Where liars and fantasists rule

The first lie you’re told as a child is that honesty is the best policy. If you really want to get ahead in this world, you need to be skilled at knowing when to say somebody is right when you think the exact opposite, or to say, ‘We’re reviewing our budget’ rather than give an outright ‘no’ to a company pitching for business.

What makes a great business?

A common theme linking successful companies is often the simplicity and directness of the business proposition. Indeed, the world of business is probably the harshest environment for punishing those who become too clever for their own good.

Angels must raise their game

There’s a scene in the Martin Scorsese movie Goodfellas where Tommy (played by Joe Pesci) thinks he’s going to be “made” and become a fully fledged member of the mafia. Instead, he’s ushered into an empty room and unceremoniously “whacked”

The onward march of innovation

Nokia used to make rubber boots. Admittedly, that was a century ago and, back then, a rubber works in Finland was probably as cutting edge as anything used to produce the latest phone.

Why acquisitions fail

‘Nobody knows anything,’ said William Goldman, the screenwriter behind classic movies such as All the President’s Men and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

The price of success - and failure

The fat cat debate never fails to raise eyebrows. For the past decade at least, you could guarantee an annual eruption of shock as the bonuses of investment bankers in the City hit the headlines.

Dealing with delinquency

Offices are breeding grounds of malcontent. No matter how inventively you encourage employees, send them on training courses, nurture their self belief, or ply them with bribes – a trip to the races, a bowling alley, karaoke – there’ll always be a tiny, po-faced coterie, happy to criticise the company.

Companies to watch

This year’s 50 Rising Stars have combined sales of just over £645 million and profits of nearly £100 million. It’s a broad selection too, in which companies making a packet from the booming care sector are shoulder to shoulder with retailers, publishers and debt specialists.

The lure of foreign shores

Expanding overseas sounds exciting but it’s scarily easy to burn money on a venture that seemed like a no-brainer in the boardroom, where exuberance can get the better of reason. There should be tombstones commemorating the fallen UK businesses that litter the entrepreneurial battlefields in the US and, more recently, China.

Beating the Blockbuster effect

Dying businesses are interesting to watch. Remember the video chain, Blockbuster? Those punchy ads on TV where a singer would cry, “Oh what a difference, Blockbuster video.”

Shades of green

Green business is a fad. Take the weighty corporate social responsibility reports produced by corporations; more often than not they amount to nothing more than PR puff.

Failure is always a danger

I’m in a good mood this festive season, which is why I’d like to remind you that the odds of your business sinking or running aground are scarily high...

What's luck got to do with it?

I’m a back-to-front magazine reader. Which means that I hugely enjoy our column on the last page, ‘What I wish I’d known when I started’. The essence of the column is entrepreneurs confessing to their mistakes and offering insights into what they have learned as a result. Brilliant stuff, issue after issue...

Stages of growth

Building a business is a unique journey because the operation you run evolves through so many different stages – until you stand back from the cash flows, contracts, and strategies, you often can’t recognise at what stage your venture is...

Overcoming fear of change

One man’s exciting challenge can be another’s nightmare. All too often that’s exactly how change is viewed by an organisation...

Learn from the best

One of our goals at Business XL is to give you, the entrepreneur, exposure to the thoughts and strategies of some of the most successful business people in Britain. In this month’s issue, four of the UK’s leading practitioners of growth offer up thought-provoking ways in which business progression and expansion – both internal and external – are best served...

Time to practise what we preach

In the next few months we’re going to find out whether two publishing companies, each of which spends a lot of time writing about how to make successful acquisitions, can actually put their theoretical knowledge into practice and make their own acquisition a success...