Small Office, Home Office Information

By Stuart Livesey 

For over 20 years I worked as a field officer in the New South Wales Sheriff’s Office. Part of my job was to serve and execute court process in various country towns around the State. In those 20 years I had contact with a thousand or more small businesses and usually that contact was at times of crisis.

When a small business had reached a point where it couldn’t pay its bills I was usually the first one there with court process to start recovery action. When the small business owner had gone beyond the point of no return I was usually the one there to sell up their stock and evict them from the business premises.

Sounds a wonderful job doesn’t it … but it had its good points and not every small business that fell into debt sank to the point where there was no way out but to be sold up and evicted.

Sadly though there were plenty of small businesses that did reach the point of no return and after just a few years it seemed that I could tell from the moment I walked into the business those that would survive and those that would not. It was almost as if they had the scent of death about them right from the start.

Perfect examples were a young mechanic who ran his own business repairing cars in a workshop attached to his house and a much older car salesman who had a business selling one of the leading brand-name cars in Australia. He was the only dealer for that brand in a small but prosperous country town.

The young guy was working in conjunction with his wife who handled all the banking until one day she left him with the kids and took all the money that was in their bank accounts. I thought he was guaranteed to end up out of business because his his wife hadn’t been paying the accounts for months but, even though things got very tough for him, he recovered and there was always something very positive about him.

The older guy ran into some problems when his wife became very ill but his business looked very sound and I couldn’t understand why there were so many negative vibes about him. It didn’t surprise me when, a few months after I first had contact with him, I put the locks on his door. He had a great business but when the going got tough he folded.

Toni and I were talking about that yesterday after we were reviewing some of the contacts that we’d had this week. One couple we talked with just had that air of negativity about them. They’d done a lot of market research before they set up their small business but they’d still managed to make some serious mistakes and they’re on the slide. They did have an opportunity this week to turn their business around but they didn’t take it.

So why do some small business people survive while others have the scent of death about them?

John Wooden - the well-known American basketball coach - seems to have summed it up quite well in his Pyramid of Success. One of the fundamentals in that pyramid is Intentness and what he says about it is so very applicable to small business.

“Stay the course. When thwarted try again; harder; smarter. Persevere relentlessly.”

Your small business does not have to have that scent of death about it if you are prepared to persevere relentlessly.

There’s no doubt that, in this day and age, just about every small business needs a website. Even in small country towns more and more people are going to the Web to search for information about the goods and services they want to buy.

Because there’s such a need for small business websites there are plenty of people around who make a living from building websites for local businesses. Some are very good at what they do while others … no matter how professional they might look and sound … simply have no clue.

Many, whether they’re good or bad, will try to hold on to you as a client … and that’s fair enough … but it’s what they do to retain you as a client that can really hurt your business. Good web designer businesses will seek to keep you as an ongoing client by offering you services that go on adding value to your small business.

The not so good web design businesses will seek to keep you as a client by holding you hostage and you need to be aware of some of the tricks that they use.  Here are two of those sneaky ways that we’ve come across in the last year.

Owning Your Domain Name
Many web design businesses will offer to purchase your domain name for you … and that is quite reasonable. If you’ve never done it before you can end up paying a whole lot more for your domain name than you need to and in small business every dollar counts.

However, if you do elect to have the web designer purchase your domain name, make sure that they transfer it into your name as soon as possible. We know of one designer who purchases many domain names for his clients but seldom transfers them into the client’s name. That means that if the client ever wants to take their business elsewhere they can but they have to leave the domain name behind and start all over again.

Content Management Systems
Content management systems are scripts that many designers use to build out a website. There are definite pros and cons when it comes to content management systesm and, for what it’s worth, we prefer to use straight HTML to build websites for clients. We see the disadvantages of content management systems as far outweighing the advantages.

There are many content management scripts out there on the Web; some are free and very well supported and some are not. Some content management systems are custom-built for clients and if that is what you need you will be able to take the script with you if you take your website business elsewhere after your site has been built.

Some web designers have their own unique content management systems that no other designer has access to and they use them to build clients’ websites whether such a system is needed or not. The end result there is that if one of their clients wants to take their business elsewhere the new designer has to start from scratch and do a complete re-design of the website and if you’re that client it’s going to cost you a lot of money.

So make sure that your web designer is either using straight HTML or a content management system that you can take with you if you elect to move to take your business elsewhere.

Getting your small business online can have great benefits for your visibility and your cash flow but it can also cost you a lot of money if you get caught by an unscrupulous designer who is prepared to hold your business hostage simply to put more money in his or her pocket.

Well it’s January 1 2008 and the new year stretches before us. For Toni and I it looks like being a very interesting year and it will be starting off in a very positive manner. First thing tomorrow morning we’re meeting with a new client to work up a proposal for a website for his business.

Of course not everyone’s small business is going to make such a positive start to the new year and for most of us the year ahead will be quite a challenge. The threat of a world-wide recession is looming and usually it’s the small business person who suffers most when economic times are bad.

But then being in a small business was never for the faint-hearted and even though times may become very tough you can survive if you’re prepared for those rough times. Some of the practical things you can do that might help you survive include:

1. Reduce your debt levels to the absolute minimum.

2. Review all your expenses and look at ways of reducing them. For example, are you paying too much rent? Is it possible to carry on your business from another cheaper location than the one that you’re in now?

This even applies to you if you happen to be working from a home office. If your family has grown up and left home perhaps it’s time to move into something smaller?

3. Is your advertising really working for you? Do you even bother to monitor the results of your advertising?

4. Are your employees cost-effective? Are they really generating an income for your business that not only pays their wages but also puts money in your pocket?

5. Are you actively chasing work or are you just waiting for it to come to you?

6. Could you be working smarter rather than harder?

7. Are you still doing things because that’s the way you’ve always done them … or could there be better ways of doing things?

That’s just a few suggestions to get you thinking about your small business and the things you may need to do to survive the times ahead.

Last week I talked about the fact that we were working at over the Christmas - New Year period while our competitors in this town were taking a break. You can read about no rest for our small business by following the link.

To be honest there were times over the last week when we thought we were crazy to have been working when no one else was. Yesterday we added up the work that we picked up over the last week and the total surprised us because it was more than we had expected. It made working when others were taking a break very worthwhile.

Sometimes following the herd is the worst thing to do if you want to succeed.