Author archives: servicedemoevolvesites

A few miles down the road from you, there’s another company very similar to yours. They’re in the same industry, offering a similar product to a similar customer base. There’s just one substantial difference. While your IT is all cutting-edge and up-to-date, they’re still working with computers from 2008. Now, from their point-of-view these machines […]

In December 1944, Japanese soldier Hiroo Onoda retreated into a jungle on a small island in the Philippine archipelago, to hold off the American and Philippine troops. When the war ended, he noticed a lull in the fighting but didn’t realise the implications. And although he saw several American leaflets announcing the end of the […]

The start of 2023 is, fittingly, all about new beginnings for me. After 35 years in the same house, Thelma and I are moving to Gloucestershire. We’ve always fancied slightly more rural surroundings, which will be slower and calmer than our Essex life – although we will be returning to Essex frequently for the business […]

I know it’s traditional to look ahead around New Year’s… But over the last few hours, I’ve been looking backwards. To be precise, I’ve been looking over all my emails from the past year. We’ve covered so much – from building up your business’s financial resilience to the financial lessons of the late Queen’s jubilee. And along […]

I miss the days when my kids were young, and wrote a wish list for Santa. Their lists could include anything from Thomas the Tank Engine to weird items like a barometer (well, I guess my son did grow up to be a scientist), pets, dolls, “jewerly” (sic), hula hoops and one memorable year, a […]

Have you been following this huge financial scandal? A few months ago, 30-year-old Sam Bankman-Fried was on top of the world. He headed a huge crypto exchange called FTX, which allowed customers to trade regular money for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. He also owned Alameda Research, which traded cryptocurrencies. At his peak, FTX was valued at […]

A few weeks ago, I went to a conference by the Heritage Railway Association. The economy was naturally a big topic of conversation…. But possibly not in the way you might expect. Initially it was very much doom and gloom. But my position was that the British population can still, broadly, be put into two […]

One year, we had a new client who wanted us to work out in a lot more detail which parts of his business were profitable over the past 12 months, and which weren’t. It was a wonderful idea, because you need to understand where the profit lies in your business in order to grow faster. […]

In the early 1990s, an employee of Swan Vesta, the matches company, told his bosses that he could save the organisation millions each year. Initially, they laughed at him. But he persisted, and was eventually granted a few minutes with the Board. His proposal? Instead of using the sandpaper strike on both sides of the […]