For me this question has a simple answer, and it goes like this:

• 90% sales and marketing
• 10% product development

Let me quantify that a little. Before you start in business, and the clock is ticking, sort of speak you should have a two things:

• at least one order for your product, to see if someone will actually buy it, preferably more orders if possible and
• the product to sell, which you will have produced in your spare time, while still having an income.

But from the time you launch your small business or 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, you need to spend most of your time on selling and marketing, because that is what brings the money into your business.

Many thousands of businesses go bust every year with a “perfect product”, but no sales. So get a product out there and sell, sell and sell. If you then have time develop your product further or develop more product. By now you will have had some feedback from your clients and they will guide you as to what they would like to buy from your next.

That is the bootstrapper way of doing it, in my mind the only way to do it with the least amount of risk and on a shoe string. Remember the aim is to make money, not to spend it. ST.

…. at least that is what an article in my week-end paper said. Are you appalled by this headline, good so you should be! The Times Online has this article which highlights some idiotic policies we have in the UK and the effect on women and small business alike.

Sylvia Tidy-Harris, 46, is the founder of speaking agency Womenspeakers.co.uk, based in Leicestershire, UK. She argues that it is not fair on small business to have to employ woman of childbearing age:

“Small businesses should be exempt from employing women of childbearing age because the cost of dealing with maternity leave could cripple them. If one of the six staff in my public-speaking agency found she was pregnant and needed to have a year off, I would have to keep her job open – and to cover the job while she was on maternity leave, it would be very hard to find somebody else as committed, as that person would know that at the end of the maternity-leave period they were going to be booted out. It would be incredibly debilitating for my business – and any small enterprise hoping to grow. …..”

There is more to be read in the article and examples are given, when woman exploited the situation and caused big damage to small business. But is this the rule, I believe not.

If a small business was to be exempt from employing woman of childbearing age - and I do not agree that they should be exempt - then what about big business? Now I’m not usually taking sides for big business, but that would be unfair. Not even to speak of all the woman who return to work and do need the work.

If you want a baby you need to make room for the newborn in your life, and our society needs to acknowledge the need for new born babies. Here the state should provide a reasonable solution for the mother to be, it is unreasonable for any business - small or big - to be penalized for employing woman of childbearing age and it is unreasonable to turn on woman for wanting to plan a family.

Reading these articles just reminds me always how stupid and wrong some of our policies are, and that our political correctness often achieves the opposite of what it aims to protect, our humanity.

We should not seek to create new victims (woman), just to get away from being a victim ourself (small business) - we should seek to change the system to protect our human needs.

Like it or not, running a small business means to be socially and politically aware. ST.

For me small business planning centers around some very basic questions and I always aim to answer those first:

• How much is my business going to cost to set-up?
• What are the monthly running costs of my start-up?
• Is anyone willing to buy what I have to sell?
• What other problems or challenges does my business face?
• What are my best selling points or strength?

You may thing that these are all very basic questions and you would be right - but can you really answer them for your small business? I think I would find it difficult at times too. So I have devised this very basic business planning system I would like to share with you:

• Cash-flow Planning
• SWOT - Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats Analysis
• Mission & Goals Statement

Let us have a look at each one of these components individually - first up cash-flow planning - without money it is difficult to run a business. You may see that as a problem, I view that as an opportunity in as much that it forces you to sell your service or product, before you do anything else.

You could of cause do a market study and analysis, spend “lots” of money in the process and have very little extra useful information at the end of the process. While if someone buys your service or product you know it sells - without spending a penny. Enter your sales into a cash-flow and you can easily work out how much cost your small business can take. I’m passionate about “bootstrapping your small business” from day one.

This in turn will help you to focus on saving money wherever you can, since you will only make very little money in the beginning. You will understand that payment terms you offer to your clients or payment terms you receive from your suppliers can greatly help with your cash-flow, I have written about cash-flow planning before.

Secondly I like to do a SWOT analysis so I can focus myself and others in my business to stay “on message” and understand the vision for the business better. Even if you have no staff to begin with, it will help you to make the right decisions and stay focused.

Strength and Weaknesses are “internal” factors where you need to be honest with yourself and write down what you do well and what you do badly - writing it down is almost therapeutic - enabling you base future decisions on these facts, building on your strength, while avoiding your weak spots.

Opportunities and Threats are all about “external” factors and deal with issues like your unique differentiators for your products and services in the market place, as well as your competitors, red-tape, funding issues, etc. Again just writing them down will move you forward.

Last but not least I find it helpful to have a “Mission Statement” for my business, what do I want to achieve, so my customers, partners and others understand what my business is all about.

The “Goals Statement” is more personal, I write down why I run my small business or why I want to start a business.

As with all plans it is of the utmost importance to revisit your business plan as often as once a month or at times when you do not know which decision to take - go to your goals list, it will help you to focus on the way forward.

Doing basic business planning like that will help you to run and grow your business, and it can be fun too. Remember it is cheaper to test your plans on paper then for real with your own money.

I wish you and your small business or 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 “Happy Planning and Success”! ST.

Related Items:

• How to Plan Cash-Flow Category.
• How to Bootstrap Category.

I find some of the most stressful things to running your own small business is when you can’t find an solution to a problem.

This is especially true when your are a personal business, like contractors, freelancer, self-employed, sole-trader and virtual assistants working alone. People have different strategies for dealing with this problem and clearing their head:

• going for a walk
• just taking a break and read about something else
• watching a film
• going to do some exercise

When you run a small business or start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal business, you can also talk to people associated with you or your business - people you trust:

• your staff
• your accountant
• your bookkeeper
• your virtual assistant
• your friends
• your business advisor or mentor

We all need advice from time to time - worrying about a problem has never solved anything. But be selective who you ask and remember what Blaise Pascal once said:

“What a difficult thing it is to ask someone’s advice on a matter without colouring his judgement by the way in which we present our problem.”

So make sure, when you ask people for advice not to waste your and their time by “colouring” your problem - you will quickly learn there is solution to almost any problem.

Starting and running a small business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal business today, is all about staying focused on the small business and not on running your office. WinWeb’s Software as a Service applications allow you to do exactly that. Below you will find some of the benefits detailed to help you make up your mind if this kind of technology is for you.

1. No More Software Installation.

Since our software comes to you via your internet browser, there is no need to install anything. Your printer will also work with our software without installation or any modifications. Our software works with any web browser, Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox etc.

2. Our software is always up to date.

This really is one of the main benefits of SaaS. We make all the software updates on our servers, so you don’t have to do anything. No update hassle and worry anymore. There are no “Update available - Please download” messages and no CDs / DVDs updates arriving in the mail.

3. Never pay for software “updates” again!

No matter if we update or bug-fix, you will never have to pay for them again, it is all part and parcel of our service. Artificially accelerated software cycles are a thing of your past.

4. Fully Compatible with any Operating System.

Our software runs on any Operating System (OS) with Linux, Mac, Windows and some others - you login and use it.

5. Work and collaborate with anyone, anytime and anywhere.

Our software allows you to work with your accountant, colleagues, virtual assistants and others in real-time at anytime - whatever your business needs.

6. No commuting. No time wasting.

With online technology you can work from anywhere, so no need to travel to an office. Run your small business from home and benefit in terms of time, money and investment.

7. No security problems. No business interruption problem.

Your data is continuously backed up onto multiple RAID-5 data servers in multiple physically and network secure data centers - if that is not enough you can make a copy of your data anytime onto your PC or a CD.
Should your computer crash or get stolen - no problem, just log on to another computer and keep working - can your competition do that?

8. 24/7 Live Support 365 days a year.

We believe that you will be busy during the day with your clients and with working on new projects and so you should - after the phone stops ringing you get down to your admin work. So we thought we better be around in case you need some support for any of our products. It would be no good if we weren’t around now, would it?

9. No contract needed.

No minimum term, cancel anytime, no contract needed and you can test drive any software for a minimum of 30 days free of charge. This puts you in control. Unlike the boxed software you buy, once you paid for it, it’s yours including the problems. Not so with our software.

10. ClimateByte™ Technology

Our environment is in trouble - by using our on-demand Small Business Infrastructure™, you can help to reduce your carbon footprint and help our environment - we are dedicated to develop our future products and services with this in mind.

Our Software as a Service products provide your small business with a on-demand Small Business Infrastructure™ helping you to concentrate on your business, while we run your office and IT. This makes your business more mobile and competitive while saving you time, money and helping the environment.

When you run a small business and personal business, like contractors, freelancer, self-employed, sole-trader and virtual assistants you probably benefit even more from using SaaS technology - program your business for success.

I get regular questions about what we really mean by WinWeb’s Small Business Infrastructure?

On-demand Small Business Infrastructure™ centers around the idea that business start-ups and growing small businesses need help with numerous administrative tasks that are not core to the business success - such as bookkeeping, it services, internet services, call handling and other such services.

These services - if performed by the business owner - cause a great deal of time wasting - while the fixed cost of a business is still accumulating. This is in our minds a fatally floored business model and can easily be remedied with our infrastructure approach.

We should not expect business start-ups and small business in general to be accountants, bookkeepers, lawyers, marketing & PR gurus and so on. We should provide small business with an infrastructure in which it can concentrate on core business tasks, while at the same time enabling the business owner to stay informed of all relevant business facts like cash flow, sales, HR issues, tax position and more. This will enable him / her to make informed decisions, maybe with the help of an external advisor.

Based on these facts, we have devised a six point on-demand Small Business Infrastructure™ concept, which consist of:

1. WinWeb On-Demand Software Solutions - Anywhere At Anytime.

AccountsOffice and OnlineOffice are our two software offerings, which are based on the SaaS - Software as a Services model, to allow for the following key business benefits:

• tight inclusion of business advisors from the start,
• cultivating outsourcing techniques at the outset, i.e. virtual assistants,
• no IT knowledge needed and hassle free operation,
• real-time multi-user access from anywhere, increasing mobility.

2. WinWeb 24/7 Live Support - We Are Here For You Always.

Providing customer care and support only during business hours is not acceptable to our clients. Experience has shown us that most admin work gets done by small business before nine in the morning or after five in the evening. This practice is essential if the business is to survive it’s early years.

This is why we have provided our much acclaimed customer support for 24 hours a day, seven days a week from the outset. Saving our clients wasted time and money - while setting new standards in customer support. No manuals need to be read - all problems can be solved in real-time online.

3. WinWeb Live - Networking Community for Small Business Only.

To foster collaboration and outsourcing we have expanded our WinWeb Live™ offering to allow for small business community networking - thus enabling the business owner to make decisions about his / her current needs, with the following benefits:

• timeshare virtual assistants for professional results,
• offer contracts of work to contractors on a case-by-case basis,
• promote the business to a large audience or even locally,
• find new work and contracts online

4. Business Advice

Our On-Demand Small Business Infrastructure™ enables business advisors, accountants, bookkeepers and other advisors to have a “Up Close and Personal” relationship with the small business owner, providing key elements for the success of a small business:

• timely and up-to-date advice from anywhere at anytime,
• more efficient advisor function due to SaaS technology, less travel,
• easily expandable advisor network.

5. Solution Partners

Third parties provide external services to complement our services, such as parcel service, office supply services, printing services. These and other services are provided on a bulk buy arrangements by leading businesses in their respective sectors - to provide the most reliable and up-to date service possible - with the effect of enhancing the professional appearance of our clients.

6. ClimateByte™ Technology - For A Cleaner Future.

Our clients are among the biggest demographics concerned with climate change and carbon footprint neutrality. It is a fact that employing remote working and collaboration techniques drastically reduces the damaging business side affects on our environment. We enable our clients to be more eco-friendly and aware, by providing them with our green technology - an ongoing development commitment of WinWeb.

WinWeb welcomes any suggestion that will further enhance our On-Demand Small Business Infrastructure™ concept - especially the development of even more eco-friendly business processes - to serve our small business and business start-up client-base.

The typical scenario is you work hard all week, have no live and at the end of it all little money to show for it. This is often a sure sign of loss of management control in a small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal businesses.

The small business health-check questions for this episode are:

• Do I know what is going on in my business in all areas or have I abdicated some responsibility to staff? You can pick and choose what you do work-wise everyday, you can not pick and choose what you should know about and make decisions about - this is your business, not your staffs business - act like it.
• Am I running my business or is it running “itself”? No business is running itself, other than into the ground!
• Do you know how your cash-flow is doing? Done this one before, yet it always comes back to this, check it out.
• Do you have an overview of your small business fixed costs and sales, are you happy with the situation? I guess you could always do better, but if you do not know the details you can not improve your situation.
• Is your vision in line with your small business targets? You need a vision for your business, that will allow you to develop your small business strategy and plan, so you know where you are going - don’t just drift along.
• Have you asked your staff lately? Have a power-meeting with your staff once a week, to see how they are feeling about your small business, last week or the next few weeks. It will motivate them and give you a new insight in how others see your small business.

The central message here is to be involved in ALL areas of your business ALL of the time - in a management capacity. When I hire people I always hire people who do something better than I, but you have to stay involved.

You can see other reasons for small business and personal business, like contractors, freelancer, self-employed, sole-trader and virtual assistants failures in my Health Check Category, if you can add to this list please do so, I would welcome your comments.

It is Saturday, weekend - here in the UK a long weekend as we have public or bank holiday on Monday - for me always a time to reflect on the week gone by and of the weeks ahead. For many small business owners it’s time to work and catch up with admin or other work, but ask yourself this, “Is this what I wanted from my small business?” Or did you want to be with your family, have some time off - have a life?

This morning I was reminded of a gentleman I met almost thirty years ago while working in the US, he was from Florida and extremely wealthy. He had made all his money in nylon-stockings after the second world war. I was still looking for my first break to make my mark and money, so I asked him how he made it to become so wealthy. His answer was:

Remember always, if you work all day, then you have no time to make any money, you are too busy.

As you can well imagine, here I was, about 20 years old and this guy came out with a statement like this, I thought he was completely mad and insane. Unfortunately I was stupid enough not to ask him what he means - otherwise I would have learned one of the most important business success lessons of my business live very early on.

He was absolutely right of course, you may very well already know that. He was talking about having time to have a vision and dream, think about your small business and not about your products, standing back and getting out of the proverbial forrest, so the trees are not in the way.

So why not use this weekend, stop working and do some dreaming about what could be - nurture your vision for your small business and see where it takes you. Vision is one of the most important ingredient for small business success.

Take the time to make money - stop being so busy. But now you have to excuse me ……. Have a great weekend!

If you have a group of people working with you - in your office or from home, employed or outsourced - does that mean you have a team? Well that depends how you work together.

Small Businesses need to be build a team, a Small Business Team. A team is defined as a group of people who co-operate in such a manner that it achieves more than the sum total of the individuals achieve each, they are united around a common goal and are accountable to the team for their actions.

Examples of teams are:

• Work Teams
• Sales Teams
• Customer Service Teams
• Virtual Teams

I would suggest that small business owners need to form teams around their small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal businesses, too. This will achieve scalability, higher efficiency, more professionalism, in other words to grow your business with less growing pains, like struggling cash-flow, excessive financial and administrative overheads and much more.

In fact keeping business failure at bay, may very well depend on your ability to form these teams, in your office or virtually.

In a modern business context we also call these teams Small Business Communities or Small Business Networks. Even a small business may have different types of networks - as indicated above - you can have your office team, while your small office team member for sales may also belong to a external sales network (team).

As you can see we live not only technologically in a networked world - we live in a world of teams, communities and people networks. The benefits especially for small business and even more business start-up, can not be over emphasized - teams perform functions so important for small business success:

• achieve better work results than individuals,
• are ultimately more scalable and flexible than larger organisations,
• offer a wider range of services and products than individuals,
• offer the opportunity of “brain-storming”,
• motivate each other,
• develop more skills and confidence
• show more commitment to each other.

Whatever you do, employ new staff, hire a consultant, work with an accountant, think my-team, think my-community and think my-network - because you are building your Small Business Team. Do it even before you open your door for business, during the business start-up phase.

So, back to my question for you: Do you work with a Group of people or do you have your own Small Business Team?

Small may be beautiful - but often you will have to appear bigger than your really are, to get that next contract. Here are some pointers to help you to look bigger, more professional and efficient:

1. Business address - “19, Rose Gardens” may not be the best small business address, a PO Box number is not really the way to instill confidence either - use a business address service, which will forward all mail to you.
2. Phone answering - have your phone answered, no matter what, use a virtual assistant or an answering service. Not answering your phone will cost you business - big time, trust me - probably the biggest mistake small business make in terms of appearance.
3. Conference rooms - use good meeting rooms in high quality business centers. They may be able to offer some of the other services for you as well, like an business address and call answering.
4. Online presence - absolute minimum is a good website, best with a blog and if appropriate online-shop. If you are not online you are not in business. Have your own domain, to use for your email, don’t use hotmail or gmail, etc. that is what your kids do.
5. Outsource - use timesharing techniques for professionals, there are virtual assistants which offer hundreds of services at an professional level, hire them as you need them. If you work with one virtual assistant they have usually a network of expertise around them, that creates a one stop shop for professional skills for you.
6. Be proactive - use Key Account Management Techniques to deal with your customers, remember the 80/20 rule.
7. Branding - even if you outsource insist on your own branding, it builds your brand and is less confusing for your customers.
8. Share technology and facilities - see if you can find other businesses that let you share equipment, storage, office and anything else you can think of.
9. Think big - the way you talk about your business, products and services will tell others a lot about you and your business. Remember, anything is possible if you want it bad enough.
10. Say “YES” - work out how to do it later. Your small business is probably more efficient and flexible that your big competitors - use that to your advantage.

Remember your new slogan - “Whatever they can do, I can do better!” or my slogan “What the hell, let’s do it.”

For more of my checklists see the Small Business Checklists category and as always please add to my list with your comments, tell us what works for you.