Dear If I only had time? Recently the Leatherhead & District Chamber of Commerce ran a Focus for Growth Conference to which they invited businesses in the general area and in particular members from the neighbouring Chambers in Dorking and Cobham. There were opportunities for One to One mentoring sessions with some experienced entrepreneurs, HMRC and the Speakers, together with an excellent and free Networking Lunch provided by Chamber members The Woodlands Park Hotel (www.handpickedhotels.co.uk/hotels/woodlands-park) Four experienced speakers talked about aspects of dealing with or achieving Growth:
Joanne Rogers MD of Prowse & Co Ltd- Searching for the Right Direction- covered a variety of aspects involved in anticipating and adapting to changing markets and the importance and cost effectiveness of market research (www.prowse.co.uk ).
Jeremy Taylor CEO of the Gatwick Diamond Business Association spoke on Growing Gatwick means Growing Businesses (www.gatwickdiamondbusiness.org.uk ) on the opportunities arising for any business at any stage from a growing and independent Gatwick Airport Irving Levy from Business Link SE spoke on Change is the Name of the Game, including the challenges of keeping up to date with changes, new technologies and networks-including the growth of Social Media. He also told us that news of the demise of Business Link was somewhat exaggerated and they would be around for a further period while alternative arrangements are made for business support before March 2012. www.businesslink.gov.uk/southeast And finally. .. Jeremy Webb from SatNav4Business spoke on the subject - If I only had Time! How often do we hear this said? And how often do business owners bemoan the fact that they spend far more time on what they see as peripheral activities to the detriment of the time spent on the core activities of their business. All those things that many of them never anticipated when they set up their business doing something they are good at? There is a health warning- which is that burning the candle at both ends carries the risk of getting everything wrong including one’s personal relationships and leaving one unable to manage or work on the business rather than being submerged in day to day activities. While careful to make the point that this session was not about business planning, budgeting and looking at breakeven is necessary to ensure that your business is capable of supporting you and the expenses of doing business. So how can one cope? There are two related answers: 1. Work effectively yourself (and if you have employees make sure they do too) 2. Get someone else to do stuff that gets in the way of what you do best Well there is not space to roll out all the detail here but any member of Leatherhead Chamber or of the audience on the day who emails Jeremy can have a copy of his presentation. Please also see this month’s Special Offers which are available to everyone! So – bearing in mind the many factors that will adversely affect the business climate next year, the need to ensure we have planned the next stage in our business journey is even more vital than previously. In recognition of this SatNav4Business have some great free offers to make sure your business is firing on all cylinders for 2011. For the details please see below. From time to time Jeremy and Jerry contribute articles to various business magazines please click on the link below to see the latest "Borrowing from your Bank - not how to get blood out of a stone" in Raw Business magazine.
http://www.rawbusiness.com/onlinemagazine/raw_14/index.html#/78/
We are currently planning for 2011 ourselves so if you would like to see any particular topics featured- or contribute an article yourself please be in touch.
If you would like to chat through your thoughts, call us for a free meeting or call of up to one hour for Newsletter readers (usually up to half an hour) on 0845 468 1 468 or email us on:
jeremy.webb@SatNav4Business.com
or jerry.irving@Satnav4Business.com We hope to see or hear from you soon.
In the meantime we wish all our readers a Happy Christmas and a Successful Year in 2011
Kind regards
Jeremy and Jerry
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