After my father died I found among his papers a booklet detailing the history of his mother’s family, the Goodliffes, over several generations during the 19th century, during which they built a thriving wholesale grocery business in the Midlands. In one passage it describes how Thomas Goodliffe, my great-grandfather, went on the first escorted tour…
Category: Sunday supplement
He didn’t know it was impossible
Did you see Messi’s goal? No, stay with me! This football related analogy has an important message for your business. I’ve been a Liverpool FC fan for more years than I can remember. Last week they played Barcelona FC in the semi-final of the Champions League. They are demonstrably two of the best teams in…
How Universal Credit is destroying a once great nation
Regular readers of my blog will know that on occasion I hand over the pen, metaphorically speaking, to highlight some injustice that should concern us all. Last week the Trussell Trust reported that it handed out over 1.6m food parcels last year, over 500,000 of them to children, as benefit cuts, Universal Credit delays, and rising poverty fuelled…
You just can’t get good staff any more.
‘Really?’ I said. ‘It can’t be that hard’. ‘It’s almost impossible’ he replied. ‘There are so few people on the market and none of them are any good’. It wasn’t a conversation I wanted to continue with. After a couple more questions I said: ‘Thank-you for your time, but on balance I don’t think we…
I don’t think I’m cut out to be rich
This week I attended a Masterclass. Amongst the discussion was an exploration of how rich people think. Of course they aren’t called rich people – that would be crass. They are called affluent, high net worth or high value, but whatever they are called they have one thing in common – a lot of money.…
The time I lost control
I recently had a week’s leave…..and ended up working every day! I don’t say this to brag. In fact the opposite because I want you to chastise me for being so stupid. I know the value and importance of recovery time after exercise (and I give my brain a lot of exercise) and yet I…
There is a Third Path
It hadn’t been a good year. Two of my consultancy clients had been forced to cancel their contracts and a third had had their loan called in by the bank who had appointed a Receiver. Back then I mainly carried out consultancy work for growing businesses most of whom had built up debt. Most of…
The results so far
In a recent blog I explained why your website is your most important marketing asset. At the time my site ranked very badly in Google for the keywords someone would use to search for an accountant in Chester. So with the help of Will Robinson (who gave my website a thorough MOT) I started a exercise to improve my…
Is your password on the dark web?
No of course not. How could it be? Well if you use the same password repeatedly with your email address it is quite likely that it is out there and you don’t know it. Mine was. 551,509,767 real world passwords have been exposed in data breaches. This exposure makes them unsuitable for ongoing use as they’re…
You may have to start digging deeper
Last week I spent two days, with different clients, analysing and reviewing their management information. In the first case we’d be warned by their monthly management accounts that profitability had slipped in December. As is often the case the reason wasn’t clear from the P/L alone (which is often the case) and we needed to…
