The Business Bulletin
Paul Green
Working with ambitious business owners who want to grow their business through networking, business support & workshops.
Welcome to The Business Bulletin - a weekly collection of useful articles covering all pillars of business created by leading experts in their field. Plus a "spotlight on" interview - gaining insights from small business owners.
In this week's edition:
What’s your money mindset? - Vivienne Joy - Add NLP Coaching to Your Business
They say that money makes the world go round and we certainly all need it. Some are great at saving it, others spending it and in the current climate your relationship to money is something important to consider.
So let’s explore how you view money in your life.
How much money do you earn, save, spend and invest daily, weekly, monthly and annually, and how do you feel about it?
You may wonder if you need more than the advice of business coaches and experts in financial areas to be enough for you to change. However, it is your internal dialogue that matters in resetting your money mindset. Check-in with yourself. What is your resistance to change? Is it a physical impossibility or a fear-based response? Are you fearful of making it worse, not better? Are you scared to leave a comfortable job, uncertain about spending or investing money in case you need it in the future? As yourself, what is stopping you from making changes to your money behaviours.
Has this money mindset stayed the same or changed over the years, and what do you think has created your reality?
Do you blame specific people, times and circumstances in your life for where you are now and whom you have become financially? People can blame redundancy or a relationship break-up for their ‘financial demise’. However, is the situation with unexplored and unreleased emotions the real problem? Many wealthy and famous talk of their back story and their financial breakdown being their breakthrough. What is the difference between them and everyone considering these life changes and setbacks? Their beliefs are different! In the modern world, we call this mindset.?
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Do you hate sales? 8 top tips for loving sales and selling more - Dr Alison Edgar MBE
Love hate relationship
I recently watched an online video from a thought leader in his field talking about sales. As a self-made multi-millionaire, he shoots from the hip and is always forthcoming and to the point with his opinions. It was his comments on sales people which have led to me writing this article.
He feels that in order to sell, you have to love sales because it’s full of rejections and without the love, you will not be strong enough to survive. So that’s fair enough if you have chosen a career path in sales, you could find yourself having a high performance, and a highly rewarded position in a successful company like I did in my former life. But where does that leave you as a start-up or micro business when you have a limited budget to employ a sales person?
So with the words of the 1980’s Pretenders classic song in my ears, “There is a thin line between love and hate”, I’ve started exploring if you can change your mindset from hating to loving sales.
Hate is a strong word, but you have no idea how often I hear it used in relation to sales. It’s usually accompanied by another standard phrase, “because I’m really bad at it, I’m not a sales person”. The sad news is in business, everyone has to be a sales person.
So, is it possible to move from hating to loving? I’m not a scientist or psychologist, but in my opinion it is possible to change.
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How to use content marketing to attract your ideal clients - Jessica Shailes
As a business owner, you’re probably already producing content, whether that’s in the form of the monthly newsletter you send to clients or your social media posts. But when it comes to converting content into sales, you need a thoroughly researched and targeted approach. That’s where content marketing comes in.
What is content marketing?
The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as follows:
“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
The key word here is ‘strategic’. This is because although many business owners recognise the importance of having an online presence, the content they produce will not necessarily fulfil the ultimate aim of attracting and retaining clients. Without a strategy to achieve that aim and a thorough understanding of your audience, content is nothing more than white noise and consequently a waste of your valuable time.
Types of content marketing
The type of content marketing you do will depend on the nature of your business, the stage it’s at and the demographic of the customer you are trying to attract. However, the content marketing you engage in can include:
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Is GDPR going away? - Gayle Parker CIPP/E
The simple answer is no. With data now being worth more than oil and gold and cyber criminals seeing data theft as an easy way to make money, we will continue to need some sort of regulation governing its use.
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GDPR and other data protection regulations affect every type of organisation from small charities to big corporates and it can be difficult wading your way through what is required. Particularly as things seem to keep changing and it has been an interesting time for Data Protection legislation over the last couple of years. With the introduction into UK law of EU GDPR in 2018 and the reconfirming of it at the beginning of last year when it became UK GDPR. Then at the end of last year, Boris’s Government announced it was going to change things again and put together the new Data Reform Bill. This got to the second reading stage in parliament when we got a new Prime Minister and was promptly thrown out…it seems that the uncertainty will continue for a while yet.
On Monday 5th October 2022, the Culture Secretary announced at the Conservative Party Conference that they were “replacing GDPR”. The previous Conservative Government had already proposed the Data Protection Bill which detailed a number of changes to the GDPR which had been through the consultation period and was awaiting its second reading in parliament.
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Managing uncertainty - Kathy Bassett
We are currently living in uncertain times. News reports continue to talk about the cost of living crisis, uncertainty over energy prices, strike action by unions, rising cost of raw materials and the continuing war in Ukraine. All of this is impacting business no matter what the size of your organisation. It is important to remember that there are several consequences of all this change.
Here are just a few:
Successfully promoting the acceptance/embracing of change to your employees in this climate of uncertainty is one of your primary tasks.
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Leading through uncertainty - Mark Billage
Let me start by asking you: How are you feeling about the next few months? What words would you use to describe your expectations?
Coming out of the last couple of years with the pandemic, a war in Ukraine, inflation and the volatility of energy markets you could be forgiven for hoping for some reprieve from challenging market conditions. An emerging theme for all businesses is uncertainty. How do you lead and thrive in such circumstances?
In Afghanistan in the early 90’s the US Army came up with the VUCA acronym to describe the environment they were operating in:
VUCA stands for:
o???Volatile?– The reality is we live in a turbulent world where situations are liable to change rapidly and unpredictably.
o???Uncertain?– The feeling of uncertainty is more pronounced than ever before, where it is less likely that future events can be predicted.
o???Complex?– Our world has become ever more multifaceted which has led to increased difficulty in understanding.
o???Ambiguous?– Many of the issues we confront are capable of being understood in more than one way, and thus consensus is difficult to achieve and misunderstanding or conflict becomes more likely.
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How to manage stress - Duncan Price
If we think differently about stress we can?completely remove the need for managing it?at all and no longer rely on tools and techniques in the long term.
What is stress
Stress is a completely normal, healthy physiological reaction to a (real or perceived) threat. Sometimes we react beyond what would be considered appropriate to the situation and this is where it can become a problem.
Acute stress?is the term for a short-term experience of high stress levels. This could be the result of a dramatic life situation such as a bereavement, a burglary or moving house.
It lasts for a relatively short time and can be rather intense.
Chronic stress?is stress that lasts for a long period of time, is constant or keeps recurring. This could be from a high-stress job, being a carer for someone with ongoing needs, or from unmanaged trauma among other things.
Anything that causes us to feel stressed is known as a stressor. Stressors can be anything that lead us to feel a sense of pressure. Deadlines, physical threats, worrying about the future, financial pressures, all manner of things can lead to a stress response.
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Spotlight On interview:? ?? Paul Simpson ??
Paul runs a number of TaxAssist Accountancy practices providing tax and bookkeeping services for small business owners helping them to thrive and grow with minimal or no additional cash investment and supporting them to refocus their time and resources into a winning strategy. Watch what he has to say about his business journey.
Business Growth Specialist. What do you wish you knew?
1 年Good collection of articles, useful for everyone to read, even if you find just one tip to move your business forward reading them will have been worth your time.