Bite Sized Business Tips

2 minute reads for the values-led business leader

Snippets for purpose and values-led business leaders about meeting our responsibilities to our team, customers, owners, communities and suppliers. Context is everything, so these aren't dogma - rather a stimulus for thought. Subscribe below.

“Employees First” isn’t the path to a successful business

Business Half-Truth #2: Look after your employees first. I've seen too many turn this into making customers a distant second (or third). Yes, team is important. And if you treat your team as an investment, rather than a cost, then your business should reap rewards. But “employees first" works well ...
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Succeeding at school may be harming your entrepreneurial career

There's a reason that many successful business starters didn't have sparkling academic careers, and why a lot of people who shone at school failed at startups. If you're an academic success at school, you become conditioned to prize being right and fear being wrong. And being right is definitely a ...
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Your business can’t be about you

Entrepreneurship and business become noble when you're doing it to improve the lot of those around you, not just yourself. I love this from Nassim Taleb. "Some people take risks and some people labor in the fields. You have the option of doing either one or the other. But my ...
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Authenticity can hurt your business

Authenticity is today's buzzword. And like most buzzwords, although it can make sense in many contexts, it is now overused, inappropriately applied, and often plain wrong. Everyone tells leaders to "be authentic". But what if you're a prize arsehole? A sociopath? A bigot? A despot? Will you still take the ...
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Purpose AND Profit

There is still a face-off between Purpose and Profit in much of the business press these days. This is counterproductive. If we're looking at businesses (not charities), then they need profit to achieve their purpose. Having a more than bucketload of purpose and less than a thimbleful of profit is ...
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Focus on culture when your cash flow sucks is like focusing on dancing when you can’t breath

I'm all about the team and the culture. That, to me, is what differentiates businesses, what makes some great, others mediocre, and yet others appalling. But that greatness doesn’t happen without sales, without revenue, without cash and without profit. Sales, profit, revenue and cash are like oxygen. Oxygen doesn’t make ...
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Knowledge can destroy your business

Knowledge is power. I still hear this all the time. Sure there's truth in it, but it's also simplistic and dangerous. Knowledge hoarders are often bottlenecks. Sometimes intentionally so, knowing that being the only people who can do certain things can make them indispensable. For a while at least. Those ...
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Don’t park your humour outside the office

I'm always astonished by how many people decide to park their sense of humour outside the office. Work is a serious business. Or rather, work delivers serious results. But we don't have to be over-serious in the process of getting there. I can count on the fingers of one hand ...
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You can’t scale your business on a 4 hour week

I read Tim Ferriss's 4 hour work week probably a decade ago, and met him when he came to do a reading in London not long after. It was a great book, which had a real impact on my life, including my wife and I taking our 4 kids out ...
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Your numbers need to add up, but only by putting people first

I’ve worked in places where making the numbers right on a spreadsheet meant playing with people’s lives. I’ve also worked in places where supporting people’s lives made the numbers right on the spreadsheet. If you run a business, it’s your choice which way you want to go. It’s your choice ...
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