By accident I stumbled across this book in a second hand book shop and I have to say how ever owned this book before has little or no entrepreneurial spirit for giving it away. This book is backed with ideas for home business and other micro businesses. To be precise it has 500 ideas on how you can make some money on the side.

• Time to spare? There are lots of easy ways to making extra cash in the evenings and at weekends.
• Space to spare? Make money out of your home.
• Got a skill? Turn your hobbies and creative talents into money.
• Unwanted clutter? Ways to make money, by selling it in novel ways.
• and hundreds more great little ideas.

The ISBN for this book is: 0-7499-2651-1, it’s worth a read, I loved it. ST.

After upgrading to Apple Mac OS 10.5 also known as Leopard, I had all kinds of software issues - most of all with my desktop blogging software. I tried several vendors, most of them with serious issues.

But luckily after a complete new install of my ecto software (still in beta) it now seems to work. So I can go back to blogging on a more regular basis. I’m sorry for the less than frequent posts in the past weeks.

More tomorrow. ST

The last couple of days you could follow what can only be described as a panic on the world stock markets. The markets tumbled between five to ten per cent or even more. The trigger for this is the mortgage crisis in the US and the UK.

One further problem our countries face are unprecedented levels of foreign trade-deficids.

As a micro business or small business owner you might say, hey what am I to do about this? Well as so often the is nothing you can do about this alone, but remember small business accounts for more than 50% GDP and that is something to consider. Yet small business is not having the same impact when it comes to exporting.

Exporting is something we should all consider, especially in times like this, because it could seriously help to weaken any economic slowdown or even a recession in our countries. There are companies who will help you to set up or do business abroad, like Zana Network.

If you are wondering what you can do to help your business and your country, think exporting. ST.

I believe that many factors contribute to small business failure. Indeed I believe that business failure is part of eventually becoming successful in business. The key for me is to make sure you don’t lose everything when the business fails. So bootstrapping is absolute essential, don’t spend money you do not have, don’t borrow from banks, make sure you don’t get into trouble with taxes, hire a good small business accountant, learn cash-flow forecasting and with that try and understand your business dynamics.But to give you a more straight forward answer, running out of money is the ultimate problem why business fails, reasons for this are:

1. lack of cash-flow planning;
2. no sales or not enough sales;
3. too high overheads and not cost control;
4. loss of business focus;
5. red-tape;
6. lack of marketing;
7. bad customer care.

Bootstrapping, sales oriented and customer focused small business has, in my opinion, the best chance of survival. ST.        

Sometimes the best small business lessons can be learned in the media. Here in the UK we have one of those lessons happening right now: Northern Rock!

One of the UK’s embattled mortgage lenders, Northern Rock got in to trouble and what should have been resolved in private has turned into the biggest economical and financial debacle ever. Rarely has a financial crisis been so incompetently handled by everybody concerned.

Without wanting to bore you with all the details, the exposure for the British tax-payer could get up to £100bn, but suffice to say Mr Darling, the Chancellor, has been at the forefront of this “incompetence wave”.

The result will be an even bigger squeeze on public spending, crime, our schools, crumbling health service. And of cause small business is going to suffer, as Mr. Darling will have to find new ways to tax us all, to pay for his incompetence.

Small Business and Government Lesson - Never throw good money after bad! Have a nice weekend - ST.

According to a Staples, the office supply people, survey of 300 small business owners, 51% dream about their business. Seventy per cent of these “dream-workers” reported that they get ideas and find solutions to their small business problems, while dreaming.

Dreams - alpha brainwaves - can allow us to learn while we sleep. This is especially true if we can become “lucid” during our dreams, which means we know that we are dreaming.

In 2003 the British bank NatWest generated a different survey, in which 72% of 1,000 respondences had work related dreams. 48% reported waking up in a cold sweat - not surprising really, must have been a dream about banks!

This gives new meaning to, “It’s all in your dreams!” ST.

With all the bad news for small business around I have found a solution to ALL your small business problems. When I say I have found …., I mean I have read about it in the Sunday FT.

Woods Bagot, an architecture firm in London, reports a new trend in office refits - a threefold increase in office bars. It is apparently good for recruiting young “knowledge workers” to a business, builds better teams and is seen as a great perk. Apparently (!?) more valuable than bonuses and freebies.

I think you could use these watering holes for entertaining your late paying customers and then make them sign the outstanding amount and a healthy up-front deposit for future work on a cheque, there and then. Make sure you use cheap booze and then book the drinking session under “credit-control” cost in your accounting.
If your accountant/CPA objects to this, invite him/her to your watering hole - you get the idea!

There are many uses for a company bar, I’m grateful for this idea - now I know why I read the FT every weekend. ST.

P.S.: Make sure your accountant does not charge you for the time in your company bar, they can be very slow drinkers!

A report by the Bankers Automated Clearing Services (Bacs) found that the late payment burden on UK 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, has risen £2.6bn in the past 12 month to an staggering £18.6bn.

There is good news and there is bad news - the good news is that small businesses suffering from late payments has decreased from 59% to 51% in the past 12 month.

Combine this fact with the findings in the first paragraph and you will easily see the bad news, or as I would put it the really bad news. The average amount now owed to each company at a anyone time is 30,000, up from 22,000 in 2006. It is not surprising that 29% of the respondents to the survey said they could go bust if faced with overdue invoices of £20,000 or more.

While I have no illusions that this current government shall support small business, as some in the survey suggested that public sector bodies were the worst late payers. But maybe the Shadow Chancellor Mr George Osborne, could get his teeth into this problem.

It is not without reason that we have fallen behind France in the economic world-ranking. ST.

You must be getting bored with reading my blog, my ranting on about outsourcing, cost-contol, OnlineOffice, bootstrapping, work-life balance and so on. To solve this problem for you, I thought I will now and then introduce a new blog to you. To make things as painless as possible for me, I will have the owners of these blogs tell you themselves about the blog and themselves.

First up Tom Lindstrom - Editor, The Home Business Archive:

        Tom Lindstrom

In a report, due to be published next month, from the European School of Management - ESM, it is reported that there has been a marked decline in small business activity in the the UK under Gordon Brown.

In the last decade when most peoples idea of small business centered around reality shows, small business has suffered due to a flawed understanding of small business issues and a “reality show“ like incompetence of the government departments involved.

Here are some of the reported findings of the ESM‘s team:

• a decline from 29% in 1996 to 16% in 2006 of small businesses reaching a £1 Mio. turnover within five years of start-up;
• only 6.8% have a turnover of £7 Mio after five years, much lower than the 16% European average.

Professor Davide Sola, the report’s author and dean of the ESM said:

        “The tax system for small businesses in the UK is becoming less competitive. the changes to capital         gains tax in the 2007 Pre-Budget Report will further undermine the attractiveness of the Uk as a place         to grow a business. The implications for investment and job creation could be very damaging.“

The ESM’s report covers a time period of ten years on the quality and speed of small business growth, as it is said to be a better guide of entrepreneurship, than the number of companies starting. A third of all business start-ups fail in the first three years and only 10 per cent achieve high growth.

Given the fact that almost 70 per cent of all small business do not wish to grow, due to the red-tape burden in the UK, any changes to this trend will be hard to come by - especially under this government!

The report was commissioned by the shadow Chancellor George Osborne, so let’s hope the next government will correct some of the big mistakes made in the past ten years. I’m allowed to dream, aren’t I? ST.