PRIME business club

More than half of the visitors to this site taking part in a recent PRIME mini poll expect to sell their business as a going concern when they are ready to exit the business. A further 16 per cent also expect to keep it going, giving it to family or a friend.

Do you expect to eventually sell your business?

• 1. Yes - sell as a going concern 56% (49 votes)
• 2. No - will give away to family / friend retaining stake 15% (13 votes)
• 3. No - will give away to family / friend completely 1% (1 vote)
• 4. No - it will close but with sale of major assets 1% (1 vote)
• 5. No - it will close with sale of some minor assets 3% (3 votes)
• 6. No - it will close with nothing much to sell 22% (19 votes)
• 7. Other 2 2% (2 votes)

Source: visitors to www.primebusinessclub.com

About a quarter expect their business to close when they leave - and the great majority of these don’t expect to be able to make much from selling the assets.

So there is a clear split between those expecting to get extra money from the business when they exit and those who don’t. And this may be realistic - some businesses are worth something without the founder while for others the founder IS the business. The type of business is critical.

Where there may be some unfounded optimism is on how easy the business will be to sell. There does seem to be evidence that the size of the business is important here.

There is a well developed market for selling businesses over a certain size, with papers, notably Daltons Weekly carrying classified listing od businesses for sale, and specialist business transfer agents you can go to to help with a sale. But once you get below a value of about £250,000 for the business the market gets less interested, and the costs involved in selling start eating into the proceeds.

Related posts:

Tax bill for selling your business clarified

Exit strategy - a practical guide to selling your business

Date: Tuesday 17th June 2008

Time: FREE Exhibition with workshops 1.00pm to 5.30pm, Public presentation 5.30pm to 8.00pm

Venue: Grosvenor House, Glengall St, Belfast BT12 5AD

Status: PRIME event

Essential Enterprise Day is a free PRIME event for anyone over 50 who is thinking of starting a business or planning to be self-employed. There is an exhibition in the afternoon, with a programme of free workshops, followed by a free seminar in the evening.

You will need to book in advance for both the afternoon workshops and the evening presentation to be sure of a place. The booking form is here. But you can drop-in to the exhibition.

At the exhibition starting at 1.00pm you will be able to get advice, support and information from local experts in self-employment and business start-up. The programme of free afternoon workshops covers the basics of self-employment, making your business profitable and the ins-and-outs of tax.

In the evening from 6:30pm to 8:00pm there will be a presentation by Tom Edge, a world-class inspirational speaker, on his tips for conquering ageism and setting up a successful business when you are over 50.

This again is free, but please book in advance for the workshops and evening presentation. Book your place with this form or
email prime@ace.org.uk to book

What’s more, every afternoon workshop attendee* will receive a FREE copy of the award winning Essential Business Guide , worth £24.95. The guide has assembled the combined knowledge of 32 highly-experienced business experts, and is the perfect reference guide for you if you’re just starting out, or if you’ve been in business for many years. *max one per delegate.

PLUS: If you attend the evening presentation you will receive a free 28 page Starting in Business Guide worth £5.95 - the ideal starting point for anyone thinking of becoming self-employed.

More details of the Essential Enterprise Day programme below.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s now possible for anyone to freely access a huge resource library created for small businesses and startups by a consortium of UK universities. You can go straight to the search and browse page of the collection, called VentureNavigator, without having to register or login.

The content includes:

1. Accounting
2. Advisors
3. Angel Investors
4. Brand
5. Business Model
6. Business Plan
7. Communication
8. Compensation
9. Competition
10. Customers
11. Distribution
12. Entrepreneurship
13. Equity
14. Finance
15. Fundraising
16. Human Resources
17. Innovation
18. Intellectual Property
19. Leadership
20. Legal
21. Management
22. Marketing
23. Markets
24. Networking
25. Operations
26. Partnerships
27. Pricing
28. Production
29. Regulatory
30. Revenue
31. Risk
32. Sales
33. Strategy
34. Team
35. Valuations
36. Venture Capital

VentureNavigator is funded by the UK government and was developed by a consortium that includes the universities of Essex, Cambridge, Leeds, Liverpool, Glasgow, Warwick and the Open University. Library House, a research company founded by Doug Richard of Dragon’s Den fame is also involved.

As well as using the resources you can also sign up for free assessments and feedback - though you do have to register for these.

Libraries can be of great use when researching your business. They can help you form an overview of your market, find likely competitors or even research prospective clients, or do more specialised things like check company names and trademarks or find journalists who might be interested in your venture.

Some of the bigger libraries have extensive collections of directories and hold market research reports that would cost a fortune to buy or access online, but which you can view for free if you actually go along to the library.

The City Business Library, located in the City of London near Moorgate, is the largest specialised public reference library in the country dedicated to practical business information. You can use it for free and there are no membership requirements.

More on the collections

More on services for startups

The library runs regular 40-minute tours and longer two-hour workshops on how to find stuff, which are free.

Here are some dates for upcoming workshops on using the market research collection, all starting at 9.30 in the morning.

Thursday 17 April 2008
Thursday 8 May
Wednesday 21 May
Tuesday 10 June
Wednesday 9 July
Thursday 31 July
Tuesday 12 August

To book a place on any of these courses,  telephone the City Business Library on 020 7332 1812 or email cbl@cityoflondon.gov.uk

The British Library, located between Euston and Kings Cross stations in London, runs a regular programme of workshops on business and intellectual property topics.

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

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

Many past talks by inspirational entrepreneurs are available in the podcast area of the site.

The library itself 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 people from across the UK.

Most small business owners would reject the offers made on TV’s Dragons’ Den, according to a poll by accounting software firm Kashflow. Almost two-thirds of the firms participating felt they could get a better deal elsewhere. The Dragons typically offer cash in return for taking a hefty equity stake.

The research revealed that business owners do not believe that the deals offered by the five Dragons represent good value for money. Instead they would turn to a bank in the expectation of getting a more reasonable rate on a loan, or private backers in the hope of retaining a larger percentage of their own business in an equity deal.

Of those who would take the offer, the most popular reason was to benefit from the experience of the Dragons, followed by the opportunity to grow fast and the PR benefits.

Full story

Some 800,000 people between 50 and state pension age are currently inactive but want to work, according to a new report commissioned by PRIME and written by leading economist Christopher Smallwood.

The majority of new businesses are created by people in their forties and fifties - indeed business owners aged over 50 account for 15 per cent of all business start-ups in England and Wales.

Companies started by older people have a 70 per cent chance of surviving the first five years, compared with only 28 per cent for younger people. Yet the report finds that finance for Jobcentre’s New Deal self-employment programme for the over 50s has been reduced.

“It is worth putting real money behind a drive to re-employ economically inactive over-50s”, says the report’s author Christopher Smallwood.

“In order to reintroduce them to the workforce, two things are needed: (1) widespread changes in employers’ practices relating to training, retention and recruitment, and (2) a more proactive approach from Government agencies to help people back to work, particularly in the area of self-employment.”

The report says that there are still a greater number of complaints about age discrimination in the workplace than about any other form of discrimination. However, the solution does not necessarily lie in more legislation.

What is required, argues Smallwood, is a change in attitudes and practices of employers both in the public and private sector, together with a greater focus on the possibilities for self-employment.

Self-employment also has an important role to play. A self-created job can put an individual back in control of their lives and build on the skills, experience and knowledge acquired over a life-time.

However, for people coming off benefits some significant poverty traps remain that make test trading difficult. “The confusion with HMRC needs to be resolved very quickly”, says Smallwood. At the moments it’s “confusing even to the advisers trying to explain the system”.

Smallwood report full text

Smallwood report executive summary

Christopher Smallwood is a leading UK economist, and has held a wide range of senior positions in government, industry, banking and media. He is a Member of the Competition Commission and until April 2005 he was Chief Economic Adviser to Barclays plc.

PRIME has published “Encouraging older entrepreneurship” a report on how best to help older people starting or running their own businesses. It looks into the support needs of those entering self-employment after the age of 50, and at what PRIME and its partners can realistically do to help.

The study coincides with an unusual period of turmoil in the business support sector. Major changes in how support is funded and who provides it have unintentionally created new difficulties to individuals seeking to start their own businesses.

The production of this report, written in-house by PRIME, has been partially-funded by the Equal Diversity in Practice project, which is in turn paid for from the European Social Fund.

Only half of Britain’s small firms have a web site, according to the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB). But ALL of the visitors to this site taking part in a recent PRIME mini poll either had a web site or planned one.

Does your business have a web site of its own?

• Yes 48% (22 votes)
• No - it doesn’t need one 0% (0 votes)
• Not yet but planning one 52% (24 votes)

Source: visitors to www.primebusinessclub.com

The two sets of figures may be compatible. Both polls show an approximately 50:50 split between web-site haves and have-nots. The different interpretations put on this may be like the proverbial half-empty or half-full glass.

Those commenting on the FSB poll have tended to take a half-empty view, decrying small firm’s lack of Internet ambition.

But since the PRIME poll also asked whether people were planning to set one up in the future, it is possible that the missing web sites may only be temporary - just something that people haven’t got round to yet.

Many of PRIME’s visitors have good reason to wait, as they haven’t yet set their businesses up either, or have only done so recently. So they may have other things to get sorted out first, before leaping into cyberspace.

If anything the mini-poll shows a vivid awareness among older entrepreneurs about how valuable a web site can be in business, with none of them saying it isn’t needed.

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.

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.

There are several free on-line directories that are useful both for finding services you require and for researching the local competition.

Near.co.uk is a good example, and one of the simplest and quickest to use. It provides a straightforward list of businesses by type and town. For example:

Wedding services near Widnes
Chain saws near Chepstow
Car auctions near Carshalton

The data for Near’s listings comes from Thomson local directories, so it’s generally up to date. What’s good about Near is that it presents the information in a simple and clear way.

Yell is the Yellow Pages equivalent. The interface is a bit more cluttered but you can plot results on a map. On some of the examples we tried it seemed to have fewer entries than Thomson-based Near. But it is a more a intelligent system than Near, and will suggest a range of different sorts of supplier that might, for example, offer chain saws for example, rather than giving up after finding only one result.

But probably the best of the simple listing sites is - rather surprisingly, BT’s online phone book. This now has an excellent business look-up function. It’s fast, returns numerous results, and will suggest other relevant categories. Here’s the chain-saws in Chepstow query for example.

This service is free for “personal use”, and you can increase the number of results per page up to 50 in the preferences menu. So you could obtain the details of lots of businesses.

Thomson Local, the source of Near’s data, is another site well suited for compiling big lists. Compared to Near you need to think a bit more when using it. For example it returned no results for a simple query about car auctions in Carshalton - because strictly speaking there aren’t any. But if you manually widen your area of search to Surrey or the South East it starts finding them. So it’s a bit literal in how it handle queries. But it has vast amounts of data and is good for scanning large areas of the country.

There are limitations on using any of these sites for compiling big lists. Partly these are practical. Thomson Local for instance limits the results returned to 200 in any one search, so if you are looking for a very popular category like pubs in the South East it will miss a lot.

There may also be restrictions in the terms of use that seek to prohibit you from using the data from the web site “for any kind of direct marketing, telemarketing or electronic marketing”. Whether or not these are enforceable in law is a moot point, but if you use the site heavily you may find it stops working.

What’s going on here is that many of these firms have other paid-for products that they would rather sell you for compiing big lists. These can be more convenient and indeed cost effective, by for example allowing you to sort on more criteria so that less of your mailing effort is wasted.

Returning to what’s available for free, UpMyStreet is a more elaborate site going well beyond a directory, but it’s worth investigating as it offers others sorts of free information that may be useful for your business. You can simply use its Find My Nearest feature - here’s the results it returns for car auctions near Carshalton, which are displayed by default on a map.

But it can also tell you much more about a neighbourhood in response to a post code or town name. This includes a brief free Acorn profile - Acorn is a marketing system that attempts to describe the type of people you can expect to find in the area, including their likely income level, age, the sort of homes they live in and some of their consumer interests. Here’s what it thinks of the residents of Chepstow.

Elsewhere on the site you can find out about local property prices and crime statistics. Obviously these features are mainly aimed at home buyers. But they are also of interest when researching likely areas for customers or premises.

About a quarter of the people who have contacted PRIME over the last two years kindly filled in a form giving some details about themselves. The responses have now been analysed and here’s what you told us.

The results were independently analysed for PRIME by Professor Mark Hart from Kingston University Business School.

The purpose of this kind of formal monitoring exercise is twofold. Firstly it re-assures our supporters that PRIME, a charity, is reaching the people it should be reaching. And secondly it enables us to spot gaps where we should be doing more.

Of course this isn’t the only way we get feedback. Indeed, you are very welcome to email us at any time or post comments in the forums.

Citizen’s Advice (formerly The Citizen’s Advice Bureau) is asking people for their experiences with Working Tax Credit. This is to enable the charity to lobby government more effectively for changes in the scheme.  Last year CABs across the UK dealt with more than 150,000 tax credit problems.

Citizens Advice is in fact a network of independent charities that help people resolve their money, legal and other problems by providing information and advice and by influencing policymakers. 

Two thirds (67 per cent) of sole traders have no plans for the future of their businesses in the event that they become incapacitated or die, according to research conducted by MORI for Barclays Financial Planning.

Planning for such contingencies is more common among those over the age of 55, but even among this age group 25 per cent had yet to make any plans for the future of their business should anything happen to them. Almost half said they felt it was “too soon to think about it”.