Business
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Are New Companies House Rules A Trap For Directors?
If you’re a company director in the UK and you’ve been ignoring those emails from Companies House about identity verification, it’s time to stop. As of 18 November 2025, every director and Person with Significant Control (PSC) must verify their identity using biometric data – and the consequences of non-compliance aren’t just annoying, they’re potentially…
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“AI Curious” Why Jargon Won’t Grow Your Business
Most of what’s written about AI for business is theatre. It looks smart, it flatters the writer, and it leaves the average business owner no clearer on what to do when they open the laptop tomorrow morning. The line that set this article off was a perfect example, a headline promising to take organisations “from…
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The National Insurance Disaster Nobody Wants to Admit
In Brief: From April 2025, employer National Insurance contributions jumped from 13.8% to 15%, while the threshold dropped from £9,100 to £5,000 per employee. For businesses employing people on £20,000, costs rose 50% overnight. The result has been immediate: 27% of companies postponed or cancelled recruitment, 16% made redundancies, and 19% froze pay reviews. Oxford…
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When Warmth Replaces Worth in Business Relationships
Over the last few years, I’ve noticed a pattern. Not in one person, not in one industry, but across certain business and networking spaces where everything gets framed as support, community, and mutual uplift. On the surface, it all looks positive. Friendly faces. Encouraging words. People showing up to each other’s events, workshops, launches. Endless…
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Stop Giving Away Convenience for Free – It’s Killing Your Business
You buy a packet of biscuits. Fifty pence. Lovely. But then you see a ‘convenient’ version, the same biscuits, but individually wrapped inside a bigger packet. Now it’s £1.50. You’re getting half the biscuits for three times the price because some marketing genius knows you’re too lazy to carry a Tupperware box. And you pay…
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10 Tips for Effective Digital Marketing
In today’s digital landscape, having a strong online presence is essential for businesses of all sizes. Here are 10 tips to help you create an effective digital marketing strategy. 1. Define Clear Goals Before diving into digital marketing, establish clear, measurable goals. Whether you want to increase website traffic, generate leads, or boost sales, having…
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Pretending You Know Everything Makes You Sound Like a Knob
This is a personal reflection on a workplace I used to work at for over 20 years – where the boss was always right and disagreed with experts hired for their knowledge and expertise. Knob. Imagine this… You’re sat in a meeting. Someone asks a question. Your brain goes blank, but your mouth opens anyway.…
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Evolve or Become Irrelevant
If You Still Think “Word of Mouth” Will Save You, You Deserve the Wake-Up Call That’s Coming Once Upon a Time in a Business Far, Far Too Comfortable Back in the early 2000s, I worked for a local giant. One of those companies that made the rest look like they were playing shop in their…
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What GDPR Could Mean to Your Online Business Activities
Well, we made it. We got through all the scaremongering and the what ifs and maybes and we lived through the arrival, the official arrival of the General Data Protection Regulation (the GDPR as we will call it until it’s changed to GDPR-UK or whatever it becomes in the UK after Brexit). Gosh that was…
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Why Hire Experts If You Won’t Listen to Them?
Damn, why don’t business owners actually listen to the experts they hire? I don’t like calling myself an expert. Feels a bit wanky, if I’m honest. But I am hired for my expertise, experience, and knowledge in online marketing, websites, content, and keeping companies at the sharp end of what’s happening. That’s the job. That’s…