“It’s important to celebrate failure because it’s a learning opportunity” Maria Sipka – founder of Linqia.com
Sadly though some people never learn.
Failure in Small Business
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Monthly Archives: October 2008
Work From Home Offers
Whenever the economy looks bad you can guarantee that the number of work from home offers that arrive in your email will increase and the longer the economy stays bad the more offers you’ll receive.
If you’re one of those people who hope to weather the economic storm that we’re all facing by working from home then all those offers must look very attractive. Sadly though most of them are smoke and mirrors.
The promises these offers make are empty … the chance of you making money from one of these offers is almost nil and the end result will be that you will be worse off than you were when you first took that work from home offer.
Sure people do work from home but there is no silver bullet here. There are no overnight riches to be made online and the suggestion that you can make money by working from home for just a few hours a day is a fraud.
If you were hoping for something more encouraging than that then I’m sorry to have burst your bubble. You can work from home and there are some genuine work from home offers out there but the ones that are genuine require big investments in capital, in hard work and in time … lots of time.
So don’t be conned out of what money you have by those work from home offers that look too good to be true. The bottom line is that they are too good to be true and they’ll just take your money and leave you in a bigger financial mess than you’re in already.
Being Part of the Local Community
Every small business should be part of their local community – and by that I don’t just mean doing work for other local businesses. What I mean here is that every small business should pitch in and help the local community wherever help is needed.
Here in Hervey Bay the community needs help to build something that’s never been built by a community in Australia before … a patient transfer facility at the local airport. In Hervey Bay at least five patients every day of the week are transferred to Brisbane for further medical treatment and, just like every other country airport in Australia, that means the patient has to be transferred to one of the Royal Flying Doctor Service planes out on the open tarmac in every type of weather you could imagine.
Some members in the community decided that it was time we treated those patients to something a little more civilised and so the Fraser Coast Patient Transfer Facility Committee has been formed to raise money to construct a special building that will allow patients to be transferred to the aircraft under cover.
While Toni and I are not part of the community our small business has joined many other local small businesses in sponsoring this worthwhile project. The Fraser Coast Patient Transfer Facility website went live today.
Still Alive and Breathing
If you’re involved in small business right now then you’re probably looking at what’s happening with the world’s economy and wondering if you’re going to survive all the turmoil.
The fact is that a lot of small businesses probably won’t survive the next year or so but if you’ve been taking my advice and working hard to reduce your debt levels these last few months then you’re probably in a much better position to survive than most.
If you are in a good position financially then now is not the time to go spending money on luxuries … now is the time to put even more money into building your business. Now is a good time to purchase new equipment if you need it. Prices are coming down as suppliers find it harder to shift their stock.
Now is a good time to increase your advertising. There are still people and other businesses out there looking for what you’re selling so advertise your business so those potential customers can find you.
Now is a good time to look around for new staff. As more and more people lose their jobs the chance of picking up some very talented employees is increased but don’t hire people unless you have the work to pay for them.
Now is the time to look at expanding your business into new areas. As other less well-managed businesses fold new opportunities will open up for those that can survive so watch for those new opportunities as they appear.
Now is the time to be a little bold and not run and hide until the economic storm is over. It’s at times like these that some small businesses have the opportunity to make money so don’t be afraid to be out there in the marketplace.
And what have we done? Are we following our own advice? You bet … we’ve purchased new equipment this week … we’re expanding into some new areas and we’re increasing our advertising and we’ve got new leads and new orders coming in.
So if you run a small business now is the time to see whether you’ve got what it takes to survive.