Category
Less bureaucracy than most small businesses fear and more discipline about basic practice than most currently apply. The obligations scale with what you do with personal data, not with your size —
Considerably more than the rent — because a commercial lease gives you far fewer protections than a residential tenancy, and several standard terms can cost more than the rent itself over the term.
Three distinct roles that differ in what they produce, what qualifications they need, and — crucially — who they are working for. The third distinction is the one that surprises people. A bookkeeper
A specific and fairly short list — and the risk is not that it is complicated, but that several items are easy to miss entirely until something goes wrong. Before they start: Check the right to work.
Sometimes — but they start from a position of being void as a restraint of trade, and are enforceable only where the employer can show they go no further than reasonably necessary to protect a
Considerably more than most small businesses realise — including a statutory right to interest and compensation that does not need to be in your contract, and that many suppliers never claim because
Planning for how you would keep operating, or resume quickly, when something disrupts you — and for a small business the useful version is short, specific and focused on the handful of things that
A board is the body that directs the company — as distinct from managing it — and a non-executive director is a member who is not an employee, brought in for independent judgement, experience and
A structure in which a trust holds a controlling stake in a company on behalf of all its employees, collectively and indefinitely — rather than employees individually holding shares. It has become a
A structure where part of the purchase price is paid later, conditional on the business hitting agreed targets. It exists to bridge a disagreement about value: the seller believes the business will
Through a regulated procurement process designed to be transparent and non-discriminatory — which means the rules constrain the buyer as much as the bidder, and understanding that is what separates
Usually a slow deterioration rather than a single argument — and what determines the outcome is almost entirely what was agreed at the start, when everyone got on and nobody wanted to raise it. Why
It depends far less on ambition than people assume and far more on whether the business has a structural reason to need capital before revenue — and on what you actually want the business to be. What
Raising money from a large number of people, usually online — and it covers four fundamentally different arrangements that share a name and almost nothing else. Choosing the wrong one is the most
Through a structured process — identify, value, offer subject to due diligence, investigate, negotiate, complete — and the investigation stage is where the real work is, because what you are buying
A licence to operate a business under someone else's brand and system, in a defined territory, in exchange for an initial fee and ongoing payments. You are buying a method and a name, not a business
Whether the business is legally separate from you — and that single question drives liability, tax, admin and how you get paid. Sole trader. You are the business. No legal separation. Liability is
Insolvency is a financial state; administration and liquidation are formal procedures. Confusing the state with the process is why the terms are used so loosely in reporting. Insolvency. A company is
Considerably more than most people expect, and it is free for anyone to search — competitors, customers, journalists and members of the public included. What is always public: Company name, number,
They are legally different transactions, taxed differently, subject to different conditions — and the common advice to "take a small salary and the rest as dividends" is a simplification that depends
When your taxable turnover crosses the registration threshold in any rolling twelve months, or when you expect to cross it within the next thirty days alone — and the detail of how that is measured
Yes, in specific circumstances — and considerably less than the people insisting on one usually believe, particularly when the thing being protected is an idea. What an NDA does. Creates a
Four separate rights protecting different things, with different registration requirements and durations. Businesses routinely rely on the wrong one. Copyright. Protects original creative expression
The articles are the company's public constitution; a shareholders' agreement is a private contract between the shareholders. They do different jobs and most companies with more than one owner need