There is no doubt that Britain is a nation of sandwich lovers. After all, it was a British Earl, the Earl of Sandwich, who they are named after – no surprise there really. Making and selling sandwiches can be a very lucrative business, especially if you offer a made-to-order service. The number of businesses that do not have their own staff canteen is growing, especially with more stringent health and safety regulations. Maintaining a staff cafeteria has become too expensive and many companies have dispensed with them altogether and installed drinks machines instead. This could be to your advantage as a large number of business premises are in business parks, and staff do not have enough time during their lunch breaks to go to the nearest shop and buy their lunch, or prefer to eat at their desks so that they can leave the office early. There are also a lot of employees who don’t have time to make their own sandwiches in the morning because they are trying to get their kids off to school or the childminder, or simply can’t be bothered. These are all potential customers for a sandwich business.

You can meet this demand in a number of ways. The simplest, and most efficient, is to start a delivery service. Approach your potential customers with flyers that have a list of popular sandwiches, their prices and a telephone number for placing orders. If possible, make an appointment with someone working at the company - the head of personnel or human resources for example. Take along some sample sandwiches and ask if they would post your flyer on the staff notice board, or other suitable place. On the flyer you have a deadline by which orders need to be placed, and a time and place that they will be delivered to. When you are approaching a number of businesses in the area, it is important that you stagger the delivery times, to prevent disappointed customers and cancelled orders. When you deliver the sandwiches, you take payment. It really is as simple as that.

Another way of opening a sandwich business is to have a van from which you can sell a selection of sandwiches. Prawn mayonnaise, cheese and pickle, ham and coleslaw, tuna and cucumber and egg salad for example. You then visit the companies in the area, and let the customers come to you. Again, if you can have a flyer advertising the fact that you will be outside at a certain time each day placed in a prominent place inside the company that is the ideal. However, if you park outside each place at the same time every day then the staff will soon know when to expect you. You may want to sell other items too, such as packets of crisps, chocolate bars and canned drinks. If you are an avid baker then you may even want to sell cakes and biscuits. The choice is yours, and you will soon get a feel for what sells, and what doesn’t.

Once you become established in an area then you can branch out and expand the business by hiring staff to cover more areas, even let staff take over all the sandwich work and you just manage you growing empire!

While the demand for chimney sweeps has dropped over the last century, there is still a significant market for the service. Anyone who has a wood stove, or fireplace that gets used for actual warmth generation has a regulatory requirement to get the carbon and creosote cleared from their chimney at least once every other year, as it's a fire hazard otherwise.

What this means to you is that there's a definite demand, and that the demand must be met, giving you a shot at a second income, or even a job to replace the one you've got. Chimney sweeps perform a specialized task; you'll need to apprentice under a current chimney sweep, which can take some time to find one willing to teach you. Once you've done that, you can take on clients of your own and do the work – typical fees for a chimney sweep are about £60 or £120 or so for a basic service that has to be done once a year. On the job, sweeping a chimney takes about two hours, tops, and can be much less than that.

Now, to run your own business, you need a bit of business savvy, and some common sense. The business savvy comes from advertising. You'll need to let people know you're offering the service; this can be done as simply as going door to door in the late summer and early fall, which is when most folks have their chimneys swept. However, it's probably more efficient to take out an advertisement in the local telephone directory; the odds that someone has a chimney and doesn't have a telephone are pretty slim in this day and age. Similarly, running advertisements in the local newspaper, or in the local weekly alternative paper is probably worth doing.

The common sense, sadly, is less common than the business savvy. You need to be prompt, professional and tidy. While chimney-sweeping is a dirty job, there's no need to go tracking soot across someone's floor or rug. You're making a professional appointment – be timely; show up when you're supposed to. If you are unavoidably delayed, do have the courtesy to call ahead and let your client know.

All that said, there are some other factors to consider. First, you'll need to buy some specialized equipment; it's not terribly expensive, generally a few hundred pounds, but it is a capital investment in the business. Still, with a bit of pluck and some hard work, you'll soon be sweeping in the money on a part time job where you don't have to answer to someone else. That in itself is often a significant benefit!

Registered office is an address which is registered with the Companies House in UK, when you have your own business establishment. It is at this place that all the records of your business are kept. It also serves as the official address where you receive your official mail communication. From a legal point of view, you are required to undergo this formality by the Companies Act of 1985. It is also a rule for this address to be quoted on all company correspondence and also on the company's letterhead. Other products of this company should also carry this address, and so also should it be on the signboard outside the office.

A registered office in a famous area can work wonders for your company. This is because of the visibility factor. The address of a well-known place associated with your company's name catches the attention of people and of course, your target customers. This thus brings prestige and business to your company.

All said, the registered office need not be in the place from where you run your business. And this is very helpful for all those small firms which cannot afford to set shop in a uptown commercial area. So for the same, there are services available from providers who specialise in this. They provide you with an address to help you with publicity by the very virtue of your address while also fulfilling the legal requirement.

Besides small and medium-size business owners, the other people who can benefit from this service, are the overseas businessmen who wish to establish business in UK.

Most providers of registered office also have a mail forwarding service, which means that they ensure that all your mails are safely delivered to you. And all it involves is complementary charges. Not only this, they also have the expertise and the experience to help you out with your business-related matters.

It’s time to take a look at your assets, current assets (those expected to be used in a year or less) need to be re-examined quarterly, fixed assets (those over a year) should be dealt with at a minimum annually, semi-annually if you have the time and you purchase a fair share of fixed assets within a year. What you want to look for here is the return on assets. How are your assets contributing to making a profit? If they are not or if the number is lower then the industry average you may have to consider purchasing new assets. Check each fixed asset against its accumulated depreciation, is its useful life nearly depleted? Your accountant made an assumption for how long that particular asset would be useful, chances are that asset may still be able to provide years of production to come, so this is not a rule of thumb, but simply a way of determining whether a course of action needs to take place.

Included in your assets are your receivables. Review your credit policy; examine your customers and clients. Is your bad-debt expense too high? Are you allocating too much write-off? This is the second biggest cancer to cash flow (sales is number one, if you don’t make a sale, you have no cash, period). Re-examine who you extend credit to, do they continuously pay late? If you have a large quantity of write-offs it may be time to consider collections, or factoring (selling your receivables at a discount).

(VI) Liabilities

This section is really fairly simple. You want to watch your debt load carefully. Too much means too high interest expense, and too low could mean you’re not expanding your company, a sign of stagnation. Watch you current ratio, and the quick ratios. They’re a good gauge of your use of cash, and receivables collection.

(VII) Strategy

Every year at the beginning of the fiscal year you should be meeting with key member of your team to discuss strategy for the year ahead. This should actually be the final meeting about strategy setting as it should have been started six months ago. Everything from day one of the fiscal year on should be monitoring your strategic implementations.

It’s time to review your goals, short-term, intermediate, and long term strategies. Where is your company headed, and where does it sit compared to your competitors. It’s a great time to break out SWOT and begin reviewing. Is your company headed in the right direction? Where are your products in their life cycles? Do you need to add a line, diversify your business, and acquire a competitor or a business in another market? Or is it time to get bought out?

(VIII) Your Team

Your support staff is a crucial part of your business. Do not neglect them. They need to be led, nurtured, reviewed, given direction, given vision, and in some cases let go. Firing is difficult and letting an employee go could lead to a legal battle. Do not let this affect the decision to release an employee because they fail to meet standards, expectation, and code of conduct. Morale can be weakened by a “bad apple” why let them spoil your bunch.

Take the time to review each staff member, or at least key members and allow managers to review others. Motivation to work harder, smarter, and more creatively doesn’t always get solved by waving more green in front of them. Some employees desire different incentives, take the time to get to know what makes them tick, you may find that a key staff member may want to take half-days on Friday as an incentive, and you had planned to offer them an equity position. You may save yourself some money.

Also consider nurturing their gifts and talents, look into professional development. Seminars, books, tools, courses, training, and certifications can lead to a better staff. Pour into them, and they’ll pour into your company.