The Entrepreneur's Guide to Free Advice
April 2009, Department for Business
Andrew Pearce, joint CEO of Powwownow, talks to the Department for Business about the value of free advice
Category: News & Politics
Tags: Andrew Pearce Inc BERR bug YouTubeHD PowWowNow free advice business small obligations Business Link businesslink employing people employingpeople online tools
Transcript of Department for Business YouTube video:
Speaker: Andrew Pearce, CEO of Powwownow
Hi, my name’s Andrew Pearce. I’m the CEO of Powwownow, Europe’s fastest growing conference call provider. We established PowWow four years ago. Having held conference calls with previous businesses with some of our competitors, we realised how expensive conference calls really were. So we went out and researched the marketplace to see if we could produce and build a business that meant people didn’t have to pay extortionate amounts of money they pay with some of our competitors. We found a business in the US that had a very similar service so we took the idea, changed the model to work in the UK and across Europe and launched four years ago.
So literally by dialling a telephone number and putting a PIN in you can have someone from France, someone from Germany and someone from the UK all talking together at the same time. So really simple. No one receives a bill from us. They just pay for the cost of the telephone call. But I think today with the introduction of the Internet to the world there is huge amounts of free advice available and it makes it really simple to search and find on the Internet. In addition, there are lots of membership clubs that you can be part as a young entrepreneur setting up a business where you can meet likeminded people that have similar issues as yourself and ask them and question them and obtain free advice from your peers.The best piece of free business advice that I’ve ever received was when I was at a networking event. I met a brand manager. Introduced myself, gave my business card. Him having been responsible for changing many brands over the years, he over a couple of glasses of wine suggested that may be we should think about re-branding the business.
People believe especially small business owners that sometimes paying for advice means they’re getting the best advice and they’re dotting the Is and crossing the Ts. There is so much money being spent with consultants, lawyers, advisors where that information is totally free. It’s available on the Internet. I think there are reputable websites on the Internet and non-reputable websites on the Internet so you’ve got to be using a reputable website for your information, but there is a real opportunity for small business owners to make these decisions and find the information for themselves and it doesn’t take that long. And in doing so they can be saving themselves a substantial amount of money.
I think small businesses when they’re starting and looking at how they set their business up should start with the big banks. It’s a great place for free advice in the early days. The bank managers are trained to give you free advice and also there’s an opportunity they might lend you some money and open a bank account for you. But I think in today’s marketplace borrowing from the banks is getting harder and harder. So another good place for free advice is the Business Angels Networks.
The most helpful piece of advice on the Business Link website that I’ve ever found is most businesses have employees. And when you employ people the law around employing people is very complicated and very deep. We recently had to make the decision to dismiss one of our employees. We potentially could have gone and paid for someone to come and help us but the advice that was available on the Business Link website on how to dismiss an employee right the way from start to finish made it so clear and simple that it was really easy for us to do. It made it as painless as possible for me and as painless as possible for the employee in what really is not a nice situation for either party.
Category: News & Politics
Tags: Andrew Pearce Inc BERR bug YouTubeHD PowWowNow free advice business small obligations Business Link businesslink employing people employingpeople online tools
Transcript of Department for Business YouTube video:
Speaker: Andrew Pearce, CEO of Powwownow
Hi, my name’s Andrew Pearce. I’m the CEO of Powwownow, Europe’s fastest growing conference call provider. We established PowWow four years ago. Having held conference calls with previous businesses with some of our competitors, we realised how expensive conference calls really were. So we went out and researched the marketplace to see if we could produce and build a business that meant people didn’t have to pay extortionate amounts of money they pay with some of our competitors. We found a business in the US that had a very similar service so we took the idea, changed the model to work in the UK and across Europe and launched four years ago.
So literally by dialling a telephone number and putting a PIN in you can have someone from France, someone from Germany and someone from the UK all talking together at the same time. So really simple. No one receives a bill from us. They just pay for the cost of the telephone call. But I think today with the introduction of the Internet to the world there is huge amounts of free advice available and it makes it really simple to search and find on the Internet. In addition, there are lots of membership clubs that you can be part as a young entrepreneur setting up a business where you can meet likeminded people that have similar issues as yourself and ask them and question them and obtain free advice from your peers.The best piece of free business advice that I’ve ever received was when I was at a networking event. I met a brand manager. Introduced myself, gave my business card. Him having been responsible for changing many brands over the years, he over a couple of glasses of wine suggested that may be we should think about re-branding the business.
People believe especially small business owners that sometimes paying for advice means they’re getting the best advice and they’re dotting the Is and crossing the Ts. There is so much money being spent with consultants, lawyers, advisors where that information is totally free. It’s available on the Internet. I think there are reputable websites on the Internet and non-reputable websites on the Internet so you’ve got to be using a reputable website for your information, but there is a real opportunity for small business owners to make these decisions and find the information for themselves and it doesn’t take that long. And in doing so they can be saving themselves a substantial amount of money.
I think small businesses when they’re starting and looking at how they set their business up should start with the big banks. It’s a great place for free advice in the early days. The bank managers are trained to give you free advice and also there’s an opportunity they might lend you some money and open a bank account for you. But I think in today’s marketplace borrowing from the banks is getting harder and harder. So another good place for free advice is the Business Angels Networks.
The most helpful piece of advice on the Business Link website that I’ve ever found is most businesses have employees. And when you employ people the law around employing people is very complicated and very deep. We recently had to make the decision to dismiss one of our employees. We potentially could have gone and paid for someone to come and help us but the advice that was available on the Business Link website on how to dismiss an employee right the way from start to finish made it so clear and simple that it was really easy for us to do. It made it as painless as possible for me and as painless as possible for the employee in what really is not a nice situation for either party.
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