We had a great day at The Business Growth show in London, where we attended an interview with Lord Sugar, who spoke about how he grew his businesses, top tips on what to do and what not to do, and then answered questions from the audience.

So to share some top business tips I picked up from the interview:

1. Don’t borrow money – start small with what you can afford.
2. Focus on daily business reviews, then weekly, moving out to monthly as you grow, never lose sight of what you want to achieve.
3. Use basic business principles, keep to simple techniques – they work !
4. Take responsibility for your business, your activities, your decisions – don’t blame the Economy, the Government, the Banks, anyone …
5. Find your motivation factor – is it your Family ? the Deal ? Lifestyle ? Money ? – whatever it is keep your focus on it, it will help you reach your goals.
6. Enjoy what you do, be passionate about your product, your passion will show to everyone you speak to.
7. Review your business/products/services regularly, if something is not working then ‘cut and run’ – don’t spend time on activities that don’t work, accept it, move on.
8. Control Direct Costs and Overheads, then focus on your goal, ‘I want to make £Xxx amount of profit this week’ keep focussed and achieve.
9. Customer perception of your business is most important – it’s not all about £price – can you deliver what you’re offering ? on time ? at the quality your customer expect ? for the price you quoted ?
10. Lastly and most importantly, business is about people – be honest, straight forward, don’t beat around the bush, tell people how it is, not always what they want to hear, but that will gain you respect in the long run, have self-discipline and integrity, clear morals personally and in a business context, then be happy with your self and sleep well at night !

A very inspirational interview, lots of common sense business talk, and I guess we all do aspects of each of the above tasks, but do we do them all ? and do we review our progress in business often ? analyse what works and what don’t ? are we brave enough to cut and run at the right time ? so is the success factor the combination of all of the above ? think it may be worth while giving it a try … Lord Sugar tried it …

The Feel Good Factor needs to be bought back into UK Businesses, I’m definitely going to give it a try !

If you require any help or advice on any of the points above, or anything specific to your business, then please call JD Figures on 01922 214033 / 07885 268600 or email at jane.dean@jdfigures.co.uk where we’d be only too pleased to work with you to develop your business opportunities.

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