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Focus, Focus, Focus On Your Small Business Goal

August 29, 2009

One of the most destructive developments in any business is when a business, large or small, is loosing its business focus. The same is true if you as a small business owner fail to focus on your business goal(s).

Here we discuss what you can do to stay on course to achieve your small business goal(s):

1. Ask Yourself ‘The Question’ – Every time you make a decision, you need to ask yourself, “How is this decision going to bring me closer to my business goal?” Is that new BMW 750i you really like, really going to help you earn $20,000 or £10,000 a month?

2. Take a Step Back – Do not look at your business from the inside – look at it from the outside. Look at how the business is performing, not if you could add products or change something in your service offering. Think about what you could do to the business to make it function better and deliver your goal. Think about outsourcing nonessential tasks and focusing more in a market niche to deliver a more focused and better service. Learn to say NO!

3. Get Customer Feedback – Ask your customers how your business is doing, your business – not you! They will help you to improve your customer centric service and customer care, delivering better customer response and ultimately more business.

4. Enhance Return by Optimization – The famous 80:20 rule. See if you can establish how, what and to whom you deliver to, to create easier turnover with less problems. Ask yourself these questions, “Who are the 20% of customers I do 80% of turnover with? How can I find more of these customers?” and similar questions like this.

5. Get a Life – Don’t forget your family and friends, life without them is hardly worth living. You need to recharge your batteries and make room in your life for your private life. This will also help you to get a prospective and keep your family & friends engaged with what you are trying to achieve.

And most of all, try to have some fun running your business – if it is not fun and always a dreaded chore, is it really worth it?

Working from 5 to 9.

Working 5 to 9 has become a popular term for people who run their small businesses out of hours or after they have finished their day job.

It assumes the business is part-time and is a good way to test the credentials of a business idea you may have had. As you don’t have a full day to dedicate to running your business, it makes sense to run it from home to give you the vital extra time you need. If your home isn’t adequate for running your business idea, consider time-sharing a property to help bootstrap your business.

Extra income. A part time business is an ideal way to supplement your annual income from your day job. Working 5 to 9 allows you to keep your current income (which you and your family may rely on) and also acts as a fall back for your job. No ones job is 100% secure, especially in the current climate and if you do lose your day job you could look to run your business in a full time capacity.

Experience. Working 5 to 9 will help you gain valuable business experience that you may not gain from working for someone in your current role. Learning the pitfalls and problems business owners face on a part time basis will help you avoid them should things really take off for you. It may also give you an enjoyable taste of what it’s like to own and run a business and help make your decision to start your own small business.

Working Online. Having an strong online presence will allow you to check up on things whenever you have a spare moment and ‘keep the shop open’ while you are not there to run it. Keeping your data online will mean that it is secure and protected while you are not there to look after it. An online office also helps reduce your overheads as you won’t get the chance to utilize any expensive equipment that would only be used for a small part of the day.

Realistic Goals. Set achievable goals for your business. You really won’t have time to achieve what full time business owners can do and you probably won’t earn as much either. You will have to be more savvy when it comes to outsourcing work to keep your customers happy and produce reasonable turn-around times.

Work-life Balance. We may have mentioned this in our home business article but it is especially important when working 5 to 9. Know when to shut the door and walk away. Don’t over stretch yourself as your day job could suffer as a consequence leaving you (and maybe your family) facing tough decisions you could have avoided.

Working 5 to 9 won’t make you a millionaire (immediately!) and will limit how fast you can get things done. However, it will give you an excellent first-hand insight to how effective you and your business can be.

Use A Virtual Assistant For Outsourcing

So you’ve read all the other guides on what to do to start and run your small business or home office. Are your fingers tapping nervously on the desk while you wonder how you’re going to find enough hours in the day? Like us, you want your business to be a success but you’d also like to go to bed at some point and having dinner with your family or loved ones would be an advantage as well!

A Virtual Assistant (VA) will help take the pressure off running your business by reducing some of your workload. They carry out their work from their own premises meaning you won’t need to expand on your workplace.

Recruitment headaches. Hiring a VA means you don’t need to recruit an employee. This will save you time and resources as you won’t have to worry about health and safety, pay and other legal aspects of employment.

Sick Pay or Holiday. VAs don’t require sick pay. VAs also don’t need a holiday entitlement. We’re not saying VAs don’t go on holiday or get ill, but their leave of absence won’t mean your important project is delayed by a two week holiday abroad. Don’t rely on just one VA, have a backup ready if your first choice is unavailable for any reason.

Time Share. Like an accountant, it is likely a VA will have some experience of running a small business. By time sharing them with other (non-competive) businesses you will benefit from another more experienced virtual employee who can help you make some of the day-to-day decisions. Most VAs will be able to offer your business more than just typing up notes or answering a phone.

Busy or Quiet. The flexibility of VA outsourcing means you can hire more VAs during your busiest periods and none at all during your quietest. You pay them for the work they have completed. If they manage to complete the work you give them in an hour, you pay them for the hour and don’t have to worry about finding menial tasks to feel like your getting value from your employee.

References and Agreed Terms. Get references for your VAs and agree to all the terms of the work first. As with any business, some VAs will fail to mention their change in rates or overtime fees in the first instance. Get a clear agreement in place that you can use time and time again with all outsourced workers. Know your agreement so that you can write a covering email to amend it if necessary.

Hopefully by now you’re looking to reduce your overheads and at every possible point but bear in mind that a fresh, energetic version of you will be more useful than a worn-out version that will be prone to make more mistakes. It will help you to get that smile back onto your face.

Running A Small Business From Home

Running your business from home has many advantages over renting an office or workspace. Today’s online technology allows you to run a professional business without the overheads, another way to continue the bootstrapping mentality.

The points below will give you another brief overview of the many benefits of running your business from home.

Friends & Family. Get your friends and family on board. They will be there to help you celebrate the good times and get you through the bad. If you can, work during ‘business hours’ and take time out during social hours with your loved ones to recharge. Bounce new ideas off them, we always find our friends and family to be ‘brutally’ honest when it comes to feedback on plans and proposals!

Workspace. Make a space where you can work every day in peace and quiet and focus on what needs to be done. Find somewhere to keep your important documents to ensure things are safe and easy to find when needed. Consider using ‘Cloud Computing’ or an online solution to run your office so that your documents are always safe and readily available.

Save Money. Working from home will save you money on paying rent on an office, prevent you from paying utility bill costs and dramatically reduce your travel costs! Not only will you gain financially from not commuting every day, you will save time and hopefully start your day more relaxed as well.

Convenience. Running a home business will give you more contact and control over your family life. Want to be there when your children get home from school? Running a home business will allow that. Want to take lunch with a family member rather than making do with an office colleague? Running a home business will allow that too.

Technology. Although this goes hand in hand with Workspace, it is important to think about all the online solutions available to help you run your home business. Use Skype to make calls for free. Get your ‘virtual employees’ to use Skype and you can set up free conference calls and enjoy reduced landline business calls. Set up a PayPal account. This will provide you with a cheap, secure means of making and accepting payments from other small businesses you deal with on a regular basis.

Work-life Balance. Shut the door on your way out. We’ve said this already but its important, leave your office and spend time with your family and friends. Physically closing the door on your office will help you wind down mentally and stop you ‘just spending 5 minutes’ sorting something out, that we all know will often turn into 2 hours!

Even if it is essential to run a small office or workspace rather than a home business, many of the above points are still relevant and will help you take another step to running a successful business.

Managing Your Small Business Day-to-Day

Keeping your business running smoothly requires discipline and efficient time management. It’s easy to get bogged down with tasks that seem urgent and postpone activities that might not seem to require an immediate response. The following tasks should be scheduled into your working week and stuck to! Postponing something by half a day can make good business sense, letting it pile up for 3 weeks can leave you in more trouble than you realise.

Bookkeeping. Keep on top of your bookkeeping. Know what is going into your business bank account and what is going out. As always, this seems like an obvious statement but it is also an important one. Having an up to date knowledge of your accounts will assist you in making your business decisions and not leave any nasty surprises at month end!

Cash-flow. We’ve mentioned this before but keep on going back and revising your cash-flow plan. It’s very unlikely your first, second or third attempts will be completely accurate and as with the bookkeeping, it will help you make a more informed business decision in the long run. Your cash-flow will help you make positive decisions about the future of your business.

New orders/business. When you’re up to your neck trying to serve your current set of customers this can seem like the last thing you will need. If you have the luxury of being busy with customers, you will probably get the benefit of word of mouth advertising that is invaluable for any business. However, there’s a chance that your products and services are seasonal or will not need regular renewals by your customers. Ensuring you have as steady a stream of customers as possible knocking on your business’s door will keep your business ticking over in the quiet times (which every business goes through).

Get paid on time. This isn’t only about being strict with customers who haven’t stuck to your credit payment terms. It is also about being diligent enough to send out your invoices on time, to the correct address and making sure they are completely accurate. Any administrative errors could set back your invoices by weeks and if you are waiting for a large sum of money this could have a significant impact on your business.

Contact. Make sure people can contact you. Although your customers should be number one here, you should consider suppliers, contractors and whoever else is involved with your business. Missing a message because you’re away from the phone is no longer acceptable with the technology available today. A customer will feel better leaving a message with a person (even if that is a family member or Virtual Assistant) rather than a voicemail that could go un-noticed for some time.

Managing Your Small Business Office Online

Running your business and managing an office should be viewed as separate projects to make your business successful and should be dealt with carefully. Your main focus has to be running your business. While we have covered the importance of managing your office for the success of your business, don’t let it consume all of your working day. Remember to spend time each day doing the tasks that only you can do to progress your business.

One of the best ways to reduce the time spent managing your business is to find an online solution, or an office online. Look online to find Virtual Assistants to act as virtual employees of your company. Outsource the essential, repetitive tasks that you can pay someone else to do. Make every penny or cent count by finding the best solutions online to suit and help your business.

Keep your data safe by keeping it online. A hard drive, laptop or flash drive can crash, get lost or at worst stolen and potentially lose you a lot of money, time and contacts. Make sure backups of your data are done regularly and automatically so you don’t have to add it to your ever-growing ‘to do’ list. Once you have an effective procedure in place for your data, it will cease being a restrictive concern and allow you to concentrate on more important things in the running of your business.

An online office will allow you to access your office anywhere in the world, as long as you have access to the Internet. Keeping an eye on things while you are out of the country or away from your home is a priority for any business owner and an online offering caters for this.

‘Cloud Computing’ is a term that has escalated in use and popularity over the past year or so. Cloud computing allows you to keep all your functionality in the cloud (or Internet as you may know it!) and prevents you from having to run updates, store CDs and DVDs of programs as well as many other benefits.

Enjoy the ‘green’ aspects of an online office with cloud computing. Why pay to heat an office and your home when you can work from home and access your work on the Internet? Bootstrapping your business can start at home – save on your utility bills and perhaps you find an extra source of revenue that could be put to good use. Why pay to travel work and get stressed with late trains, traffic jams or non-existent busses when you can walk to your office and add extra time to your working day.

Cloud computing only requires an Internet connection. This removes any need to have the latest and greatest PC, Mac and operating system and will help keep your overheads to a minimum. IT (information Technology) can be just as disruptive and damaging to your business as any red tape consuming you and losing your focus. Remember, you’re here to run your business, not an office!

Finding New Customers

Finding new customers for your business involves marketing, a concept that many new small business owners are unsure of. Marketing can be a full time job in itself and for this reason can seem overwhelming to someone with little or no experience. We’ve provided another brief guide of where to start your marketing campaign to help find new customers for your business, re-activate old customers and retain your current customer’s business.

Maintaining the business bootstrapping mentality, small businesses need to find new customers without spending a large amount of money on flyers, mail-shots and radio adverts. While these all have their place, they are not immediately necessary.

Start with your website. Assuming it is already set up (if not it should be!) your website will help gather an international audience for your products and services. It gives you space to explain with high quality images why your customer should buy your products or services and provide references of other satisfied customers.

Include your website in the free search engine directories. Optimize your website using ‘Metatags’ so that search engines can find you and your business. The more optimizing you do, the higher your site will appear in the search engines results for your customers to see. Exchange web links with other web sites in your business space to improve your Google ranking.

Advertise in other places online. Write short blogs posts about your business, your new services or news stories affecting your area of work. Your customers can use your blogs as a way to keep in touch with you and send you their comments or ideas. Listen to your customer’s ideas, they will play a large part in the success or failure of your business!

Use Twitter, LinkenIn, Facebook or discussion forums to help build your brand online. Using Social Media such as these can help elevate your small business brand quickly and easily and provide you with another medium to interact with your customers.

The Tweets you send out on Twitter may have a short shelf-life in terms on how long they will be displayed on your customers pages but they will enable your customers to interact with you daily rather than browsing your site once a week/month or however often they need a new product. Not only can Twitter be used to advertise a new offer, you can share useful articles with your customers, listen to their feedback on your service and that of your competitors.

As you would expect from all the advice in the ’small business, big ideas’ series, the ideas above are all free of charge as well! If you’re unsure, use Google to find (free) techniques to help improve your use of Social Media, or just use our WinWeb Support Team to help you. Social Media can be time consuming so you should remember to focus and potentially outsource it if it starts to become a burden on your working day.

Small Business Set-Up

Now you’ve decided on your business idea, recorded your business goals and started planning your cash-flow you need to set up some essential areas of your business. The 6 steps below with give you a brief insight into what you will need to set up to get on track for running a successful business.

1. Website. Setting up your website should be one of the first things you do as it establishes your company online to help promote your products and services. Customers can use it to keep up to date with your latest offers and give you another way to interact with them. Gone are the days of only expecting customers from the 30 mile radius of your chimney. Publishing your website online will allow you to be seen and found by an international audience of customers and ‘keep the shop open’ long after you have finished your working day. We like to refer to it as the globalisation of the kitchen table/study desk that you may currently be operating from!

2. Domain Name. You will have already established your small business’s name so it is important to purchase the domain name as the home for your website. Purchasing a domain name will help your customers remember the address of your site and help establish an online brand for your business.

3. Business Cards. Everyone’s heard of Business cards but many small business owners view them as a luxury item for big meetings. Having a well designed, unique business card will give your customers something else to remember you by as well as helping your business retain a professional image. Don’t be afraid to hand out more than one to each customer, if they are talking about you to other people you should be very pleased with the free advertising!

4. Custom Business Logo. A customised logo will help your customers remember you and help with the branding of your business. This branding will give your business a ‘personality’ and distinguish you from your competitors.

5. Form a Company. Forming a limited company – LLC or Ltd. – will not only give you a legal name to trade under, it will prevent anyone else from copying or using your company name and damaging your reputation. Make sure you don’t violate someone else’s trademark!

6. Account/Business Adviser. A good accountant will act as a business adviser or ‘virtual finance director’ for your company, providing advice on cash-flow and business decisions, not just on tax once a year. Many accountants run their own small businesses and are very well informed when it comes to helping you through situations you may not have faced before. Picking the cheapest accountant may seem a good option in the short term but making sure you trust and can work with them is most important for the long term success of your company.

Completed all of the above? Congratulations, you are open for business and you’re another few steps closer to running a successful company!

Small Business Start-Up

August 28, 2009

The thought of starting a business can be a daunting prospect for anyone, regardless of experience and financial situation.

Breaking down the early stages into manageable steps will help you see it’s not as complicated as you might think. This brief overview will cover a few things you should consider if you are looking to become your own boss and how to go about it.

1. Set your goal(s). This may seem a simple and obvious step but it is also one of the most important. Without an initial goal in place, your measurements for success and failure will become impossible to judge. A goal is a destination you want to take your business to. When you get on a train, you know where the train will stop and where to need to get to. Do the same with your business, know how much you want to earn per month or how much free time you want to spend with family and friends.

Base your business idea on your goals. If one of your goals is to spend more time with children, you have to choose a business that will allow you to do that.

2. Cash-flow. Sanity-check your idea with a cash-flow plan. Force yourself to think of and record all of the potential overheads that running your business will incur. Calculate how much you will need to earn per month to meet your financial goals.

3. S.W.O.T. Complete a SWOT analysis – record your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Be as honest as you can, recognising these and taking steps to account for them will help you short and long term in your business. Maybe one of your business goals could be to improve on some of your initial weaknesses.

4. Bootstrapping. This is vital for anyone starting a business and may seem like another obvious step but it is often overlooked. Don’t spend what you haven’t earned and don’t borrow what you don’t need. Remember you are only in business once your customer pays you for the work you have done.

Look for ways to keep your overheads low, this could involve outsourcing work to a Virtual Assistant instead of hiring someone on a full or part time basis. Try and work from home rather than paying for office/workshop space. Focus on marketing your idea online for free rather than going straight to print where possible.

Try not to borrow money from banks, no matter what the latest high street offer is. They are there to help you when things are going well but will be the first people demanding payment when things are not.

5. Focus on your goals. Check back on your goals regularly and take pride in achieving what you set out to. Pay attention to the goals you haven’t met and think about where you can make adjustments to help you achieve them.

Getting into the practice of cash-flow planning and bootstrapping from day one will help put your business on course for success. Your cash-flow plans will need regular reviews and adjustments but will help you approach each new business decision with a more accurate perspective on financial stability.

10 Bootstrapping Rules For Small Business

If you are thinking about starting your own small business, or have already started your business, but maybe find the going tough, then this and the other articles in this series are for you. But before you start reading the other articles you need to be familiar with the term “bootstrapping”, to better appreciate the implications of the rest of this series.

Bootstrapping a small business means to start your business without external financial help or capital investment. You fund your business with money you earn and then reinvest into your business to grow. The average amount of money you would need to start a bootstrapped business is around $5,000 or £3,000, but often you can start a business with no money too. This assumes you already have a computer, internet connection and found room for a desk or use the kitchen table.

So here it goes, ten rules of bootstrapping your small business start-up:

1. Money – Only spend money you have earned, if you want to do something and don’t have the cash, think of other ways, think: “How can I do this without money?” Google your question, it will give you a start in finding a solution. Bootstrappers make money, they don’t spend it.
2. Niche – Start your business in a niche, provide the best personal service ever and use mouth-to-mouth advertising to grow your business slowly. Be happy with small orders, don’t over-stretch your businesses resources.
3. Overheads – High overhead costs is a business killer, keep your cost down, work from home, share resources like work-shops & offices, out-source from day one. Don’t spend money on marketing, use the internet and do it yourself for free.
4. Time – Realize that time is your most precious commodity, don’t waste it. Do things you are good at, passionate about and most of all bring you closer to your business goal. Don’t spend your time on setting up computer servers, if you are trying to sell flowers, not only are you probably bad at it, will take you much longer than it should, but it is a waste of time.
5. Outsource – Virtual Assistants are professionals and like you often run a small business, timesharing their abilities is cost-effective and will yield professional results – making you and your business look good. Don’t employ if you can not utilize the employees 100%.
6. Great Employees – if you have to employ find people who share your values, are happy to bootstrap and understand what it means for you to employ them. If all they ask is how high is my pay or how much holiday do I get – send them packing.
7. Cash-Flow – is all about understanding your situation and getting suppliers who will give you great payment terms. Making sure you get paid on-time and keeping your money for as long as you can without damaging your business.
8. Nothing To Lose – If you don’t spend much in your business and it fails you have nothing to lose – you can start again. Your competitor with thousands invested and maybe loans, etc does not have this luxury, they have something to lose. It gives you the strategic edge, do things differently, be disruptive, love to be the underdog.
9. Underdog – with Attitude & Passion – show you like what you do, be knowledgeable, build relationships & business community – people will come to you for advice and eventually for your services or products.
10. Focus – Continuously assess if your business is delivering your business goal. Every decision you make should be focused on delivering your business goal, without fail. Lose focus – lose your business.

Seth Godin, a uber-blogger and book author of “The Bootstrapper’s Bible” once wrote:

“For me, a bootstrapper isn’t a particular demographic or even a certain financial situation. Instead, it’s a state of mind.”

No matter how successful you will become, bootstrapping should be your companion. Remember how you’ve got to where you are, why change it? You may start your business in a recession, the recession will end one day, but your recession busting business model should not – Bootstrapping, it’s a state on mind!