Ian Smith | The Portfolio Partnership

5 Reasons Why Order Takers Will Kill Your Business

by Ian Smith | Nov 4, 2014 | Sales Tips

If you’re selling to businesses, private companies, public companies large and small you need to be careful not to fill your sales ranks with order takers. An order taker may be just fine in a retail environment although I’d be careful. But in a B2B environment order...

The Secret of Life (and business) is Simplicity

by Ian Smith | Oct 19, 2014 | Simplifying issues

A few years ago the WSJ ran an article titled “Speech of the Year” which highlighted a speech delivered by Jackson Hole, a Bank of England regulator. The thesis of his speech? The dog and the frisbee. Basically Jackson explained, border collies can often catch...

New HR Bootcamp

by Ian Smith | Oct 9, 2014 | HR

One of my portfolio companies HR Knowledge is running another of their superb HR Bootcamps. This is a great event for all HR professionals but especially those new to the role and non HR professionals (business owners, managers and front-line supervisors) who have...

The Secret of Where 141 Million Americans Are Employed (& why I blog)

by Ian Smith | Oct 7, 2014 | Blogging, Scaling

I started blogging in 2008. I wanted to share some hard lessons I’d learned after 30 years in business (maybe training to be an accountant shouldn’t count)! Of course gradually a few people started following the blog. Slowly a few more people passed it on...

So You’ve Just Raised $20m Now What?

by Ian Smith | Sep 30, 2014 | Scaling, VC industry

Scaling a private company without an injection of capital is tough. Waiting for each new sale to generate cash, to allow the business to invest in new hires, new systems, and new technology is tough. So if you’ve successfully raised $1m or $20m or more, you can...