Small Office, Home Office Information

Every small business faces a disaster at one time or another. It’s almost inevitable that problems will arise that can really test your determination to succeed and how we handle those problems ultimately leads to our survival or demise.

But spare a thought for those 81,000 businesses that have been affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. How do you rebuild a small business when there is very little left and no one around to buy your product?

Gwen Wallace and her husband are trying to reopen their family’s fabricated steel business in a situation where the employees have all gone and none are likely to ever return to New Orleans. The Wallaces have lost their home, their workshop, their tools and are now trying to rebuild their business. They already have home and business mortgages and their assests have been destroyed.

They can’t get any more money from the bank and Federal aid was denied and yet they are determined to recover.

Donna Poniatowski runs a restaurant in downtown New Orleans. The building that houses the restaurant is damaged but they can operate … if only they can cut through the red tape that is holding her back. Their kitchen runs on natural gas and of course the gas was turned off during the hurrican.

Getting it turned back on is not as simple as just turning a tap. Before the City will turn the gas on the the gas connections need to be certified as safe by a licencsed plumber … and there are very few of those tradespeople left in the city.

Even when she finds one and the certificates are provided it will take the City another two to three weeks to send health inspectors around to pass the restaurant as ready to open.

How would you survive when faced with those hassles? Would you resolve to succeed remain or would you be ready to pack up and go on welfare?

We went into a well known fast food outlet today and it was interesting to listen to the messages that we received while we were there.

‘You both look like a couple of average fools so I’ll tell you that there will be a two minute delay when I know is could easily be ten’

‘Just wait over there and I’ll bring it to you when it’s ready but don’t hold your breath because I’m really not interested in serving you’

‘I know that there is a set list of ingredients for this but who cares? I’ll just throw some stuff in there and squirt some cranberry sauce all over it and they won’t even know that I couldn’t be bothered putting all the ingredients into the order.”

‘Oops that’s the order for that dumb looking couple - it’s just hit the front of the food chutes - damn perhaps if I keep my head in the softserve machine they won’t notice and I won’t have to serve them’

‘Damn one of the other staff has grabbed that order for someone they’re serving - oh well the bottom of the softserve machine looks pretty interesting to me.’

‘Holy cow that old fart looks like he’s about ready to crush my gonads - I better get their order fixed up real quick.’

‘Here you are sir - I’m sorry for the delay but really I couldn’t give a damn because you’re both a couple of dumb fools and I’ll probably never see you again. Wow it worked - he said thanks but I didn’t like the way he smiled at me.’

And our message to McDonalds - ‘Thanks - we understand you were treating us like a couple of tools - we won’t be back. Subway is just around the corner and that’s where we’ll be going in future.’

Now what are your clients hearing when they deal with you and your staff?

Maybe that’s a rather strong headline but just lately the fact that so many small businesses let others control their lives has been bothering me.

Actually I thought I was over it but something I was reading about a technical gadget brought it back to me. Some firm has come up with an incredible little gadget that’s a bit like carrying a slideshow in your pocket and further information is available by filling in a form on their website.

Unfortunately the form doesn’t work - probably because whoever designed the site was in too great a rush. So now they have a great product and they’re probably wondering why no one is asking them about it. Problems like that can happen when you let other people from outside your business take control.

What really got me thinking about it was a cup of coffee I had with Toni at our favourite cafe. I was sitting there waiting for Toni to arrive when the owner whose afriend mentioned that the cafe now has it’s own website. He said that it was designed by friends in the web design business and it was pretty obvious that he had just told them to design him a website and left them to do it.

So I was interested to see what it looked like and as soon as I got home and into my office I typed in the URL.

And it was genuinely terrible. The splash page was even less interesting than a wet dish cloth. Someone had decided that the site needed a lot of Javascript but it didn’t work, links that were supposed to point to other pages in the site pointed to nothing and images were being called up from some other site that had nothing to do with the cafe.

If you are going to get someone to do some work for you maintain some control over it. If you don’t understand the work that has to go into job get them to explain it. Call them to account for why they are doing things and if they won’t tell you, or can’t tell you then make them stop till they can or will.

Keep control of your small businesses life and don’t let others destroy what you have worked so hard to achieve.

Our friend the cafe owner did just that - he wanted a website that would advertise the good food, great coffee and fun that people can have when they go to his cafe. Instead what he got was something that will turn people away.

Working from home is the goal of many people but sadly, when they achieve that goal, they find that the dream of working from home is far removed from the reality.

It’s something that Toni and I have been grappling with over the last few months and Toni has taken to working from desk in a friend’s office just to get her out of the house and mixing with real people. On the other hand I’m a bit of a hermit so isolation doesn’t worry me to the same extent.

Whatever your point of view is on the subject of working from home I’m sure you’ll be interested in this press release that arrived today.

Home Office From Hell(TM) Contest: Win One Year’s Free Rent and Escape to a Real Office

In a nationwide contest offering 12 months of free rent in real office space, Offices2share.com(R), a Web site that focuses exclusively on short-term, ready-to-use office space, is inviting entrants to submit their Top 10 Reasons for wanting (usually desperately) to move out of their home office. Aimed at those hearty souls who have — in the past and present — toiled amidst crying babies, nagging spouses, annoying neighbors and other horrors typically found in the often unproductive environs of the home office, the Home Office From Hell(TM) contest will reward the author of the wittiest and most compelling Top 10 list with a free 12-month sabbatical in the relative calm of a real office.

“For anyone who’s ever had to deal with a bratty child, fend off overly-persistent telemarketers and fix a toaster — all while negotiating an important business deal — this is a chance to have a professional office for a year, rent-free,” said Jeffrey A. Landers, founder and president of Offices2share.com. “All they have to do is examine the frustrations and drawbacks of working at home and put a humorous spin on it.”

Working at home instead of an office can be fraught with pitfalls. According to a study by the Economist Intelligence Unit, the noted global research and advisory firm, 61 percent of respondents reported that working in a home office deleteriously blurred the division between their work life and home life; 44 percent said that working at home made it more difficult to collaborate with colleagues. Other liabilities commonly associated with the home office — especially for all but the most self-disciplined — include intrusive phone calls, the lure of the TV and the refrigerator, family obligations, procrastination and even a tendency to overwork.

The winner of the Home Office From Hell contest can select professional office space in any of the hundreds of cities across the U.S. served by Offices2Share.com. Entries will be judged by an independent panel that includes volunteers from SCORE, “Counselors to America’s Small Business,” a national nonprofit organization which provides counseling and training to small businesses.

Those wishing to enter the Home Office From Hell contest must visit http://www.offices2share.com/contest and fill out the requisite online form. Official rules, prize description, guidelines and helpful hints are included therein. Contestants can base their Top 10 list on both real-life and whimsical situations; entries will be judged on originality, creativity, humor and relevance to topic.

I heard an interesting story the other day. Here in the town where we live there are a lot of real estate agents. It’s a boom town so the real estate industry is expanding.

One of the mid-sized agencies sacked three sales people on the spot the other day because the owner of the agency had heard that the three people he fired were planning on opening their own agency in a few weeks to a month’s time.

Is that how you would handle your competition? Would you alienate them like that?

Or would you stay friendly and even supportive?

A very street-wise fellow that we once knew told us that it was wise to keep your friends close and your enemies even closer.

I wonder what you gain by making enemies of your competition?

The message that many of us send out may not really be what we want the marketplace to hear. But then that problem isn’t restricted to small business. Sometimes we do have an excuse - after all we’re small and we can’t employ experts to vet every message we want to send.

But what excuse does big business have?

Take Boeing - the aircraft manufacturer for instance. They have been busy advertising their latest verion of the V22 Osprey (its a combination aircraft and helicopter if those sort of things interest you) and it has many uses. Perhaps showing it in a rescue situation might have been a good marketing ploy but someone at Boeing decided that it was time to flex a little muscle and show just what this mighty fighting machine could really do.

So about a month ago a ad appeared in print in the National Journal showing the Osprey in action. Not just any old battlefield action but something that was topical and put the plane right at the forefront of the fight for freedom. And what better way to do that than to show this hi-tech piece of hardware attacking … a mosque.

Of course you can imagine the response to which Boeing replied that it had no knowledge of how the ad came to be created.

There’s not much plausible deniability in that one - especially when the same ad was printed again this month.

So what message are you sending to all parts of your marketplace?

Here is an interesting question for you. Who speaks for your small business?

Whose voice do people in the marketplace hear when your product, your service, your whatever your selling gets a mention?

Do they hear you speaking? Do they hear your employees speaking? And is the message one that you would want the marketplace to hear?

And of course, all that leads on to another interesting point that you should never forget. Actions speak louder than words.

Now who did you say speaks for your small business?

When we can’t look at the four walls of our home office anymore Toni and I head down to the beach front here in Hervey Bay and grab a cup of coffee at our favourite cafe - The Bayaroma. It’s been there ever since we moved to Hervey Bay and has always served great coffee but seven months ago new owners took over.

Terry and his wife certainly injected some amazing enthusiasm into that business and in 7 months grew it to the point now where it is bursting at the seams. It really is the busiest cafe in town serving hundreds of meals every single day. They have done so well with their small business that they were recognised as the leading small business in town at the Small Business Awards last Friday night.

Over the weekend we were chatting with Terry and he told us this story about a visit they had from big business when they first took over the cafe.

The previous owner had been stocking Coke and the number 2 brand here in Australia and of course Terry had to re-negotiate the arrangements with both companies. Cadbury-Schweppes were very accommodating with the arrangements that Terry wanted to negotiate but not so the representative from Coco Cola.

There was little room for movement with the deal that Coke wanted to push onto them and so Terry decided to ask Coke to remove their product and fridges from the cafe. The Coke rep was horrified and couldn’t understand why Terry would want to do such a thing.

He tried to tell Terry that it would damage his business because people wanted Coke and “we’ve got Coke” became the rep’s catch-cry throughout the negotiations.

“So what?” said Terry. “Who cares?”

“But we’ve got Coke” was all the rep could say as he refused to negotiate an arrangement that was in line with the one Cadbury-Scweppes had negotiated.

And seven months later the Coke rep still has Coke and the Bayaroma doesn’t and no one who comes into that cafe seems to care. Toni and I often sit at a table quite near the drink fridges and we have never heard anyone comment about the fact that Coke is not for sale at the Bayaroma Cafe.

So I guess the moral of the story is - don’t let the big guys push you around because what they’re trying to sell you may be totally unimportant to your customers.

Sunday and, like so many other small business people, despite some beautiful weather it was not a day of rest. There was a lot of catching up to do today and that was going to require quite a fair bit of time spent online transferring files around the planet.

Of course there were big plans for both of us to get a lot of work done today but, as luck would have it, the Net was running slow today and a lot of the work still remains to be done. However, while one computer was struggling to move those files I was able to keep working on the other preparing some written work that has a deadline of tomorrow.

It’s now finished and ready for despatch tomorrow.

In the old version of this site I made mention from time to time of a daily column that Toni writes for a website that’s aimed at a specialised group of Webmasters. On Friday her 754th article was published and that brings her word count for that publication alone to over 604,000 … and who said women can’t talk

Congratulations my dear - over the years there have been people who have mocked and given you a hard time and it’s interesting to note that you’re still here turning out work every day while they have faded into obscurity.

The Internet is a odd place - the anonymity that people think they have because they sit behind a computer monitor tends to give them the freedom to speak with their real voice instead of the one they want the world to see. We’ve learned over the years that there are a lot of very ugly people out there.

It seems that small business is rushing to get online at an every increasing rate. Here in Australia there are around 50,000 new domain names registered every month.

But what are they doing online?

How would a presence on line serve you’re small business?

Just because other small businesses are doing it does your small business really need to be online too?

And if you are there will anybody really find you?