Author archives: charlie

Recently, I decamped to Wales together with my wife and children for a family weekend… The highlight was doing the ziplines over Llechwedd slate quarry. Nowadays, it’s home to “Titan 2” – a kilometre-long zipline over the site, which allows 4 people to do the route in parallel. Here’s a picture of us in action: […]

Throughout my working life, I’ve had one mission. Help company owners get to grips with the financial side of their business… …So you can run your company more smoothly and profitably. That’s exactly what we do at Insight Associates with the clients we work with, 1-2-1. But 4 years ago, I decided that wasn’t enough. […]

Your bookshelf says a lot about you. And as a book lover, I enjoy scanning other people’s book collections to get a better sense of their interests. But whatever’s on your shelves, there might be one important book missing… Click here to find out what it is I’m (modestly!) talking about my own book, Business By […]

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been talking about how hard it’s becoming to attract and retain staff in certain industries. And now, like a bolt out of the blue, it’s all just become even harder. Earlier this month, the government announced a 1.25% increase in national insurance payments, to help fund the NHS and […]

In my last blog, I showed you that you have a strong financial incentive to get your hiring right – the first time. Recruiting new people is far more expensive than most company owners realise. And if you have to recruit twice for the same position because you’ve made a mistake, it can seriously dent […]

Everywhere I go at the moment I see signs proudly announcing, “We’re hiring.” My immediate thought? That’s great… but are you hiring the right people? You’ve heard the old adage about your staff making or breaking you… It’s absolutely true. Any company – or rather, any successful company – is only worth the sum of its parts. And those […]

In my last blog, I mentioned that one of the railway companies I’m involved in lost their chef… He was poached (no pun intended) by another company, which doubled his salary. It not an unusual story right now. The labour market is quite unstable and lots of companies are experiencing staff shortages at all levels, […]

I was speaking to the owner of a beauty salon, who was trying to hire an aesthetician. “Even if I set up interviews with them, they don’t turn up,” she told me miserably. “I can’t get staff for love nor money right now.” I’m hearing the same for many business owners across a range of […]

Over the past few weeks I’ve become a lot more active on LinkedIn. I’ve noticed an enormous improvement in the quality of the posts since I was last heavily involved on the platform, a few years ago. There’s still a bit of boring, salesy material. But there are also a lot of people sharing knowledge, […]

“Garry, the podcasts you recommended sound great… Are they just for inspiration or do you actually learn anything from them?” One of my subscribers, Lee, sent me that question last week after I shared a list of podcasts I really enjoy. (If you missed the email, you can see my list right here.)How to Fail […]