Our April  event was a sell-out and proved to be a tremendous success. Johnnie Boden  kindly agreed to share his top tips for successful business with us.

• You need two good partners: one domestic and one at work. Latter
should be both 100% trustworthy and 100% complementary

• Get underneath customer skin-they're always much further ahead of you
than you realise.

• Follow the sales-just give customers what they want

• Focus on Product. A million times more important than anything else:
design, quality, value, service

• Work out what you are best at and delegate the rest

• Hard work/tenacious. If it's not knackering, you're doing something
wrong

• Hire people who are better than you. And don't hesitate to get rid of
them if they're not right. Hard but necessary. But ensure you brief and
motivate them them well

• Self aware. Be VERY open to customer and staff feedback

• Be prepared to Put all savings on line. If you're not willing to do
this, then business is probably not right. You have to believe in it
150%

• Attention to detail more important than Strategy