Business Questions

Have you every hired a professional agency design to develop your branding? It is not just your logo but everything about your business, from colour palates to uniforms and highly important. In this interview I chat with Gavin Knox-Grant, from Cape Town in South Africa on it's importance and why a logo design can cost $1m.

Would you like to get more leads for your business? Are you fed up with reaching out to prospective clients and not receiving a reply? Then Dave Holloways Wonder Leads may just be the answer for you.   I recently received his book Wonder Leads (order from Amazon - https://amzn.to/3cIIDiy and loved the concept behind it. Essentially when contacting potential clients you create a very short film to make a personal greeting. There is no selling at this stage  - just creating a film to get a higher response rate. The book details how to do this from the equipment needed to filming  and presentation tips in a step by step guide. There is a simple process to follow to achieve the best results which is really easy to do.

In this interview I chat with Alina Bassi, the founder of Kleiderly, who is based in Berlin. Having completed a chemical engineering degree Alina worked for multi-nationals before developing a Patent Pending process to repurpose clothing items to give them a new life as a totally different product. This might be as a security tag or clothes hanger, but the possibilities are seemingly endless.   One fact on www.kleiderly.com states that 87% of all clothing waste ends up in landfill or is burned in incinerators which produces the same amount of carbon dioxide as one individual taking 6 billion return flights from Berlin to Australia, per year!   That is quite alarming and goes to prove that not only is Alina's idea much needed but also essential to help combat waste.

In this interview I chat with entrepreneur Emma Robinson, a partner in Red Diamond about beating a pay gap and employee well being.

Stefanie Hopkins is the founder and managing director of Faith Public Relations with over 15 years of PR and marketing experience. Her career has included working on behalf of clients such as Bentley when she was at  McCann Erikson and the recipient of various awards including Forward Ladies SME Emerging, Yorkshire Women of Achievement and 42 under 42.   PR is part of your social media marketing and influencer marketing strategy so important to understand so know how to get free publicity.

In this interview I chat with Sarah Valentine-Bull about business efficiency and increasing productivity. Sarah is the founder of Propolis Process Solutions having formerly had a hugely impressive corporate career in the NHS and Banking sectors.

In this interview Leor Franks discusses how his marketing process, the Favourability Journey works. Leor has worked in professional services all his working life, heading up marketing and business development teams at major firms. Through this time he has formulated a marketing blueprint that forms the basis of his marketing which he has called The Favourability Journey. It is a fascinating interview that I am sure will prove beneficial to smaller business owners looking to develop their marketing strategy and create a business winning campaign.

Hiring your first members of staff can be a daunting prospect, but then looking after them and complying with the law even harder. In this interview I chat with Nicky Jolley from www.hr2day.co.uk about HR and outsourcing to a company like hers can prove to be very beneficial.  If you would like to know what is HR and the what is the roles of human resources then this interview will help you grow your business.

As your business grows you may consider the immensely popular practice of business process outsourcing. Martin Andersons company, Lemon Business Solutions, handles over 2m calls a year plus emails and chatbots. They integrate with your own software or with CRMs and other systems such as Genesys, Cloudfm, Concerto, Sage, Salesforce and Verisae. In their own words they help you to streamline processes, save time, reduce costs, remove tedious operations and improve productivity. The company is UKAS certified for ISO9001 and ISO27001 and also work to ISO22301 standards for business continuity, It is not just a reception service though - they really get to know your company through a dedicated account manager and offer a wide range of services from handling inbound sales calls, building your CRM to providing technical support on your products. It also means if working from home with a family you always present how professional you are with no kids or dogs barking in the background. Something I would have benefitted from in this film.

Running a successful business is as much of a thought process as it is the actual work. I chat with Glenn O'Grady, the Co-Chairman of Guidesmiths.com about growing to become a multi-million pound business understanding how successful business people think.   Glenn and his business partner Felipe have built up www.guidesmiths.com to be a software development company that counts household names amongst it's clients. Having started the business in 2014 and seen rapid growth Glenn is in an ideal position to offer advice to you on how to run your business.