When you have internal meetings try to keep them short. I often see meeting in small organisations that linger on and on, often even about non - business issues. Large corporations have often the shortest meetings at director level, while lower down in the organisation the meetings go on and on, too. Don’t waste your valuable 9 to 5 business time like that.

Look at you calendar and write next to each meeting how long it should take and stick too it.

While it is important to socialize, you have to make sure your tasks get done on time, so calling a meeting for ten minutes to just discuss the issue at hand will instill a sense of urgency and focus into the participants of the meeting. If you allow the meeting to drag on, by the time it’s over nobody remembers what the meeting was about.

Let me say it with the words of the British chairman of Josiah Wedgwood & Sons Ltd. Arthur Bryan, who had this advice for any small business:

The key is not to spend time, but using it.

Remember this is a rule for internal meetings, for meetings with customers this rule does not apply - within reason of cause. The customer should determine the length of the meeting. Suppliers will probably thank you for short meetings, so they too can get more done.

Meet with coworkers after work for bowling or golf, that will build your team spirit and give your team the social time needed. ST.

A sole trader is totally responsible for the small business in every aspect. You take all the profits and benefits from the small business, at the same time you are totally liable for any debts incurred in your small business, not being paid by your customers is not a defense. This liability includes all your personal belongings, your house and all it’s contents, talk to your partner about this, it will effect him/her too.

Being a sole-trader does not mean you work alone, some sole-traders employ other people. Again you would be totally liable for paying wages, insurance, etc.

Many small businesses start out as sole-traders and then change in a different for like a LLC (US) or Limited Company (UK). Maybe a trip to an accountant, for a free (always think bootstrapping) consultation would be in order, these guys can tell you all the in’s and out’s of your choice. ST.

Disclaimer: As with any of my readers questions, I do not have all the answers and here on my blog I can only give you some ideas, since I know very little about your small business. If any of you can add anything here do so for the benefit of my reader, who asked the question and everybody else, leave a comment below - I’d be most grateful.

Yes, you can, but you need to make sure that your employes knows about it. You may have a clause in your work-contract, that would require approval for your sole-trader activity. Even if you don’t have such a clause in your work contract, it would be the ethical thing to do to let your employer know.

Best of all, many of my current clients actually started out by having their employer give them the first order for their new business.

Remember small business is all about relationships, trust (even in this cynical world) and networking. ST.

Disclaimer: As with any of my readers questions, I do not have all the answers and here on my blog I can only give you some ideas, since I know very little about your small business. If any of you can add anything here do so for the benefit of my reader, who asked the question and everybody else, leave a comment below - I’d be most grateful.

This is easily answered, you have to answer one question: Do I know how to do bookkeeping, Yes or NO?

If YES - you can go and get an off-line (Intuit, Sage) or online accounting system and get started. WinWeb’s OnlineOffice includes a free forever - no strings attached - full accounting system, including free 24/7 live support.

If NO - you need to find a system that allows you to record all your transactions, without having to do the “Double-Entries”, you can leave that to an bookkeeper or an accountant, in other words outsource the tricky bit. The good thing here is that you will save most of the money you would have to pay someone else to do your accounts, because you do the labour intensive stuff yourself. WinWeb also covers this version of bookkeeping.

A good side effect here is that you will have to look at your expenses and cost again, and may be able to make a judgement if that was good or bad money spent - you know what I mean - the hindsight thing.

One thing is for sure getting involved in your bookkeeping/accounting, however little, will have a very positive effect on your business, no matter which kind of 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 run - I’m all for DIY.

Remember, if you have any specific questions on our bookkeeping/accounting software you can always use our 24/7 support. ST.

Disclaimer: As with any of my readers questions, I do not have all the answers and here on my blog I can only give you some ideas, since I know very little about your small business. If any of you can add anything here do so for the benefit of my reader, who asked the question and everybody else, leave a comment below - I’d be most grateful.

You are in a good position - because you will have to start your business by selling your service or your idea for a product, to make any money.

Bootstrapping is what you need to do, you can find information about this in my categories, about bootstrapping.

I can also recommend a great book I got yesterday:

Bootstrapping Your Business by Greg Gianforte (ISBN: 978-1-4196-6955-2)

In my last post, I touched on the cost to set up a home business. If you read some of the articles on the left hand side of my blog you will get a pretty good idea, what I would consider when starting out - so have a look.

As a bootstrapper you will order the second-hand books of cause, won’t you. ST.

Disclaimer: As with any of my readers questions, I do not have all the answers and this is not business advice, since I only know very little about your business. If any of you can add anything here do so for the benefit of my reader, who asked the question and everybody else, leave a comment below - I thank you for your effort.

If you don’t know what co-working is then let me quote from the Coworking Wiki:

“Co-working is cafe-like community/collaboration space for developers, writers and independents.
Or, it’s like this: start with a shared office and add cafe culture. Which is the opposite of most modern cafes. ”

Here is a great resource if you are looking for co-working space or even think about setting up a co-working space. More information can be found in an article by Small Biz Labs ” Nerd Values and Small Business” or “The American Prospect on Coworking; Coworking Location Map” .

It is a great way to work for yourself, bootstrapp and have a social life while working. ST.

Whilst writing the Small Business Quotation: Crisis I started thinking about the crises I have had in my business life and it it occurred to me that crises are not only unavoidable, but sometimes good for small business.

Sometimes Plan B is better than Plan A.

The question I asked myself was, why did I have these crises? For those that I can remember it is true to say “Something was not right with the way we did business, developed our product”, but once you got through it we had usually improved things.

Let me use the recent Skype outage as an example. I think everyone would agree that the recent outage was a major crisis for Skype. They had a software problem in their code, they had not know about. So after the problem was fixed Skype’s service today is better then it was before the crisis.

It really is that simple sometimes, crises are another form of progress if you learn to accept that crises are part of our everyday life, be it in business or in our private lives. It is needless to say that not all crises fall in this category, losing a loved one, having an accident, falling ill are quite different and as such also part of our lives, but they never improve things, ever.

I think we need to understand that things will go wrong, before they actually go wrong - remember Murphy’s Law - so assume the worst and do your best.

The lesson we can learn here is also one about staying focused, stick to the simple stuff, less will go wrong and you will have to deal with less crises. For the stuff you have to do, ask yourself if you can prevent it, plan for it, make it tolerable or influence any possible crisis. It is a form of disaster planning, for the everyday crises that happen in business.

You know “Business is Progress, Progress is Life and Life’s a Mess!” 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.

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.