Ok, so it’s easy to congratulate the winners from the ACE NPO review but the next question is how do we help those who are on the blunt end of the dis-investment? Well, the Culture Benchmark can certainly help you explore the business models of organisations in your sector, region and of a similar size Read the full article…
Tag Archives: planning
The value of benchmarking when the past is not an indicator of the future
We’ve been talking to various people who are considering using the Culture Benchmark because they are going through significant infrastructural change. The challenge for an organisation who is refurbishing their building or moving into new and different facilities. The challenge here is that if you’ve been running a 350 seater theatre and you will soon Read the full article…
how do I ring fence monies for research and development?
Having decided to invest research and development to build your creative business, how to you ensure monies set aside for R&D are used correctly? Here are some tips from MyCake
Advice for the Recently Redundant
This is the first in a series of posts for those who have recently left the corporate world and are considering their alternatives. We will make a number of assumptions about such folks including: you have 10-20 years experience demonstrable success in your chosen field and a clear skill set be it in sales, marketing, Read the full article…
What’s the difference between your ideal rate and the minimum you’ll accept?
In the last post on the subject of how you price time, we looked at what your ideal daily rate would be. In this post we’ll look at how you might actually offer a range of rates (you might not publish this but you might negotiate it) depending on what the work is and how Read the full article…
How much time can you sell?
This post is aimed at those businesses who essentially sell their time (and the time of others) and looks at what assumptions you can make about how much time you can realistically sell per annum. Q1 – What would you like to earn per annum? Let’s start with the simple version i.e. a freelancer or Read the full article…
How to create a budget (plus a free tool)
Here are a few simple tasks to help you create a budget for your business, to get control of your finances and make the numbers valuable. Plus free tool.
Do you have enough income to enjoy Christmas and the January sales?

Wouldn’t it be great if you had a better idea of what your forward income looks like?
Here’s a process to help you achieve exactly that.
Can the Christmas staff party give you more than a hangover?
Hopefully it’s not too early to ask you “what’s the point of a Christmas staff party?” You’re probably starting to plan one even if it is just drinks after work one evening.
There are some obvious things like thanking the staff and freelancers for their hard work, relief that you’ve got through a tough year etc. etc.
However, if you’re smart, there are some other messages you could be communicating and feedback you could be soliciting.
Do you have a vision for what 2010 will bring?
first part in a business planning series on setting your goals and vision for the coming year.