The title of this article “no nation was ever ruined by trade” is a quote from Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790) and it just about sums up what we all need to do in order to be more successful.

Right now (that’s December 2011) the European Union is mired in deep discussion about how to rectify the decline of the Euro, unstable economies in PIIGS countries (and beyond) and the prospect of an even deeper recession. The focus of the discussion, if we are to believe the media (and I do) …

Friday the 2nd of September 2011 saw me attending the dConstruct conference in Brighton as part of the month long Brighton Digital Festival. And it proved to be quite an eye opener both in terms of what I learnt from the speakers and from other members of the audience!
The first speaker in a long list was Don Norman, who at one time was one of the leading thinkers at Apple. He had a good deal to say, and he invoked an extraordinary eruption of tweeting from the floor of the …

Cash, then Systems and then People. That’s the way to grow a business!

More than 50% of small businesses fail to reach their 3rd anniversary, because by that time they have gone out of business.  And the biggest reason that businesses fail is a lack of cash. In order to give yourself a sporting chance, your new business has to focus on bringing in cash. If you can’t do that in the early days, then you really don’t have much of a business.
Once the theory starts working in practice, you then …

At the risk of depriving myself of the opportunity to sell you a 6 second coaching session for FIM10,000 I’m going to share a story with you which one of my Finnish friends recently shared with me. And, for those of you who don’t remember the Finnish Markka (in the days before the Euro) or who cannot recall the exchange rate, that price equates to roughly EUR1,666 or GBP1,250.
So the story goes, that in the days when businesses in Finland were growing at an exponential rate, some of the less …

For those of you who don’t already know, London’s Old Street roundabout has acquired the name “The Silcon Roundabout” on account of the increasing presence of hi-tech start ups in the area. It’s a cosmopolitan place helped by the fact that geographically it spans parts of Islington, The City and Hackney, and arguably takes in a corner of Tower Hamlets as well.
And it has given rise to a range of tech meet up groups from the Anglophone ApéroEntrepreneurs to a new group who style themselves “The Silcon Roundabout MeetUp Group“. …