When you are doing something really well, people immediately think it’s easy. A pro-golfer nailing that hole-in-one, a dancer seemingly suspended in the air - real excellence looks effortless.

It’s been a tricky year for business management. From pandemic fatigue to workplace burnout, startups of various sizes are faced with a similar challenge – to rethink and reignite employee engagement. Some might approach this as a one-off event – like a holiday bonus. But leaders in their fields know that it demands a long-term approach. It’s an opportunity to start listening to the needs of your team members and committing to ongoing adjustments.

When I first took on the role of Chairman and CEO of Barry-Wehmiller in 1975, the definition of good business management looked very different. Then, as it largely is now, the focus was on managing people, with very little attention paid to leadership. 

Since the news broke that Meta Platforms Inc (formerly known as Facebook) will be leading the work on the metaverse, I often get asked what will happen if this new virtual realm looks like Meta itself, the tech industry, or even the broader professional world, in terms of female representation.

The world of law has always seemed impenetrable to the uninitiated. In Charles Dickens’ Bleak House from 1852, characters are entangled in an inheritance dispute spanning several generations.

Co-working spaces are an integral part of the startup ecosystem – they offer entrepreneurs equipped and comfortable workspace, in addition to being an affordable solution as compared to traditional offices. Many also choose co-working spaces because of their flexibility and opportunities to network.

When my co-founders and I decided to seek our next round of investment, we wanted to make sure the funding process brought our community closer to our business, or even, into our business.

In the era of the digital worker, it’s fair to say that none of us can predict how the world of work will look a few years from now from VoIPs to paperless law offices.

Startups encounter a lot of hurdles on their way to success, one of the biggest is their approach to marketing.

COVID-19 has forced companies to adapt. Transforming in-house workers into remote employees has become a necessity. It’s estimated that 27% of teams will continue remotely after the pandemic, and, in five years, the number of remote workers will double to over 35 million in the US.

With so much change in the workplace over the last couple of years, many employees may have found themselves falling into negative working patterns. These toxic traits - such as working too many hours or skipping a lunch break - could have a huge impact on wellbeing, job satisfaction and productivity.

Gender lens investing has seen impressive growth in recent years, with the Wharton Social Impact Initiative reporting a 58.6% increase in the number of female-led funds - clearing $4.8bn  in capital raised internationally.

When the opportunity for distraction is rife, startups must empower employees to focus deeply within their home environment.

2021 was one for the history books. It’s a year that saw entire workforces shift and adapt to remote working models, transform their product offering and make decisions based on simply staying afloat.

In this age of globalisation and e-commerce, expanding your business internationally can be an exciting idea. With just a few clicks, small businesses now have access to a vast global market that can be brimming with new opportunities waiting to be discovered. 

It’s reasonable to say that many of us anticipated 2021 to be a year of recovery. If 2020 was the year that forced us to reset, 2021 has been the year to start again, re-strategise and grow.

I have been founding businesses for over 35 years and over that time I have managed to make almost all the mistakes possible when launching a startup. In the last 10 years I’ve also been involved in mentoring startups in various universities, business schools and incubators. It is clear that founders are still making many obvious mistakes: they continue to do the things they enjoy about a starting a business, rather than the things they need to do to make it successful.

The world is going digital and NFTs are a technology which can provide unique, infallible data for this digital world in industries beyond art. You might be wondering how, as a startup founder, you could take advantage of non-fungible tokens (NFTs)?

Zorka.Agency marketing team together with SOLYANKA conducted “Startup Marketing Research: challenges and opportunities in digital promotion”.

Scaling is everything. The majority of businesses have to try and do this without incurring extra costs, and it is how good they are at this process that can define the trajectory of most small to medium sized businesses.