Market

As Companies House data shows a rise in start-ups born during the pandemic, new data has revealed that savvy entrepreneurs in the UK collectively secured £25m of funding for a new venture in the past three years through personal guarantee backed loans that were protected by Personal Guarantee insurance.

That means if the business does fail, 80% of the loan will be settled by the insurance rather than the business owner’s home, savings and other personal assets being called on to settle the debt.

As access to small business funding is increasingly expected to depend on signing a Personal Guarantee, Purbeck is urging start-ups to factor Personal Guarantee Insurance into their thinking when shopping for finance.

Todd Davison, MD of Purbeck Insurance Services said: “For many, borrowing money is their only way of starting and growing a business.  Creating a business is risky enough without taking on a personal guarantee

It’s an age-old adage that the customer is always right. Everyone has heard someone in management say this at one point in our lives.

It’s a tenet that many businesses follow dogmatically. But why then, do they never extend the same faith to their employees?

Treating your employees like your most loyal customers could prove to be the best thing you ever do. This simple shift in outlook could see productivity, employee retention and general staff wellbeing skyrocket. It could also see your company receive the additional bonus of a better reputation.

Reputation

Every businessowner wants to be known as someone that treats their employees well. It provides numerous benefits that will enhance the other factors mentioned in this article. Word of mouth spreads quickly. You wouldn’t treat a customer in a way that might cause stress or make them feel undervalued, which is why you absolutely cannot do the

With staggering sales, one marketplace that has literally boomed during covid is the ‘bed-in-a-box’ mattress concept. As business owners it’s important to understand the strategies they’ve employed to begin, capitalise and maintain epic rates of growth. 

I’ve spoken to some of the top providers in the marketplace to understand how they’ve managed to adapt and conquer despite rigorous changes to their systems to ensure their business model could survive the sheer rise in mattress demand spurred on by the virus. Ready to take notes?

So how did lockdown effect the data and trends of buying mattresses?

Simba Sleep found that data from their consumer sleep app, used nightly by 50,000 people in the UK alone revealed that people were wrestling with their sleep in lockdown. This level of stress could be one of the reasons for the upturn in sales. People have been searching for self-care solutions at a time

If you want to evaluate whether or not your business’s organisational design is as effective and efficient as it could be, there are 3 simple questions you should ask yourself.

The answers to these questions will inform you, if your organisational design is what it should be, if it would benefit from adjustment or if you need to pull it apart and start again. The questions are,

Question 1: To what extent is your organisational design driven by legacy culture and practices?

This question is designed to challenge the status quo thinking about your organisational design.

Are your people organised in a particular way because they’ve always been organised in that manner, regardless of changes to your processes, the market you operate in and/or competitive forces? Moreover, was it historically designed to accommodate (now redundant) processes, but hasn’t been updated due to a resistance to change from the people within

Having worked in the SME space for the past couple of decades, I have noticed a certain pattern that is not all that surprising. The more experience a person has in business, the better business loan they are likely to get.

In general, this is not because banks or lenders are more confident in their ability to succeed, but because experienced business owners know what to look for.

The simple reality is that, until you have run a business, you don’t really know what running a business takes. You underestimate expenses, overestimate profits, and rely on the wrong people to give you accurate information.

Many SMEs run by first-time business owners end up with expensive loans that don’t even cover everything they need. Often, they have listened to their banker without negotiating or even knowing the right questions to ask. I’ve been there before, and it is nothing to be