Small Office, Home Office Information

by Stuart Livesey

A couple of years ago when Toni started our little business we never thought that we would ever move out of our home office. But every so often another opportunity would open and we would just have to take that next step and so Toni’s business grew even more.

These days I work from the home office while Toni works three days a week from a desk we hire from our friend who runs a local computer shop. Originally we opted for that arrangement because working from home can be a very lonely experience and Toni needed to spend time out in the real world talking to other people beside the grump she’s married to.

Then we found that having Toni out there opened up more opportunities for us and we’ve taken them and now that has led us to this point:

Yep, new premises opening next month and our part of the office is going to be staffed a full five days a week. We’ve got some big plans for the future and this is just the start.

Scary? You bet!

Fun? Absolutely!

And something neither of us ever dreamed of when Copy Text Online was originally conceived but then any small business that doesn’t grow tends to stagnate and both of us want to be in a position to work on our small business rather than in our small business.

If you’re just starting out on your small business adventure and you’re trying to set up your office - whether it be a home office or something downtown - the cost of furnishing that office can really hurt your budget.

But what if you could get all the furniture you need for free?

Well maybe you can and to find out you need to visit freecycle.org - you may just find someone in your area who is trying to give away what you need. You’ll also find that it’s not just limited to the United States - there are local freecycle.org groups across the world.

A hat tip to Build a Solo Practice, LLC for the link.

The last two weeks has been absolutely crazy for our small business. Almost on a daily basis we’ve had new clients coming to us - and old clients coming back to us - for web design work. Even visiting the doctor on Tuesday for a check up resulted in another client being added to the list for some work he wants done in November.

And all that work is coming to us from a country town where there’s plenty of competition for website design and development. So what’s working for us?

Word of mouth marketing from satisfied clients and a willingness to get out of the office and go and talk to new clients is what’s working for us. But, as in any small business, one size doesn’t fit all and what works for us may not work for you.

That’s why you might find this thread over on Sitepoint worth reading. While it’s talking about promoting a small web design business the principles are the same for many other types of business too.

by Stuart Livesey

The way you answer the phone goes a long way to making the right impression with your clients. So what do you do when you’re not in the office?

Obviously some small businesses will have employees who can answer the phone but what about those who of us who have no employees in the office? Of course there’s always the answering machine but so many of us who might sound bright and breezy on the phone fail miserably when it comes to recording a message on an answering machine.

Toni, who usually sounds so professional and personable on the phone sounds like a funeral director if you get her voice mail. My sister, who worked in advertising and hospitality for many many years is no better and my recorded phone messages sound like they came from something out of the crypt.

But there is an alternative service and it’s one we’re going to invest in. When we move our office to new premises we’ll be using a live phone answering service to handle the calls when Toni or I are out of the office.

Search Google for one in your area and you’ll see that they’re not expensive and some will even send a text message to your mobile phone to let you know who has just called. And if you don’t think that they’re all that important to your business then read of one lawyer’s frustration at not being able to offer some great PR opportunities to five others in her profession.

by Stuart Livesey 

I’ve just been reading a rather sad blog entry written by a guy who has been working from home for the last few years. It’s sad because now he feels that he needs to go back to paid employment for a while. He’s sure he will be back to working from home again sometime in the next few years … but when you read between the lines you just know that’s never going to happen.

When you read between the lines you can also see that he probably made the move to self-employment from a home office without realising some of the consequences. So here is a list five things you should consider before you make the jump from working for someone else to running your own small business from home.

1. You can’t work with kids around. So many people think that they can save money by working from home because they can also care for the kids at the same time. Sadly that’s just not so. You can’t put the concentration into your work that might be required if you also have to care for your kids … and it doesn’t matter whether they’re toddlers or older.

2. You can’t spend all your time doing the work you like doing. That may sound a little strange but the fact is that if you work for yourself then much of your time is going to be spent chasing work, selling yourself, chasing up payments, doing admin work and a million and one other things than whatever it might be that you do best.

If you’re a graphic designer and you love what you’re doing don’t expect to spend all your time working on designs … in fact, don’t expect to spend a lot of your time working on designs. If you do and you neglect all those other things then it’s only a matter of time before your business fails.

3.You can’t take time off whenever you want to. Sure, you might be able to duck out for a coffee at odd times through the day but don’t expect to be able to take holidays whenever you want and weekends can be problematic too.

Toni and I were looking forward to a bit of a break this weekend until one of our major clients called on Saturday morning with some urgent work that just had to be done over the weekend. Of course we could have turned him down but we value his work and we like to keep him happy (the translation for that is: his work keeps our cashflow happening throughout the year and that helps us sleep at night).

4. You can’t expect a pay cheque at the end of every week. One big advantage of working for someone else is that regular pay cheque that comes in every week or every month. When you work for yourself there can be some very dry times - especially when you’re first starting out - when there is little or no money coming in. At other times you may have a lot of accounts outstanding for work you’ve done but the promise of money some time in the future doesn’t ease that empty feeling in your wallet.

If you can’t cope with the idea that some weeks your bank balance is going to look rather miserable then don’t start your own small business.

5. You can’t always buy those luxury items you or your family might want. Even when the money is rolling in there are contingencies that you should always be preparing for. That means that there will be times when your family might want something but you simply can’t afford it right then and there. Try explaining that to your wife or husband when they know that the bank balance is quite healthy and they’re really lusting after a jet ski or a new widescreen television.

There is no doubt that running your own small business from home can be very rewarding … but it can also be very difficult when your expectations exceed the reality.

“Remember that there are no barriers to entering the web development business. Any person from anywhere in the world can simply say “I’m a web developer” and start bidding on jobs. As a result, there are large numbers of inexperienced and unqualified vendors in the web design industry, and most of them lack the experience to execute your project properly”

Dave Hecker - Outsourcing Web Projects

by Stuart Livesey

Lots of people out dream of being their own boss; of being able to do what they do best by freelancing. But is that the way things really happen?

Today Toni spent time talking to and selling our business to a prospective client who is likely to spend many thousands of dollars with us over the next few years. That was nothing like what she thought she would be doing when she started her business. And it’s nothing like I thought I would be doing when I joined her business either.

You see, even I spent time with a prospective client selling our services and that’s what you will find yourself doing if you want to start your own business freelancing. While I only spend a small amount of my time working on our business Toni spends a good 70% of her time working on growing the business rather than working in the business.

That’s the reality of working for yourself and you can read more about that reality here.

by Stuart Livesey

The cost of doing business for a small business - even a home office type business - is incredible and if you’re just at the point of setting one up meeting those costs can be a hurdle that’s hard to climb over. At times like that it’s great to be able to find something you need that comes at zero cost. Freebies attract consumers like bees to a honeypot and small business people are no different.

Computer software that you might need to run your small business can be a major hit to your financial resources. Here in Australia the cost of a suite of programmes like Microsoft Office can run up to around $900 and that can seem like a lot of money to spend when someone like Google offers a similar suite of products for free.

But are those products really free? If you read the terms of service for that particular Google application you might actually find that you’re giving Google something you weren’t expecting - something like:

“By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Google services which are intended to be available to the members of the public, you grant Google a worldwide, nonexclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, adapt, modify, publish and distribute such content on Google services for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting Google services.”

You can read more about the cost of Google’s ‘free’ application here

Then you have to understand what you’re doing?

by Stuart Livesey

We had a wonderful time this morning with a local small businessman. He wants to take his small business online … and not just with a brochure site. This guy wants to go the whole 9 yards and sell his products online even while they’re still in a container at sea. He even pointed us to a well-known marketing site here in Australia and told us to build him something like that.

Our time with him was wonderful because this is a guy who understands what it takes to produce a website that sells. He understands that what he is doing is opening a branch of his business online and to do that effectively is going to cost money.

If you were moving your bricks and mortar business to a new location there would be costs involved in fitting out your new premises and getting it set up for your business and there would be ongoing costs as well. It’s the same in the virtual world.

 You want your place in cyberspace to be set up and functional so that you can sell your product and that is going to cost real money.

It would cost real money to move to a new location in the real world and take planning and execution by professionals so why do so many small business people expect a move into cyberspace to cost $50 and  be entrusted to their nephew or some kid in high school?

Obviously it can’t and the guy we talked to today understood that so the session wasn’t about convincing the client that he was going to have to spend money. Instead the session was about listening to the client’s dreams and devising ways of making them happen.

By the time this site is built our client will have a bricks and mortar location and a website and I wouldn’t be surprised if the website didn’t outsell his bricks and mortar location … and that’s saying something because this guy moves a lot of product every single week and quite often his container loads are pre-sold before they even arrive on the docks.

by Stuart Livesey

Here is an interesting article from the Courier Mail in Brisbane about habits and business failings. It’s interesting to read and I’m sure you’ll find some points in it that will remind you of what it was like to work for someone else … who had to implement change but saw no reason to change the way they themselves did things.

I had a Chief Inspector just like that.