How do businesses survive?

Judgeneo said:
My company sells me at 7 times my salary, and I have 100% utilisation on fees.

Its not hard when you have good staff :p
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Are you happy with that?

My company used to sell me at 3.5 times my salary, that is until I formed my own business and now subcontract to them at 70>30 my way :)

Yep, their clients really wanted to keep me :D
 
oulton said:
Are you happy with that?

My company used to sell me at 3.5 times my salary, that is until I formed my own business and now subcontract to them at 70>30 my way :)

Yep, their clients really wanted to keep me :D
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I'm still at the beginning my career, so its fine for now while I gain experience. I'll probably go it alone at some point down the line though :p
 
I run my own very small business - been going for just over 8 years now. I think the one thing that has helped me most over the years, and it's taken a while to develop, is my gradually improving ability to sniff out a time-wasters/sharks/POS potential clients before a contract gets signed. I've learned to be pretty ruthless when it comes to the money side of things, which has been hard, because my actual business is more in the artistic end of things, and is regularly abused by clients historically. I think being able to detect the BS up front has saved me a great deal of wasted time and money. That and damned hard graft.
 
pitchfork said:
Walk in with a halo and people respect them.

I don't, I think all consultants are useless ***** and that anyone can give an outside view. I've been proved right more than wrong.
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Where I work consultants do most of the technical work and the majority of internal staff are useless bureaucrats who love the smell of their own methane.
 
mothermachine said:
I run my own very small business - been going for just over 8 years now. I think the one thing that has helped me most over the years, and it's taken a while to develop, is my gradually improving ability to sniff out a time-wasters/sharks/POS potential clients before a contract gets signed. I've learned to be pretty ruthless when it comes to the money side of things, which has been hard, because my actual business is more in the artistic end of things, and is regularly abused by clients historically. I think being able to detect the BS up front has saved me a great deal of wasted time and money. That and damned hard graft.
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What do you do?
 
Haggisman said:
Pretty simple, if you can pay someone £100k to tell/show you how to make/save £500k, then it's worth every penny.
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:yeahthat:

I work in Analytics and can think of more than a few times where i've saved (& identified opportunities to make) amounts which are 100's of times my annual salary. Unfortunately nobody ever buys into my 1% commission suggestion :(
 
oulton said:
Are you happy with that?

My company used to sell me at 3.5 times my salary, that is until I formed my own business and now subcontract to them at 70>30 my way :)

Yep, their clients really wanted to keep me :D
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That's fine if you're specialised/skilled/experienced enough to do that, but I guess the question to ask is how much work would you actually get without the force of that big company behind you :p

You might get a bigger slice of the pie, but in many cases it would be a much smaller pie :p
 
Is the whole thing not just a private members club where money just rotates around in circles. There are plenty poor people in this country who work hard and plenty elsewhere in the world who make a pittance and work to the bone, sometimes drinking dirty water and breathing dangerous pollutions.

That's what I don't understand, maybe these people do indirectly help the overall country by generating business, although I can't see how, seems like you just have to get your foot in the door and mix in the right circles and get paid for work of very little substance.

Could be wrong of course.
 
jsmoke said:
Is the whole thing not just a private members club where money just rotates around in circles. There are plenty poor people in this country who work hard and plenty elsewhere in the world who make a pittance and work to the bone, sometimes drinking dirty water and breathing dangerous pollutions.

That's what I don't understand, maybe these people do indirectly help the overall country by generating business, although I can't see how, seems like you just have to get your foot in the door and mix in the right circles and get paid for work of very little substance.

Could be wrong of course.
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Unfortunately working hard doesn't necessarily equate to being financially "successful" or well off.
 
jsmoke said:
Is the whole thing not just a private members club where money just rotates around in circles. There are plenty poor people in this country who work hard and plenty elsewhere in the world who make a pittance and work to the bone, sometimes drinking dirty water and breathing dangerous pollutions.

That's what I don't understand, maybe these people do indirectly help the overall country by generating business, although I can't see how, seems like you just have to get your foot in the door and mix in the right circles and get paid for work of very little substance.

Could be wrong of course.
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Yup I agree with your analysis. The knowledge based economy is a sound idea in principle but in reality the number of people with actually useful knowledge is a small percentage of the people who work in "knowledge industries" - the rest are made up of people with outstanding business friendly soft skills like sales, PR, leadership or are completely useless. Same as it ever was.
 
Working hard means nothing. It would be very hard work to break rocks all day with a toffee hammer, but it wouldn't be very useful work. You need to be working hard at something which is useful for a start.
 
jsmoke said:
I can understand a business like OCuk, it's selling sought after highly technical products, so hence a lot of demand. However there seem to be endless 'advisory' companies and a whole host of similar that don't really seem to do much, same goes for a lot of jobs in the financial sector, read about financial analysts or the like and they will tell you that they are just paper pushers who tell there clients anything that will make them buy shares.

As for advisory companies, they may have a team of 10, so that's 10 * £40k average = £400k per year on salaries, I don't get it, are they really worth their weight, maybe they are. Or take the video that's going around about the management bods and the techie guy, where the management don't seem to have a clue what they are talking about. Where is all the money coming from?
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Even though I think that this is probably in English, I don't understand it and understand the thread title even less than you understand the very basics of business itself.
 
scorza said:
Yup I agree with your analysis. The knowledge based economy is a sound idea in principle but in reality the number of people with actually useful knowledge is a small percentage of the people who work in "knowledge industries" - the rest are made up of people with outstanding business friendly soft skills like sales, PR, leadership or are completely useless. Same as it ever was.
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But what you have to take into account is that (sweeping generalisation) very technical/knowledgeable people aren't always very good at communicating to non-technical people, selling themselves, managing themselves, etc. It's all very well knowing everything about a certain system or technology, but if no one is aware you have that knowledge and expertise, you're not going to make any money from it ;)

Thompson_NCL said:
Working hard means nothing. It would be very hard work to break rocks all day with a toffee hammer, but it wouldn't be very useful work. You need to be working hard at something which is useful for a start.
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Or to be more specific, something which other people are willing to pay for :p
 
oulton said:
Where I work consultants do most of the technical work and the majority of internal staff are useless bureaucrats who love the smell of their own methane.
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Well I suppose we can agree I've worked for places that use way too many consultants, mostly they do the job half as quick as we could do it internally and cost twice the price.

"Why don't we pay a consultant to produce these reports" begs the question why the **** you're working there if you're incapable of doing your own reports.
 
The law firms i work at make a load of money. The staff turnover is unreal. they always hiring and firing people. Sometimes they will take on fee earners just because of their client and just for one deal and then they will come in on a £125k base and within a year they left making the firm a million plus. When the recession in 08 hit they closed three departments without a second thought. They don't waste any time at getting rid of dead weight.

The actual IT company i work for seems to have too many managers and too many people who don't know what they are doing, its very unprofessional and becoming a bit a joke. Its got to the point where the next three levels above me have no idea what they are doing.

For the price my useless manager costs they increase my salary and hire someone else on the same salary. Might as well as he does nothing anyway.
 
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