Category Contractor

Entries 17 Total

Small Business Maxim: Have a Passion.

Nov 20, ’07 6:30 AM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Contractor, Entrepreneur, Freelancer, Generation-Y, Home Business, MumEntrepreneur, Personal Business, SOHO/SMB/SME/Micro, Self-employed, Sole-Trader, Start-Up, be successful, start-up in business

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.

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New Small Business Startup Idea: Coworking Space

Nov 14, ’07 11:21 AM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Business Ideas, Contractor, Entrepreneur, Freelancer, Generation-Y, MumEntrepreneur, Office - IT, Personal Business, Self-employed, Sole-Trader, Virtual Assistants, use online IT

It may be that you have some spare space in your house, out-building, or you even a whole house, you can’t or don’t want to sell or rent out, then you could generate income by setting it up as a coworking space, a coworking wiki-site explains it like this:

Coworking 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.

All you need is tables, chairs, a WI-Fi setup and apparently a coffee machine and you are in business. But remember you will have people in your house every day, so make sure you are OK with that, before you start. Have a look at the website for coworking to get some more ideas, or read the blog.

It will be a great place for working, socializing, and getting ideas and help from others. ST.

NOTE: If you have any problems with setting something like this up, give our 24/7 live support a “click“, they can help you.

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New Small Business Idea: Local News Portal

Nov 12, ’07 11:13 AM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Business Ideas, Contractor, E-Commerce, Entrepreneur, Personal Business, SOHO/SMB/SME/Micro, Self-employed, Small Business / SOHO, Sole-Trader, Start-Up, bootstrap, start-up in business

With all the new mobile gadgets, with Wi-Fi and free data service, it is obvious that more and more people will consume their news and information electronically. This has been happening for some time now. Local news is still harder to come by, but you could change that with this little business start-up idea.

You could get some pre-designed portal software, blogging software or a forum to set up your portal and then write about local events, with things like this:

  • Live events – like Live Jazz in the local pub,
  • New Business launch – write about the company, people and products;
  • Evening Classes – anything from cooking to phontography;
  • Club News – what time they meet, run a prifile.
  • For Sale Section – from paperclips to houses and cars

You get the idea, there are many more events you could report about. Take leaflets around to get it started and then get revenue from ad’s of local businesses, clubs, for sale ad’s, and get paid for event announcements. Have a look at your local paper that will give you some idea, what people want.

It will get you involved in many areas of your community you didn’t even know existed, get you out of the house, make new friends and earn you some money – what else can you want. One day Google may pay you some money to supply local news to them, who knows?

There is money to be made in each locality, be the first and hog the niche first. Work from home, keep it cost effective, then the set-up should be about $150/£75 and the monthly cost no more than $20/£10, assuming you have a phone, computer and broadband. ST.

NOTE: If you have any problems with setting something like this up, give our 24/7 live support a “click“, they can help you.

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Social Isolation for Home Worker and Home Business.

Oct 12, ’07 7:04 AM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Contractor, Entrepreneur, Freelancer, Home Business, Lifestyle, Marketing/PR, Mobile Technology, Work/Life Balance, grow your business

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.

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Disaster Planning for Small Business

Oct 2, ’07 4:02 PM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Contractor, Entrepreneur, Freelancer, Home Business, How to ..., Personal Business, SOHO/SMB/SME/Micro, Self-employed, Small Business / SOHO, Sole-Trader, handle problems

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.

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Social Impact of Working From Home

Sep 22, ’07 9:32 AM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Boomer Business, Comments, Contractor, DIY Business, Entrepreneur, Freelancer, Generation-Y, Green/Eco-Friendly, Health Check, Home Business, Infrastructure, Lifestyle, MumEntrepreneur, Personal Business, Red-Tape, SOHO/SMB/SME/Micro, Self-employed, Small Business / SOHO, Social Entrepreneur, Sole-Trader, Start-Up, WinWeb, Work/Life Balance, bootstrap, do a reality check, grow your business, plan your business, start-up in business

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.

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Been saying it for years……

Aug 29, ’07 2:09 PM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Comments, Contractor, DIY Business, Entrepreneur, Freelancer, Generation-Y, Home Business, Lifestyle, MumEntrepreneur, Personal Business, SOHO/SMB/SME/Micro, Self-employed, Small Business / SOHO, Social Entrepreneur, Sole-Trader, Start-Up, Virtual Assistants, start-up in business

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.

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Small Business Infrastructure For Business Start-Up.

Aug 28, ’07 12:42 PM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Accountants/CPAs, Accounting, Business Ideas, Contractor, DIY Business, Data Security, Development, E-Commerce, Employment, Entrepreneur, Exporting, Finance, Franchise, Freelancer, Generation-Y, Globalization 3.0, Green/Eco-Friendly, Health Check, Home Business, How to ..., Infrastructure, Infrastructure, Lifestyle, Marketing/PR, Mobile Technology, MumEntrepreneur, Office - IT, Outsourcing, Personal Business, Red-Tape, Relationships, SOHO/SMB/SME/Micro, Sales, Self-employed, Small Business / SOHO, Social Entrepreneur, Software as a Service, Sole-Trader, Start-Up, Suppliers, Virtual Assistants, Web Technology, WinWeb, WinWeb Live™, Work/Life Balance, avoid growing pain, be eco-friendly, be successful, bootstrap, choose your office, deal with taxes, do a SWOT plan, do a reality check, do bookkeeping., do cost cutting, do credit control, export, find funding, grow your business, handle problems, keep data safe, lower overheads, market and sell, motivate your staff, outsource effectively, plan cash-flow, plan your business, start-up in business, use online IT

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.

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If You Work All Day, You Have No Time To Make Any Money!

Aug 25, ’07 10:23 AM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Boomer Business, Comments, Contractor, DIY Business, Development, Entrepreneur, Freelancer, Generation-Y, Home Business, Lifestyle, MumEntrepreneur, Personal Business, Relationships, SOHO/SMB/SME/Micro, Self-employed, Small Business / SOHO, Social Entrepreneur, Sole-Trader, Start-Up, Virtual Assistants, Work/Life Balance, do a reality check, plan your business, start-up in business

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!

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Cost Cutting for Small Business – Payment Terms

Aug 24, ’07 3:37 PM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Boomer Business, Business Ideas, Contractor, E-Commerce, Entrepreneur, Finance, Freelancer, Generation-Y, Home Business, Lifestyle, Outsourcing, Personal Business, Relationships, SOHO/SMB/SME/Micro, Self-employed, Small Business / SOHO, Social Entrepreneur, Sole-Trader, Start-Up, Suppliers, Virtual Assistants, avoid growing pain, bootstrap, do a reality check, do cost cutting, do credit control, find funding, grow your business, handle problems, lower overheads, outsource effectively, plan cash-flow, plan your business, recruit the right people, start-up in business, use online IT

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.

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