Executive Playground

10 great things about the Recession

The business landscape is changing more quickly than previously imagined, thanks to the recession. And I really do mean ‘thanks’.  Good things also emerge from recessions. Someone told me a few days ago that many of the great companies around today, like Google for example were created in a downturn.

So here’s our top 10 list of positive things to emerge from the Recession. Join in and add your own in the comments box.

1. Many businesses are moving out of expensive leased and serviced offices to become ‘home based’. This reduces costs and increases profitability.

2. Because we’re all in ‘it’ together, having a home based business is now perfectly acceptable and credible
   

3. The reduction in business and travel costs means you don’t have to work as hard to generate the same amount of profit
   

4. The reduction in travel caused by less people travelling to work is good for the planet
   

5. High calibre staff and so called ‘victims’ of redundancy are choosing not to go back to what they had before and instead they are taking the opportunity to create a better future for themselves. They are setting up the business they’ve always wanted, retraining to do the work they love and using the web to offer their skills as a freelancer on sites like People per Hour and Freelancer .com
   

6. Work/Life balance will improve if you allow it to!
   

7. Managers responsible for remote and home based teams have to find new and better ways to manage and motivate them. Command and Control managers have to learn to trust their people more and even treat them like the grown-ups they are.
   

8. New opportunities are emerging in green industries and Homeshoring ‘the transfer of appropriate business functions to an employee’s home setting’ is about to take off like a rocket.
   

9. The added flexibility of working from home or just being at home means we have the time to get fitter, lose weight and spend more quality time with family and friends
   

10. We’re all having a much needed ‘sort out’ that’s been needed for a while. We’ll emerge better, stronger and closer to where we need to be as a result.
    

'Access to Finance' Business Funding Information Available Now

In our last post, we mentioned the Access to Finance seminar Anne attended at Aston Science Park. Given the huge finance/funding issues facing the business community now that the banks are playing 'hard to get', it will come as no surprise that this event was full to capacity. Amongst the attendees and presenters were Advantage West Midlands, ART Reinvestment Trust, Business Link, Barclays and Midlands Connect.

One of the messages was that 'small' businesses in particular, need to be much better organised, be better planned, be better presented, be more professional, understand the meaning behind the numbers and generally manage their businesses better.

Patrick Palmer, Head of Access to Finance at Advantage West Midlands gave an excellent presentation entitled "Access to Finance: Where is the money?" which was choc-ful of information about "sources of finance for a range of circumstances (even when the bank says “no”!)"

Steve Walker, Chief Executive, Aston Reinvestment Trust (ART) addressed "Accessing Finance: Alternative Sources of Finance." and again his presentation provided an invaluable breakdown of alternative funding sources along with information about who's lending how much and what investors and lenders are looking for.

So why are we telling you this AFTER the event? Well, we've managed to obtain copies of both of these presentations (in pdf formats) so we can share them with you! All you need to do to access BOTH presentations, is join our VIP OFFERS list. Simply enter your email into the form at the top right of the site and click on the JOIN button.  Then early next week, we will email you a link to a 'secret' download area for VIPs only. Go on then... you've got until Friday lunchtime (13th Feb) to sign up for this particular VIP OFFER.