Christmas is time for giving, sharing and being with people we care about. In the same spirit, it’s a great time to nurture our business families too. In this blog, we look at how to do it generously and effectively, to benefit everyone involved.
(more…)Category: Small business
Events of 2020 saw many of us working from home, with figures backed up by a recent survey from the ONS. Once the initial joy at the reduced cost of commuting had passed, many realised that the money they saved on travel cards was being spent instead on their fuel bills.
(more…)Having the ambition to work for yourself shows an excellent attitude and one that it likely to succeed. To harness that ambition before it goes stale, it’s important to define business goals to keep you on track. But what happens when you don’t achieve your goal? How do you stay motivated and moving in the right direction?
If this happens to you, it’s important to stay strong, turn negatives into positives and find opportunities for improvement. Here are some questions to ask yourself and your team:
(more…)Awareness days, holidays and promotional days all present great marketing opportunities. You can join in with hashtags on social media, or leverage the enthusiasm generated by Google’s doodles. Offline, you can take advantage of the general holiday atmosphere and market your business in line with Christmas or Halloween.
(more…)As we look back over the quarter and even over the year, it’s important to celebrate our successes and identify the strengths we should be nurturing.
But it’s even more important to review what went wrong. By learning from our mistakes, we can turn them into positives, improving our business practice and growing as professionals.
In this blog, we look at why it’s important to learn from our mistakes, and how to go about it.
(more…)One quarter of the year is long enough to identify meaningful trends, but not so long that those patterns become irrelevant. Now that we’re in Q4, it’s a great time to reflect on the last quarter, evaluate successes, and apply key learnings as we head into the final stretch of the year.
In this blog, we look at the four questions business owners should be asking during a quarterly review.
(more…)If you’re new to running a small business, you’re not naturally organised, or you just hate finance jobs, it can be easy for your accounts to get on top of you. Of course, it’s much better if you can get on top of them. The best way to do this is to break your accounting tasks down into regular responsibilities. In this blog, we look at what you should be doing daily, weekly, monthly and annually so you can keep up to date with your finances.
(more…)Happy birthday to us! Get Ahead turns eleven this autumn and we are so proud of how far we’ve come. Of course, we don’t just want to keep our success to ourselves.
Here’s what we’ve learned in the last eleven years – we hope our experience will help you too!
(more…)If you’ve just set up your business, or you’re offering a new service, it can be difficult to know how to price your offering. You don’t want to rip off your customers…but you don’t want to rip yourself off either. Working out what to charge for services can be very complex, so we’ve put together some do’s and don’ts to point you in the right direction.
(more…)Most of the time, clients and customers pay on time, cash flow is steady and all is well. But sometimes, invoices go unpaid. Perhaps the client is trying it on; perhaps there’s a genuine reason why they’re struggling to pay. Whatever the reason, unpaid invoices can hold up your business, reduce your income and restrict your business growth. In this blog, we look at how best to chase unpaid invoices, and how to avoid the situation in the first place.
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