As part of our OnlineOffice we offer web-services like web-hosting, email, online shop, online file-store and a wordpress blog. Blogging is most certainly the most inexpensive and direct way to communicate with possible customers, you can

• blog about your products and services; explain certain aspects better;
• blog about your company and your business mission;
• blog about your industry, comment on development and differentiate yourself;
• blog about case studies to do with your product and services.

In other words communicate with others on the internet and market your small business. There are many hosted services out there, which are more or less easy to use. Our approach has been to make the blog a plug-in to the basic web site you can setup without any IT skills. With our free 24/7 live support we can help with any issues, should you have any. problems.

For me blogging is a bootstrapper technique to attract new business without having to spend any more money. In the mid-ninties I used to tell people to get a web-site, today a web-site should be standard for any small business and a blog a must if you want to succeed in the future. You may believe that blogging is all about attracting global audiences, when in reality you can use blogging for very local markets, too. It certainly beats sending out leaflets and it is better for the environment.

If you have a story to tell, tell it - nobody else is going to do it for you. ST.

It’s a fact, that so many people will tell you that starting a small business is a bad idea, should not really influence your decision making at all. An here I include the so called business gurus - just ignore them.

Can you imagine what happened when

• Alexander Graham Bell announced he wanted a phone in every house - Western Union called it an “electric toy” and “totally out of the question”;
• Henry Ford said he wanted one car in every family - most felt the horse was here to stay.

The same happened to me still in 1995, when most people thought the internet was going to disappear faster than it had arrived - I remember the abuse very well. So why do people get so negative about other peoples business ideas:

• Lack of Vision is probably the biggest reason;
• Envy is another big reason - driven by the inability to take a risk themselves and the fact that they can’t bear to see others succeed;
• Genuine concern for your well being - they thing your are taking too big a risk, you are naive, and so on.

Take advise on certain techniques on how to run your business, but do not take advise on if you should start a business or not. As these examples above show, you never know how big a business will get.

People make it big in business, while I think it not necessary to make it big, it may never the less happen and it could be your turn next. ST.

I have mentioned the 80/20 rule before, it basically says that you will do about:

80% of your business turnover with 20% of your customers.

Everyone in your small business should know these 20% of your customers by name, so when they call you can give them the “special” treatment they deserve. Often you will hear people say, “you need to scream the loudest to get things done”, many of you 20% customers will not scream, they will leave.

Knowing these customers by name, giving them top priority in terms of service and courteous professionalism is essential, to build your business in the long run. Make your business the business, where your customers don’t have to scream, but just phone and feel treated special, because that is what they deserve.

Your reward for this kind of service is a loyal customer and word of mouth marketing you could not pay for. ST.

I hope you have got one and everyone in your small business knows it. You need to understand what level of customer care your customers want, so most of all you need to listen.

I often come across small business, where customer complaints are causing stress and sometimes even anger. That is sad to see, since you should be grateful that your customers bother telling you about your problems, nine out of ten times they don’t. That should be a frightening thought for any small business owner, they will just stay away and you lost a customer.

You should thank your clients for taking the time to talk to you about your problem. Sometimes listening to simple little comments can make a difference too:

• “No parking out there!” - could cost you your customer for the next order;
• “I forgot, I can’t pay with credit cards!” - will cost you business;
• “Nobody called me back!” or “Nobody answered the phone!” - are business killers;

These are just a few examples, why you need a customer service agenda. You should get your staff to understand your customer service agenda fully, so they can do things professionally, courteously and promptly.

If you don’t have a customer service agenda, your customers may have a agenda, to go and buy somewhere else. ST.

Once you have started your business, you will encounter problems, teething problems. Things like the courier did not turn up, your product didn’t work or maybe you could not deliver fast enough, and thru all that your customers stayed with you and ordered new product.

At this point you must realise that you have made your first important step to business success, you have created loyal customers. These customers need to be cared for as they are the back bone of your company sales. On average it is five times more expensive to sell to a new customer than to an existing one. The reasons for this ore obvious, they already know your product or service and you do not need to sell your product to them anymore, lower marketing costs, less time spend on explaining the product or service.

Don’t misunderstand me here, your small business needs new customers all the time, but as mentioned it is far more costly to get them. If your business can’t keep customers than that is a bad sign, and you need to investigate this ASAP.

Turning new customers into loyal customers is the key objective in any business, small or large. And the only way to that is with outstanding customer service. ST.

Just got this question, I know there are others questions I have not yet answered, and I have already written my “The Week Ender” post for the week, what the hell, but I’m in the mood to have a go at “The System” again. I think I’ve mentioned before that blogging is therapy for me, and I’m sure some of you might even think I should be in therapy, so there you are.

I’m going to expand this question “slightly” into - I hope Walsh does not mind:

What are some of the social, political and economic issues small business face?

I should remind you that when I talk about small business, I mean 1 to 5 people businesses, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer- or Personal business, like professionals, contractors, freelancers, self-employed, sole-traders and virtual assistants.

Social issues are clearly centered around the work-place, work life and private life. To many work is the central activity in their lives and the stresses and pressures of todays workplace are enormous, overtime, project pressure, sales targets, travel to and from the place of work, to name but a few. This all causes tension in a partnership, family and leads often to a dysfunctional family/private life. For example, we need dating agencies and web-sites to find partners, because we are too busy to find a partner in what used to be a “normal way”, and in this sense we have to be thankful for the service dating agencies and web-sites provide. These issues are prevalent in the group of small business owners too.

Striking the right work/life balance has become a personal choice item, with the advent of home businesses. Businesses run by entrepreneurs, often unhappy with the traditional choices in the work place, who have decided to set their their own work/life balance and run a business, not to grow and dominate the world, but to earn an often higher than average income, while retaining a certain amount of freedom and flexibility in their private lives. Parenting people often see a home business, as a way to have a family and stay active in their chosen field of work.

The growth in these kinds of businesses is explosive, while our society is technologically perfectly capable of sustaining this trend, our social work infrastructure in many cases is not.

This brings us to the political issues these micro and small businesses face. The fact that our society is wholly unprepared for this revolution in the work place and small business environment, has to do with the fact, that governments often receive no advice from actual participants in this new home based micro business economy. Current advisors are from big business, with virtually no experience or knowledge about micro business issues.

Of late universities and other institutions have started to produce a vast amount of valuable data, about micro businesses, which is often meaningless to the political elite in the western world. It is, in my opinion, wrong to expect our politicians to guide us into this new area of explosive micro business growth. Experience tells us that any decisions made will be often too late or even counter productive, market forces are much faster and more targeted to help these growing sectors develop.

In my discussions with politicians, civil servants and often big business, the term “Small Business Infrastructure” is rarely understood. The best we can hope for is the insight that less red-tape is going to help, for some politicians this is a frightening thought.

Economically, I feel we are at the beginning of a truly “golden age” of entrepreneurship. Our technical infrastructure, the internet, powerful micro-computer systems and mobile technology have helped to transform our way of doing business. The last piece in the puzzle was the advent of the software as a service industry, which took longer to develop than I had foreseen. With an almost transparent internet and IT infrastructure, the focus is getting back to the business objectives, even in very small businesses. If this is extended by a “Small Business Infrastructure“, which includes 24/7 technical and customer support, additional service offerings like bookkeeping, telephone answering, and similar services, the survival rate of small business startups, vastly improves.

If small business owners use outsourcing and bootstrapping techniques as a matter of cause, the fixed cost (over-head) structure in each of these micro businesses can lead to super efficient and hyper valuable home or micro businesses. I believe you can start a business with $20/£10 a month and grow your business, risk free (without loans) on the side, while still in employment, until the turnover is big enough to justify quitting ones day job.

You may feel about a business on the side as you will, the fact remains this is going on as we speak, trends we see in the online usage patterns of our OnlineOffice, certainly support this theory.

At the same time business failure is far less an issue, as the risk associated with these ventures is very small, with the right mental attitude of the entrepreneur towards failure, the learning effect of a failure can be enormous. Especially in Europe the old-fashined anti-risk strategies only serve to leave us further behind the other global economies in terms of technological leadership. The U.S. is testament to what an economy with a “normal prospective on business failure” can do.

Emerging economies like China, India and some others are learning from the U.S. and will outstrip our economies within the next decades, unless our politicians, will finally stop putting barriers up for micro businesses.

Last and by no means least, the positive ecological impact of a largely home based economy can not be underestimated. Endless hours of travel to and from the work place, meetings, office heating, and so on could be a thing of the past. Rural economies will be revitalized, multi-generation household will no longer be a thing of the past, this all will have a tremendous positive impact on our social infrastructure, child-care, crime and drug abuse, to name but a few.

While I have often quoted this in the past “it is not the answers that are the problem, knowing the question is”, I’m often left feeling with politicians it is both, not only do they not know the question, they don’t know the answers either. While I accept it is easy for me to sit here and say this, it does not alter the fact that it is only too often true.

It is almost the weekend now, and I’m off to see 10cc, or what is left of them. ST.

I received a great weekend question the other day, “How can I find a great home business idea for me?“. What I would do in these situations is get a pad of paper and a pencil - yes paper not my computer, that comes later - and sit by myself in a corner somewhere.

I start writing down what it is I’m interested in or passionate about, so for myself I write down things like diving, photography, traveling, boating, physics, computers, internet and stuff like that, not to forget small business. In my next step I try and find reasons, why I like this particular subject or activity, again write them down.

Next, I try to find out what my personal traits are, with the help of my family and friends, am I:

• a good teacher,
• a traveling person, like driving all day
• do I thrive on new ideas,
• and so on?

Now I combine the two, diving and teaching, I’m a bad teacher, so diving instructor is out - you get the idea. I may come up with some close ideas - but doing gardening everyday, no matter what someone payed me would be a definite NO-NO!

Somewhere down the line I get to small business and I can say:

• I have had 30 years of small business experience;
• I have had formal business education;
• I’m passionate about small business;
• I know I make and will make mistakes everyday, failure for me is just another way of learning;
• I love listening to customers and their ideas about my business; I’m always surprised and learn something new;
• mad about the inability of politicians to understand very small business;
• sad about the accountants lack of a forward looking outlook in their profession;
• know we are in trouble with our environment, and I would like to make a difference;
• always loved high-tech, computers, software, my years as CEO of a leading ISP;
• building a company from zero to tens of millions in turnover in just four years.

This is my personal list for my small business interest and after all that, what you get is WinWeb - my way of dealing with my passion and frustration about small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer- or Personal business, like professional, contractors, freelancer, self-employed, sole-trader and virtual assistants - and it’s a great business!

The point I’m making here is, the answer to this question - Finding the right home or small business idea for you? - is within yourself. So spend some time with yourself over this weekend, find out what you like and what you are like, get some feedback from friends on how they see you, write it down. Then go though the permutations and I’m sure you will find a few ideas that will make your heart jump, when thinking about the possibilities - e-voila, your business ideas!

You need to have passion, interest, a love for change, and control your fear of failure. You noticed, I didn’t mention an MBA, lots of money or bookkeeping, marketing, IT, and law experience, these are “nice to have” items, but not essential, unless you are working in those fields of cause.

Like someone once said, when you are older,

“You don’t regret the things you did, you regret the things you didn’t do.”

At the beginning and the end of our life we are all the same, what makes the difference is the bit in the middle, making it exciting and interesting is something you have to do - nobody is going to do it for you. On second thoughts, my wife would possibly disagree, she keeps telling my that at least life with me isn’t boring. I think I will have to think about that this weekend.

Have a great weekend and an even better “middle bit”, Stefan.

I read some good articles last week and want to share them with you here:

• Web Worker Daily has a business example of a 100% Online We Consulting Firm, as I hope a growing trend.
• Jason Holden follows one of my favorite themes in Online accountant and online accounting?.
• Shama Hyder, apart from getting me onto twitter, has a great interview with TheFreeLanceNation.com.
• Wendy Piersall is telling all us bloggers how to monetize your blog, in nine different ways.
• The Digerati Life blog will let you know How To Safely Borrow For A House Purchase, as the US House votes to license mortgage brokers.
• John Jantsch has two pieces I liked - How to SCORE some seriously good start-up help AND NYC doing small business right.

That is my little round-up for this week and your weekend. I hope you will enjoy some of these links, and undoubtedly you will find more great stuff while following these links. Let me know if you find anything I should mention here. ST.

After a long night at the AccountancyAge Awards 2007, I’m very happy to announce that Goodman-Jones have won the prestigious award for “Best use of Internet: Practice” again, for the second year running. It has to be said it was a close race with the other two contenders for the title. It was nice to meet Phil Woodgate and some of his colleagues again.

My conversations of the evening have been focused around my changing attitude toward the accounting profession, and I was quite surprised to find that most of my conversation partners agreed with me on my assessment of the “backward looking profession” and it’s damaging effect on very small business, which has been a constant source of concern for me in the past few years. Hence WinWeb’s complete change in it’s way to market. I had no idea that my views on this are so well known in the profession - with obvious little effect, of cause - which kind of proves my point.

The attraction of the evening was Boris Johnson - hopefully our new mayor for London, I certainly wish him every success - with his as usual very “eloquently” put points about the state London is in. Having had the pleasure to hear him speak, make his points, there is no question in my mind, that he is the right man for the job. Some of you might say, “that is not difficult, after what Ken Livingstone has done in the past years”! While that is true, I feel we would get back to some sensible ideas, like our London buses, what was wrong with the route master busses(?), or why is Ken spending Londoners money on a space program?

Although, Boris was not that dismissive about the space program, since it included the possibility of shooting Ken into space, clearly one of the more “realistic” policies Boris would follow, if voted into office! IMO, his manifesto is getting better and better. That is of cause if we are talking about a one-way ticket to ride, Boris?

I for one, would prefer to live in London, where we can get up in the morning with a smile on our faces, about a serious point made the “Boris Way”, rather than being embarrassed and upset by an intolerable and arrogant Mayor, who clearly does not understand even the basics of the problems we face in the future, a trait he shares with many in his party, especially when it comes to micro- and small business issues.

All in, I enjoyed last evening immensely and thank AccountancyAge for putting up a great show. ST.

It is fair to say, that the only constant in life is change. While I always caution people, that change is not necessarily progress, it is also correct that change is what is creating new business opportunities every day.

It is living with this change and realizing the opportunities change generates that is the important process here. So how could a small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer- or Personal business, like professional, contractors, freelancer, self-employed, sole-trader and virtual assistants go about seeing these opportunities?

The answer sounds easy, but requires patience, you need to look at your chosen market segment from the out-side. You have to become a judge, not a participant. Look at all the trends and judge them, find ways to improve upon techniques and find out what people are talking about.

Don’t be blinded by your own business, if you already have one. You must realize, that you can ignore or unfairly discredit someone else’s idea today, only for them to come back and kill your business tomorrow. Fighting a trend is futile and a wasted opportunity.

If something you see is better, appropriate it, in business that is called “best practice sharing” or “benchmarking” - within reason of cause! ST.