Artificial intelligence and cognitive computing is the latest in a series of technological developments that have affected the value of human ability. Graeme Codrington discusses the development in this video.

Computers have the advantage

About 100 years ago if you wanted to be quite successful in the world it would have been very clever for you to be quite physically fit. Because in the industrial age, as before that in the agrarian age, in the age of farming the people who either owned the land or owned the factories or worked on the land or worked in the factories, they were the people who were in charge. Those were your assets, physical ability. What we’ve done over the last 100 years is replaced peoples’ physical, the physical needs in terms of what we need from them physically with machines, you know, the combined harvester and the container and the robots in factories. And then for the last 50 years we have ploughed our resources, as human beings we’ve become clever by being clever. We have moved into the information age where your mental ability is what sets you apart from other people. Now, somebody who was gifted at birth, not by my choice, but was gifted with a reasonable intelligence and a nice IQ and a middle class family that could get me through university, that’s been brilliant. Because I’ve been able to use my brain to make money, but unfortunately right now computers are about to do to me what robots and machines did to my farm working, factory working uncles and grandparents. They’re about to make me redundant because they can think faster than I can. They can think more than I can. They don’t need to take a break to eat or sleep or all the other things I like to do. Inside Finance TV has more fantastic video by Graeme Codrington and other experts on the future of business.

Business strategy models have to adaptable to future disruptions and developments. In this TV show Keith Coats of TomorrowToday discusses strategic thinking for leaders.

Business strategy models in an unpredictable world

Leaders have to be future-focused. Levi right now have a great slogan, which says ‘the future has left, so go forth’. Jim Data is a retired futurist and he articulated that past thinking amongst futurists was something like this … I might have some of the percentages slightly wrong but the rough ratios is 80% of our tomorrows would be built on what futurists call continuations, so if you want to understand tomorrow, look at the DNA of today, 80%. 15% would be cycles – economic, political social cycles – and 5% would be novelties. Now, in the futurist language a novelty is the curve ball, the unexpected, the 9/11, the thing that very few people could foresee. I’ll preface that with past thinking. Current thinking amongst futurists has inverted that table, turned it on its head. They are telling us that up to 80% of our tomorrow is what they call novelty, we simply do not know. Now, even if they’re half correct I wouldn’t go to war over those percentages, it’s the trend here we’re looking at, that the bulk of our tomorrows is going to be a surprise, going to be the unexpected, the unpredictable. The question then becomes how do you build continuity in that? What does the organisation that learns how to build planes in the air, as it were, look like in that context? For one thing it renders redundant strategic planning, you cannot plan your way into that kind of uncertainty. We need companies today who understand the emphasis needs to be on strategic thinking and at all levels of the organisation, this is a leadership agenda.

Inside Finance is very interested in business strategy models and the future business world. Browse our video player for related content.

In this business growth show Alistair Brew discusses the financial industry supporting entrepreneurial businesses.

Business growth show - Finance support for entrepreneurs

There’s absolutely no shortage of entrepreneurial talent in the UK, lots of fantastic ideas, I think it’s been about those, those ideas, those businesses now being picked up by the financial community and supported on the journey through its the different levels of expansion.  It’s taking, I think it’s getting better and people are more joined-up and hopefully we can support some businesses from the very early stage right through to the giants.  The Americans have traditionally done this very well, we want to be able to do that in the UK as well now.

If you found this business growth show interesting , why not follow Inside Finance on Twitter @InsideFinanceTV and let us know what you think.

 

Dynamic boards are now using expertise form generation y to inform their business development. In this TV show Peter Klauber discusses this change.

Modern thinking in dynamic boards

I think Y generation has a lot to answer for. I think it is fantastic. Ideas come from everywhere in an organisation not just the board. I think most switched on companies will enable everyone to add some opinion to the process of business development. We now have very dynamic boards with all ages, looking for expertise to help and there's no fear in using it.

If you want to hear more about dynamic boards, the role of directors and generation Y, keep browsing Inside Finance TV.

Business risk can come from many unknown variables. When working with an investment manager people should be clear about how much risk they are prepared to take, as Michael Pagliari explains in this TV show.

Investment & business risk

I think that you know individuals sometimes tend to give misleading answers when asked about the amount of risk that they want to take. So for example a typical response that you get from an entrepreneur is ‘oh, I don’t really want too much risk but you know I’d like to make 10% returns’. Now in the current sort of environment that we exist, where interest rates are at zero, 10% is a very ambitious rate of return, so the statement is actually pretty incoherent. So at that point I think you need to dig deeper and find out exactly what the client needs as a minimum requirement and make sure that it is coherent with his underlying thought process. They understand risk very well in their own business, in the context of managing financial assets my experience has been that that knowledge is of the same type of thought process does not necessarily transfer itself well to their financial assets. And that can mean, that can mean that either they take on too much risk in their financial assets or they take on too little. Ideally, I actually think that it takes about a couple of years until you really understand a client’s risk profile and as you get to know him you make some adjustments. So my personal suggestion or my personal methodology is to start with a relatively conservative risk profile until I feel that I really understand and know the client better. Investment does involve risk. The value of investments can go down as well as up. This video contains information believed to be reliable but no guarantee is given. See Video for full disclaimer.

Interested in informed financial planning? Why not explore more TV shows on Inside Finance?

   

Financial objectives need to be met for success as an entrepreneur. Those with a good idea will still need to prove it works in order to secure further funding, as David Spencer-Percival explains in this video.

Financial Objectives: Funding

You need to have a track record of what you have been doing, I think to get investment. I think it is awfully hard to get investment for something that is a completely new idea. The thing about investment is getting the money is only half the trick. The other bit is actually using that money to create value. So I think you can go and get investment for something, but you have to deliver on it. It's two halves to one piece, so there's no magic trick, but if you are good at something I am sure you can convince somebody to give you money to do it again. It's just what you do with that money.

Continue browsing Inside Finance to find out more about how businesses are achieving their financial objectives.

Having the right business assets can make you a lot of money if an interested acquirer gets in touch. In this TV show BeatThatQuote.com’s John Paleomylites discusses selling to Google.

The right business assets

There wasn't anything specifically that we did with a view to selling it to Google. Google approached us. I the year to Jan '11 revenues of the company were around 14m, with a reasonable profit. Subsequently as the company would have grown probably in the subsequent year probably around 20m. So there was still a fair amount of growth in the business. I think there was probably a few reasons why it was BeatThatQuote.com. In e of them would be down to the technology choices that we made, I think it would be accurate to say that BeatThatQoute of all of the UK comparison sites was the only one that used open source technologies to deliver it's service. I think one of the other reasons is that BeatThatQoute never really developed a brand. Our route to market was through direct marketing and through white label, which is essentially putting our content into other people's brands. Whereas pretty much all of the other aggregators were branded, and given that Google really has the best brand in the industry there was no need for them to pay over the odds to acquire a branded comparison site. the most important lesson I think that any entrepreneur really needs to learn and to understand is to negotiate the best deal that they can possibly get. Keep exploring Inside Finance for more TV shows about business assets and similar subjects.

Pimlico Plumbers has grown dramatically since 1979. In this business growth show Charlie Mullins discusses his business's growth.

Entrepreneurial business growth show

We're London's largest independent plumbing company, we employ 200 people, have 150 vehicles on the road and we 24/7 deal with 80,000 jobs per year. I started business in 1979, I was an apprentice plumber then became self employed. then started Pimlico Plumbers. we grew gradually for about 10 years and in the last 20 years things have expanded even more and even more so in the last five years, we have really sort of come to the front of the industry.

If you enjoyed this business growth show then keep browsing Inside Finance for more business success stories.

Attitude to risk may depend on the age of the client or the business. Younger people lean more towards risk, as Michael Pagliari explains in this TV show.

The young person's attitude to risk

I think that goes back to sort of life cycle questions.  As clients are younger and are looking to build assets they may well have a higher disposition towards risk and that might lead them towards more growth-type portfolios.  As clients advance through that life cycle and perhaps sell a business or begin to retire then it’s really a question about draw-downs and inheritance tax planning and so on, and portfolios tend to de-risk to some extent.  So as you grow through that life cycle portfolios do tend to sort of de-risk over time.

Inside Finance will continue to follow discussion on attitudes to risk and we have plenty more videos featuring experts from our channel partner Smith & Williamson.

MarketInvoice's business model innovation means that new business can get funding without going through a bank. In this TV show Anil Stocker explains how the company use a digital platform to connect people to funds.

Business model innovation from MarketInvoice

We’re not a bank, we don’t have a large pot of money which we’re lending out through MarketInvoice’s platform to businesses, what we have is we have, you know, over 150 registered funders, and these are high net worths, sophisticated investors, investment professionals, hedge funds, family offices, people who are sitting on a lot of cash but have never had a way of channelling this money to SMEs directly. And our technology on the investors’ side allows them to put money onto the platform and set what their return and risk profiles they want and our system pulls that money straight in to fund the companies’ invoices. And what’s interesting is that we’ve done no marketing to funders and yet we have a huge backlog, wait list of people who want to put money into the platform. At any given point in time there’s a backlog of £20m, and that shows that, you know, these people are really gagging to put money to work and they don’t have to go through the banking infrastructure to do it.

Inside Finance will continue to bring you fantastic examples of business model innovation in the digital world.

Business innovation skills need to be harnessed in the right environment. In this TV show Simon La Fosse discusses government helping entrepreneurs grow.

Entrepreneurial business innovation skills are valuable

The heat you see on the west coast of America that is leading to massive salary inflation and people moving all too frequently to try to be able to build these businesses, mean that you’re seeing west coast US businesses saying “We should be setting up in, not setting up a peripheral business in London but maybe we should be setting up in London”.  The same with some of the Nordic countries, so there’s some really exciting stuff happening, that I think has proper momentum and, you know, I’m not a great fan of government intervention, I don’t know whether you call it government intervention or just enabling things to happen, but I think they should be credited with creating an environment that is much more conducive to the growth of entrepreneurialism in a time in our lives which is so exciting, this is, you know, akin to the industrial revolution, it’s just the digital revolution, and I feel lucky to be a part of it and I’m hanging on, I’m trying to keep up with what’s going on.

Inside Finance will continue to produce great TV shows about entrepreneurial business and business innovation skills.

 

There are many business benefits of the UK environment as Stephen Drew of Smith & Williamson discusses in this TV show.

UK's business benefits

I think there are a variety of reasons as to why people would choose the UK as a good place to invest. Certainly we have some interesting sectors that appeal to a large number of investors from outside of the UK, and in particular we’re seeing a lot of activity in life sciences, the creative industries around professional practices and professional services and in the technology space. So they’re sectors that are seen as high growth and there are foreign investors that want a piece of that action and therefore they have a certain amount of appeal to see how they can get involved with those sectors. When combined with a business environment that’s reasonably friendly and it’s quite easy to get involved with those businesses, to make the investment programmes, and to start fresh businesses and that makes it an easier investment decision compared to other territories. The UK government has been very helpful in trying to make the taxation environment business-friendly and therefore there are attractions again for encouraging foreign investors to actually put cash into the UK economy, which will help the general improvement in what we’re looking for within the UK as well.

If you are interested in discussion around UK business benefits and investment in different environment, please browse more TV shows on Inside Finance.

Business assets valuations are needed for commercial and tax purposes. It is a complex process. In this TV show John Rugman explains the art & science of valuations.

Business assets valuations are an art

Valuations need to be done well because the value of any business or asset is really dependent on the future performance of that business. So it’s less about the past and more about the future and that’s quite judgemental, it’s not a matter of fact, it’s a matter of opinion and analysis. So valuations are as much an art as they are a science and it’s important to get that judgement right. To do a proper valuation we really need to understand about the prospects for a business, so we really need to understand what the prognosis is, what the future performance of that business might be and the sorts of risks that might affect that performance. All valuations are very different, doing a valuation for tax purposes is a very different exercise to doing a valuation for commercial purposes. We use a variety of different approaches and techniques to make sure that any conclusion we reach is one which we’re comfortable with. Keep browsing videos on Inside Finance TV for more expert insight into business assets valuations, risks to the assets, and legislations that must be followed.

Strategy development is necessary when starting a business in a new environment. In this TV show Stephen Drew discusses typical issues for entrepreneurs who move into the UK.

International strategy development

I think what’s quite interesting is we see a lot of business coming in from a variety of different countries arriving in the UK and often the mind set is understanding their own markets and how things operate, and there can be a bit of an adjustment to understand what they need to do in a new country like the UK. For somebody that’s used to operating and running a business in the UK they often don’t think about some of the smaller detail, because it’s quite easy to deal with and they know where the answers are, but for an inbound business that can actually be quite daunting and quite difficult to deal with. So an example would be you’re bringing in some workers from your host country to get the business up and running and established and you need to put them on the payroll, but how do you get somebody a National Insurance number so they can be properly registered to go through the UK payroll system? Now, again, when you know the answer that’s relatively easy to deal with, when you don’t know the answer you need to know where to go to to be able to make that happen, so that you don’t fall into compliance holes, you don’t create difficulties with the authorities, and actually you can just deal with that level of detail efficiently and actually focus on the prime reason for being there and for growing the business.

If you found this TV show interesting and want to hear more about strategy development and similar subjects then browse our videos and follow @InsideFinanceTV on Twitter.

Informed financial planning with trustworthy advice means that entrepreneurs can make appropriate, realistic, investments. Michael Pagliari explains in this TV show.

Informed financial planning and bottom lines

Lots of entrepreneurs sort of start with double digit return expectations and in an era of financial repression with interest rates at zero that is ambitious and I think it’s very important that you don’t play along with the client and say ‘okay, fine, let’s do that’, I mean you have to actually explain to him that to get to 10% there’s going to be some significant risks in the portfolio. Personally what I’ve found is that most clients actually have a fairly modest sort of bottom line expected return and it’s really in case they’re in the concept of protecting against inflation and perhaps adding something at the margin. So whilst tens might be ambitious, in this kind of environment five might be a more realistic sort of bottom line target for many of the portfolios that I manage. Investment does involve risk. The value of investments can go down as well as up. This video contains information believed to be reliable but no guarantee is given. See Video for full disclaimer.

If you enjoyed this video about informed financial planning, then why not watch more TV shows on Inside Finance?

The UK marketplace cannot be looked at as a whole as there is a difference between growth in London and in other regions, as Sir David Michels points out in this TV show.

UK marketplace variables

Certainly there is two markets in the UK, as with almost every industry. There is London, perhaps greater London, and everywhere else. London certainly seems to be booming in every sector. There are forecasts in 2013 that it might stay level with 2012, and 2012 was a good year. Outside of London, generally, but not totally, things are more difficult.

If you found this video about the UK Marketplace interesting, please browse ore videos on Inside Finance TV.

Business risk should be assessed before making investments or giving investment advice. In this TV show Michael Pagliari discusses building portfolios according to risk tolerance.

No assumptions on business risk

It’s very important because if I make some assumptions about your risk appetite I may go off on a tangent, I may suggest investments that are inappropriate, that are too risky or are not risky enough, so it’s very, very important for me to understand your risk tolerance.  And by risk tolerance I mean what sort of draw-downs you could sustain without it causing you any problems.  So there are technical terms like ‘sharp ratio’ which measure the amount of volatility that you will accept in your underlying portfolio, but as I say I don’t think it’s not just a process about numbers, it’s actually a process about understanding the levels of those draw-downs. One further point I’d make is that a lot of clients have a sort of wealthy clients have an asymmetric risk profile, so in other words they have a greater sensitivity to making losses than to making gains and I think it’s careful that you, it’s very important that you try to build a portfolio that has some asymmetric qualities to it.  In other words when it goes down, you don’t suffer massive draw-downs, even at the expense of missing out on some of the upsides when markets rally. Investment does involve risk. The value of investments can go down as well as up. This video contains information believed to be reliable but no guarantee is given. See Video for full disclaimer. If you are interested in discussions around business risk, please explore more great free content on Inside Finance TV.

The hospitality industry would benefit from investment in technology and infrastructure. In this TV show Sir David Michels explains that government successfully invests in failed industries.

Technology, infrastructure and investment

I don’t think the hospitality industry generally needs any subsidisation. It will always ask to pay less tax, to be more equal to our European partners, but I don’t think that’s the main thing that the hospitality industry would ask for. It would ask for investment in infrastructure, investment in technology where it is appropriate, investment in an industry where they have never invested before. Government has been wonderful at investing in failed industries; Coal, steel, I won’t give the whole list. But it always seems to put its money on industries that are no longer relevant. Maybe not always but very often. What it doesn’t do is find industries that are growing and invest in them because from their view they don’t need help. History tells us that if you invest more in the successful, and less in the unsuccessful, you’ll get a higher return. Now it’s our fault if we haven’t been able to convey that message, but it’s one message we are desperately trying to convey.

If you enjoyed this video about technology, infrastructure, and investment, please explore more TV shows on Inside Finance TV

In this business growth show Stephen Drew discusses the increase in businesses flocking to the UK.

Business Growth Show UK

It’s quite interesting to see how there’s been a change in the inflow of businesses coming into the UK over the last few years. If you look at the reports produced by the UKTI, for example, you will see that there’s been an increase in inbound business coming into the UK from a variety of different sources, but by comparison to that sort of in inward investment into the rest of Europe, for example, there’s been a marked increase in the number of businesses that are interested in the UK. There are probably a variety of reasons as to why that is happening. Certainly the UK has positioned itself well as being somewhere where it’s easy to do business for either home-grown business or for inbound business. There’s definitely been an increase in the amount of investment that foreign businesses are looking to make into the UK, either through expanding existing operations they have and therefore investing in plant or machinery or investing in the labour force, but also through businesses looking to start afresh in the UK and using it as a springboard to trade into Europe.

If you found this business growth show interesting and want to hear more about UK investments and similar subjects, then please browse our videos and follow @InsideFinanceTV on Twitter.

 

There are business benefits to doing evaluations before making purchases, and there are also times when evaluations are necessary. In this TV show John Rugman explains why and when businesses need to be evaluated.

Business benefits from proper assessment

Evaluation is required for a number of different circumstances, it might be that you’re selling a business and you want to know what the value of that business is in advance of the process. It might be that you’re wanting to grant some share options or some shares to employees in that business, in which case you’re going to need evaluation for tax purposes. Or it could be that you need to report some fair values in your accounts and need some input into what those might be. So there can be substantial amounts of money at stake. I’m conscious of one client where we assisted them in relation to a potential purchase of that business and we managed to raise the initial offer for that business by 50%, so they achieved a price 50% higher than they would otherwise have achieved.

If you enjoyed this video about the business benefits of evaluations, why not browse more TV Shows on Inside Finance.

In this business growth show Colin Stevens explains how BetterBathrooms responded to customer needs in a way the industry had never done before.

Business growth show: Improving the industry standard

Predominantly the bathroom industry was Monday to Friday 9-5, you know, when everyone was at work, it seems madness looking back. So we included weekend opening hours, Saturday and Sunday, we did that from day one, seven days from when we opened the door. But what we did about three years ago, we changed the operating hours to ten o’clock at night in the week. So that’s sales, over the phone, showrooms, customer service, and again that has grown our sales quite tremendously. But were the first people to do that in the industry. Obviously the National Business Awards recognise that as being quite disruptive in the marketplace and that’s one of the other things. Another thing is transport system. We deliver nationwide so were are dealing with lots of logistics people all over the country, we found that we couldn’t keep full control of that so we’ve actually, in the north-west started our own transport network internally, so we’ve created a load more jobs, got a load of better bathrooms vans on the road. Service has increased dramatically because of it, for instance satisfaction rating went from, on our own transport vehicles, it went from 8.2 out of 1o to 9.9 out of 10 in the north-west. So its amazing when you listen to the customer and you think, actually this makes sense. It ramps your business. If you found this business growth TV show interesting why not watch more shows on Inside Finance?

Business advantage must be the focus of any merger discussions. In this TV show Giles Murphy explains one of the big reasons why mergers fail.

Business advantage clarity

I think it is about being very clear about what the benefits are of actually merging with another organisation. Inevitably, as I say, there will be downsides, there will be costs involved, disruption, and just the risk of a transaction of that nature. So being very clear up front and being able to articulate precisely why the merger is going to be beneficial for the business is often forgotten about or possibly gets lost in the discussions and the debates between the two firms. And I think unless that can be at the forefront of everyone’s minds as a reminder as to why this transaction is so important, the discussions can just generally grind to a halt and negotiation occurs over the more minor irrelevant points of the merger rather than focusing on the key issues.  

Browse Inside Finance for more videos discussing business advantage and similar issues.

In this business growth show Paul Garwood explains how Smith & Williamson's recruitment strategy ensures a high quality service for its clients.

Business growth show: Smith and Williamson

We’ve a very, very fussy recruitment policy. So we’d like to think that the people that we recruit are the best advisors available on the market. We also have a training programme which ensures that individuals are trained to chartered financial planner level. I think it’s fair to say that the majority of our advisors are now trained to chartered financial planner level and that certainly gives me comfort that they have the technical knowledge and understanding to be able to lead clients along the correct path when they’re advising them.

There are more business growth TV shows on Inside Finance.

In this business growth show Charlie Mullins of Pimlico Plumbers discusses employing the best apprentices and tradespeople.

Business growth show: Staffing

It’s important to us to make sure that we employ the right people and as far as apprentices go we actually go to the local colleges and we pick the best of the class that’s there. We’ve got that arrangement with the college, they let us know whose really doing well and who would suite us. So in the company we have the pick of the best apprentices. When move on to tradesmen I think our reputation has been out there quite a while now and people know that we’re at the top of the game. Therefore we tend to attract the better tradespersons. We pay the highest rate there is in London, you know if you work as a plumber for Pimlico plumbers you can earn between £75,000 and £125,000. So by employing the best we are the best, and by paying the best we get the best. If you enjoyed this business growth show then please browse more videos on Inside Finance TV.  

A business development role has implications for larger society. In this TV show Julie Meyer discusses the creation of social contracts.

Business development role - The social contract

We see cracks all over the place, right. We see it all over the place but you have to see the cracks. What we’re trying to do is design the system, but not ourselves, we’re saying here’s what we think. We think, you know, entrepreneurs who go to entrepreneur country every day have a sense of how society should work, right? They’re dealing with the headwinds way at the cockpit of the train, so let’s design society, right? And we just think that the process of building a new social contract is being done. But it’s a very long process, you know. It was 13 years for the United States from whatever to whatever before we had a constitution. And Iraq, you can see a new country, gosh it’s whatever, 13 years. You know, probably at the beginning of the United Kingdom lots of years to get that. It takes a lot of time for people to convene and to say, we are going to live a certain way. After the end of World War 2, Europe, you know, probably, you know, the fifties were all about how are we going to live now that we’ve got all the bad stuff behind us. And so that social contract which was created after the war I think is shattered. What’s not clear is what’s the next social contract. But some of us really care about that. Some of us really care about what that social contract is.

The business development role and other key factors of our changing economy will be discussed in further Inside Finance TV shows.

Merger business benefits are not always key consideration when companies join together. In this TV show Giles Murphy discusses the trend of businesses merging with friends.

Merger business benefits - Key considerations

Far too often we believe that merger discussions happen simply because there’s a relationship between the two firms. Maybe the two managing partners or senior partners know each other, come up with this jolly good idea that the firms should merge, and that sets off a train of events. So the starting point is really to consider what are the genuine business reasons that two plus two will create four and beyond. In our concern and our experience, often two plus two only equals three.

If you found this video about merger business benefits, please browse more TV shows on Inside Finance.

The business advantages of a public company are compared to those of being a private company by Philip Quigley in this TV show.

Business advantages comparison

The flipside is that if you’ve got a private equity investor, you’ve got one investor sitting on your board and you really have to take notice of them. If you’re a public company with a broader base of shareholders then you haven’t quite got the concentration of power in one set of hands that you would have with PE. The great thing, you know, about being, is you’ve then got shares you can use for acquisitions. They’re a liquid form of currency other than cash. So you can use your shares to make acquisitions. And if, you know, that should be your plan, it’s a growth market on AIM, it’s not for companies who are going to steadily grow, it’s for companies who are going to look to expand quickly.

If you enjoyed this video about business advantages, why not watch more TV shows on Inside Finance?

 

A businesses will become a public company to raise finance and grow. In this TV show Philip Quigley explains how.

How to become a public company

Mechanics are, well you have to do an omission document, a prospectus. It’s set down in law or rules, what’s got to be in it. That covers, you’ve got to explain what the business is, who the management are, what the risks are, give a financial history, give various disclosures about directors remuneration, significant contracts, a whole load of legal stuff at the back end of a document which is in very small print. The principle reasons I suppose are to raise finance for further growth, to give some liquidity to the shares which is, I don’t know, some sort of ability for existing shareholders to exit, new shareholders to come in. They’re the principle two reasons.

If you enjoyed this video about becoming a public company why not watch more TV shows on Inside Finance.

 

Merger business advantage should be the first consideration when joining with another company. Giles Murphy of Smith & Williamson looks at quantifying the business benefits of a potential merger.

Merger business advantage of joining with a friend

I think the question of what are the advantages of a merger is actually the first question we will often raise with clients when we’re talking to them because quite often people will end up in conversations with other firms simply because there is a relationship there and somebody believed it was a good idea.

Bearing in mind the pitfalls and the downsides, and the costs involved in a merger, I think it’s very important that right up front people fully understand what the benefits are and can articulate them, and actually also put a monetary sum against them so they can actually quantify what the opportunity is.

There are more TV shows with Giles Murphy on Inside Finance TV and plenty more discussion about merger business advantage for you to explore.

In this business growth show, Phillip Quigley of Smith & Williamson discusses the junior marketplace.

Business growth show - AIM

The ones that come to us are people who are going to AIM, the junior market in the UK which is for growth companies rather than long established companies. And in terms of sectors, that can be tech companies, natural resources companies, and a broad range of activities, probably, I mean the most recent ones I’ve done was a gaming company coming to AIM, raising money at a fairly early stage in its development. But raising money on the public market to get going, that was in the summer, a long and drawn out process. But they got there, rather a lot of cooperation between the client, us, the lawyers and the financial advisor, the nomad.

If you found this business growth TV show interesting why not watch more shows on Inside Finance?

 

Merger and acquisition has five principles, which Giles Murphy discusses in this TV show.

Merger and acquisition - essential merger factors

I think we often talk about the five Ps as being principles why mergers won’t take place.

Those come down to property, pensions and annuity arrangements, you’ve also got the people aspect of it and the culture.

There’s the profile of a firm or the brand, if you like, and how that’s going to be portrayed in the market.

And the fifth one is just the general level of profits, the comparable levels between the two firms.

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If you found this video about merger and acquisition interesting, why not watch more briefings and interviews on Inside Finance TV.

Making your business a public company has advantages. Philip Quigley discusses public market shares in this TV show.

Public company market shares

If you’re listed you’ve got a liquid currency in your shares. So you can use shares to acquire, not just cash. It means people you’re buying, then get a liquid currency, the shares, they can keep them or sell them. They might be locked in, depending, other rules. But generally you can use your shares to acquire people, that’s a really strong point of being on AIM, having public market shares. _______________________________________________ If you found this video about public company advantages interesting, why not watch more TV shows on Inside Finance TV

Merger and acquisition can involve any sized firm but, as Giles Murphy discusses in this TV show, is more likely to involve a big and a small party.

Merger and acquisition - The big with the small

I think it’s much harder these days to actually execute a merger where you’ve got two similar sized firms. The reason for that is inevitably there’s a level of compromise that has to be achieved and therefore both firms often feel like they’re giving something away. So what we’re increasingly seeing is mergers taking place where there is a much more dominant party, which essentially acquires the much smaller firm. As a result of that, a lot of the difficult decisions that have to be taken post-merger can be executed in a much simpler way. ________________________________________________ If you found this video about mergers and acquisitions, why not browse more TV shows on Inside Finance TV.  

What is due diligence? Smith & Williamson's Philip Quigley explains what he does when working with people who are buy a business.

What is due diligence?

A financial due diligence process is a pretty, it’s an in depth review. And it’s not just financial, it moves towards commercial. It’s not really about does x agree to y. It’s about do I understand the business I’m buying? Do I understand the financial dynamics? Is it different from my business? Why is it different from my business? Can I get to the stage that they’ve got to? And you really need, if you’re doing a transaction, you’ve got so many things to think about, the financial due diligence, the legal due diligence, the HR due diligence and you’ve got to deal with your nomad. So you’re going to have to outsource the financial due diligence. This is what we do. ________________________________________________________ What is due diligence? is just one of many question Inside Finance TV has posed to its many knowledgeable interviewees.

Life expectancy is rising. Mike Fosberry of Smith & Williamson discusses successfully advising a growing number of retirees.

Financial services respond to higher life expectancy

I think the successes are people obviously living much longer nowadays.

 Longevity I think it one of the biggest issues we face economically from a family life perspective.  It's a huge impact in terms of well an economic perspective in terms of things like care costs, etc.

And how do you deal with longevity?

People are, let me say, they're retiring at 65, they may have a spouse who's three years younger than them on average, that's normally the case.  One of them is likely to be alive in 30 years’ time, actuarially speaking.

 So that's a huge issue because their retirement life may in some cases be longer than their working life.  So do you have enough money when you retire to sustain yourself through what could be a very long retirement?

And bear in mind that the latter stages of the retirement are probably going to be in pretty poor health as well.  So how do you cope with that?  How much money do you need to cope with that?  And so we've got to get people focusing on those issues now.

Government is looking at it.

Obviously we've seen extension of state retirement age. For most people it's going to be 67 or 68, perhaps longer in the future.

That's only part of the solution the government will put to it.  They can't afford to increase the amount of money set aside for things like care bills, we haven't got the money to do it.

So there's going to be a huge incentive or a huge requirement for people to fund for themselves.

And that's part of my job, making sure that they focus on those issues.

 In terms of success, well we have a lot of clients who are well into retirement, in their late 80s, who seem to be surviving on the income and capital that we're able to provide them with in their retirement.

So I'm touching wood when I say this because ultimately peoples’ expenditure patterns, etc differ.

 But in the main I think we've done a pretty good job.  And I think one of the issues there is being in a situation where you're able to provide that long term advice and have the capability of being able to do that as an organisation.

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Life expectancy is just one issue that is changing the ways businesses are thinking and operating. Inside Finance will bring you more perspectives on the big issues in 2014.

The governance model in an organisation affects how it operates. In this TV show, Smith & Williamson's Philip Quigley explains how going public necessitates greater accountability.

Governance model of a public company

The main thing I suppose is that they have to appoint non exec directors which means that you give up some measure of control on a day-to-day basis of your business. So you’re sort of answerable to non-execs and to the nomad.  And you have to put out announcements to the market on a regular basis.  You have to publish your accounts more widely than you do as a private company. You’re just generally under more scrutiny.  And that the more institutional your client or your shareholder base, the more scrutiny you are likely to come under. You might end up having to do roadshows, and results announcements and you know, generally being accountable to your shareholders. _______________________________________________________________________________________ Check back for more TV shows looking at governance model issues.

The digital economy creates a lot of unstructured data. In this TV show Nigel Huddleston discusses the challenge of making it relevant to your business.

Using big data in the digital economy

There’s a real hot topic around big data and it means lots of different things to different people.

But I think the key is, is finding an intelligent way to make this massive confusing information relevant to what you’re looking at.

I think in the hospitality sector again, one of the key things is, is bringing in data from third parties and your own data in a meaningful way

So integrating things like your loyalty programmes with search behaviour, you know, who’s looking for what hotels in which cities and at what times and from what devices, and being able to track that with your own data.

And bring all of these bits of information together so that you can both serve the user but also carry out transactions and push information to the user in a meaningful way.

It’s very confusing.  There’s lots of companies out there trying to help with this at the moment.

It’s early stages but it’s very, very important to the industry.

Inside Finance TV is following discussions about the digital economy - Look out for more from Nigel Huddleston

We live in a connected economy, but businesses should ask permission to use consumer data, as Nigel Huddleston explains in today's TV show.

Our connected economy creates vast data fields

One of the things with data is what we use with it, both as Google, but also as a provider or a supplier of holidays, content hotels.

That one of the key things with data is to make sure that it’s permission based, so that you’re using information the way that the user allows you to use.

 And that means that the onus is on you to make sure that if you’re using that data then it’s useful to the consumer so that you’re using it in a way that’s going to be helpful to them.

 So if you’re checking into a hotel or about to arrive at a hotel and maybe they’re kind of following you from the airport and can see through mobile that you’re on their way. As long as you give permission.

They know that you’re ready to check-in, that they know what room type that you prefer, they know what you like in your room in terms of flowers or drinks in the bar, all of those things are potentially useful, but only with the user’s permission.

But again, early stages there, there’s lots of exciting things going on in using user information.

I think it’s very early stages in this big data field.  I would say we’re probably two out of ten in terms of where we can go with this.

And who knows where it’s going to go, you know, it’s almost as if it’s the early stages of the dot com era again in terms of the power of big data.

Inside Finance TV will have more expert discussion on the connected economy - Look out for more from Nigel Huddleston.

 

In this digital economy more consumers are using mobile devices to make purchases. Nigel Huddleston says mobile optimised sites are key:

Digital economy - 30% of travel queries made on mobiles

The industry is pretty switched on to search, both in terms of paid search and then also organic. I would say perhaps that there are some leaders in the industry. The OTAs, because of the very definition of who they are, they’re online travel agents, probably had a bit of a leading edge to begin with. And some of the suppliers are playing catch up, but pretty quickly. One of the best examples is in the mobile space. Getting a mobile optimised site is really key now. It’s not just a 'nice to have, it’s a must have, you know, many, many users are searching and actually booking travel through mobile devices, whether that’s a high end mobile device or a tablet now. And we’re seeing the early stages of that at the moment. But it’s huge, it’s about 30% of all queries now made on mobile devices. Look out for more experts discussing the digital economy on Inside Finance TV.

Connected marketing relies on well developed personal brands to share company content. Our latest video from Bob Barker explores the issue:

Connected marketing comes from individuals

A lot of companies out there have been using traditional marketing mechanisms.

They’ve been using digital marketing, and what we see is that more and more marketing has got to rely on the individuals in the company to help get the messages out because it’s those individuals that are often the sales people and it’s the individuals who themselves have got networks.

So what we do a lot of is helping people to understand what their personal brand is all about and to make sure, for example, on LinkedIn that they’ve got a decent profile because Google’s going to find you on LinkedIn if somebody’s looking for you quicker than any other platform, so you need to look the part.

You need to be dressed well, and so on and so forth. And then there’s the whole thing about network maintenance, or understanding and managing your network.

So we’ve all built up contacts on our Outlook or whatever it is, and we’re beginning to build up more and more contact on LinkedIn as it becomes more the de facto business platform for business people connecting.

So we have to put time in and understand how we build and nurture our networks using something like that.

And then the other thing is that now we’ve got a brand and we understand our network, we’ve then got all this content that the company’s produced that might be relevant to what we’re talking about but nobody’s sharing it.

So a lot of companies are building all this content and people aren’t sharing it, like these videos.

We see in large companies, when you look at the shares, nothing’s going on, and so we help companies to understand.

We help the individuals in those companies to understand it’s their responsibility to help get this content out there because on the internet when people are researching companies and they’re looking for what people, you know, what companies are all about, they’re doing a lot of their research without the company knowing.

So unless that company’s got content out there and people are interfacing and being out there, and having their brand out there, they’re not going to be visible when companies are looking for who they want to do business with and who they might trust.

Inside Finance TV will continue to explore connected marketing and the surrounding issues- look out for more TV shows from Bob Barker.

Marketing communications strategy has a pattern. In this TV Show Ibrahim Ibrahim looks at consumerism and status symbols within emerging economies:

Marketing communications strategy in developing economies

The developing economies are going through the cycle of consumerism that we went through two decades ago. I think this idea of buying stuff and buying logos and just accumulating status symbols is prevalent. But I think, like in the developing economies, there’s a shift from status symbols to status skills, no longer. At the heart of consumerism is status, but no longer is the status, you know, in owning this bottle of whiskey, it may have cost me 80 quid but, you know, two decades ago the status was in owning it. Now the status is in knowing whether it’s east coast, west coast, is it peat, is it honey, where is it from, is it made on the Isle of Skye, is it by the sea, because it’s got beautiful flavours of peat or you know, it’s the stories. So if we’re talking and go full circle back to the notion of the store, stores are no longer about shops, they’re about stories. And I think that is really important, the idea of shifting shopping from stores to stories is really key. So how do you equip customers with those stories, and that are engaging and relevant, that they can then gain status, because that’s ultimately what we all want. It’s the dematerialising of shopping. Look out for more discussion about marketing communications strategy from experts like Ibrahim Ibrahim on Inside Finance TV and our new Connected Economy channel

Business growth strategy at Google involves developing social platforms alongside existing search functions. Nigel Huddleston explains:

Business growth strategy from Nigel Huddleston

We know that social is really important in travel. We can see from user behaviour that people do actually listen to and act upon the recommendations of people they in particular trust, but even people that they don’t know. So social’s huge, you know, people are actually changing hotels that they choose, they’re even changing which country they’re going to go on holiday based on these kind of social recommendations. So Google’s investing very heavily in it at the moment with Google Plus. But one of the key things there is, it’s not just a standalone, we’re trying to amalgamate it and bring it together with search, so it’s bringing together search and social in a really powerful way. There is more expert discussion about business growth strategy on Inside Finance TV.    

Business innovation skills can be brought in from outside an organisation. David Moschella discusses changing the structure of a business to incorporate external capabilities:

Business innovation skills are everywhere.

We talk a lot in our work about this shift from an inside out to more of an outside in organisation. And what we mean by that is really quite simple. That traditionally firms were very focused on their own internal resources, internal capabilities and skills and had their own internal value chain of how they did things. But today there’s so much capability outside in the marketplace of cloud services, the knowledge of employees, partners, the emerging ecosystems, that firms need to in many cases look first to the outside world to find resources, capabilities, transient issues, and secondary to their own organisations. And that's that’s a big shift particularly for enterprise IT people who have grown up in a world of internal systems, internal procedures, internal processes and internal controls. This is a very big change from inside out to outside in. But it’s not one or the other. You know, internal processes, internal  systems, internal skills and values are still amazingly important. Apple is a company that does a tremendous amount internally. It has been a tremendous success. But the trend in terms of where innovation is heading, where market developments, and where sort of the competition is really happening is increasingly outside the walls of the firm. So it’s more of a significant adjustment  than a total transformation. Inside Finance will continue to follow ideas about business innovation skills and we will have more videos from David Moschella.

In our connected economy it is important for businesses to be social. Google has increased its connectivity with Google Plus, as Bob Barker discusses: So Google is beginning to go social itself. Its Google plus network is only two years old and it’s still working out how best to use that glue. But what they’ve done, if you look at the bar that Google has, when you look at the Google bar, the plus bar is right at the far left. It’s the first thing on the menu. It’s before search. So they see social as very, very important. The thing that Google Plus does, is it gives people an identity within the Google world and it allows people to share content within the Google world, and it allows people to connect with people in the Google world, and they’ve got a real tight integration with everything else that they do. So within Google Plus you have circles of friends. So they’ve been really thinking through how do you operate in the social world. So you can have circles of friends and those circles of friends can also reflect in your Google Mail, so if you want to look at, if you have a particular set of friends you can sort your email by those friends. They also have a free communities application, you can set up communities within that social area, so they’re bringing more and more functionality out. They’ve got hang outs, which is the video conferencing and it’s all integrated into every bit of the system.  So it becomes easier and easier and more integrated to use. So they’re putting a lot of time and effort into this and it’s early days with it, and people are beginning to go onto Google Plus more, because ultimate with all that effort, it’s collating all that content and it’s giving you better search results because it’s part of Google. So if you like, when you’ve used Google Plus and you put content on Google Plus, and you know You Tube is integrated with it too. It’s all that time giving you higher and higher potential to get higher search rankings and being found and being understood is what it’s all about.

In the connected economy online communities continue to grow.

Inside Finance TV will be following ideas about the connected economy and will have more videos from Bob Barker.

Disruptive innovation puts static businesses at risk. It is important to make changes in the workplace to survive. Dean Van Leeuwen discusses:

Disruptive innovation can be great if businesses adapt.

We’re living in a golden era of change. Amazing technological innovations that are happening at the moment. We actually believe that the period that we are living during is going to have as big an impact as the industrial revolution. And you can look back every sort of 150, 200 years there’s inflection points where everything seems to change. The size of forces just come rushing in and they converge and they change and they transform the world dramatically. And we believe that we’re living during one of those times. I believe that historians will name the period that we are living in at the moment. And like that has important implications for business leaders. Because if that prediction is true, even if it’s just half true, then that means that you can’t go back to your workplaces and take last year’s strategy and add 10%. It means that you can’t go back and just do the same things that you’ve done over and over again just because they’ve worked in… in the past. And the surest way to fail in a world that is changing like this is just to continue doing the same things over and over again. Inside Finance will continue to discuss disruptive innovation in future videos.

Anthony Hilton, Financial Editor, The London Evening Standard on how the cautious business environment is not helping progress

I think there are a variety of things, one is my earlier point that not many people in business now have actually been through this process before.  I think the second one is that the whole thrust of shareholder value and the, you know, the financial economic engineering that there is mitigates against that kind of risk taking for the long term.

I don’t want to get into a short termism kind of rant.

But there is a definite prejudice against taking those kind of long term risks.

And I think the third thing is as well that the media, the politicians are pretty bad at suggesting we’re ever going to get out of this, you know, they’re almost making a meal of the gloom.

And so even if you are a businessman who has an optimistic streak about your own business, it’s very difficult to be optimistic about the wider economy because every time you turn on the television or pick up a newspaper, you know, you get slapped in the face, I think it’s bad news.

Colin Stevens, Founder & Leader, BetterBathrooms.com on a boost in confidence

There is a big difference, there is a big difference because you walk in a room now and people know of you.  Before, you'd walk in a room and people would like... they might know you, they might not know you but only through introductions.

I walk in a business meeting now or a business room now and it's like oh yeah that's Colin he won all those entrepreneur awards last year.

So it gives you that bit of negotiating power as well, and I guess belief in the business BetterBathrooms and the belief in you as an individual to back you.

So much so, because we've done so successful as a business, we've just done an equity release deal, so we've just got an injection of a lot of money, I can't comment on until after Sunday because Sunday papers hopefully will be publishing.

But the whole thing brought together and it's, like I say, it's been an amazing 12 months.

Colin Stevens, Founder & Leader, BetterBathrooms.com on BetterBathroom's global ambitions

We're testing Europe and we're looking at that and we're obviously receiving the investment money to carry on with the growth. We're secure as a business, we don't want to... one of the reasons we got the investment money was to make sure we were just going to go twice as fast and still be stable. We could have done it ourselves but I just didn't want to take that big risk.  So yeah, UK, Europe and then the world.

Colin Stevens, Founder & Leader, BetterBathrooms.com on passing on the tricks of the trade

I've had another Sky interview and a few more BBC Radio interviews but also because of winning entrepreneur of the year you get other opportunities.  So I'm involved in the tenner campaign which is a government backed campaign where we give £10 to students at high school and they basically use that £10 to buy a product and resell it.

And this is something that's rolled out nationally.

So I went to a school in Manchester and worked with their students and it was amazing, like you're talking about 11, 12, 13 year olds who were thinking like entrepreneurs, they were really into it.  I guess the Apprentice TV thing's really helped that.  So I've been involved in that project, I've been involved in other charity stuff.

So it's just allowed me to get to another level for people to actually recognise that actually this guy's quite good at business and not only that, if this kid at 32 years of age can do all of this I wonder if he can share that knowledge.

So I've actually got involved in a few other things since then, a few other businesses and I'm mentoring someone now who's 21 years of old who's the next, in my opinion, the next super geek and he doesn't mind me saying that.

I'm a bit of a geek myself.  So it's been an amazing journey this last year.

Dr Stephanie Hussels, Lecturer in Entrepreneurship, Cranfield University on three things every entrepreneur should know

Three things to keep in mind for your business. I would say number one to me is love your customers.  Understand what they want, if they love you they will come back that's advice number one. I think advice number two is hire the best people possible.  It's scary, hire people who are better than you because they will take it forward. And I think number three will be have a very clear vision and purpose for your company and communicate that clearly throughout your organisation. Because that will also encourage other people to join, it will attract customers and I think it will take you forward.

Dr Stephanie Hussels, Lecturer in Entrepreneurship, Cranfield University the importance of financials, growth and vision

For me the other one I think is be really aware of your financials.  It's not only from... it's a dash point that you know at each point in time what your financials look like but then also making clear that your key staff understand key financials.

And don't be scared of communicating that with your key staff.  Another one I think is growth, we see a lot of businesses that immediately are incentivised of diversifying in terms of products and new markets very quickly.

We always say stick with the knitting, sell more to your existing customer base and a term at Cranfield we use, is like squeezing the lemon.

So if you think about a fridge, you want to get as much lemon out and not end up with a half-rotten lemon at the end of the week.

I think that is another important lesson to hand out and I think if I had the last possible one to squeeze in, it would be, I think, think about what you want to be as an entrepreneur.

What role do you want to play, where do you see yourself in a few years time?

And so make sure that you build a succession that will allow you to do the things you're best at and not be the hero or the meddler but be the one who works on the business and rather in the business.

Anthony Hilton, Financial Editor, The London Evening Standard on coping with the economic recovery.

The interesting thing about the UK economy is that because we had such a long period of uninterrupted growth from 1993 through to 2008, basically a whole generation grew up who had never seen a downturn. Nobody under 35, probably nobody under 40 had ever seen a downturn. So when it came they didn’t know how to react. And similarly now we’re in recovery they don’t know how to react, they don’t know what to expect. And they somehow expect, you know, suddenly there will be green shoots everywhere and life will be rosy, and of course it’s not like that. And so I think the most interesting thing is how badly most businesses are coping with the recovery. And I say business loosely of course, but the same thing could apply, particularly to the political class and indeed to the media. I mean I think the media’s approach to this economic crisis has been naïve beyond belief and probably completely unhelpful.

Anthony Hilton, Financial Editor, The London Evening Standard on investing for the upturn.

A key thing I put forward as an investment, I mean that history shows that the companies that do well in the upturn are those that manage to maintain their investment and their marketing and basically the fabric of the business intact so that when the upturn came they could take advantage of it.

Those that as it were waited until it was obvious missed the boat.

And yet if you look at the levels of investment, the levels of marketing and all these indicators in the UK economy, it’s clear that for the most part people are cutting back.

And so they’re not actually looking through the current difficult times so that when the good times do come an awful lot of them aren’t going to be ready and so they’ll miss the markets.

Peter Maher: "I think I am by no means a technophile, I’m probably more likely be a technophobe but I have seen the requirements of auto-enrolment and that is that, you know, you must enrol a member of staff within three months of him joining your firm.  He may choose to opt out once you’ve enrolled him.  He can do that within a month or at a later date.  He can’t do via his employee.  He must come to an adviser or the insurer.  But three years later or three years after the date at which the firm auto enrolled its first member of staff, he has to be auto enrolled again and put back in.  So you will have people joining and leaving automatically.  And if you missed those dates, you’re in breach.  The only way you can do that is through technology.  There will be human error if you try and do it by man or woman and the amount of men and women it will take to do it will be huge.  So technology will save you an awful lot of money in manpower and it will save you the pain of making a mistake which may ultimately cost you by way of penalty."

Entrepreneurial spirit will be portrayed in various parts of a persons character. In this TV show Julie Meyer discusses persistence.

The intensity of an entrepreneurial spirit

I’m fairly good at picking up on how much steel somebody has in their spine.  So, you can tell and it’s not just the level of intensity or the stare that they give you,  it’s more you can kind of sense in how concerted an effort. People betray their level of persistence in many ways and I don’t know how, it’s almost like a neural network after you’ve done it for so long.  But you can kind of sense whether somebody’s going to pull through, for example, with Alastair Lukies of Monitise there’s just something that I felt about him that he was extraordinary and exceptional. And, you know, when he got his first client he secured the first client and he sent me a text message, it was like a Friday night in 2006.  And I remember getting a text message that said, you know, 106 meetings, 76 nights away from my wife, but we have a client today.  And, you know, that’s irrational, that’s obsessive behaviour.  Normal people do not do that, normal people don’t just keep on going. Now, he wasn’t just banging his head against the wall, what he was doing was constantly learning, constantly retargeting, adjusting.  And so the man is extremely smart, which is why Monitise is doing, you know, Monitise will be one of the most important companies ever to have been founded in the United Kingdom.  But it takes an irrational level of persistence.  And I think I’m pretty good at figuring out whether somebody is up for that.

There are many more great videos about entrepreneurial spirit and business success on Inside Finance. Look out for more briefings on the subject.

It is difficult to know the best time to start a business as Charlie Mullins discusses in this TV show.

Entrepreneurship Strategy

We have a situation at the moment where obviously tines are tough out there and money is tight. there is still a lot of youngsters that want to succeed in life, well you know, for me, you know they often ask when is the best time is when you are ready for it. Forget the economy, forget the climate at the moment. If you have a product and you are all ready to go with it, go with it. But it is not an easy ride and probably what I would say to people is I have never met a successful person in business who hasn't worked hard to achieve it. Another great tip is, quitters are not winners and winners are not quitters.

Guy Rigby: "I think it’s a fantastic environment, and I think that, you know, we are now at this time coming out of a, you know, the worst period of trading that we’ve seen probably since the 1930s.  It’s been a disastrous time, very difficult, yet all the innovation that’s coming out around places like tech city, around new funding platforms, alternative funding, you know, the banks are not in an easy position.  So we need these other things to come out.  And there’s huge opportunity.  In addition people have virtual offices, they can set themselves up on computers or laptops for hundreds of pounds as opposed to tens of thousands, which it used to be 10 or 20 years ago.  So the opportunity for entrepreneurs has never been greater.  All you’ve got to do is have a great idea, a great vision as it were and then have the strategy and the business plan to deliver it."

Guy Rigby: "We think that there’s a gap in the market for entrepreneurs these days. You know, we’re the eighth largest accountancy firm in the UK and we feel that all of those above us and indeed around us aren’t giving this community the attention it needs.  We want to be the all round adviser to entrepreneurs, helping them achieve their goals, you know, getting their ball across whichever line they want to get it across. Okay.  So most accountancy firms do audits and tax.  What they don’t really do is get underneath the skin of the business.  What we try to do is to work for the entrepreneur and then the business.  So effectively what we’re trying to do is to help the entrepreneur get his particular ball across the line, whatever that may be.  It might be to grow a 10 million pound turnover business, it might be to pass it on to his family, it might be to sell it, whatever they want, our job is to help them achieve that.  That’s unusual, you know, it goes beyond doing an audit and a tax computation."

Guy Rigby: "First of all we want to be known, so you know, Smith & Williamson is a quiet brand and we’re trying to get it out and dust it off a bit and you know, make sure that people know who we are.  Secondly, we really believe in this entrepreneur community, which is why we’re sponsoring this particular award.  And around us in the accountancy profession, you know there are some other big firms but most of them are focused on doing audits, doing tax and working for larger corporates.  And we find that the opportunity to work for these up and coming firms is very exciting, very interesting, and we think a natural spot for us."

Guy Rigby: "It can be very, very early stage, some of the businesses, you know, are turning over just a few hundreds of thousands, a million or two.  Last year the business that won was turning over probably 20 million.  But that didn’t matter, I mean if we’d favoured something because it was very fast growth.  It’s quite difficult to appoint a National Business Awards winner to someone who’s just started a business because the proof of the pudding isn’t yet there.  But if we can see exponential growth and they’ve been around long enough then they’d certainly be considered."

Guy Rigby: "You get a total variation of businesses.  I mean one of my favourites last year that we put forward for inclusion in the top 10 was a company called Rock Choir, which if you haven’t heard of it, it’s a marvellous social business effectively where people go off every week and sing together.  And it’s for profit, so it’s a very, very social thing.  I mean I have to say my wife goes and she comes back in such a fantastic mood, I wish she could go every night to be honest.  But no, it’s a really, really fantastic evening. And they’ve built a real business around this.  So this is a community thing, it happens in lots of different cities around the UK, well not even cities, towns, villages etc.  And I believe that they actually culminate with sort of concerts at the O2 and things like that. So everyone getting together, have a great singsong.  And they do rock music, you know, ELO, stuff like that, really good.  So Rock Choir was a business, we had a big hosting company like, you know, companies like ... I’m not going to name names in that area, but they’re ... we had a couple of bathroom companies that were basically selling online.  So technology platforms with Facebook pages, suddenly turning over 20 million a year, amazing how these things are springing up.  So a lot of sort of businesses that are becoming technology enabled and using the internet to grow, and leaving effectively, leaving those whole high street players behind.  We’ve seen it happen haven’t we?"

Guy Rigby: "The National Business Awards are, I suppose, the pinnacle of success for a lot of entrepreneurial type businesses, because we are focusing on entrepreneurs and their ... or private clients and their business interests, which I look at as being the entrepreneurial types.  We’ve decided that we’re going to sponsor 'entrepreneur of the year'.  We did some judging last year, we weren’t the sponsors this year, we were actually the sponsors.  So it’s going to be quite exciting.  A big national programme, really good for Smith & Williamson, covering all our offices.  There’ll be different events going on.  It’s a nine month programme.  We had some real fun judging it last year, some great companies get involved."

Guy Rigby: "I think how you get access to My Personal FD will depend upon your particular requirement.  So if you have a financial planning requirement, perhaps we’ll start the process through that and then perhaps move on to other services that you might need to give it the all round feel that we’re aiming at.  If you’ve got a particular tax requirement then we might start with your tax affairs.  So your kind of entry point will depend upon your specific need or pain at the time.  You know, if you’re unhappy with your Investment Manager maybe we start there.  So we think the natural entry point for people is to come in under the personal tax heading.  So tax is probably a leading element of that.  And we’re probably going to be looking at a minimum fee of 1,500 to 2,000 a year to actually start that process.  I hasten to add that everybody is completely individual and the pricing will be dependent entirely upon the circumstances of each case.  But what we will do is we will price it in advance.  So when we know someone’s circumstances we will give firm quotes, we won’t just use a clock."

Mark Webb: "There’s quite often situations for companies where they are being looked at to be acquired or to go and acquire other entities.  Now, if those companies get their advisers involved early, what it can mean is that the adviser can ensure that you get tax relief for acquisitions.  But equally then if you’ve got people that you’d like to reward within the business if you’re disposing then we can work to make sure that those individuals get some reward on exit. But also that’s dealt with as tax efficiently as we can, simple rule is, the earlier you advise your adviser, that they can ... that a deal is on the horizon or an acquisition is on the horizon the better the chance for structuring something that is tax efficient and useful for everybody’s purposes."

Mark Webb: "I Chair the Property Construction Group.  And a lot of work that we’ve been doing recently is in relation to capital allowances.  It’s important in that area because there’s been a lot of changes to capital allowances over the last four or five years and with change comes alteration, how you deal with tax.  But with that often comes opportunity to make new claims that companies are entitled to. And we’re helping a lot of companies make claims they didn’t even realise they could make."

Laurence Bard: "The obvious examples might be pharmaceuticals, men in white coats and test tubes.  Another obvious example would be automotive, you know, Jaguar, Land Rover developing weird and wonderful extra ways that engines run.  And then less obviously you have all sorts of ... I mean banking you might think doesn’t do anything innovative, but banks spend a huge amount on software and the use of the internet and it has to be secure and it has to work."

This business leadership video features Jo Malone, Founder of Jo Malone & JO LOVES.

Business leadership video for success

The formula for success is hardwork, courage and tenacity. She says entrepreneurs should create a team that feels like a family and would love to do business on a hand shake again. There is a value in building real relationships in business. If you found this business leadership video interesting why not watch more TV shows on Inside Finance?