Moving to London is one of those activities that most young people consider at least once in their twenties and which many act upon. Some subsequently leave, others stay for decades. The ?brain drain? south is a cause of concern for northern counties like Yorkshire, as well as Scotland and Wales. People are lured by the promise of a massive capital city, with plenty of jobs and opportunities. The only problem is that because there are millions of people competition for jobs and customers is fierce, and let's not forget, the London lifestyle is not to everyone's taste.
Businesses can thrive in London if they prove popular ? there are certainly customers if you can attract them and there's plenty of contacts. However, with sky-high rents and the personal cost of living quite painful, London is not always the best option for starting out. Neither, for that matter, are other big cities like Birmingham and Bristol. It depends of course on your business and life-style expectations, but smaller cities like Inverness can be surprisingly business friendly.
Part of the reason for this is that enterprise committees and development agencies may be very keen on creating or maintaining jobs, therefore strongly encourage new business in their jurisdiction. In Inverness, Highlands and Islands Enterprise has invested heavily in the area in the last few years, drawing money from the EU and Scottish Executive.
The investment project into the University of the Highlands and Islands has also contributed to economic growth. However, Inverness is popular with professionals who simply want to escape from the rat race. With outstanding scenery close by, including the Great Glen and its most famous inhabitant, the Loch Ness Monster, businessmen and businesswomen simply choose to make the move and then look around to see where they can use their skills.
With the flexibility now offered by the Internet, an increasing number of small businesses can be run from rural premises. It is not always necessary to have an ?office front? in a reasonably well frequented location. Boreas Books, retailing fine or rare books and first editions, is located in the Orkney island archipelago and could not be further from a metropolis, but still prospers. Offering an exclusively online service it has no need of over-the-counter sales.
It is increasingly tempting to combine running a small business with enjoying a comfortable life-style. Of course, the glitter of big cities cannot to denied, but if you need something quieter, fresher and perhaps more child friendly, then setting up a in a less metropolitan area could beautifully let you combine business with pleasure.
To find out about the business potential of less urban places you have a number of options: contact Regional Development Agencies, Business Link or local entrepreneurial groups. Otherwise, for a fee, special marketing companies will send you over a deluge of statistics. If the figures look good and you need to escape from the city, consider whether your small business ? and your family ? would do just as well, if not better, in another location.
Disclaimer: This article has been written for information and interest purposes only. The information contained within this article is the opinion of the author only, and should not be construed as advice or used to make financial decisions. Expert financial advice should always be sought and any links contained within this article are included for information purposes only.
Those were the words from my small business client, Paul. He didn't mean that he was too short. He meant that in his mind, his $4 million business was too small to need a 'leader.'
After all, he wasn't running a computer software company or a car manufacturer, 'just a local services business.'
He brought me in to work with his management team on improving their overall performance. The company had been started by his father, a selling dynamo and charmer who had everyone who worked for him happy when he walked through the offices. "Dad" turned the business over to Paul when he decided to retire up the coast with Mom.
The company's facilities services business had a good reputation and customers who were generally satisfied with the services. But those same customers' internal business goals of cost containment meant they were always willing to entertain lower priced proposals from the competition.
Paul was suddenly wearing both the Sales Manager hat, and also the President hat. He'd been wearing that sales hat for 18 years, and he didn't know what a President's hat was supposed to look like.
Since Dad's retirement, the company had undergone steady erosion from competition and constant turnover of the junior staff. And Paul was tired of feeling like the company was stalled.
Paul asked me to work with him and his managers to get them refocused and into action growing their business. I found they were stuck with all the common challenges of small businesses:
* Key decision makers were feeling overwhelmed by the challenges of the business
* Work groups were silo'ed as each 'manager' tried to carve out their turf and have a sense of control
* Meetings were more about disagreements than using information to make decisions
* Sales plans had bigger goals without describing the targets for the sales team
* Staff felt like "It's just a job" and were on the look out for more pay
And so on.
Paul's initial reaction to the idea of Leadership was typical. Many small business owners, entrepreneurs, and even professionals view their sphere of influence with a 'small' lens. They believe their company or their department needs to hit some mythical size, often ten times it's current sales, before having a 'Leader' is important.
What they don't understand is that even a two-person partnership needs 'leadership time' to grow and thrive.
* Each business needs a Vision that inspires everyone who shows up to work to bring their best experience, intelligence and efforts with them each day.
* Each person in every company needs a sense of being acknowledged, assisted and appreciated or their attention drifts off to other areas than the purpose of their work.
* Each manager needs a model for how to build a business case for the items that needed decisions across functional areas.
And each business owner, key decision maker, manager needs to use the simple leadership techniques that hold the entire work effort together, and keep it focused forward.
Leadership is the series of activities that take place when the rat race of running a business is paused for a moment and one person communicates directly with the heart of the others in their business.
Paul's notion was that Leadership would divert his attention from managing the business's sales. He couldn't have been more wrong. It's as relevant for the owner of a small business as it is for the Leader of a mega corporation.
Whether I'm consulting to an individual company, or coaching MasterMind groups of professionals who want to grow their business, the key I'm teaching each person is that small efforts have enormous payoffs.
For Paul that meant we started him with three easy High Payoff Leadership steps:
* Inspiring his sales force with measurable sales targets: tripling the number of boutique hotels the company served in a 20-mile radius in the next 18 months.
* Empowering each of the functional areas of the company to design and deliver services packages for that target market that kept those customers delighted and staying with the company.
* Encouraging his staff by running meetings where he kept sharing how proud he was that the team was going after and winning the business that fit their targets.
In total, those activities required that Paul learn 5 new ways of talking about business, and took only 35 minutes per week of his time.
In one month his team's time spent in meetings shortened by 30%. In four months the company had no turnover. In six months they had doubled their business in their target market.
Isn't it time you put High Payoff Leadership on your calendar?
Both Andrew Regan & Linda Feinholz are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Andrew Regan has sinced written about articles on various topics from Travel and Leisure, Small Business and Modelling. Andrew Regan is an online, freelance author from Scotland. He is a keen rugby player and enjoys travelling.. Andrew Regan's top article generates over 20400000 views. to your Favourites.
Linda Feinholz has sinced written about articles on various topics from Education Toys, Small Business and Your Online Business. Management expert, consultant, and coach Linda Feinholz is "Your High payoff Catalyst." Linda publishes the free weekly newsletter to subscribers w. Linda Feinholz's top article generates over 14800 views. to your Favourites.