Small Office, Home Office Information

by Toni Livesey

Like Stuart I;m a big fan of blogs but I’m not sure that I agree with those who suggest that every small business needs a blog. However, for those who might be a little less obvious - like those in a home office - blogs can be important.

However, a blog that’s directly about your business may not be the right approach. You’ll find the story of one lawyer who discovered that talking about running was more beneficial to his business than talking about the law if you read How Blogging About What You Love Can Get You Clients

It’s Friday - there’s a whole bunch of deadlines due today - lots of work to get done so I’m up at 3.30am and wander into the office.

A jiggle of both mice and two screens spring to life … but the other two stay black. Oh well, maybe I didn’t jiggle that mouse hard enough … another harder jiggle … screens still black.

Hmmm … time to thump the mouse on the desk a few times - you know these electronic gadgets, you’ve got to show them who’s boss … screens stay black.

Reboot time and the black screens spring to life with a very odd pattern … not looking good Stuart … time to man the pre-panic stations.

Two more reboots and the screens aren’t even showing that odd pattern anymore. Time to mutter a few choice expletives under my breath … bugger that didn’t work either.

One of the big jobs for today needed two computers and three screens … time to improvise, adapt and overcome.

6am the computer is walking out the door and on its way to the computer shop. Looks like the fan cooled graphic card has pulled in so much dirt I could be growing vegetables in there.

Oh well I was thinking of re-arranging my desk and now, while one computer is out of the way, is as good a time as any - I’ll just have to fit it into my already overcrowded day

It’s nice to have some involvement with a computer shop where the tech likes to get an early start on the day. I should have it back in an hour or so.

If you’re about to launch a major advertising campaign for your business in print media - and you want to include the URL of your website - then be sure that your website is finished and ready for people to see.

That may sound a lot like common sense and not something that any savvy small business person would do … but I saw it done today. Not only is the website for this small business not ready but it has a nice little advertisment on the page - not for the business - but for the design company that’s building the site.

How sad is that!

by Stuart Livesey 

One of the big attractions for many people who dream of starting up a home-based business or working from a home office is the possibility of working in an unstructured - or less structured - environment.

It’s certainly one of the attractions for me; I can stop for coffee whenever I like, I can go out and do the banking at times that suit me, we can go down to the Boat Club and have lunch on the deck if the weather is good (let’s face it, here in Hervey Bay that’s about 99% of the time), I can stop and read the newspaper online any time I like.

But it’s important that you don’t lose the discipline that you should have developed when you were working in a more structured environment. If you’ve lost that discipline, you might not be able to survive those times when your workload and deadlines require a lot of hard work. And if you never had that discipline then perhaps working from home may not be for you.

Toni and I facing one of those times when we need discipline right now. A number of our regular customers have dropped some big projects on us, we’re in the middle of building a complex website for a new client, several others have scheduled appointments to discuss new websites and that’s on top of the regular weekly columns, blog entries etc. we write for clients plus the website management that we provide for clientss is becoming an increasingly important part of our business.

At times like this it’s discipline and focus that can get help us meet the deadlines.

by Stuart Livesey 

Knowing where … and how … to advertise is critical for small business and especially so for those who operate from a home office.

And remembering to insert the link to what you’re talking about - and then proof-reading the piece you’ve just written is equally important. Finding out a week later that you’ve done none of those things and now can’t remember where the link was always leads to a serious red-face moment. DUH!!

While this very brief article isn’t specifically talking about advertising if you will find some interesting figures that may help you when you’re thinking about advertising. They certainly don’t apply in every situation - for example radio and local newspaper is a big mover and shaker in the area where I live - but you will still find them helpful.

Well the weekend turned out to be pretty much the way I expected it to be. We both spent a lot of time working but we also achieved a huge amount too and one day this coming week we’ll take a break … but it won’t be today.

Today is one of those days where I have so much to do that I’ve made a list and I’ll be working my way through it to ensure I get everything done.

Lists really are an invaluable productivity tool because they can definitely keep you focused on what you have to achieve especially if your goals are going to be spread across a whole range of projects. Obviously some days you may only have one goal to achieve in your small business but other days, when there’s a heap of things you need to get done a simple list scribbled down on a scrap of paper can be worth more to you than the highest tech gadget in your office.

Have fun today - I know that I’m going to.

by Stuart Livesey

What did you do before you became a small business person? Was it something completely different to what you’re doing now?

If what you were doing back then is completely different to what you’re doing now (and that’s certainly my situation) then don’t forget the lessons you learned and the skills you developed back then. You just never know when they might become useful in what you’re doing or experiencing right now.

Well after almost a week of silence we’re back. It’s not that we actually went anywhere it’s just that we’ve been so busy doing some very diverse tasks for clients that we’ve hardly had time to scratch ourselves.

We’ve  been busy developing a rather extensive website for a rather unusual client and that work will continue on for several more weeks. We’ve also been writing some highly specialised text for a tourism site that needs to rank at the top of Google for a very competitive term as well as sell its product.

We’ve also been dressing up an online booking system for a local tourism operator. There were times when that was rather frustrating but it was also very satisfying to hit the enter key for the final time and log out of the system when the job was completed.

Somewhere in there we also managed to find time to start looking at a very specialized way to pulling in traffic from the search engines. Ranking in all the top spots can be hard enough but then appearing relevant to the people who are reading that snippet of text that appears below the blue link on the search engines is even harder.

It’s a whole lot more than just including a meta description tag because sometimes the search engines don’t reproduce that with a listing but it’s something we know is achievable and we’re going to do it.

And we’ve also been working to bring one of our major projects closer to launch time. I have to admit that this is something that needed Toni’s vision to get started. She’s definitely the entrepreneur in this outfit.

Now we have the weekend to look forward to but somehow I think it’s going to be one of those weekends that we’ll spend working but that’s something we’re actually going to enjoy because it’s all challenging and we thrive on challenges.

Many people see working from home as the perfect way of developing a small business, earning an income and being able to look after the kids at the same time. The reality is often something quite different.

In a recent interview Rae Hoffman - one rather successful Internet marketer who has three young children - made this interesting comment:

“I actually got my start in the business due to my oldest son. I guess my biggest piece of advice would be that if you work from home, don’t think it doesn’t mean you don’t need childcare. Getting a nanny was probably my best business investment ever. I have the flexibility from being my own boss to be there whenever they need me, but by having childcare, I also have the ability to focus on my business during the rest of the time.”

The link will take you to Rae’s site and it’s well worth following. If you want to read the full interview the follow this link to SEO Honolulu.

Life is not always as easy as you might think for people who want to run their small business from a home office.

by Stuart Livesey

If your small business sells it’s products online then you’re always going to be interested in new billing options to facilitate the transfer of funds from your client to you.

Here’s a new billing company that is now ready to deal with small business. Paymentus is located in Canada and it’s definitely worth a look.

A hat tip to The Post Money Value for pointing to the site. If any of you are thinking of seeking venture capital to expand your small business then Rick’s blog is one that you definitely should be reading.