This week saw the remaining candidates wandering the streets of London trying to sell a variety of items ranging from a vintage pair of shoes to a first edition book and a skeleton. It was a fairly dull episode this week as there wasn’t an awful lot of "business" content (but then again there seems [...]

Over the last couple of months I’ve been experimenting with growing my own fruit, vegetables and salad. It turns out I’m pretty good with lettuce – we’re now eating it with more or less every meal – but not so good with strawberries. We’re still waiting to see how everything else does. I’m not really [...]

How often have you met a prospect, spent time doing all the right things (asking open questions, getting to the root of the issue, fleshing out a solution, positioning yourself as the only viable supplier ….) only for your carefully qualified great prospect to decide to do nothing? This happens when we miss out crucial [...]

This week The Apprentice 2009 candidates were tasked with creating a marketing campaign for a new breakfast cereal. The campaign should include a character and they have to produce a box and TV advert. Sounds reasonable, so off they all ran to do some market research. Except they didn’t, they wandered off to brainstorm. In [...]

A reader asks: Can you suggest any creative business ideas that my wife and I can pursue? We’re both creative people who want to start our own home based business. Well I’d argue that all entrepreneurs are creative, the act of starting a business is itself a creative act. I’m not alone either, the well [...]

In February, according to The Times B & Q reported a 5.9% drop in UK sales and noted that heavy discounting had depressed it’s profit margins. Like many other businesses B & Q is obviously feeling the effects of the recession/credit crunch. So what has B & Q been doing about it? Well they slashing [...]

This instalment of The Apprentice saw the candidates tasked with making two new natural beauty products, which they’d spend the second day of the task selling to the public in central London. In theory it’s an easy task as the profit margins (as Sir Alan Sugar reminds them) on beauty products are very high – [...]

400 Latest & Greatest Small Business Ideas From Around The World is a collection of over 400 small business ideas, which it claims are the latest, greatest and newest small business ideas from around the world. However 400 Latest & Greatest Small Business Ideas From Around The World doesn’t just contain business ideas. The first [...]

The third episode of The Apprentice had the candidates invent and pitch a novel piece of fitness equipment. The product was supposed to retail at £30 or under and be targeted at those who don’t want (or can’t afford) to pay for "those fancy gyms". This time the teams were mixed up a bit so [...]

In January 2007 I decided that the business to business magazine I’d started during 2006 wasn’t the right business idea for me to be pursuing. As I’d had some interest in the magazine from a potential buyer I didn’t want to just fold the business if it could be sold (or even given) to another [...]