Running a business

Staff, premises, contracts, customers and the hours. The parts of running a business that nobody warns you about until they have already happened.

How to choose where to open. The cheap unit at the end of the parade is cheap because nobody walks past it. Rent is the second question. Who goes by, and why, is the first.
Reading a commercial lease before you sign it. Full repairing and insuring means the roof is yours. A break clause you cannot satisfy is not a break clause. Read these five things before the pen comes out.
Pricing is a decision, not a calculation. Your first price becomes your ceiling, and the customers who choose you on price are the ones who leave on price. Costs tell you the floor and nothing else.
When to stop doing everything yourself. You are the constraint. A manager costs margin and buys hours, and the business only survives the trade if you actually let go of the things you hand over.
Every British business has a bad January. December takes the money and February spends it. Planning a year as twelve equal months is how a business that trades well still runs out of cash in week six.
What has to be in a contract of employment. A written statement of particulars is due on or before the first day, not after probation. Some of the clauses people copy from the internet are not enforceable.
Six ways a first hire goes wrong. Most first hires fail for reasons decided before the person started. No job description, no induction, no review, and a salary set by affection rather than by value.
The insurance you need and the insurance you are sold. One policy is required by law and can be fined daily. Most of the rest is judgement, and the useful reading is the exclusions rather than the cover summary.
Franchise or independent. A franchise fee buys a system and a queue of customers who already know the name. It also buys a rulebook you cannot change and an exit priced by somebody else.
Buying a business that already exists. The accounts look fine, the lease has six years to run and the seller wants out because of his knees. Here is what to check before you believe any of it.
Marketing for a business nobody has heard of. You have opened, the sign is up, and nobody knows. The cheapest marketing a British small business can do is mostly unglamorous and mostly free.
The second site is a different business. The first shop works because you are in it. The second one is a test of whether the business exists without you, and most owners find out the answer too late.
Making somebody redundant, properly. Redundancy is about the job disappearing, not the person. Get that distinction wrong and what you have is an unfair dismissal with a cheque attached.
Health and safety without the folder of nonsense. Nobody has ever been prosecuted for having a thin risk assessment folder. They get prosecuted for the thing in the corner everybody had stopped noticing.
Employing family, and the paperwork nobody does. Putting your daughter on the payroll is legal and often sensible. Doing it with no contract, no timesheet and a wage that suits the tax is the expensive version.
The agreement you write while you still like each other. Two founders, fifty shares each, and no document. It works until one of them stops turning up, and then there is no mechanism at all for anything.
Taking on an apprentice. A small firm that has never paid the apprenticeship levy can still have most of the training bill paid for it. The part nobody budgets for is the time.
Sick pay, and the week you have to cover anyway. Statutory sick pay is a fraction of a wage and you cannot reclaim it. The expensive part is not the payment. It is that the work still has to be done.

Running a business

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