I am probably a lot like you, in that I receive numerous email and hard copy newsletters on a daily basis. Sometimes I give them a quick scan to see if there is anything interesting, or if I’m busy, I file them to read later, but somehow never seem to have the time to read them later! Eventually I simply ‘file’ them.

However, I have received a couple in the past week that really caught my attention.

The first was a local magazine which was all about my local community. There was an article promoting all the unique and interesting businesses surrounded by local offers. In it, I found something that was really interesting and which, as small businesses, we all too often forget in the race to win business with competitive pricing. In a box they had highlighted that for every £ spent with a local business 63 p of it is spent again within our local community. Think about it, effectively if we buy locally we are investing in the growth of our local economy and the compound effect can be huge. Put this investment together with the higher service levels, prices that are often as competitive and the benefits we all get from a thriving local business community and why would you want to buy apparently ‘cheap’ products from national businesses that take the money away from your local community?

The message is obvious, sourcing locally is good business.

The other newsletter I found really interesting was from our friends at Beresfords Accountants. If you would like to read it in full, please click here.

In the newsletter were several articles about growth. One explained that SME loan success rates were up to 80 % and another about how recruitment growth rates have hit a 5 year high.

There are numerous stories every day on the improvement in the economy so we are coming out of the recession. This is great news, but we all face challenges that include:

1. Wanting to grow our business but not sure how and need some fresh ideas

2. Although lending is increasing, often we need to find alternative or supplementary funding routes to help us grow our business

3. Recruiting good quality motivated staff has always been a challenge and will remain one going forward

Now is the time to grow your business and we believe is the perfect time for you to seek outside help and it got me thinking about what is available from the Government:

There are a number of great schemes which support business and business owners who want to improve. These include:

                Growth Accelerator
                Growth Vouchers
                Regional Loan Schemes
                R & D Tax Credits

Growth Accelerator and Growth Vouchers are a great way to get affordable business coaching and advice to help you move your business to the next level.

R & D Tax Credits can substantially reduce your tax bill, or even give you a cash injection if you are making a loss! To qualify you need to be UK based and be carrying out research and development.

Which neatly brings me on to Smart Support. We are experts in developing great businesses. We are registered and approved advisors for Growth Accelerator and Growth Vouchers and have worked with clients successfully to obtain regional loan funding and R&D Tax Credits. We work with businesses who want to grow and succeed and help them build the business they want and we are so confident that we can help you that our first meeting is always free. During it we explore where you are, where you would like to get to and start you on the journey to take you there including whether Growth Accelerator, Growth Vouchers and/or regional loan schemes are appropriate solutions for you.

So if you want to build a great business, take advantage of our free meeting where you get to talk about your business and begin the process of improvement, just contact us and we will do the rest

Until next month