Running your own business shouldn’t mean running yourself into the ground. Unfortunately, stress, and stress-related illness, is extremely common among entrepreneurs. So, here are 10 tips to help you spot and control your stress levels. Headaches – stress often comes with headaches. If you start developing frequent headaches, it could be time to take a break and de-stress. Nervousness – some nerves can be good to help you ace a big pitch, but feeling nervous before any small task could be a sign of stress. Drinking – coffee or alcohol. Too much of either won’t help your stress levels in the long run, no matter how it may feel at the time. Mood – are you finding that people are finding you difficult to be with? You’re getting irritable more and more easily? You guessed it – another symptom of stress! Your body – your body will let you know when stress is getting the better of you. As well as the headaches you might find sleeping increasing difficult, that you need to go to the loo more and more often, and you might develop of wind issue (yes, flatulence can be a sign of stress). Be realistic – look at your goals and try to be realistic with what you can do. Of course, you’re going to feel stressed if you have 2 weeks of work to do, but you’ve only budgeted a day to do it in! Be realistic with your customers too. If you tell them two weeks and it takes two weeks, everyone is happy. If you tell them two days and it takes two weeks, you’re stressed, the customer is stressed and no-one’s happy. Exercise – work off your stress through exercise. It really does work! It can be a great time to think, too, and may help you work better once you’re done. Share – talk to someone who will support you. This could be a friend, a partner, or a parent – anyone who will listen! Sometimes just talking through your problems helps to lighten them. Charities – there are charities set up specifically to help people deal with stress and mental illness where you can find support and advice. Professionals – Stress can affect both your mental and physical health, so don’t be afraid to seek professional help. Stress levels tend to rise gradually so it can often be hard to spot when you transition from healthy, motivational nerves, to unhealthily stressed. Pay attention to your body and take time to relax. Stress can make you far less effective, so don’t think of de-stressing as wasted time, but as charging your batteries for the next challenge.

Yesterday afternoon, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, announced the Autumn Budget. The budget was marked by increased spending commitments which the Chancellor claimed were possible due to quicker economic recovery from COVID-19 than had been predicted. Among these commitments were £2 billion for schools and £6 billion for the NHS. There were also plenty of announcements that directly affect SMEs: · For those in the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors, the Chancellor has announced a 50% cut in business rates up to a total of £110,000 for the period 2022-2023. · The planned increase in fuel duty has been cancelled due to the already increasing fuel costs. · The National Living Wage will increase to £9.50 an hour with the National Minimum Wage also increasing. The rate for apprentices has also increased from £4.30 to £4.81 per hour. · Inflation is forecasted to rise by 4% over the next year. · Annual Investment Allowance of £1 million is extended to 31 March 2023 · Six-month extension of the Recovery Loan Scheme. · Provision of funding to allow the British Business Bank to continue to support SMEs, including £660m for the Northern Powerhouse investment fund. · As announced earlier in the year, National Insurance contributions by employees, employers, and the self-employed are set to increase by 1.25%. Each business will have different needs and will be affected by these announcements differently. If you need help understanding these changes, or taking advantage of the benefits offered, contact the SME Centre of Excellence.

When entering a new market, you need to research. Without planning or knowing what you’re doing, chances are that you aren’t going to make it big. This is the same for most instances, actually. Below are some questions you should ask yourself, and others, before starting something new. Would you buy it? - If you were in the customer's shoes, would you really pay that price for this product? Is it appealing enough, would it stand out in front of competitors? Would you come back for more? If not, why not? Fix that. Would they buy it? - Assume whether people are going to buy your product or not. If you think no to this question, re-evaluate why you are doing this. Maybe even ask others to gain a better perspective. Who already does it? - Check online trade directories, look at who’s offering similar items already. Go into stores and view related items. Does your product have an advantage over these? Look at the size of the market you’re entering, there could be sales everywhere you go for similar goods. Where is it done best? - Find your largest competitor. Have a look at the most popular selling items in the market, and take note as to how they sell them. Go surprise shopping, there’s nothing wrong with posing as a customer, buying from your competitors and seeing how they do it. It’s a great insight for your future systems. Is there a market? - It’s extremely hard to come up with an entirely new idea these days, so if there’s nothing that already exists, start to be cautious, and check over everything. Best to let someone else pioneer a similar venture and improve upon it. Or, if you’re very sure and want to start immediately, lucky you! Click here to get more support when starting your business venture.

In truth, to grow your business, you can’t do all the work forever. So the next step is to find some employees and have them do some of your old work for you, you’re much too busy now anyways. You might feel guilty at first, but this is a necessary step to progressing forward. So how do you delegate this responsibility responsibly? Make it clear – Clearly explain exactly what you want done, when it needs to be done, and why. Leave zero confusion. Train – Investing the time into showing how to do it and demonstrating examples is a very efficient way for your employees to learn quickly. Encourage innovation – You can’t always be right. Listen to your employees ideas and sample them, they might be much better than your own. Avoid blaming – No one is perfect immediately, expect some initial mistakes and issues and deal with them calmly and patiently. Follow routine – Make motions operational, routine practice is important to getting this right. Empower – Give your employees a little power to make some choices. Eventually they will needed to be trusted to do this anyways. Just make sure they’re trained up first. Don’t interfere – Now it’s delegated, you need to trust your employees to do it without you, only help if asked. This also encourages communication. Make a list – Plan in advance of all your tasks, and choose the ones that can be delegated. Lists are a great motivation to work through. Some day, give your employees a task you think normally only you could do, they may surprise you. Explore new things – If you can delegate all your tasks, this is a prime time to explore what can be done in addition for your business with all your newly found personal time. Review – Let your delegates know how well they’re doing, what they need to improve on, and how they can do so. This motivates your employees to trying harder, and once they improve, you can delegate more.

Starting a new business is not easy. You need to be able to see your venture all the way through. Here are ten qualities to hold to help your business grow. Vision – Without a clear picture of what you want your future to look like, it will be difficult to create it. Think about every detail possible to bring forward your dreams. Determination – Deal with all your doubts before you start, and commit to your goals, it becomes difficult to turn back. Fitness – You can’t afford to be sick when you work for yourself, take the time to take care of yourself. Mental Health – Starting a business is stressful and you need to be resilient. Stay calm and at peace with yourself, progressively overcome any barriers to prevent yourself being overwhelmed. Curiosity – Take an interest in every situation possible, the more knowledge on your new venture the better. Cash – Inevitably your business will take some time before you earn a decent wage off it. The bigger the cash reserve, the longer you can wait before drawing income from your new business. Flexibility – Starting a new business tends to be a solitary movement, be prepared to fill in any role necessary. Humour – You're going to make some mistakes, just like everyone else does, no one's perfect. The ability to laugh it off, learn from it quickly and move on, will help keep you going. Caution – Not everything is an opportunity, sometimes it’s difficult to spot threats to your growth. Don’t be risk averse, but stay cautious. Generosity – When you find success, repay those that helped you along the way. Giving back and investing in those who made it possible will make it all the more worthwhile. Stay passionate about what you do, keep focused, and don’t let faults break you down. We are here to help your business start, survive and thrive! If you are looking for expert support, please feel free to reach out to our team for a quick chat.

You can establish a unique identity for your business based on the product and service you offer, as well as, intangible factors such as customer values. This unique identity will help you stand out from the crowd and it can be valued highly amongst customers. Creating your business identity on intangible factors is likely to be more sustainable for business growth as these cannot be replicated. When it comes to differentiation, there is a cost attached so make sure the customer benefits are outweighing the additional costs to make this sustainable.

Whilst all start-ups need product awareness, the way this is done depends on how you are launching your business, and what type of business it is. With any product or service launch, it is important to get the right message to prospective customers. You should convey to your target market that you have a proposition that meets some need or want that is currently unmet, or is better than ones currently owned. The more interesting the product or service, the more likely you are to gain genuine public interest. Existing companies can use PR as an in when introducing a new product to a new market. Big enough deals will attract news on their own, meaning the PR has a natural advantage. However, relying on just PR is not recommended. The public deciding how much the product awareness is spread out and in what spotlight can be intimidating, as the public can be unpredictable and inaccurate. For example, Apple make sure they control what the media is told when a new product is about to be released, and then host their own reveal event, of course using Apple as an example is extreme given their huge name. Some businesses get lucky and have a celebrity launch their product, or similarly the product blows up on social media, attracting millions of views. You can endorse and persuade a celeb or influencer to promote your product, but remember any PR issues will affect both parties involved, and the price will always be high. If cost is an issue, check out some newspapers. Many run regular small business pages and journalists look for inspirational stories to fill in their pages. Following this, creating a name for your product through social media is very cost effective, and has an incredible power of spreading awareness if items go viral etc. Your business should have social media set up as a basis anyways, so this shouldn’t be too hard to configure into your schedule. The steadiest, risk-free way to spread awareness is to tell your target market segment about your product/service, note the benefits for them as customers – why to purchase it, and where they can buy it. Create sufficient curiosity with honesty, that’s the best recipe for success.

There never seems to be enough time to get the thousands of jobs on your to-do list done. Here are ten ways to get more out of each day. Make a list – at the end of each day, list all the things you must do tomorrow, then write rate them by order of priority. Now you don’t need to waste half an hour tomorrow morning remembering everything before you can even get started. Treat yourself – you need to reward yourself for all your hard work. Buy your favourite chocolate bar to reward yourself for finishing that task you’ve been putting off, or save the jobs you actually enjoy doing to pick you up after all the boring stuff! Check reality – be realistic. Things always take longer than you expect them to, especially paperwork. Budget in an hour or two every day as reaction time for things that take longer than expected, or tasks that get sprung on you suddenly. Prepare for the weekend – try to wrap up as many of the week’s tasks as you can on Friday afternoon so you don’t spend the weekend feeling guilty for every hour off. You’ll be able to relax much better knowing that everything important can wait until Monday. Do what you love – if you love your work, you’ll want to spend time on it and it might not even feel like work. If you don’t love it… maybe you should re-think why you started this business. Set an agenda – for arranged meetings, create an agenda and send it out. This will help you and participants prepare your thoughts beforehand and help your meeting stay on track. Avoid interruptions – turn off your email notifications and turn on your answering machine. Budget in time to check them all at once rather than constantly interrupting your other important work. Clear the desk – don’t pile tasks up on the desk to get in your way and distract you. Put everything away and only get it out when you need it. This saves time on tidying and cleaning as well. Time yourself – spend a week or two timing yourself. Are you spending 10 minutes on a phone call chatting when your business was done in the first 5? Where else can you identify time wasting? Be assertive – Control your conversations; use your selling skills to extract commitments; walk that chatty customer to the door instead of letting them decide when they leave; sometimes you just need to accept that your time is precious and refuse to let other people waste it for you!

Unless you are developing a completely new, never-before-seen industry, you will find that your business slots into a pre-existing industry. Each industry is made up of the group of firms that supplies a market or markets. Each market is slightly different and companies in the same industry could still be serving completely different market segments. Understanding your specific industry and market segment can help you develop the most effective strategy for success. Once you understand where the competition, risks and opportunities are you will be better prepared to enter your chosen market. To help you, here are several ways that markets/industries can be described. Industry/market life-cycle stages: Completely new (market paradigm shift) – a completely new market based on radical innovation. It is a high-risk market as its longevity has not been proven but can bring high rewards with a lack of competitors and first mover advantage allowing the possibility of market dominance. Marketing costs can be high to attract customers to a market that they have never needed before and processes and procedures are yet to be developed. Emerging – a market where demand is proven but size is still uncertain and processes and procedures are still developing. Competition in an emerging market can be fierce as dominant brands emerge with aggressive marketing strategies and competitive pricing. There are opportunities for development and innovation to begin leading the market. Mature – a large market with established demand and processes but where growth may be slow or non-existent. Competitors will be well established and it can be difficult to break into, however, the limited innovation means that there are significant innovation opportunities. Declining – a market that has well established processes and buying patterns but is steadily losing both customers and competitors and so has a limited life expectancy. As competitors drop out, innovation and product range declines which can present opportunities if demand is still high enough. Buying out competitors could allow a business to consolidate the market. There could also be opportunities to cut production costs to reflect reducing demand. Competitor concentration: Fragmented – a market with a large number of similarly sized, established competitors, usually leading to competitive pricing and limited profitability. There could be the opportunity to buy out competitors to create a market that is… Consolidated – a market in which a few, large competitors dominate causing high barriers to entry including the ability to price defensively. Radical innovation would be needed to successfully break into a consolidated market. Geographic extent: Local, regional, or national – are markets, often new and emerging that trades solely in one geographic region though they may become international in time. Smaller geographic markets make market dominance easier and careful expansion. Global – a market that is international from the start (increasingly common through the Internet). Going global immediately can give a first-mover advantage, or allow a niche market to thrive, however, it can also be expensive to establish.

Next week sees the culmination of months of hard work as the first cohort of the Tees Valley Business Hub Pitch Perfect programme deliver their presentations to potential investors. Pitch Perfect – Access to Finance is a programme that has been delivered by Tees Valley Business Hub (TVBH) in association with Grow Tees Valley over the summer, to enable Tees Valley-based businesses to confidently and effectively pitch their businesses to investors. Over the next two years of running the programme, TVBH hopes to use Pitch Perfect to raise £2million of finance, create 100 jobs and support 60 high growth companies, all in the Tees Valley. The pioneering cohort consist of seven businesses with high growth potential, representing a spectrum of sectors from soft drinks, to SaaS, to hydrogen technology. Over the past few months, TVBH has worked closely with each business owner, in collaboration with other specialists in disciplines including presentation skills, finance and law, to fully equip and ready these businesses to pitch to investors. The pitch is the final challenge after months of hard work, and businesses will be pitching to a panel of guest investors, hoping to gain investment and funding to continue growing their companies. To make things even more challenging , the businesses will be pitching digitally and all teaching and learning has also been completed online. Luckily, renowned local actor Craig Conway was on hand to give them some presenting tips. “Craig was able to help me identify what I needed to do to better present Odyssea to potential investors and gave me some advice on techniques to relax and centre myself to deliver the presentation,” says Peter Holdsworth, owner of Odyssea App. The cohort are excited at the prospect of finally being able to put all their learning into action. “It has been so enjoyable to focus on how to deliver [my pitch],” Mags Bradshaw, Pitch Perfect participant and Managing Director of My Marketing Button says. “I’ve learnt so much, including what investors look for, and how to extract the key points from my business that will support me in the future.” Pitch Day next week will be an exciting opportunity for the seven Pitch Perfect businesses as well as continued investment in the Tees Valley.

Preparing the business plan is the essential first step to your new business. It should be: concise, emotional, logical, factual, and realistic. The plan you write needs to be so relevant and useful that it becomes part of your business management. Here are ten things every business plan should contain: Vision – What makes this business opportunity so exciting to you, your potential customers, suppliers, and investors? Keep your mind focused on the end goal. Background – What has happened in the world for you to think this venture is the right thing to do right now? Relate to it. Goals – Success will look like this: turnover, profit, customer numbers. People – Who is in your team and how do they add value to their job? Products – What are you going to sell and how will your products/services evolve to changes in the market and adapt to feedback? Competition – How will you be different from others? Discover how you’ll stand out from the crowd. The differences are crucially important. Marketing – How will you purvey the benefits of what you offer to your target market? Funding – How will it all be paid for? Are you relying on investors? How much do you need of them and what can they expect in return? Measurement – Measure your performance. Figure out and kinks and issues and the best way to resolve them. Jumping Ship – Never plan for failure, but keep an exit strategy just in case. Also, keep in mind the end of your business's life cycle, what will you do with it then?

That moment when you jump out the bath shouting ‘Eureka!’ very rarely happens by chance. Instead, it takes planning and research to look for opportunities in a market and design innovative ways to meet these opportunities. Successful entrepreneurial firms such as Google and Samsung don’t just throw out ideas randomly, but they have a systematic process for developing systems that meet commercial opportunities. To find that one great idea, you’ll probably have to think of at least ten not-so-great ideas. It has been estimated that, even at the developmental stage, only one out of eleven ideas will be successfully launched. And even then, that idea still needs to be perfected and modified both before and after launch. So, you will still be generating new ideas even after you have designed your initial product. Most of the time, you can never be sure if an idea will be a success or not until you launch it. It can be a good idea to minimise your risks when you do this, though. A trial launch, for example, might be a good idea if your business doesn’t have any established competitors. Is the reason for that simply that there is no demand? Market research might help you in an established market sector, but new products and services might not get a full response as people do not understand what is being offered. Steve Jobs, for example, preferred to rely on his own insight rather than rely on market research and focus groups. Would you have been able to give the same feedback on a prototype iPhone in 2005 that you could give now? How can you find a business opportunity? Sometimes you will have to create one: a new, radical innovation will need a niche carved out of the existing market. On the other hand, smaller innovations can be slotted in the gaps. Examine the existing markets to spot the opportunities of unfulfilled need there. This method is much easier than creating opportunity and can be equally profitable.