When my wife went to university in London in the eighties one of her professors was of the opinion that the education was wasted on women, since they would leave university, get married and have children. While nobody says these things anymore in public, we still seem to have the same mentality.

Today I travel around the world and speak with all kinds of people about micro-business, like home-business. Often the conversation includes the so called “skill shortage”, felt especially hard in Australia these days. When I question this alleged shortage, I’m always surprised about how little consideration is given to well skilled and educated parents - mainly women - sitting at home looking after the family.

After one of these conversations today, I was reminded of this professor and began wondering if he was right with his opinion in the final analysis? Trivially, his assertion that educating women is a waste, is completely nonsensical, but the final result to the economy seems to suggest his analysis could be right. How else can it be explained that we ignore this massive “skills resource” sitting at home.

The technology we at WinWeb have developed allows for work from anywhere at anytime, others have done the same in other areas? Where is this “skill shortage”? The truth in my opinion is more the fact that we often block this remote working possibility from our minds, but why?

If you consider the skills potential of parents, if each parent would only contribute one hour on average per week to their learned professions. This would be a staggering number of man hours per week.

The benefits for the home working parent would be very tangible too. They could show a almost uninterrupted work history, stay in touch with their profession and would therefor find it much easier to get back into full-time employment after the kids have grown up.

To often my conversation partners look somewhat bewildered at my initial suggestion, but then often admit they had never thought about this possibility.

It is not a waste to educate women or any parent, it is however a waste to treat parents as if they do not exist in work terms. I consider it an insult to each parent and unbelievably damaging for our economy. — ST.

I have been reading about Ray Kroc the founder of McDonald’s, these stories can tell about figures like that can tell you a lot about the way business does work.

He was fifty-two years old when he found that funny shaped hamburger stand in San Bernardino in California. At fifty-two and suffering from diabetes he found his business idea that would transform the way we look at fast food. He was not a young entrepreneur or grey suited corporate type, no he had been a salesman for most of his live. He had also earned his living with playing music in bars, in short things were not always easy.

But now at fifty-two, when our society has decided you no longer represent prime employee material, Ray Kroc knew the best part of his live was still ahead of him. Ray’s life teaches us many lessons for our private and professional lives. Not only is his live a lesson in perseverance, as it is often the case, perseverance is something that just happens out of necessity, but about the fact that it is never to late to make your mark or find your niche and change your life.

You need to keep an open mind and understand challenges as opportunities - read Ray’s story and see this mindset in action, it is utterly compelling. — ST.

I always look for way to turn a problem into an advantage, so here is my take on the so often mentioned “isolation problem” for small home businesses, free-lancers, contractor, sole-traders and micro-business.

So, you don’t meet enough people to interact with on a personal level? Let me ask you another question, what kind of people does your business need most of all? Customers, right? As a good bootstrapper you know that everything starts with sales, because that is how you get your money. You may very well do all your marketing online and get business that way, but why leave it at that? Think global - do local!

So, now to my solution for your “isolation problem”, I guess you already know what is coming:

• Go and meet people, customer people.
• Go to networking events in your local area.
• Go and join business clubs or start one.
• Run an event from your home.
• Take a business class at your local college.

All these and other events will get you out of the house, open your local paper, call your local camber of commerce, they all can help you to find events and contacts, and start your “isolation-opportunity” marketing and sales drive.

Turning “customer people” into “customer friends” could be the smartest thing you will do this year. Business is so much easier if you know someone personally. You know your “isolation-problem” has turned into an “isolation-business-advantage”, when your customers come around your house to discuss the next business deal and/or for a cup of coffee.

Always think, where is the opportunity in this problem? Once you start thinking like that you will see many new opportunities and the world will become a much more friendly and profitable place. ST.

A few days ago I was once again reminded by Joshua Levy and his piece “One Blogger Asks: Is the Grass Really Greener on the Web Worker’s Lawn?” on his blog Web Worker Daily that I wanted to write a piece about what I believe to be the social impact of home working.

Joshua is asking some interesting questions about working from home:

So is all of this freedom actually liberating us? Does web work actually represent an evolution in the working conditions of the masses? Or are we fooling ourselves, blind to the reality that we can’t have it two ways — you can’t have the freedom AND have someone else, er, pay the bills.

If I ask myself these and other questions I’m invariably drawn to find answers in my personal work life and how it has changed in the last decade.

In 1999 I was still office based, traveled from one of our offices around the world to the next and was rarely home. In fact most of the time those years I came home Friday very late or Saturday and then often left Sunday night again. So I saw little of my family and especially my son who is now grown-up and ready to go to university.

Then in 1999 I sold my ISP-business and went back to run WinWeb. This time around I worked from home, right from the start I did not want to be in an office and lead the same life as before. So for the past eight years I have been there when my son came home from school, I even picked him up often enough. I was here when he came home with the latest music CD, I had to listen to - not always easy, I admit - or the latest sport-shoes form addidas had finally arrived at the shops.

Similarly I spend much more time with my wife, going for lunch, doing some “essential” gardening - I hated gardening, but love it now. I could give you many more examples, but you get the picture.

While there are many challenges for home workers, I believe we are seeing the beginning of an “reversal” trend. I would like to list here some challenges I believe our society is facing currently:

• Child care - in our work dominated society we often outsource most of our child-care, in kindergarten, boarding schools, and other institutions, here our children will not receive the same level of care and love they deserve and need;
• Care for the Elderly - our lifestyles often separate us from our loved ones and in times of need we are often not able to care for our relatives or friends, because we live in different cities or even countries for example;
• Environment - many of us spend hours every day alone in cars or on trains - not alone, but still isolated - and contribute to the carbon emissions that change our climate.

There are many more examples. This whole process began with the “Industrial Revolution” some 150 years ago. Some of us may even remember a time when three or even four generations of a family lived in one house. People worked in their villages, child-care or care for family “just” happened - was that a bad or good thing? Looking at single parent families and the impact on our children, I would argue it was a good thing, and so would the many parents working from home exactly for that reason - to provide a healthy family environment for their loved ones.

I believe that the whole trend of home working may in the future allow us to have a much more natural work/life balance and will reverse some of the damaging effects of the post industrial revolution changes in our society. People will live closer to family, local communities will be revived - I believe that is happening as we speak, and our children will benefit from “more family”, and all this will have a profound impact on all our lives and the environment.

I would encourage Joshua and everyone else working from home to relearn the social skills of building local friendships, or live near family and give you the social life you need.

After all, this technology we at WinWeb and others supply makes it possible to work from anywhere, gives you a tremendous amount of freedom to live the life you want, where you want.

Let’s hope in hundred years from now people will see this era not only as the “Information Age”, but also the age when we learned to live a better work/life balance, in tune with our emotional and social needs as individuals, families and society as a whole. What do you think?

Have a great weekend with your family and friends.

It seems finally people are waking up to the fact that small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal business wants to stay small. Small Biz Labs reports:

According to this month’s Discover Small Business Watch (a survey of small business owners with 5 or fewer employees) “69 percent of small business owners said that they prefer to have their business remain small.”

I’m still somewhat surprised it took most people that long to finally understand that it is perfectly OK to want to stay small. Question is why nobody ( apart from WinWeb) is really catering for these types of small business and personal business, like contractors, freelancer, self-employed, sole-trader and virtual assistants.

What really gets me going is when these types of small businesses get told ” It’s just like having a home job!” - dream on.

Running a business from home can be one of the most liberating and fulfilling things you have ever done in your life.

Sometimes it can get pretty stressful starting, running and especially growing your small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal business.

I always found it helpful to remember why I started my business, even if you run a personal business, like contractors, freelancer, self-employed, sole-trader and virtual assistants. My first business was started to make money and get me through university. I have never really worked for anyone full-time, but your own motivation for starting a business may be reasons like:

• having a better live
• higher standard of living
• launch your own product and see it succeed
• escape the corporate rat-race
• spend more time with your family
• look after a family member
• can’t stand being retired

And the list could go on and on, compared to your goal the stress may seem more bearable, stress is apart of live not only for business owners, but anyone.

So remember why you are running your small business - it will help you to deal with the stresses a little better.

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!

There are two ways to get better payment terms from your suppliers - make sure you know what the pricing is and negotiate the payment terms last, without warning. Most businesses do not expect small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal businesses to negotiate payment terms, so you have the element of surprise on your side - and it makes you look more professional.

Firstly there is the extended payment term, of 60, 90 and 180 days - see if your supplier will allow any of those terms. Even if they only give you 60 days, you can always go back after 3-4 month using this payment terms in which you have shown to be trustworthy. If it is declined and only 30 days are offered - because you have no history - then this is the perfect scenario of our second method.

Early payment discounts of 2% if you pay within 7 days. This is like a 24% p.a. discount on the invoice value, not a bad way to compensate for the overdraft interest charges from your bank.

Surly you supplier is interested in your business, and is not going to decline both offers - you win either way - if they decline, then look for a new supplier. Because you are not only helping yourself with your cash-flow, but theirs too.