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.

Sometimes it is a good idea to go back to basics if you want to evaluate what you are doing or achieving in you small business. Much time in a business is spend thinking about marketing, PR, sales and customer care issues, how to make them more effective for our customers and easier to use. But have you asked yourself lately why you need to worry about that?

In short, there are three motivations why you should be doing all of this:

• Acquisition of new customers;
• Re-activation of existing but dormant customers;
• Retention of existing and active customers.

If you remind yourself of these three reasons when you thing about any activity in your company. Even a change in your payment terms should be considered with these three reasons in mind. How will it effect my customer acquisition, will it help to get some old customers to order new product or service from me, is it likely to drive some existing customers away?

Customer focus may very well be the most important aspect to your success with your home business or your freelance work. Creating barriers is something you should only do towards your competition, never towards your customers or prospects.

How is what you do today going to help you with these three goals? — ST.

The Silicon-Valley based Institute for the Future is telling us what small business or micros business is going to look like within a decade, older, younger, more feminine and above all far more global. What I have been proclaiming as Globalization 3.0, has received validation in this new report out in the last few weeks.

The U.S. has now over 26 million micro businesses, like home businesses, sole-traders, freelancers and other forms of self-employment, the growth is explosive and with good reason as this report details the way into the next decade.

Some key findings make for great reading, if you are a budding entrepreneur, that is:

• Small business will be better positioned than large corporations to provide customers with highly targeted, customized, and relevant products.
• Outsourced innovation from big business will increase opportunities for small business.
• Small business will reclaim manufacturing, fueling small-scale and specialized production.
• Plug and Play infrastructures will make small business more competitive and successful.
• The shift to variable cost structures for core business operations will reduce risk and increase opportunities for small business.
• Almost half of U.S. small business will be involved in global trade by 2018.
• Social networks will fuel border-less commerce.
• Globelization will increase small business diversity and amplify economic value.

This report makes for some great reading and I have to agree with it’s findings. There was never a better time to start your own business and be successful, and the times are getting better and better, as far as we can tell this trend of rapid growth in the number of small business and business start-ups shows no signs of slowing.

Some good news in these economic difficult times for small business, great work. — ST.

I talk a lot about outsourcing as a way to grow small business turnover and small business capability, but we should also talk about value co-production!

Outsourcing means several businesses working together, to service more customers than they could service by themselves. If you think only small business does this, think again. Almost all big car manufacturers, furniture manufacturers, and other big business do it always.

Value Co-production means that you, and your outsourcing partners, offer discounts to customers so they build their own product. You effectively sell a kit of whatever it is you manufacture. This is often done in the furniture industry, look at IKEA, Homebase, etc. When they talk about “flat-packs” they are talking value co-production, with benefits to the customer:

        1. Lower Price - in return for their own work input;
        2. Transport - the items often fit into in your own car;
        3. NOW factor - customers can take the good now, no waiting for delivery.

Some of the benefits for your small business are:

        1. Lower Cost - due to shortened manufacture cycle;
        2. Higher Manufacturing Output - due to shortened manufacture cycle;
        3. Higher Turnover - products become more competitive in price;
        4. Lower Transport Cost - due to smaller items being shipped.

This all will help to drive down overheads and help cutting costs. Is value co-production for you?

If you are a manufacturing business, it is certainly worth thinking about! ST.

When hiring people, what are you looking for? Knowledge about your industry, high IQ, many years experience? All these personal traits are important, but not as important as EQ - emotional intelligence - which means people who have natural warmth, are optimistic and can empathize with the plight of other people.

Who would you rather deal with, someone who seems cold and distant, or someone who understands your problems and can suggest solutions or ideas on a services/product level, but also on a more emotional and beneficial level. It is with everything else in life, we like dealing with friendly and warm people.

So when you hire, ask about faults, ask about being told off for getting something wrong, ask how they felt when someone else got told off at work? Listen to their answers, if they have no faults, if they never make mistakes, or think others are just not good enough, than they are obviously perfect.

Never hire perfect people, they are deeply flawed or inhuman, and nobody will want to deal with them, including you! ST.

When you talk about business, small business or even micro business, eventually the talk always turn to making money. How to make it, how to make some more and how to make sure the business keeps making money in the future. Most often than not people are surprised by my simple answer:

If you are passionate about what you business does, you will make money. If you are only after making money, you won’t.

I can proof that to you, too. My wife will always ask me why I can’t give up work, she will say you don’t have to do anything, why not stop? Answer: Passion. Why would people like Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Rubert Murdoch carry on working, after they amassed not millions, but billions? Answer: Passion.

We are not driven by making money, but by making a difference, leaving a mark. We can’t wait to tell people about our “brilliant ideas”, even if they turn out not so brilliant sometimes. I got up today at 4:00 am, because I have a great meeting set up today, with some people I wanted to meet for some time, and I can’t wait to tell them my ideas about the future of our business, so I’m going over my presentation again.

I’m sitting here at 5:15 writing my daily postings to you all, you may think I’m nuts. Or you may think I’m driven by the idea to make small and micro businesses more successful, but whatever you think, it is not “my god is this guy greedy!”

Greed is NOT the same as passion! So be passionate about your business and your customers will love you for it. 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.