Hot Business News Today

Books for summer reading take a focus on the future

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Originally written by Stephanie Spicer on Small Business
The Beginning of the End – a practical guide to retirement preparation for the small business owner, by Dr Terri Bourne

The title of this book may sound rather ominous but could equally be called the start of things to come. It is essentially about exiting your business – but as Bourne explains this could be a long time off. And it may be that you don’t sell your own business at all, you may retire without selling.
With the experience of having set up seven different business Bourne understands the hard work and investment that goes into running a business and making it successful. She also understands that many business owners focus on building and running their businesses and not looking at how they will ever exit them.
This is a very engaging and fluid read – and Bourne provides online, a free workbook to help business owners work through their own ideas and fashion a personal and private record of all the steps they can go through.
These steps take the business owner through assessing your options and reasons: why you need to sell or want to sell, what you want to do, how you

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7 investor personas: how start-ups can understand their motivations

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Originally written by Matthew Cushen on Small Business
No one should consider launching a product or service without getting into the heads of their consumer, digging into when, where and how often your offer might be purchased and what you are competing against for a share of their purse.
The same principle stands for understanding the motivations of a potential investor. After all you are selling something to them. Here are a few pen portraits of 7 investor personas that you might come across. Whilst you’re unlikely to meet exactly the investors below, you can expect to come across some combination of these characteristics.
1. Passionate Polly: she is intimately involved in your market, maybe professionally experienced or they have some empathy as a potential user of your product or service, for example a mother is more likely to understand baby products.
Tip: be careful in assuming that because someone knows your market that they will understand or appreciate your idea — they may be so entrenched in the standard thinking around the industry they find it hard to see a valuable innovation that could take a category in a different way.
2. Taxed Trevor: there are some highly attractive tax reliefs available for investors

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What winning The Start-Up Series meant for me – Daniel Verblis, The Moving Home Warehouse

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Originally written by Anna Jordan on Small Business
Like many entrepreneurs, Daniel Verblis began a career in finance and launched his own business later on.
High quality packaging is a must – and difficult to get hold of out of hours – as Daniel discovered when he became a partner in his friend’s removal company. Customers would be ringing up during the week and at the weekend to ask for more boxes, which in turn was costing them time and money in terms of delivery. They weren’t the only ones: Daniel found that other companies were experiencing the same thing, to the great frustration of firms and customers.
That fed him the inspiration for The Moving Home Warehouse. They partner with removal firms to sell essentials like boxes, bubble wrap and furniture covers from their website and through partner websites using an industry-first free Dropbox API.
The focus on sending these items direct to customers has lent itself well during COVID-19, as there’s no contact between movers and customers.   
Before coronavirus surged, Daniel entered The Start-up Series competition (and forgot about it!), going on to win with his innovative business. He tells us how winning the funding has benefited him and whether

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