Next came the usual demands at who should be project manager. However, this part of the show was brightened up by the brilliantly awkward moment of Rebecca putting herself forward and being met with a nervous silence and sideways glances.

Once her team had chosen Luisa instead, we got our glimpses at the usual shenanigans of the team's search for products and arguing over budgets. This time, at least there was some livestock to brighten up the occasion.

The task was won by two key battles, buffalo vs. milkshake and who could sell better. Other than Myles, no one really seemed to excel with the latter. It was Jordan's decision to go with high end buffalo that won the profit race against Kurt's milkshakes. But, if you had been watching the show, you would have had no idea that was going to happen.

The whole episode tried hard to convince you Endeavour and their milkshakes were outselling everything, just for the one moment of surprise when Evolve were revealed as the winners. Still, with project manager Neil, Kurt and Uzma coming back into the boardroom, at least we got the thrill of wondering if our predicted winner would take the early exit she deserved.

In the boardroom

And she did. In the end, it was thoroughly deserved. Neil may have resembled a 1800s European dictator in his leadership and Kurt may have made a mess of his milkshakes, and his chances of impressing Lord Sugar with his business idea, but Uzma was always going to get the chop after her performances so far.

Villain of the week - Uzma Yakoob

We had such high hopes for Uzma. All her experience and promises of a calm nature ended up being big claims with little backing as she failed to win in her own industry, failed to make friends and failed to convince Lord Sugar she deserved another chance. After three appearances in the bottom three, it's finally time to say goodbye to Smarta's choice.

Hero of the week - Jason Leech

Ok, he didn't do anything spectacular, or anything at all for that matter, but is there anyone more fun to watch? Whether it's grating cheese, fumbling with Rebecca's apron or trying to avoid being told off, Jason is adorable. He's unlikely to win Lord Sugar's favour with the way he's acting, but we love the touch of joyful immaturity he's bringing to the show.

If you're up to date with the stream of negative business voices out there, they'll tell you that securing funding is the hardest part of starting a business these days. But, if you have a regular salary landing in your bank account every month, you've got the funding for the early stages of your business sorted.

Don't forget: One day, you will leave your steady salary behind. Saving as much as possible while you know what's coming in will give you a safety net when leaving the nest of full time employment.

Up to date skills

Alan Sugar swears that every entrepreneur should work in whatever industry they're starting a business in. But the truth is, whether you're in the right sector or not, the skills you use every day at work will help you get your business going. Whether it's IT capabilities, organisation or networking, working life offers you opportunities every day to improve the skills you'll need as an entrepreneur.

Don't forget: While your day job is a great training place for skills, there will be aspects of starting a business that you'll never practice there. Your innovation, marketing and commitment will be tested every day in a way full time work won't have prepared you for. Use courses or Smarta 100 Academy events to help build up your confidence in the areas you haven't used recently.

Contacts

Don't be secretive about your business. Tell everyone at work you're ideas and listen to their advice. And say yes to every favour you can to build up a team of people who will return the favours and sing your praises once your business starts.

Don't forget: It's important to understand where you work and what's acceptable there. Starting a business is an exciting time and you're going to want everyone to know what you're doing, but letting your boss know you're desperate to get out will only muddy the water. Once you've started a business, every relationship is crucial, don't forget that in your relationships at work.

The final push

If and when you do decide it's time to leave your day job behind, it will be the perfect motivation to put everything you've got into getting your business growing. Chances are, you'll have left because you need to invest your time in your business rather than that safe salary, and that thought should drive you to make the most of every minute you have to spend on your business.

Of course, there are other ways to boost your business by leaving your job, like Mr Cake, who generated incredible viral PR with his resignation in the icing of one of his homemade cakes.

Don't forget: Everything will change when you leave your day job. You won't have anyone setting your deadlines, your targets and your long term goals. You'll be setting those yourself and you'll need to get used to that quickly. Quitting your job isn't about giving yourself a holiday, it's about giving yourself the time to focus on making your business a success.

From the videos, Richard will choose the three best entrepreneurs and invite them into a live Google+ Hangout. In the Hangout, the three will have to convince Richard why they deserve his money.

As well as the £10,000 loan, the winner will gain ongoing business advice from the Dragon and enjoy a private lunch with him.

Six seconds to sell

So, get thinking of how you can sell your business in six seconds. With so little time, will you concentrate on your idea, your marketing or your business plan? What else can you show off in the video? You may not be able to fit a lot of words into six seconds, but there are other ways to show off your business.

When your video is ready, tweet your Vine using the hashtag #S4SLaunchMe before the 28^th of May.

You can never fully understand your target market until you listen to them and one of the quickest and most effective ways of doing this is with online monitoring. By tracking a range of online sources you can see what people are saying about your business as well as getting a greater understanding of the types of product they're after. This then allow you to tailor your brand's online presence to reach those who are in the market for your product or service, when they need it most.

Know your brand's reputation

It's surprising how many firms are unaware of what is being said about them both online and in print which can lead to reputational damage in the short-term and business failure in the long-term if not addressed. By getting online and scanning as wide a range of sources as possible you will get a clear picture of how your company is viewed by existing and potential clients.  Understanding what your brand means to people is the first step in developing or changing your firm's perception in future and with the rise of social media communities this is only going to increase in importance over traditional channels.

Keep tabs on the competition

You should never underestimate your competitors. By having an understanding of your rivals' reputations, comparing them with conversations around your business, you can create a detailed picture of the industry and where you sit, before putting plans in place to outmanoeuvre your competitors and stay one step ahead.

Understand who is important

Brands must be persuasive and the key to this is understanding who in your industry has the power to do the influencing on your behalf. By understanding which media outlets, bloggers and key commentators have real sway you can target your PR efforts accordingly to maximise the likelihood of influential endorsement and with it improved brand appeal.

It's all about sentiment

They say that it's more important to understand how something is said than what exactly is being said and the same applies for online conversations. Whether your brand gets 10 or 100,000 mentions a day it's important to quantify how many of these are positive, negative and neutral to provide an accurate snapshot of how your brand is perceived by the public. By understanding the current sentiment towards your brand you can then make the necessary changes to appeasing those who are unhappy as well as turning those who are already pleased into brand ambassadors who will work on your behalf to help spread the word about your company and help you grow in future.

Spot risks and stop them becoming reality

It's much harder to build a brand online which has suffered a number of negative comments, especially with the ease of sharing and so it's worth proactively planning for issues which could result in negative comments about your brand to ensure that they are at best avoided altogether and at worst kept to a minimum.

It's impossible to stop comments both positive and negative, however monitoring and knowing as soon as possible allows you to asses, step back and decide how best to handle the situation to minimise the negative impact.

Large firms have fallen foul to the likes of backfiring Twitter campaigns and poorly considered blog posts, so put the time in to plan for problems to ensure they are kept to a minimum and won't stunt your brand's growth over time. Remember, once something is up online it can be extremely difficult to get rid of.

If you have any social media monitoring queries you'd like Richard to answer then tweet @SpotterLive.

As the British recovery picks up speed, the businesses that hire staff and invest in their production process first will be the ones who can meet the growing requirements of clients. That's what is leading almost half of manufacturers to invest in new machinery, premises or technologies now rather than waiting for the demand to come to them.

These figures, found by the Government's Manufacturing Advisory Service (MAS), are announced alongside news that hiring and sales within small businesses are set to rise.

Invest to remain competitive

"There appeared to be a greater appetite from SMEs for investment in order to remain competitive." Lorraine Holmes, area director for MAS, said, "I think we are also seeing a desire to create jobs to meet expected demand."

This paints a great picture for the coming months, but also a warning to small businesses across the country. If an energetic economic recovery is coming, it will cause huge strain on firms' cash flow, staff and stock. It will be the business' that prepare quickest who are ready to profit from the growth.

We definitely recommend taking a look at your cashflow, your resources and your employees to figure out how ready your business is for increased demand.

For more help with planning for the future, catch up with the King of Cashflow.

Here are a few tips to help you if you are low on time and budget but need to have some online presence.

Target relevant opportunities

Perform keyword research and get a better understanding what key phrases people use to find your products or services using Google's Keyword Tool. Think you will be able to rank for broad generic terms which receive thousands of monthly searches? Think again. Using the tool can bring up some promising niche areas for you to concentrate within. Try to target in your business niche and area, i.e. "hairdressers in Bristol". This will convert higher and you will have a better chance of reaching the first page or even top spot due to lower competition.

When using the Google Keyword Tool make sure you select [exact] match in the left column, click 'only show ideas closely related to my search terms' and change the search location to your target area. Type in some queries which are relevant and think you will want to target, then look at the local monthly search volume to give you an idea of what may work for you.

If you're already running a PPC (pay per click) campaign, then analyse the data and let it drive what you target in SEO. Your analytics is also a very good place to get a better understanding, which leads us nicely onto the next point.

Tracking

Google Analytics is a free tool you can use to monitor various metrics such as traffic to your site, traffic source, search engines used, key phrases used to get there, language, amongst a whole range of other items. Once you become more confident, you can have goals or e-commerce tracking set-up within your analytics. This tool is great and you can really learn a lot about what is and isn't working and how to adapt your site accordingly. Google also has Webmaster Tools, which is similar to Analytics, but will let you know certain things such as if you are blocking the search engines via robot.txt and retaining 404 errors. It also has average position tracking for search queries and will show you some links back to your site.

Make your website relevant

This may be thought of as a given, but having a website free from errors (or broken links) and pleasing aesthetically is critical. You should use the keyword research you have already performed, to include your target key phrases naturally into your site. Most importantly, pages should have relevant keyword focused 'Page Title' elements which should be under 65 characters ideally.

Something like "Your Brand | Relevant on Page Key Phrases" should work. "Meta Descriptions" should be under 156 characters and should include key phrases - which will become bold when they appear in the search results for the given search query. You can ignore the 'meta keywords' tag, it's simply not used by the search engines. Headings and copy should also include your key phrases naturally within paragraphs, but do not stuff the copy, focus on quality of content for the user and include where it makes sense. SEOmofo has a great SERP Snippet Tool to check how your pages will look in the Google search results.

You can crawl your website with the Screaming Frog SEO Spider which will also help to identify any errors on the website as well as collect all the important elements you should be considering when improving your onsite relevancy.

Links Are Vital

Other websites linking to yours is vital in helping your website rank high on search engines. The more reputable the link, the more weight it carries with the search engines and the more visible you will become. So have a think about any relationships you may already have to get a link to your website, such as friends, suppliers, associations or trade bodies you may be part of. You can also consider local business directories and local news sites for quick wins. Try and get listed in all of these which should get you ranking for your brand name and possibly even some long tail specific results. Beenmentioned in the news or had a PR piece which news outlets may have picked up on? Make sure you are getting those links! SEOmoz's Fresh Web Explorer can be useful for this, as well as a having a look around a good old fashioned search engine after you type in your brand name. Follow up and ask for a link if you are not getting credited!

Get Blogging

I know you don't have time, but you should make time! Creating compelling and valuable content will make your website far more likely to attract links naturally. Think about solving people's problems with advice, guides and tips. If you're going to write about news, make sure you provide unique insight and don't just republish what has already been written elsewhere. Focus on quality over quantity, one top blog post a week, which people genuinely would want to read and share, is better than one a day which nobody is interested in.

Branding and Social Media

If you haven't yet got a business Twitter account, get one and use it! With the launch of Google Plus and the direction Google's algorithm seems to be going, we expect that social signals will play a big part in the rankings soon as a democratic vote for quality.

Customers may legitimately be interested in your company. If not create an engaging brand which will spark a buzz to get people talking…and bloggers linking.

There are many blogs and other resources out there about SEO best practices, tips and tactics. If any of the above is new to you, I would recommend reading the SEOmoz Beginners Guide to get started.

This post was written on behalf of Matt Payne, who is director of the plastic card printing company Oomph. Oomph print plastic cards such as membership cards, hotel key cards and NFC cards.

David Karp was surprised that none of the big names in blogging had produced a platform for "tumblelogs", short blogs, so began work on his own site with developer Marco Arment. Spotting a gap in the market may be one of the biggest buzz phrases in entrepreneurship, but David Karp did exactly that and was determined enough to run with it.

February 2007 - 75,000 users in two weeks

The demand for Tumblr's easy to use and clean blogging space was proven by the reaction of bloggers to its beta release. Using this small release as testing ground, but waiting to release a final product, mean Karp was able to enter his first funding round with proof of the potential of Tumblr.

October 2007 - Tumblr raises $750,000

In the first round of funding, Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures invested £750,000 in Tumblr, giving it the capital to launch and market itself globally. After a full release, the second round of funding in December 2008 went on to raise a further $4.5m.

February 2009 - First official app

Developers Jeff Rock and Garrett Ross actually created the first Tumblr app, Tumblerette, but Karp bought it and went on to release an official iPhone app for Tumblr later that year. The official app was crucial in Tumblr's struggle to surpass competitors including WordPress in the number of blogs posted on their sites.

June 2012 - First large scale advertising campaign

Five years after starting up, Tumblr was finally monetised and started allowing advertising on the site, with a huge campaign from Adidas. Having not generated money before, 2012 saw Tumblr receive £13m in advertising revenue. While still not enough to break a profit, it created interest in the potential of the business.

May 2013 - Yahoo buys Tumblr for $1.1bn

That interest led to Yahoo's huge purchase Tumblr. While the possibility of much larger advertising revenues will be a big drawing point, the move is also a signal of intent from Yahoo itself. If it is ever going compete against its rivals at Google and Facebook, Yahoo needs a presence in social media, and Tumblr is now that presence.

With this in mind, it's no surprise David Cameron's enterprise adviser Lord Young recently said "this is a very good time to start a business."

Of course, this doesn't mean all entrepreneurs should be abandoning their incomes after one week to commit to starting up their own businesses, but it does mean the barriers to starting-up are falling and there's less to stop you from getting your business going than ever before.

Anyone can start-up

More than three quarters of micro-businesses are started with less than £2,000 in funding. The world of start-ups has changed so dramatically that the doors are open to everyone to see what they can achieve on their own.

"Starting a business is now most definitely open to anyone," says Xenios Thrasyvoulou, founder and CEO of PeoplePerHour. "You don't have to be from a wealthy family, have a background in finance or have started on your entrepreneurial journey while in your teens."

PeoplePerHour's report also found that more than a third of micro-business owners started their business while still working and that 28% of micro businesses were started by entrepreneurs over 40.

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Here's how I talk about it in my new book, The Inside-Out Revolution:

What would that actually be like? Chances are if you were able to quadruple your money you would be excited in the moment, but at the end of the night after turning in your chips you would forget all about it. Similarly, if you lost it all, you would likely be disappointed - until you remembered that it was all just a game and the real payoff was already in your pocket.

What would it be like to play the game of life knowing that everything that really counts - your well-being, happiness, love, and self-worth - are already yours to keep? After all, you were born with them, and the only thing that can ever take you away from them is a thought. There is nothing of true and lasting value you can get from playing the game of life that wasn't already yours before you started playing and won't continue to be yours after the game is done.

You are playing with the house's money. There is nothing real at stake. The pressure is completely off…

Are you ready to begin?

Click the link for more information about the Michael Neill and the Inside-Out Revolution

We provide a highly functional loyalty and offers platform for businesses that want to run their own schemes.

2. Why are you a smart business?

Because we do smart things. We offer our clients an easy to use tool that increases their customer engagement, driving a greater footfall which naturally leads to higher revenues.

3. What's the smartest thing you've done to help your business grow?

Learning to say "no" to the bad customers- so we can make sure we only work with clients that will get really exceptional value from our products.

4. What smart things do you do for your customer's?

We give the best of the best technology in a way that any size of business can benefit from. The World of marketing is one that can often be daunting, particularly to smaller business, but it is often the difference between success and failure. We therefore offer a product and support to make this key area of any business easy to manage.

5. What smart technologies do you use to run your business?

We take commodity Android smartphones and turn them into highly specialised marketing tools. Our smartphones are customised to run our scanning application, which is also available on all personal smartphones by downloading our app (http://bit.ly/18QqeJQ), so that each offer that is redeemed is secure and can be fully tracked down to the customer, location, time, date and spend amount.

6. What's your smartest tip for other entrepreneurs?

Know very clearly what you are selling, and then get really good at delivering it.

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