Small Office, Home Office Information

It’s easy to sit here and right the pieces for this blog. Even though I’m writing about things that Toni and I have experienced there is a certain disconnect … the things I’m writing about are in the past … they’re over and done with … we have faced the challenges, dealth with them, come to a conclusion and have moved on.

But now I find myself wanting to write about something that is current … it’s happening now … we’re wrestling with the problem now … we don’t have a position on it … and it is something that we are very uncomfortable with.

Let me try and explain. There is another small business here in town that is involved in providing computers for its clients. The clients are always under the impression that the computers are built by this small business but in fact they are not. Instead they are built by another small business here in town that belongs to a friend of ours.

Our friend builds the machines and charges the other business the same figure he would charge if he were selling the machine to a private individual. The other business then adds on as much as 50% and that is the amount their customer pays for the computer.

Well … that may not bother you but it doesn’t sit well with me even though it is free enterprise and all that stuff. Up to this point Toni and I are not involved but now one of the clients of that small business wants quite an extensive web site developed and the small business has come to us.

They want to operate under the same conditions as they do with our friend. They want to appear as though it is them building the site even though it would be us doing the work. They want us to keep the price down so that they can add on a sizeable amount for themselves.

They want us to remain in the background and have no contact with the client.

Now of course, when you’re building a website the very first person you want to talk to is the client. You need to get inside his head and find out what he is thinking and where he wants the site to go - so not talking to the client is not an option.

And we have been quite clear about that. No contact with the client means we don’t want the job but even if we do get access to the client there are still other ethical questions that we need to deal with.

Perhaps I’ve just been thinking out aloud here but if you want to add your thoughts please feel free to do so.

small business

I sometimes think that many small business people are very short-sighted. They tend to forget that the people who are doing work for them today may well be their own clients at some point in the future.

An example of what I am suggesting happened this week. A friend who runs a small business here in town was having his carpets cleaned by a professional cleaner. The conversation turned to advertising and our friend mentioned that he had a website.

The carpet cleaner told our friend that he spent thousands of dollars each year on advertising and would like to talk to someone about having his own website. Our friend, as all good friends do, recommended us and the carpet cleaner asked our friend to get us to call him.

I called him next day and obviously caught him at work in someone’s house so he asked me to call him back after six that night. And I did call him back after six … and got his answering service.

I left a message and asked him to return my call.

Several days later I’m still waiting for that call.

Now if he couldn’t return a call how reliable is he to come and clean carpets at a pre-arranged time?

In small business you shouldn’t just be working to impress your clients, you should also be working to impress those who are working for you. You never know when those people could turn into prospective clients.

There are times when we sit down at our friend’s computer shop drinking coffee and just listening. Of course we listen to our friend because he has a lot to teach us about computers but we also listen to his customers too.

The one’s I find to be particularly interesting are those who bring their computers in for repair. These are mostly people who have no clue about computers. Some are highly articulate and successful in their own businesses while others are just ordinary people. There are retirees, students, mums and dads … just ordinary people who don’t understand much about computers.

I find that the stories they tell our friend are really interesting. There are times when I get quietly frustrated with them - why don’t they just give our friend the facts? Why do they have to keep waffling on and wasting time when just the facts would get our friend on the job quicker?

These people have a need to resort to stories. They don’t have the technical background and so they don’t have the technical words to use. To them there are no short sharp facts - there is only the story. And our friend understands that.

To these people there is only the story because the story helps them understand what happens and so the clues that our friend needs are embedded in the story.

Do you listen to the stories when the customers and clients of your small business come to you for help?

Or do you miss the clues because you don’t understand that telling you a story is the only way that many of your customers and clients can express their need?

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?