Small Office, Home Office Information

I got up this morning feeling totally yuck … not physically ill, just weary and drained … but I’ve got a list of things to do that seems to be as long as my arm.

Solution - if your schedule allows it, work on some of the quick and easy jobs and make sure you cross them off your list as soon as you’ve finished the job. Soon the list doesn’t look quite so bad and the psychological effect of seeing a shortened list can encourage you to push on.

When times get tough for small business we small business owners often have to make some hard decisions about which accounts we’ll pay this month and which accounts we’ll let slide into next month as well as which accounts we’ll close and which accounts we’ll keep active.

At times like this you really do need to know all the facts so that you can make an informed decision because you could so very easily close something like an advertising account that happens to be generating a large number of very targeted leads.

So before you make a decision that could have an adverse decision on your small business do your homework and remember, the most expensive form of marketing is not always the most effective. A $19.90 website hosting bill each month could keep your phones ringing while a very expensive newspaper advertisment might produce nothing but a deathly silence.

Every person who starts a small business starts with a dream … but life as a small business person is tough and it’s easy to lose the dream and just fight for survival.

If you’ve lost your small business dream then here’s a guy who might be able to help you get it back.

A hat tip to Rick Segal and his The Post Money Value blog for the link to the video

Some competitors are close … round the corner … down the street … up the road … maybe even next door. They’re close geographically speaking … but they may be so far behind you that you’re not even close to them.

On the other hand some competitors are far away … in the next state … across the country … on the other side of the planet. Geographically speaking they’re a long way from you … but they could be right up there with you.

Whether they’re near or far they have things to teach you … to remind you of … to help you with and that’s what this competitor of ours did for us today. He might be a long way from us but he’s quite close in other ways and he reminded us today that “past performance is indicative of future behaviour”

Every small business has something to teach other small businesses whether they’re near or far. Thanks John for reminding us of something Toni and I knew but were on the verge of forgetting.

I guess that if you’ve read my ramblings here you could be mistaken and think that everything about our small business is sweetness and light … problems never arise … the wheels never fall off … and we simply go on from strength to strength. If that’s what you think then I’m about to disappoint you.

You see, our small business is no different to any other out there … we have problems just like everyone else and for a few days this week things really went downhill. Wheels were falling off all over the place … and wheels we didn’t even know we had fell off.

So what do you do when things go wrong in your small business? Do you panic? Do you run around in ever decreasing circles till you disappear up your very own you-know-what? Or do you calmly assess the situation and get on with the job of fixing it?

Let’s face it, very few of us can assess a situation calmly when you’re standing in the middle of potential loss that could cost you tens of thousands of dollars … so don’t feel bad if you’re like most of us and you indulge in a little panic.

Just don’t let the panic go on too long and while you’re panicking be careful about the decisions you make and the things you hear people telling you. All sorts of odd communication filters come into play when you’re panicking and what you hear may not be what someone is really telling you … and that can lead to even more problems.

So when things go wrong get over the panic stage quickly and only then can you really get down to the serious business of fixing those problems that have suddenly appeared.

So many people want to be able to work from home but don’t want to be in the position of having to go through all the hassles of starting their own business. For them it’s a shame that there aren’t more companies like Dotspots who have this to say about themsleves on their Jobs page.

We are a totally distributed company. This means that while we were thinking about how to change the world for good, we started by not making everyone drive to one central location, wasting time, money and energy to get to and maintain an office. Instead, we’re learning how to work in a completely distributed way. One immediate and wonderful byproduct is that everyone gets to work from home. And, because we don’t have office expenses, we even pay a part of every employee’s rent or mortgage! (yes, it’s smarter than Google’s free cafeteria idea… ;)) This will allow us to work with the best people, wherever their home may be in this world!

 

For someone who has spent a large part of his working life outdoors, on the road, dealing with people in crisis working online has and will continue to be a lot of fun. Helping people make money from their websites is even more satisfying than helping people survive bad financial times and usually everything flows along without a much drama at all.

But when the wheel falls off it usually happens late at night when you would much rather be in bed than sitting up rubbing your tired eyes and squinting at the computer screen. Last week the wheel fell off not once but twice.

On Thursday night we were about to head for bed when we discovered that one of our sites had been hacked. So we trudged through over 400 pages of content weeding out the garbage that had been inserted and then upgrading the security measures so the hacker couldn’t get in again.

Last night we found that another upgrade that we’d just done to one of the scripts on a server we run had messed with the individual scripts that we run on 10 different sites so we sat up again updating those scripts and fixing a couple of other glitches as well.

I guess that just goes to show you that running a small business is a 24 hour, 7 days a week kind of job.

While some of us build our small businesses from the ground up others prefer to buy in to an established business. There are definitely pros and cons for both options but when you’re buying into an established small business sometimes there are some hidden traps lurking behind those great … and perfectly legitimate … figures that you’re seeing when you look at the financials.

Here is a story of an internet business that certainly had a great cashflow but wasn’t as profitable as it seemed.

I’ve come to the realistation this morning that there’s one sad fact that relates to our small business that I just have to face.

The desk in my home office is a total mess and the parts that you can’t see are even worse than the parts that you can see. So it’s time to spend a few hours tidying it all up.

Of course I could hide behind the myth that I work better with a messy desk but that’s all it is, a myth.

You’re far more productive if your desk isn’t cluttered with old files, scraps of paper, business cards, an old mobile phone, a PDA you’d forgetten all about, still and video cameras, a magazine or two and an assortment of pens, pencils, cables and other hordable junk like mine is at the moment.

The day outside is going to be wet and windy so what better way to spend the time than cleaning up my desk.

Any business, whether it be a large multi-national or your small business in your very local part of the world needs to plan for the future. You need to plan for future growth and you need to have plans in place that will ensure that your business survives when things get tough.

Here’s a little story about how tough things could get here in Australia in the future. So how would your small business cope if the fuel for your vehicles was rationed?

If your business doesn’t own any vehicles then you should still be thinking about a future when fuel isn’t as easy to come by as it is today because, when you stop and think about it, every business both large and small is dependant on fuel.

So perhaps it’s time to start looking at the impact that fuel rationing will have on your small business.