PRIME business club

The British Library, located between Euston and Kings Cross stations in London, is running a packed programme of workshops on patents and other intellectual property topics in November.

The workshops are generally aimed at a small business audience, last a few hours, and are free. But they are often crowded -  advance booking is essential.

Here’s a list of selected topics - click for more on how to book.

A beginner’s guide to intellectual property

Introducing patents searching

Introducing trade marks & registered designs

Introducing copyright

Researching a company

Knowing your market

The library also holds a large collection of market research reports, fact sheets on starting different sorts of business, and a searchable database of patents. To use these you will need to get a reader pass, but this again is free.

These services are partly funded by the London Development Agency, but are available to anyone.

If you are planning to use the sale of your business to fund your retirement, there’s some good news on the way. Changes to capital gains tax expected to be announced by the Chancellor should see you retain all of the money you make up to an expected threshold of £100,000.

The details have not yet been fully worked out, but The Daily Telegraph is reporting that the decision has been made to make the change. Under the government’s previous plans the owners of small UK businesses wishing to retire were faced with stiff tax bills brought in recently to stop abuses by big private equity companies.

The relaxation in the rules - which may well only apply to business owners over the age of 50, follows a campaign against the unfair way capital gains tax would hitting ordinary small business owners with no connection to the private equity sector.

Details of the new scheme are still sketchy, but the Daily Telegraph is reporting that the first £100,000 made on a business sale are likely to be exempt, and thereafter the gain will be taxed at 18 per cent.

To prevent this concession being abused by big City firms, it is likely to be available only a one-off basis to individuals setting up a ‘retirement relief fund’ - details to be announced.

Background to the campaign

The customer is not always right, argues this article from Business Week. If they are taking up too much time sometimes it’s better to part company and put the effort into finding new business.

“All that time and energy I had spent on resolving conflict was now spent on getting new customers”, reported one business owner whose revenues were up by a third six months after the split.

“When, Why, and How to Fire That Customer” also goes into less drastic ways of dealing with problem or unprofitable customers. Sometimes you can save them by re-negotiating the terms of the relationship.

There’s also a useful graphic that shows how to work out the profit on a given client.

The world is full of people who can’t sell or don’t want to - often for good reasons. Usually it’s because they don’t want be the sort of person who they think it’s necessary to turn into to sell things.

They may have real examples in mind - obnoxious sales-men or -women they have encountered in their past who bullied, pushed or lied.

However, once you start your own business it becomes necessary to find customers on a regular basis. So you need to put these traumas behind you and find an approach to selling your product or service that both works and that you are completely comfortable with.

Here are some articles by US sales guru Lenann Gardner that suggest ways of finding customers that are different to the practices that have long given selling a bad name.

So don’t let bad sales experiences from your past become negative role models to you - and a barrier to setting up your own independent business. Resolve to do it differently to them - and better.

1. “Selling is not telling”, writes Lenann on the Business Week web site. “Don’t talk so much. Ask questions. Really listen to what this person wants. And then talk only about the aspects of your product that relate to what your prospect desires.”

2. In another article (Your bias against selling is gonna kill your success) she suggests that you “uncover the ways in which you might be helpful to other people, and then make those people aware of the opportunity you represent to them”. It’s then up to them to be “big boys and girls and decide whether they’d like to take advantage of that opportunity.”

3. “Think about your prospective client’s ego”, Lenann recommends on Business Week again. “Damage an ego, and even though you are right, they won’t be buying from you!”

The reluctance to sell we are assuming here doesn’t apply to all people, and it probably depends on what type of salespeople you have been exposed to. But it is something many people express to PRIME, and it can be overcome by developing your own approach that simply avoids practices you are uncomfortable with.

If you have a good product or service it stands to reason that there are people out there who would welcome the opportunity to buy it. It may sometimes be hard work, but you owe it to them as well as your own business to find them and make them an offer they can understand and make their own decision on.

“When selling, one should have a sincere desire to see the buyer get where he wants to go, whether or not it involves buying from you or your firm,” says Lenann. “This attitude transforms the selling and purchasing experience into something much more positive, productive, even pleasant.”

easyJet founder and serial entrepreneur Stelios Haji-Ioannou is entering the serviced office business with a chain of easyOffices targeted especially at start-ups. The first opens in London on the 14th of November 2007. Other offices are expected to follow swiftly in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Like other easyGroup businesses Stelios has given his serviced offices a twist. The price you pay for a unit depends on how much demand there is when you book. So a unit that costs the minimum of £99 a week if you book well in advance will cost more if you leave it till there are few units left.

The London site, located in Kensington, has 35 units, which you can hire for a minimum of one week up to a maximum of three months. Booking is online at www.easyoffice.co.uk. At the moment there is a special offer of £10 if you book now for the first week.

According to Stelios, easyOffice is “designed with the true start-up entrepreneur in mind who knows it’s a smart business move not to waste money, especially at the start of a new venture”.

There are off course plenty of other serviced offices on the market, so it remains to be seen whether easyOffice will shake the sector up, either by reducing prices or introducing more flexible bookings.

But even if not, Stelios has a second string to his bow. In partnership with established brokerage firm Instant Offices you can search and book offices NOT owned by Stelios in around 4,000 locations in the UK and worldwide from the www.easyoffice.co.uk site.

Yell.com has published a very encouraging piece of research into businesses started by older people. The survey focuses on business owners over 50 who have set up in the last five years, who it calls “senior startups”.

Overall this is a strikingly contented group, with 44 per cent of respondents reporting that they are now happier than they’ve ever been. Around a third of all respondents (30 per cent) say that they love their work, and (61 per cent) say they regret not having set up on their own earlier.

More than half (53 per cent) say that the key piece of advice they would give to other over-50s would be to “go for it”.

Other findings include:

• The average turnover of the people polled was £67,500 per year, with most working alone from home
• Most have no thoughts of retirement and see their business as their pension plan – more than two thirds (71 per cent) want to run their business for as long as they are able
• Businesses within this group tend to be financed by savings – with only 13 per cent funded by bank loans

Only 16 per cent of those questioned had run their own business before, with 41 per cent having worked in a completely different field before setting up on their own. Almost one in five (19 per cent) of the female respondents were not working immediately before setting up their businesses.

More details of the research along with tips and case studies are on Yell’s the people behind the numbers web site.

Disclosure: PRIME has a connection with this study through Professor Mark Hart, who did the analysis and who is a member of PRIME’s board of trustees (the equivalent in a charity to a company’s board of directors).

Mark, who is Professor of Small Business Research at Kingston University as well as a PRIME trustee, comments “This research adds greatly to our knowledge of the over 50s’ contribution to enterprise in the UK. There is now clear evidence that the entrepreneurial activities of this diverse group are capable of providing sustainable incomes.”

The over 50s are little studied compared to younger entrepreneurs, but are known from other evidence to account for one in six of new businesses in the UK.

Here are five case studies of entrepreneurs over 50 from the Yell.com web site. All are finalists or winners of the Yellow Pages-sponsored ‘Silver Fox’ category at the 2007 Startups Awards, except Brian who won in 2005.

Myreen Young

MY Skincare Ltd
Southampton, Hampshire

Ann Litster

Hands on Cleaning
Clevedon, North Somerset

Gary Sheffield

Alpine Training Centre
Rye, East Sussex

Ken Bird

Dwrpur Pure Water Ltd
St Clears, Carmarthenshire

Brian Plunkett

Trichocare Diagnostics Ltd
Ridgmont, Beds

Date: Thursday 15th November 2007, 12 noon to 7:00pm

Venue: Upper Room, The Crossing at St Paul’s, Dawell Street, Walsall, WS1 1DA

Status: PRIME event

This free drop-in event for people over 50 covers opportunities in self-employment, learning and work. There will be trained advisers on hand to discuss your options on a confidential, one-to-one basis.

Ideas for setting up your own business
Planning a particular idea in more detail
Benefits, tax and national insurance
The training courses that are available
Financing your business
There’s also a special focus on the creative arts and design sectors.

You can just turn up at any time between noon and 7pm on the day, but if you want more information ring 0800 783 1904 or email prime@ace.org.uk

Location map and directions

The Treasury has announced the figures that will be used to calculate Working Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit next financial year, which starts in April 2008. The figures should be of interest to many self-employed people, because those running new businesses often have incomes low enough to qualify for tax credits.

The tax credit system provides a safety net so your income won’t fall to zero even if your net profit does - which in the early stages of a business is quite possible. You can find a PRIME’s own independent booklet explaining the tax credit system here.

So what are the major changes just announced? The basic structure of Working Tax Credit remains the same, but from April there will be a big rise in the “first income threshold”, which goes up by £1,200 to £6,420. This means that from April 2008 you will keep the full amount of whatever WTC payments you are entitled to until you reach the new £6,420 threshold.

The government has paid for this change by increasing the withdrawal rate (or “taper”") that takes effect above the threshold from 37 per cent to 39 per cent. So once your income (or net profit) rises above £6,420 you will lose payments quicker than now.

Overall this change benefits those on very low incomes up to about £7,000, and reduces the amounts paid to those making more.

Another interesting figure in the Treasury’s announcement is the “income disregard”, which remains at the very high value of £25,000 for another year. The income disregard is a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card that can be introduced into disputes about overpayment entirely at HMRC’s discretion. It allows the HMRC to ignore overpayments paid to you up to this amount if it feels like it.

HMRC’s generosity is most likely to arise in cases where it itself has itself made a mistake, and fears press or political pressure should it persist in attempts to claw an overpayment back. So the income disregard is not a right you yourself can claim, but a fudge factor that provides wriggle room for the tax authorities in cases of dispute.

The fact the figure is remaining so high indicates that there are still a lot of disputes going on - though most of these to be fair also involve Child Tax Credit, where the rules are hard to interpret.
Among other figures announced for the 2008 to 2009 tax year is the value of basic state pension paid to those over state pension age. This edges up in line with inflation by £3.40 a week for a single person, to £90.70 a week from next April.

The minimum income guaranteed to poorer pensioners (those entitled to claim Pension Credit) goes up to just over £124 a week for a single person.

This isn’t much to live on - which underlines the need to put other arrangements in place to boost your income in retirement while you can.

Date: Wednesday 14th November 2007, 9:30am to 3:30pm

Venue: Novartis Grimsby Ltd, Pyewipe, Grimsby, DN31 2SR

Status: PRIME event

This beginner’s workshop will help you come up with and develop your ideas.
You will then begin to make a decision on whether you would like to work for yourself. 

The workshop will focus on:

~ using your skills and talents

~ developing your business idea

~ the basics of being self-employed

To book your place on this workshop please contact Faye Banerjee on:0800 783 1904
Email: faye.banerjee@ace.org.uk

Grimsby printable flyer

Date: Monday 12th November 2007, 9:30am to 3:30pm

Venue: The Helmsley Arts Centre, The Old Meeting House, Helmsley, Yorkshire YO62 5DW

Status: PRIME event

This beginner’s workshop will help you come up with and develop your ideas.
You will then begin to make a decision on whether you would like to work for yourself.

The workshop will focus on:

~ using your skills and talents

~ developing your business idea

~ the basics of being self-employed

To book your place on this workshop please contact Faye Banerjee on:0800 783 1904
Email: faye.banerjee@ace.org.uk

Printable flyer for Helmsley

Date: Wednesday 07th November 2007, 9:30am to 3:30pm

Venue: Hudawi Cultural Centre, Great Nothern Street, Huddersfield, HD1 6BG

Status: PRIME event

This beginner’s workshop will help you come up with and develop your ideas.
You will then begin to make a decision on whether you would like to work for yourself. 

The workshop will focus on:

~ using your skills and talents

~ developing your business idea

~ the basics of being self-employed

To book your place on this workshop please contact Faye Banerjee on:0800 783 1904
Email: faye.banerjee@ace.org.uk

Printable flyer

Female entrepreneurs showed off some of the businesses they had set up at a recent event hosted by Barclays Bank. All the women had been on short courses for the over 50s run by London Metropolitan University.

The programme has been running over the last three years, with the typical course lasting for 10 days spread over 20 weeks - this part-time format allowing the women time to actually start their businesses.

Among the new enterprises created are several in the care and alternative health sectors, educational games, dog clothes and importing African musical instruments.

“Businesses set up by older people not only provide a living for the business owner, but are one of fastest growing groups of start-up businesses in London”, said Hilary Farnworth, manager of the project. 

Date: Wednesday 07th November 2007, 6pm to 9pm

Venue: The Ramada Jarvis Hotel, Norwich

Status: PRIME event

Finding New Futures is a free workshop especially for older people considering setting up their own business. It explores the pros and cons of different routes in to business including taking up a franchise.

Please book early to ensure your place.

Freephone: 0800 783 1904
or email faye.banerjee@ace.org.uk

Printable Details

Click for map

Here’s an interesting collection of stories from New Zealand of people who set up their own businesses after being made redundant.

Refreshingly, what has happened to these people since has not been written up in the usual relentless “success story” style. For example, where people have motives other than the desire to get rich (for example revenge or the desire to spend more time gardening) these are reflected in the story.

Sample quote: “But we don’t want to put our money into the business”, says Elaine [one half of a successful garden tools company]. “We want to buy a boat and go down the canals in Europe.”