all cost, whatever it takes. Visualise your exit with a renewed gusto and plan that you succeed without fail. Read more »

The perceived importance of innovation has reached heady heights. But innovation hasn’t just arrived so why now?  What’s the fuss all about?

Man has survived and thrived on innovation since day one. Cavemen realised the importance of innovation when they discovered an ability to create fire from sticks.  The wheel rolled in to our lives in about 3,500 BC whilst the canning industry was born out of Napoleon’s need to feed his army in the early 19th century.  The Anglo-Saxons, Normans, Tudors, Stuarts and Victorians were all innovators. George Stephenson gave us a steam locomotive, Henry Ford modern assembly lines bla bla bla ……..

And yet now its “all about innovation”. The importance of innovation is unrivalled. Nothing else matters.

Corporations preach innovation with the smugness and self-satisfaction of teenage lovers convinced they’ve pioneered great sex for the benefit of mankind. Read more »

Failure is an “act that does not achieve success”.  So to ask “how does failure breed success?”, we must first define success.

Success is “the act of achieving a desired or planned outcome”.  This definition makes no reference to an absence of failure. In other words, success and failure can co-exist.

Pairs of muscles in the human body work antagonistically. One pushes and the other pulls. For instance, the biceps and triceps are a pair of muscles that work antagonistically for the common good of the arm – allowing it to bend and straighten.  The arm cannot function without the presence of both.

In a similar way, success and failure work antagonistically for the common good of the project, task, or whatever.

They say that success is a journey not a destination.

But surely failure is the journey, success the destination. Read more »

What’s the difference between an Entrepreneur and an Intrapreneur? and why should I care?

“An Entrepreneur is someone who has the skills, passion and financial backing to create wealth from new business opportunities and is willing to take full responsibility for its success or failure.”

“An Intrapreneur is someone who Read more »