Small Office, Home Office Information

Friends can be great fun to be around. They can be supportive, encouraging, caring out of business time … but don’t always expect them to be that way when they’re engaging your small business.

You may just find that your best friends are going to be your worst customers and can do the most damage to your business.

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.

by Stuart and Toni Livesey 

This morning we went to see our accountant - it’s one of the four times each year here in Australia when small businesses have to lodge various returns with the Taxation Department - the Australian version of the IRS.

It’s also a good time to take the temperature and judge the health of a small business and what better and more objective person to do that than your accountant. Today, after looking at our business it was nice to hear our accountant tell us that our small business is in very good shape. Our turnover has increased every quarter for the last six … and next quarter is looking pretty good too.

So how did we manage to reach this point? Well we wish we could say that all we had to do was wave a magic wand but success for a small business … and especially ones that start their business from a home office … never comes that easy and some of our early quarters were downright dismal.

So what did we do?

1. We never gave up - even when we were both ill and very short on money we just never gave up.

2. We set out to provide the best possible service for our customers and we made sure that “the best possible service” was a hell of a lot better than ANY of our competitors were providing.

3. We kept … and still keep … our overheads screwed right down. We don’t drive a flashy car … we don’t go on expensive holidays … and we don’t play the game of keeping up with the Joneses.

4. We spend some money on promotion … in the right places but we rely on word of mouth from very satisfied customers. We spend lots of time talking to people and showing them that we really are the most experienced people in our field, both here in town, and on the Net. A considerable amount of our income still comes from clients that are overseas

5. We listen to what our clients want and we provide what they need. We don’t spend their money on things that they really don’t need. We  go to them rather than expecting them to come to us.

6. We work at times when our clients want us to work … if they contact us on a Saturday with urgent work then we do it … we don’t put them off till the weekend is over. Sure that sucks when the weather is perfect and beach is just 10 minutes away but what do you want? Do you want a nice day at the beach and a so-so business or do you really want your business to survive and grow?

Every client has our mobile phone numbers and they know that they can call us day or night.

6. And we don’t play at running a business … we just go ahead and do it.

That’s what has helped us achieve what we have so far. As you can see, there really is no magic wand in there … just a lot of hard work. If you can match what we do then the chances are that you will succeed in whatever industry you’re working in and your small business will grow.

That’s our manifesto for success in small business put in the hard yards and you will succeed

We came across an interesting business model the other day that’s sure to have a negative impact on any small business owner that gets caught by it.

Charge too much, provide too little and refuse to give a refund when you’re customer wakes up to the fact that they could have got a better deal somewhere else.

It doesn’t matter what the goods or services your buying might be. Before you part with your hard-earned cash make sure that the seller or service provider explains it to you so that you have a clear understanding of all the elements that make up whatever it is that you’re buying.

And when they have then go and look to see if you can get a better deal from someone else. As a web designer and copywriter it’s nice to see a small business owner take the deal that we’re offering without shopping around - but I always feel comfortable if they come back to us after they’ve seen what our competition has to offer.

by Stuart Livesey 

Now that’s an old saying that’s probably been round for many centuries and it’s certainly one that’s always stuck in my mind. My maternal grandparents were wheat farmers back in the day when horses pulled the equipment so I’m sure that saying was firmly embedded in their minds too and it’s a saying that should be etched into the minds of every small business person today.

 And if you don’t understand that saying then let me suggest that it’s all about working hard when the work is there whether it’s on a day you would normally work or not.

The weekend that’s just gone was a long weekend here in Queensland and in a tourist centre like Hervey Bay, where we live, that means three days with plenty of tourists about. Now here in Hervey Bay most tourist related businesses - especially the cafes - have been doing it tough for the last nine months. The weather hasn’t been the best, interest rates and increases in petrol costs have all combined to keep tourists away but last weekend the weather was incredible and the tourists came in quite decent numbers.

On Monday every cafe along the tourist strip was packed with customers all day … that’s every cafe but two. Two of the smaller cafes … cafes that have been a little short on customers lately … remained closed and missed out on that bonanza.

Of course, they’ll be open today when all the tourists are long gone .

I guess the lesson for all small businesses is that we need to be prepared to work when the work’s there.

Toni and I worked right through the weekend too; we had planned on taking a couple of days off but early on Saturday morning one of our overseas clients contacted us with some urgent work and we wanted to make hay while the sun was shining … so we worked.

Monday morning and the sun is just peeping over the horizon. There isn’t a cloud in the sky and it’s going to be another perfect day in paradise. In fact we had a whole long weekend of perfect days and we enjoyed some very pleasant times down by the beach.

Now though we’re both looking forward to getting stuck into some work. Our buyer is in China this week - spot buying for both our online shops and loading it straight into the container and he’ll be in touch with us on and off by phone.

We’ll be starting a couple of new websites this week and bringing a couple of others to the point where they’ll be ready to go live too so it’s going to be an interesting week that we’ll enjoy.

I hope the week ahead for you is just as enjoyable and challenging … but then most weeks are interesting for small business people - that’s what makes small business so attractive

by Stuart Livesey

Let me say right at the start that what I’m about to say is strictly our experience only. Other people may have a better or a worse experience than we have had so far.

Background
For some time now Toni and I have each run a small online shop in addition to Toni’s web design and copywriting business. The items that Toni sells can be sourced from just about anywhere in the world. The items that I sell are mostly manufactured in China and I’ve been sourcing them from a variety of wholesalers here in Australia and from eBay as well.

A new importer - who will be sourcing much of their stock from China and Vietnam - is commencing business here in Australia in the next few weeks and we’ve been asked to design their website for them. When they found out that we would be interested in buying from them they very kindly gave us direct access to their buyers and agents.

So we decided to start looking for the products I need for my store direct from China and for the last 10 days I’ve been having a very interesting time trying to source one particular piece of computer equipment to help give us some ‘feel’ for how things work when you deal with businesses in China

Our Experience
We started off by looking around the Web for manufacturers and came across Alibaba.com. This is one of a number of portals that puts buyers in touch with sellers in China and to use the service properly you have to register. Registering is free and quite easy to do.

Alibaba also supplies an instant messaging system that you can download and is quite a valuable tool.

Then we posted an expression of interest on Alibaba complete with a photo of what we were looking for. Ultimately we must have heard from 40 or 50 different Chinese businesses who all said that they could supply what we wanted. Sadly, not one of them really could.

Rather than go into all the gory details of the time we wasted here is what we learned from the experience.

Lots of people will tell you that they’re manufacturers of the products you want but after you’ve looked at eight or nine of their websites it soon becomes apparent that they’re just wholesalers who all have access to the same manufacturers.

Even though you might be quite explicit in the information you post about the product you want to buy many of these wholesalers are going to try and sell you on what they have rather than what you want. We stated that we were prepared to buy just 20 of the item we were looking for but most of those who contacted us didn’t want to deal in orders that small.

Dollar amounts quoted are definitely not firm and when you do get a price don’t expect it to be the final price or to include all the costs. One supplier did give us a unit price of $7.52 on the Monday - on something that was close to what we wanted - but by the time we were ready to do the deal on the Friday that had blown out with the addition of $50 bank charges  - something that hadn’t been mentioned on the Monday - and a supposed price increase that just happened to have occurred the day before. The deal stopped right there!

If you register at places like Alibaba and you include your phone number in your details expect to get some phone calls from Chinese sales people who can’t speak much English and don’t understand that Australia is not in the same time zone as America.

Even though you may clearly indicate that the business that’s trying to sell something to you does not supply what you want don’t expect them to stop trying. One wholesaler who claimed to manufacture nVidia graphic cards kept trying to contact me for four days even though all I wanted to buy was 20 very specialised flash drives.

Many of the suppliers we encountered wanted to be paid by Western Union - even some Chinese will warn you that Western Union is a favourite with scammers. We found out later that someone we know personally lost $15k when he paid for some equipment from China via Western Union.

We never did find a true manufacturer for what we wanted.

All in all it was a very interesting experience and one that has definitely put us off trying to do business remotely with any Chinese suppliers. We’ll certainly be taking up the offer of using the importer’s buyers to directly source items for us but we won’t be trying it ourselves again any time soon.

It’s 5am on Saturday morning and I’m up working. Perhaps some people would think that it was sad that I have to work on a Saturday … let alone being up at 5am … but today’s going to be a busy one for us. It’s an exciting day for us too and if I wanted to work 9 to 5 Monday to Friday I’d still be back working for someone else.

And when you get up early here in Hervey Bay in Queensland you get to see some stunning colours in the sky as the sun rises

I’ve got to work up proposals for a couple of new websites for new clients who walked into the office yesterday; one of our US clients dropped a heap of work on us yesterday  and we’ve got a meeting this morning with a guy who has a very exciting project coming together and he wants us to be part of it.

We certainly want to be part of it too because it involves a massive website for a huge importing business and both Toni and I lay awake last night talking about it; we can see this project taking our business to a whole new level so meeting with him on a Saturday is not a problem.

Of course there are going to be challenges but that’s why we’re here in small business and not just working for a wage. We love the challenges that come our way and we’re not afraid to grab them … even if it does mean that sometimes we have to work on weekends.

There’ll still be time for coffee down by the beach

Yuck … I have a nasty head cold and I feel like crap and when I’m like that bears with sore heads are much better company than I am so fortunately Toni was able to deal with  what happened yesterday and handle it much more diplomatically than I might done.

A couple of weeks ago the people behind a typical online Mom and Pop business that they run from their home here in town approached us and asked us to redevelop their site. Sales were very poor and they had built the original site themselves.

Throughout the redevelopment we had kept in touch with them and, as we do with all our customers, at the midway point we showed them what the new site looked like. Apart from a couple of very minor changes they seemed quite happy with the new look.

Yesterday, with the redeveloped site just two days away from going live, one of them rang the office and spoke to Toni. They weren’t happy, they thought we had missed the point when it came to marketing what they were selling and they suggested that we didn’t have any experience in selling anything online. They even pointed to a site we had built for another customer and suggested that it was way “too cold” to sell anything.

I suppose we could have suggested that they call the owner of that website and find out just how successful the site has been. We could have pointed to our car and told them how it had been paid for by the online sales we have made and continue to make via affiliate marketing and our own online shops. But in the end if a client suddenly loses faith in your ability to produce what they’re paying for then there’s only thing you can do … and that’s what we did.

The client was invited to come into the office today and pick up a full refund.

You win some and you lose some but as long as you learn from your loses things haven’t been a total waste of time.

I was just reading an online news report that suggested that the chairman of the US Federal Reserve may be hinting that the US economy is now in recession and I’m sure that’s not news to many small business both in the US and in other parts of the world. Times definitely are tough, money is tight and small businesses are hesitant to spend even if there is plenty of work coming through the door.

When we’re in times like this we begin to see signs of desperation as those businesses that are struggling look for ways of improving their cash flow. That’s when you start to receive offers that sound really great and use power words that will impress you and encourage you to buy what they’re selling … offers that sound too good to be true … until you read the fine print.

But don’t be duped by those impressive offers and don’t rush in to buy what they’re selling. Shop around and look to see what others are offering; you might find that the special offer you received isn’t so special after all and other businesses can offer you a far better deal at their ordinary every-day price.

Yesterday we were spammed with an offer of “premium” hosting which sounded really impressive until we compared it with the ordinary every-day hosting we offer and then ”premium” became somewhat less than the word implied. So don’t rush in to grab any special offers that may come your way. Instead, shop around look to see what level of service others are providing and then make an informed decision on whether or not to spend your money.

And if you’re thinking of sending out emails to try and drum up a little business then take the time to personalise them … they’ll look a little less spammy if you do.