10 – a healthy disregard for time – none of them watches the clock when there’s work to be finished;

9 – The unshakeable belief that they deserve to succeed in their aims and therefore they can – and they will – actually, no, it’s beyond that -‘belief’ implies an element of faith in something it might not be possible to prove; but what they have is knowledge – they know they deserve to get where they want to go;

8 – Equal certainty that what their business does is of real value to its customers;

7 – Ridiculous amounts of energy, including the kind of stamina a distance athlete would envy;

6 – Blinkers – which are capable of filtering out everything except the business,

5 – Less subtlety than the average brick – somehow combined with the ability to inspire forgiveness from family, friends, colleagues etc, for behaviour which, from anyone else would, quite frankly, be unacceptable!;

4 – A powerful set of ‘bum springs’, or ‘weeble weights’ (my terminology) – so that when life knocks them over, they just bounce straight back up again!;

3 – More front than Southend and Blackpool put together and

2 – what I recently heard described as: ‘a constitutional aversion to spending money’.

So what’s No. 1?

Every business adviser you’ll ever meet will tell you you need to set goals. That’s fine – except that goal posts are notoriously easy to move – especially when the goal is a ‘nice to have’. I made that mistake when I got started – and I kept making it for several years! I’d think: ‘I want to earn x, so that I can do Y’. Y was always a nice to have – like a weekend away – very pleasant if I achieved it, but hardly the end of the world if I didn’t. What the people I’ve been talking about all have – and what I have now – is at least one imperative – a ‘must have’, or a ‘must to avoid’. These days, I’ve got one of each – a carrot and a stick. If I start to lose sight of the carrot, the stick catches me across the ankles. I can honestly say I’ve never been so focused in my life!

Now all I have to do is perfect the other 9…!!!

I wasn’t trying to be clever – I think in pictures and that was the picture which kept coming to mind. (The fact that someone who works primarily with sound, and has a guide dog, thinks in pictures may seem a bit odd to you, but that’s another story!). Anyway, it rang a few bells with the audience on the night.

As time went on, others started asking me about putting some podcasts together to help people at different stages of business – start-up, expansion etc – and eventually the two ideas came together (or should that be “collided”?) shortly after 5:00am last Friday, 6th November 2009 and “The Savvy Business Mountain Guides” were born. I’d already written an ebook, on an aspect of law for non-lawyers but this time, I thought, I could do something a bit different and combine the book with some audio and audio-visual material so that contributors can, literally, speak for themselves. I’ve run it past several people and so far the response has been fantastic – what do you think? Constructive criticism is as good as enthusiasm – so let me know.

It’s a major project, which I must be mad to take on at this stage in my own business life – but then, as I said to a fellow business author last week (who is in the process of completing her second book) – “You don’t have to be bonkers to go into business – but it certainly helps! The trick is to find the method in your madness, so you can infect other people with it”.

I’m aiming to get the first book launched within the year. Over the coming months, I’ll keep you up to speed with how it’s going, who I’m talking to and, no doubt, what I’m learning from the exercise. If I can work out how to upload multimedia material here, I’ll do some of that by way of audio and perhaps even some video.

If you want to get involved, email me at sherie@savvybc.com.

The Companies Act 2006 received Royal Assent on 8 November 2006, and has been introduced in a series of different stages. Some of the key changes coming into force on 1 October 2009 are outlined below.

New company formation 

The documentation required for forming a company will be very different, with a much shorter Memorandum of Association. Companies will no longer be required to specify their objects, and the concept of authorised share capital will be abolished. New Model Articles will be introduced. There will be three types: 

Private company limited by shares

Private company limited by guarantee

Public limited company

The Statement of Capital is a new requirement, providing a ’snapshot’ of a limited company’s issued share capital at a given time. It will also need to be provided in various other circumstances, including as part of the application to incorporate and with each annual return made up on or after 1 October 2009.

Existing companies 

Companies formed before 1 October 2009 will have constitutions designed under previous law, so there will be a need for transitional provisions. Where the Articles contain matters which are not required under the specific provisions of the Companies Act 2006, the company may consider them to be unduly restrictive. Companies would be well advised to examine their Memorandum and Articles of Association with a view to adopting the new Model Articles, or to changing some of their current provisions.

Directors’ Service Addresses 

Directors (and company secretaries where applicable) of both existing and new companies will have the right to set out a service address rather than their usual residential address. The service address may be the company’s registered office.

Individual companies will have to maintain two registers of directors – one containing, amongst other things, a service address for each director, and a further register containing the residential address of each director (protected information).

Only shareholders of traded public companies will be required to provide any address to Companies House.

Registrar’s Powers 

The Registrar of companies will be given a range of new powers. These include powers to decide on the form and manner in which companies must deliver documents, what is needed for a document to be properly delivered, provision of electronic delivery for certain documents, and amendments to the register.

Striking off 

The existing procedures will be carried over in a similar form. However, there will be a new simplified administrative restoration procedure for companies struck off by Registrar’s action. Whatever the route of dissolution, the time limit for application to restore will be six years (currently two years for liquidation, 20 years for striking off).