Ask the experts

Do you have a burning question that you would like the answer to? Or maybe you’re looking for some advice to help your business? In each edition some questions will be shared and answered by some of The Business Bulletin experts.

Q. What mindset do you need to be successful in business?

A. When you look at why businesses are successful, it’s normally because they have disrupted the market, e.g. Dyson, Easy Jet, etc. So having that disruptive mindset is one of the keys to unlocking success. You may think this is difficult to have but in reality it’s not. Simply…: 1. Move away from negative business relationships that are sapping your time and energy 2. 2. Shake up some of your own practices and routines that may have become habitual and lead to unproductive time; and 3. Focus that valuable energy on important goals.

Finally it’s ok to fail, be rejected, but keep focused and you will win.

Roger Eddowes - Essendon Accounts & Tax

A. I think you need resilience. Not everything will go as planned, and the flipside of being in total control is that everything also falls on your shoulders. An ability to view every ‘mistake’ or issue as a opportunity for learning and improvement is very useful I’ve found.

Additionally I think your desire for a challenge, to improve yourself and to do something new needs to utterly outweigh your need for security and certainty. If it doesn’t the draw to return to employment will be too great. I suspect most people leave employment with the aim of earning more, working fewer hours and having a better work-life balance, but the reality is often quite (or very) different. Especially in the beginning.

Over the years you’ll often be faced with challenges that may question your choice to ‘go it alone’, but a resilient mindset and a desire to ‘prove yourself right’ (no matter what it takes) will help you deal with this and face it head on.

Mark Coster Pixooma

Q. As a small business owner, is continuous professional development (CPD) important?

A. Development is vital. In fact, not only is development important I think you should look outside of your main business interest to expand your experiences. The professional demands of CPD sometimes do not allow for this. Within your profession, there is a ceiling of competence and then expertise beyond which you are just adding minor additions to your skillset. If you look outside that you may find that you experience things that you can build into your professional practice that produce hybridity and unexpected results. I learned a huge amount about how to message effectively in copywriting from semiotics and from my training as a television scriptwriter and just as much from studying the basic principles of psychology. Combined, they make a different approach and offer options that I would otherwise not have. Yet they all seem out of the copywriter’s remit.

One of the restrictions of CPD is that it is hard to justify spending CPD points outside your own professional sphere. Yet there have been many examples (chaos theory for instance) where if practitioners of different disciplines had conversed they would have found common ground.

Kevin Robinson = Your-Copywriter.com

A. CPD is most certainly important when running a small business. The number one question that would stem off of the back of this would be, how do you expect to improve your offering without firstly improving yourself?

Many look at CPD as having to take courses however it doesn’t have to be that way. It can be as simple as reading a book on a business element that you aren’t quite certain on. Perhaps finding an influencer from your sector. Follow them on social media, subscribe to their YouTube channel, absorb the content learn from their experiences.

Simply don’t have the time to do it… RUBBISH! Take a look at your day and the things you can do without timewise. Replace an episode of your favourite series a night with a bit of valuable content and your sorted.

As well as the above I would add the following which I have heard floating around many of times. We each become the average of the 5 people we spend most time with. If you surround yourself with the right people you will learn from these people as well.

Charles Jones - JPAD UK

A. Absolutely CPD is important in our business to keep up-to-date with the latest changes in legislation and general practice. We need the knowledge and expertise to pass onto our clients, but we can also add value to our service by coming up with areas that our clients should also educate themselves on. Intelligence can have a huge added benefit. For example passing on the fact from our wine merchant client to our restaurant client that Sauvignon Blanc is an upward trend with the millennial generation is a simple thing to do, but adds such a lot of added value to our service. The restaurant can go away and refine it’s wine menu and we can show the benefits of an uplift in say a 10% increase in wine sales purely by getting an attractive bottle of Sauvignon Blanc on the menu!

Roger Eddowes - Essendon Accounts & Tax A.

In my job, CPD is obligatory. Without recording structured CPD of the right quality and spectrum of learning, I wouldn’t be able to obtain the certification to trade. However, what I have noticed is that when I do CPD there’s evidence of knowledge decay, which I probably wouldn’t have noticed had I not taken the tests. So in summary, CPD is worth doing to keep on top of your subject, even if it’s not formalised and structured, to keep up with changes and developments as well as to keep your knowledge fresh.

James Tarry - Scottsdale Moneywise