In business have you ever come across the term Bootstrapping? Well the official definition from the Business Dictionary is… ‘Building a business out of very little or virtually nothing. Bootstrappers rely usually on personal income and savings, sweat equity, lowest possible operating costs, fast inventory turnaround, and a cash-only approach to selling. In fact many

Do you use marginal gains to improve products or problems in your industry? Just so we’re clear. I mean. Developing small incremental improvements to a product or service over time. And on their own they could be classed as insignificant. But added together they create a step change and can sometimes even be revolutionary. Sir

Yes, it Christmas special offer time… Buy 1 of our own brand printer cartridges (ink or toner) & you can buy another 1 of the same for only HALF PRICE (saving 50%)! And this years special offer is running right up until midnight on 31st December. Guess what? You can buy as many as you

I don’t think it’s a secret that I read a lot of business books, is it? Yes I agree. It can be difficult to make time. And I’m not sure on your schedule. But this is how I do it… Driving – I’ll always have an audio book or a CD book on, rather than

How much do you value a guarantee? Mike (1 of our drivers) has gone on holiday to Vietnam. Lucky sod, I’d love to go to Vietnam. But with 3 kids to bring up and fund, I can’t see it happening this side of 2030. Which means (as the spare) I’ve had to jump in the

Forget black Friday & ignore cyber Monday… Our Christmas special offer to you is running right up until midnight on 31st December. Buy 1 of our own brand printer cartridges (ink or toner) & you can buy another 1 of the same for only HALF PRICE (saving 50%)! And you can buy as many as

Did you hear about the football referee who forgot his coin, and instead made the 2 captains play Rock Paper Scissors to decide who gets the choice of ends, and who kicks off… It was a high profile game too. Between 2 women’s Super League teams (Manchester City & Reading) featuring the current England captain

I don’t know about you but I can’t stand these dark cold nights, and it’s definitely time to break out the logs & get the wood burner going again… As you may know? I’m a great advocate of shopping local. Even to the point of declaring that I’m never going to buy anything off Amazon

I don’t know about you but marketing in small organisations is not like it used to be. When we first started out (15 years ago) there was no such thing as social media. And we could simply stick an advert in our local paper and hey presto, people would call & buy our stuff… For the last

It was one of the more welcoming features of the Budget, a Digital Services Tax to make the likes of Amazon, Google & Facebook pay their fair share. The Treasury says it will apply to search engines, online marketplaces and social media firms who have global revenues of more than £500 million. But is it

There’s nothing wrong with being different. The fact is. If you do what others do (following the crowd) you’ll simply end up getting the same thing they do. Being different is a very valuable thing. You won’t gain anything by being boring, plain & vanilla or by trying to please everyone. Trying to please everyone

We’ve got a REAL BIG PROBLEM in our industry & we really need you to share this article to stop organisations like yours from being victims… We’ve recently wrote a couple of articles (read them here & here) about small organisations being victims of rogue traders through terms & conditions not being clearly explained. And

It’s just happened again. A small organisation being ripped off by a rogue trader through terms & conditions not clearly explained. And in this case actually hidden. We’ve been helping a small business get to the bottom of their telephone contract. And it’s turned up a right bag of worms. The poor customer has had

Warren Buffet famously said “If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die.” Well Amazon have just taken things to another level. They plan to make money from your dreams… And have launched their own private label mattress products (as detailed by TJI Research) & prices

Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto was an Italian engineer, sociologist, economist, political scientist, and philosopher born in 1848. He introduced the concept of Pareto efficiency and helped develop the field of microeconomics. The Pareto principle was named after him. And was built on observations such as 80% of the land in Italy was owned by about 20% of the population. The Pareto principle (80/20 rule) implies (roughly) 80% of the