PRIME Initiative

On Wednesday 24th June some forty people drawn from civil servants and government agency staff (from BIS, DWP, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales), business support organisations and industry met together to look at harnessing the enterprise, experience and skills of the 50+ to the labour market. It was chaired by Luke Johnson, chair of the RSA, and facilitated by Tony Robinson of SFEDI.

To bring people from across the UK to such an event was itself an amazing step forward, but this was also the first rung of the ladder in a 50+ enterprise manifesto.

Let’s get some of the gripes over.

Between the ages of 50 and 65 almost one person in three is workless and almost sixty per cent have no pension other than the state pension to look forward to. People of this age who are out of work for more than six months after being made redundant stand a one in ten chance of ever working as an employee again. Despite this, there is still an inclination to say we should be concentrating on getting them jobs - stacking shelves or whatever. The unspoken implication is that this “enterprise and self-employment thing” is for the few and a bit of an irrelevance for mass 50+ unemployment.

On the other side there is an increasing number of people who are beginning to say that the opportunity for self-employment should be a right, and that implies the entitlement to an opportunity to gain the knowledge, skills and support needed to start a business.

Widening the 50+ enterprise opportunity entitlement is particularly important now that the government is making threats and promises about welfare and work to those aged under 25. Just how many jobs will there be left for the over 50s once this policy is fulfilled?

It seems to me that the economic case is undeniable. We cannot afford to keep a growing number of over 50s on welfare and pensions: forget tax cuts and paying off the cost of government borrowing. This is an escalating burden on the state coffers.

But what about industry? Someone said that the airbus creates tens of thousands of jobs but is dependent on 400 small and medium enterprises. Each of these “SMEs” is dependent on a large number of micro-businesses. Without these micro-businesses there would be no airbus.

But industry does not seem to be worried about the future of micro-businesses that are at the bottom of the supply-chain and are suffering most in the recession. You would think that with enlightened self-interest they would want to ensure there was a bigger pool of micro-businesses. They could easily do this by ensuring that all their experienced staff had an opportunity to think self-employment rather than think redundancy.

So, never was there a time riper for a 50+ enterprise manifesto than now.

Eight per cent of UK adults now want to start a business in retirement, according to a YouGov poll commissioned by Standard Life. And 85 per cent do not intend to stop work after they reach retirement age.

YouGov surveyed the opinions of 2,100 adults broadly representative of the UK population. A third (33 per cent) of respondents wanted to continue in full-time work after they reach retirement age. Roughly another third (31 per cent) wanted to carry on in a similar role but on their own more flexible terms. While eight per cent wanted to start their own business.

Commenting on the findings, John Lawson from Standard Life said “Quite simply, people do not get old like they used to. The baby boomers started a trend for redefining what is effectively their ‘third age’ and these findings point to a continued trend for re-writing the rule book for younger generations.”

The full report is not yet available at the time of writing but it should appear on the Standard Life site shortly.

See also Baby boomers don’t want to retire says pension firm.

Over the next 20 years the UK’s population will age faster than ever before in its history. There will be 5.4 million more people of pension age - an increase of 45 per cent. At the same time, our working-age ratio is declining. This combination has serious implications for the economy, with proportionally fewer workers supporting the growing number of older retired people.

One measure being implemented by Government from next year to tackle this issue is the introduction of later retirement ages. Through gradual changes in State Pension age (SPA), three million people who would otherwise be able to claim a state pension are being nudged rather hopefully back into the workforce.

This presentation given by PRIME recently (Powerpoint format) highlights the economic impact of these changes - and projects even higher levels of worklessness and poverty among older people if practical measures are not adopted now.

Of the three million workers eventually being removed from pension entitlement by the changes, most are women - in fact in the initial batch all are. We reckon that no more than 40 per cent of the total are likely to be economically active. This means that 60 per cent of the three million will be without a pension - and without a job. And that’s without taking into consideration the impact of the recession, since it’s impossible to say how long that will last.

But it does seem the consequences of changing the pension age haven’t really been thought through. In attempting to solve the problem of financing pension provision the state may only have succeeded in creating different problems elsewhere.

On the plus side, today around one fifth of the over-50 working population are self-employed, and many continuing to work beyond the current state pension age. So there is considerable benefit to the economy to be gained through assisting higher numbers of over 50s into self-employment.

But self-employment isn’t an option for everyone, so there would also need to be other measures to support older workers to remain in or re-enter conventional employment.

Without such action raising the state pension age won’t accomplish much - indeed it may do more harm than good. It’s not enough to put a whole lot of older women and men back into the workforce by administrative fiat. They also need some practical way of making a living.

See also What are the alternatives to a personal pension? on our other site.

Barbie has joined the ranks of the 50-plus, an event celebrated in characteristic style with an immediate facelift. Plastic surgeons at Californian-based manufacturer Mattel have given the world’s most famous doll “a more natural look, including a thinner jaw line, more almond-shaped eyes and fuller lips”.

It is notoriously difficult to judge people’s ages nowadays, as by and large people are looking much younger than their parents did at the same age. This doesn’t seem to prevent the all-too-common tendency by employers and some advertisers to lump all over 50s together as a single group, putting Baby Boomers and their elderly parents in the same category (often the same scrapheap). The mistake is to ignore the real differences in age, attitudes and ability to work between distinct generations.

In tune with today’s celebrity climate, let’s attempt to correct this by identifying some famous people born in the main years of the post-war boom. There are some surprises!

Selected Baby Boom celebrities by year of birth

1945: Ken Livingstone, Helen Mirren, Debbie Harry, Bryan Ferry, Rod Stewart - all 64 this year.

1946: Joanna Lumley, Susan Sarandon, Alan Rickman, Sylvester Stallone, Bill Clinton - all 63 this year.

1947: Alan Sugar, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Hillary Clinton, Salman Rushdie, Glenn Close, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Elton John - all 62 this year.

1948: Prince Charles, Ozzy Osbourne, Samuel L. Jackson, Sven Goran Eriksson, Terry Pratchett - all 61 this year.

1949: Twiggy, Bill Nighy, Richard Gere, Duncan Bannatyne, Arsene Wenger, Martin Amis - all 60 this year.

1950: Richard Branson, Jeremy Paxman, Julie Walters, Bill Murray, Stevie Wonder, Robbie Coltrane - all 59 this year.

1951: Gordon Brown, Kevin Keegan, Michael Keaton, Jane Seymour, Sting all 58 this year.

1952: Vladimir Putin, Jenny Agutter, Sharon Osbourne, Liam Neeson -
all 57 this year.

1953: Tony Blair, Victoria Wood, Kim Basinger, Pierce Brosnan, Keith Allen, William Petersen - all 56 this year.

1954: Bob Geldof, Michael Moore, Annie Lennox, John Travolta, Jackie Chan - all 55 this year.

1955: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Bruce Willis, Kevin Costner, Ian Botham, Alan Hansen, Lesley Garrett - all 54 this year.

1956: Rowan Atkinson, Kim Cattrall, Mel Gibson, Martina Navratilova, Sebastian Coe - all 53 this year.

1957: Stephen Fry, Paul Merton, Daniel Day-Lewis, Dawn French, Donny Osmond - all 52 this year.

1958: Madonna, Prince, Sharon Stone, Michael Jackson, Kate Bush, Lennie Henry, Viggo Mortensen, Marg Helgenberger, Miranda Richardson - all 51 this year.

1959: Hugh Laurie, Theo Paphitis, Deborah Meaden, Ben Elton, Morrissey, Linzi Drew, John McEnroe, Kevin Spacey, Val Kilmer, Rupert Everett - all 50 this year.

1960: Nigella Lawson, Kristin Scott Thomas, Carol Vorderman, Hugh Grant, Sean Penn, Gary Lineker, Colin Firth, Antonio Banderas, Michael Stipe, Bono, Richard Farleigh - all 49 this year.

1961: Barack Obama, Barry McGuigan, Eddie Murphy, K D Lang, Meg Ryan, Nastassja Kinski, Boy George, Frank Bruno, George Clooney, Heather Locklear, Michael J Fox, Peter Jackson, Robert Carlyle, Sarah Brightman, Tim Roth, William Hague, Woody Harrelson - all 48 this year.

Perhaps even more suprising are some of those born in 1969, who will all be 40 this year - Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jennifer Aniston and Jennifer Lopez.

Worth a read: Advice for Barbie at age 50

Pension giant Standard Life has produced a very interesting report called The Death of Retirement. The key findings are that the current generation of older people are very different to their parents. Above all they want to keep doing things. Baby boomers want to travel, work - and even launch new business ventures. Retirement in its traditional sense is not a concept that appeals to them at all.

“Currently society constrains people into a post-65 mindset which is at odds with their ambitions”, says Honey Langcaster-James, psychologist and one of the report’s authors. “Government, society, industry – particularly the financial services industry, use entirely the wrong language.

“The messages currently conveyed to the next generation approaching third age imply slowing down, being less involved in society, being cautious, risk averse and preparing to be less active.

“Ageism is endemic and could have severe implications for the mental health of third agers because it will ultimately frustrate their ambitions.”

“A huge potential resource is left untapped by not engaging this population, drawing on their expertise, their drive to embark on new ventures and pursue society-enhancing activities such as voluntary work and enterprise.”

Honey Langcaster-James, psychologist

Large survey

The report is based on a large survey of 1,500 people aged 46 to 65 of broadly representative wealth living in the UK. It was then repeated among another sample of 1,000 people from the same age group but representing the wealthiest six per cent of society. So two contrasting groups of normal and great wealth were polled.

Setting the scene, the report says that people from this baby boom generation face a future in which they are likely to be more financially burdened than ever before. They may have to provide for parents who will live a long time and for children who may be financially dependent well into adulthood. This financial burden goes alongside having greater ambitions than any previous generation for their own future after the age of 65.

When asked about their intentions regarding working in the “long-term future”, 30 per cent of the sample representing the normal UK wealth range said they wanted to continue to be involved in work - but on their own terms. This rises to 42 per cent for the wealthier group, who were also asked what their own parents did. Only 15 per cent of parents continued to stay involved in work after retirement. This indicates a massive change between the generations.

When asked about starting a new business, six per cent of the sample of 46-to-65 year-olds of normal wealth want to embark on a new business venture in the future. There was only a slight increase to seven per cent among the wealthier group, so wealth does not seem to be a major factor affecting this aspiration. But the passage of time has certainly produced a change. Among their parents’ generation this aspiration was much less common - seven times less at retirement age.

“It is not that those approaching retirement want to stop working. As our research reveals, baby boomers want to remain active. The challenge for government, society and the financial services industry is how to enable them to remain productive to answer the dilemma of our ageing workforce.”

John Lawson, Head of Pension Policy at Standard Life

It’s widely recognised that our population is ageing, the main cause being the post-war baby-boom.

According to figures released by the Office for National Statistics last year (see ref 1), between 2006 and 2031, the overall population of England is set to rise from 50.76 million to 60.43m, a rise of 19.1 per cent.

However, the number of people of pension age is projected to increase by a much higher rate than this; over this same period, the number of women aged over 60, and men aged over 65 (ie current retirement age) is set to rise from 9.46m to 14.96m - a rise of 58 per cent.

Naturally, authorities are extremely concerned by the increasing costs of supporting older people, particularly pensions, healthcare, social services and housing.

Government is taking measures to tackle this challenge, including a gradual increase in pension age, which starts next year, the biggest impact being for women’s retirement ages.

For a man or woman aged 30 on 1st March this year, they will both work for longer, and will be aged 68 when they reach State Pension Age; however, for a woman who reaches her 50th birthday on 1st March this year, she would be aged 65 before she can draw her State Pension, whereas for a man of the same age, there is no change.

You can get your own projection here. 

These changes in State Pension Age will have a big impact on our working age population; this is currently women aged 16 to 59, and men aged 16 to 64. Pension Age changes across England will bring 2.53 million people into the working age population, who, without these changes, would be retired.

So what support is needed to help older people remain in work? We know that currently, 28 per cent of those aged 50 to State Pension Age are out of work, compared with just 20 per cent of those aged under 50 (see ref 2 below). We also know that employment rates drop off sharply the closer people get to retirement age (see ref 3).

This is why PRIME, a national charity founded by Prince Charles in 1999, helps people look at self-employment as a way of continuing to earn, and remain economically active. Self-employment rates are much higher for the over 50s than their younger counterparts, with around one in five (18 per cent ) working in this way, compared with 11 per cent for the under 50s.

The over 50s also appear to have much better business survival rates than younger people (ref 4), so with careful research and planning, this could be an option that gives people more control over their working lives, and the choice of retiring when they want.

We know from the people we talk to daily that many are looking for more flexible solutions than they can find on offer through traditional employment, and that’s assuming they can even find job opportunities. A lot of people over 50 have care responsibilities for both elderly parents and grandchildren; many have health conditions that require a change in working patterns, and some only want to work part-time.

In today’s economic climate, with rising unemployment, redundancies continually in the headlines, and less jobs on offer, people do need to consider different options, and that’s where organisations like PRIME come in. We are very aware of the challenges self-employment presents, particularly to someone who has spent all their life as an employee, and often in the same organisation.

There’s a lot of help and information on this website , but if you can’t find what you’re looking for call us on 0800 783 1904.

References 

1 ONS, 2006-based subnational population projections by broad age-groups and old age dependency ratios.

2 Annual Population Survey, ONS, Jul 2007-Jun 2008

3 Nigel Campbell, “Decline of Employment Among Older People in Britain”,
Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, 1999

4 Cressy and Storey (1995) show survival rates after six years amounted to 70% for businesses with owner/managers over 55, while the average rate for all start-ups was only 19%.

5. Findings from: The Economic Impact of Ageing on Entrepreneurship and SMEs by M. Peters, R. Cressy, D. Storey May 1999. Warwick Business School. Study initiated and financed by the Forward Studies Unit of the European Commission.

Today’s unemployment figures released by the Office for National Statistics paint a worrying picture for those aged over 50.

In the last year (Dec 2007 to Dec 2008), as highlighted by the national media, unemployment in the UK has risen from 1.6m to 1.97m - an increase of 370,000 people.

This increase is made up of 296,000 under 50s and 74,000 over 50s. What’s particularly worrying for the over 50s is that the increase is 31.5 per cent, against just 21.6 per cent for younger working-age people.

This now means that of all unemployed people, the number aged over 50 now represents 15.5 per cent of the total, as against 14.5 per cent a year ago. What’s more, once on Jobseekers Allowance, younger people tend to get back into work quicker than the over 50s, resulting in a higher proportion of older people becoming long-term unemployed.

It’s interesting to note that employment figures have seen an increase of 86,000 from those who are of pension age, 50,000 of whom are women. Is this an indication that more older people want to, and are capable of, work beyond our current State Pensions ages? Or is it through necessity, with devalued pension funds, badly performing savings, and inadequate State Pensions?

Nationally, around 20 per cent of working over 50s are self-employed, and benefit from better business survival rates than younger people, mainly through life experience and better planning & research.

So this can sometimes be a solution to continuing to work in today’s economic climate, and achieving the flexibility to fit around other commitments.

PRIME’s £2 million corporate partnership with Bank of America has received a great deal of publicity in the last few days. And quite right too. Bank of America is the first major corporation to stand up and say “We believe in the potential of people aged over 50: we are going to invest in PRIME so that the entrepreneurial spirit of older people can be realised”.

We anticipate that Bank of America will be the first of many corporates to get it -  that in an ageing society olderpreneurship is vital for global competitiveness.

But what are we spending the money on?

First of all we are appointing two mentor coordinators, one in the South and one in the North, to recruit, train and manage volunteer mentors. Many of our clients want a mentor who can help them make that jump from thinking whether self-employment is something they can do, to getting their business underway. Having someone to turn to at that time is something PRIME’s clients have really appreciated where we have been able to offer a mentoring service.

Then we are appointing two trainers. We want to provide a range of introductory road shows across the country as well as more detailed workshops. At the end of November we ran a beginners roadshow in Belfast and some more detailed seminars and we were able to help over 130 people. How marvellous if we could emulate that in 20 more cities in the UK in 2009!

Bank of America is putting £0.5 million into our new Prince of Wales Enterprise Endowment. We are looking to see this grow as other corporates and individuals donate to the fund. The Enterprise Endowment will eventually provide a range of financial help to olderpreneurs. We intend to start with a micro-loan scheme for those who cannot raise money from traditional banks. This will be launched around Easter 2009. In the meanwhile we are appointing a loans officer to put everything in place.

STOP PRESS. The Zopa-PRIME Olderpreneur Loan scheme is now available - more details on our client-support site.

Hectic but exciting times. PRIME is making progress - but offers of help are always welcome. Please see SUPPORT US.

It’s easy to be cynical about the constant stream of awards we are all treated to in the media. But where they work best is at the regional level. The PR they generate is of some use to smaller businesses, who often serve a local rather than national market. And the chances of winning or getting shortlisted is greater.

A case in point is the NW Women in Business Awards 2009, which is the only business award in the region to focus exclusively on women (regardless of age).

For more information on how to enter and to download an entry form you can visit www.nwda.co.uk/women. The deadline for nominations is soon - the 30th November 2008.

The winners of the awards will be announced at an Awards Dinner to be held at the Park Royal Hotel in January 2009. This will also provide an opportunity to network with business women from across the region and also meet representatives from the Northwest’s key business support providers and women’s business networks.

When Enterprise Week was first invented a few years back PRIME was vociferous in pointing out that enterprise was not just for the young. Finally our lobbying paid off. In March 2008 “Enterprise: unlocking the UK’s talent“, the government’s new strategy on enterprise appeared. In it there was a small paragraph with major ramifications:

“Given the ageing population and the lower aspirations around enterprise amongst older age groups, it is important for the UK’s future growth prospects to encourage more people over 50 to become enterprising. The Government will work with Enterprise Insight, PRIME and SEEDA to develop and a campaign to encourage older people to realise the benefits of unlocking their talent and exploiting their skills and knowledge to be active in enterprise”.

So this year a number of special events designed for the over 50s will feature during Enterprise Week. Some of these are highlighted on www.primebusinessclub.com under “Up-coming events”.

Enterprise Insight has commissioned research on the thorny question of marketing enterprise to the over 50s. You might think that marketeers would have cracked this long ago - but they were too busy concentrating on the youth market!

It has been a very small start, but it is a beginning. There is a slow dawning of realisation that soon there will be more people over fifty than under fifty. The number of young people is dropping fast. Ignoring the needs of those aged over fifty is becoming a nonsense.

Why?

Well first of all nearly one person in three aged between fifty and state pension age is workless. These are people who have one-third of their lives in front of them. They need to finance this.

If we are to have a robust and competitive economy, we need a thriving start-up market. Given that the number of younger people is falling (and the under 30s start-up market was never that strong anyway), we need to invest in people with skills and experience if we are, as a country, to remain competitive in the global economy.

The sad thing is that too many people just have not got it yet.

Let us make sure that this year Enterprise Week is also Breakthrough Week for olderpreneurs.

The Prince of Wales is 60 on the 14th of November 2008. PRIME itself was born around ten years ago, as a direct result of the approach of the Prince’s 50th birthday. He realised that for most people getting a job gets increasingly difficult with age. His post bag was full of letters from people desperate to work but unable to find anyone to employ them - because they were “too old”. PRIME and its sister charity in Wales PRIME-Cymru were the result - two of the 18 charities the Prince has personally founded.

The two PRIMEs help people over the age of 50 get round the problem of finding someone to employ them by setting up in business for themselves - self-employment as a means of getting back into the fray and earning a livelihood.

In addition to his charities, Prince Charles has also founded six social enterprises whose trading activities help fund them. The best known is the highly successful organic brand Duchy Originals, the most recent The Highgrove Shop. These activities are substantial - the charities alone raise over £100 million a year from all sources.

It would tempting to apply an American term like “social entrepreneur” to the Prince. But this would fail to do justice to the real roots of his commitment. This side of the Prince’s life gets well-deserved attention in an hour-and-a-half long BBC documentary two day’s before his 60th birthday.

“Charles At 60: the Passionate Prince” transmits at 8.30pm on BBC One on the 12th of November. The BBC has had unprecedented access over the course of a year to observe the Prince at work in the UK and abroad, at home at Clarence House in London, at Highgrove in Gloucestershire and Birkhall in Aberdeenshire.

“This important documentary sheds new light on the Prince of Wales”, says Nick Vaughan-Barratt, its Executive Producer. “It shows the Prince using his substantial influence to further a wide variety of causes – some of them unfashionable, some controversial – and it provides a rare opportunity to hear him speaking directly, not just about what he does but why he is so passionate about the many causes he espouses.”

UPDATE: Missed the programme?
Watch on BBC iPlayer.

More about the programme at the BBC web site

Full list of Prince’s charities and social enterprises

If you are over 50 then you are closer to retirement than most of the population. Even if you have a good 15 or 20 years of work left in you, it is likely that eventually you will want to stop. So what then will happen to the business you have built up - and can it help pay for the next stage of your life?

More than half of the respondents to a recent PRIME mini poll expect to sell their business as a going concern when they are ready to exit the business. A further 16 per cent of the olderpreneurs expect to keep it going by giving it to family or a friend.

Do you expect to eventually sell your business?

• 1. Yes - sell as a going concern 56% (49 votes)
• 2. No - will give away to family / friend retaining stake 15% (13 votes)
• 3. No - will give away to family / friend completely 1% (1 vote)
• 4. No - it will close but with sale of major assets 1% (1 vote)
• 5. No - it will close with sale of some minor assets 3% (3 votes)
• 6. No - it will close with nothing much to sell 22% (19 votes)
• 7. Other 2 2% (2 votes)

Source: visitors to www.primebusinessclub.com

The poll was run on PRIME’s other web site, www.primebusinessclub.com, which provides support for those starting or running a business after the age of 50.

A key finding was that about a quarter of the respondents expect their business to close when they leave. And the great majority of these don’t expect to be able to make much from selling the assets.

So there is a clear split between those expecting to get extra money from the business when they exit and those who don’t. This may be realistic - some businesses are worth something without the founder while for others the founder IS the business. The type of business is critical.

And so is its size. There is a well developed market for selling businesses over a certain size. Papers, notably Daltons Weekly carry classified listing of businesses for sale, and specialist business transfer agents will help with a sale in return for a fee. But once you get below a value of about £250,000 for the business the market gets less interested, and the costs involved in selling start eating into the proceeds.

PRIME is very interested in this process and whether there is anything we can realistically do to help the owners of smaller owner-run and self-employed businesses. Part of PRIME’s charitable mission is “the prevention of poverty in retirement”. Maximising the chances of business owners realising at least some of the value of their businesses when they pack it in would certainly help.

We hope to produce some kind of report or practical guide.

UPDATE: October 2008. We have secured funding to produce a guide, which we hope to do by the end of March 2009. The emphasis will be on producing a practical guide we can distribute free to older business owners. The money comes from the Pensions Education Fund, part of the DWP that we have worked with before. One of the objectives the fund shares with PRIME (and the charity Age Concern that PRIME is linked to) is the desire to improve the way people plan their finances in the run up to retirement. This can sometimes nip problems of later pensioner poverty in the bud.

Though our focus will be on producing a useful guide about what older business owners can do now under existing arrangements, we will take the opportunity to research wider issues as much as we can. Is there any kind of market failure when it comes to realising the assets of smaller businesses? Or is it just inevitable that below a certain size it is hard for market mechanisms to work?  Is it done better anywhere abroad, and if so are their any lessons we could learn? Are there other organisations working on the problem?

If you have got any ideas please contact me through the form below, or email prime@ace.org.uk

Ian Stobie.

This video on the BBC web site is about people over 50 in the South West setting up their own businesses. It was shown on Spotlight, the BBC’s regional news programme for the South West of England, on the 23rd of October 2008.

The clip shows interviews with Jean Singleton and Carol Glover who set up Jeneca Beads, and also an interview with me, Peter Bennie of PRIME. We were filmed as part of the coverage of the well-attended HMRC business advice day held in Torquay the same day  Jean and Carol were filmed back at their base, after having earlier spoken at a PRIME seminar at the same event.

PRIME regularly attends the HMRC events with a stand, as they are a cost effective way of making contact with people around the UK. We have another one coming up soon in Belfast, where we’ll also be running our own programme of workshops late into the evening, after the HMRC exhibition has finished.

Women’s web site More To Life Than Shoes has relaunched. Though not strictly a business web site - its stated aim is the more general one of “inspiring women to achieve their dreams”, it has lessons for anyone doing a web site aimed at people facing the daunting task of setting out on their own.

www.moretolifethanshoes.com sets itself the task of providing inspiration, support and encouragement. And by and large it succeeds.

Its basic method is to pile on the positive examples. There is interview after interview, story after story, about women doing things for themselves and succeeding. Though the relentless optimism can get a bit wearing, by comparison most sites targeted at small business are lifeless and dull.

Many of the inspirational examples are from the world of business, so this is a good site for confidence building. The expert section also contains much advice of a business nature, so overall this is a good free resource for female business starters.

The lesson for PRIME? You can never have too many case studies.

For what it’s worth the UK has dropped from 9th to 12th in the annual league table of global “competitiveness” produced by the World Economic Forum. This puts it behind the US and several of its European neighbours, notably the Scandinavian countries.

But taking a broader view the UK remains a very good place to do business since there are 134 countries in the survey. Chad comes in last, just behind Zimbabwe.

Top 12 for business

1. United States
2. Switzerland
3. Denmark
4. Sweden
5. Singapore
6. Finland
7. Germany
8. Netherlands
9. Japan
10. Canada
11. Hong Kong SAR
12. United Kingdom

So, with only a little spin, “UK remains in Top 12!”

The report says the UK dropped three spots mainly because of worries about access to capital, as well as concern about the general high level of indebtedness prevailing in the economy. But on its institutions and legal system, infrastructure, technology and may of the other things that affect ease of doing business, the UK is still among the best places in the world to set up shop. The list is based largely on a poll of 12,000 business leaders from all the 134 countries rated.