Category MumEntrepreneur

Entries 13 Total

2012:The Year Enterprise Rocks

Dec 30, ’11 6:21 PM
Author Tony Robinson OBE Categories Announcements, Employment, Freelancer, Getting Things Done, Home Business, Micro Business, MumEntrepreneur, Self-employed, Small Business / SOHO, Small Business Support, Sole-Trader, Start-Up

Making it Better and Fairer

It will be a rocking good start to 2012. The UK Enterprise Rockers movement is inviting journalists to kick off 2012 by covering the launch of our #MicroBizMatters campaign. The Enterprise Rockers, all micro business owners, have chosen Scarborough to host the media launch event at noon on January 9th.

Scarborough is a former winner of both the most enterprising place in Britain and the most enterprising town in Europe. Oh and the two founders of the Enterprise Rockers, the wonderful Tina Boden and me, live there.

The aim of the Enterprise Rockers movement is to make life better and fairer for all Micro Business Owners. The #MicroBizMatters campaign will improve awareness of the importance of the UK’s 4.5 million micro businesses, including start-ups, to jobs, the economy and communities.

Although the UK is the first to launch the Rockers there is already interest being shown in many countries to take up our movement, including the US.

Positive Messages Will Tackle Discrimination

The campaign also seeks to make people more aware of the discrimination by Government, Banks and Big Businesses against micro business owners and what the benefits to Britain would be if they gave them a fairer chance to survive and thrive. The campaign also positively recognises large organisations that the Rockers agree are micro enterprise friendly such as Apple, the Co-op, British Library and ACAS.

Founder Tina Boden, who owns a fine food company, explained, ‘We’re not a political, lobbying or a fee paying membership organisation. Micro business owners freely get involved in the Rockers to do as much or as little as they like. We agree everything by majority decision.

We believe that by thousands of us supporting each other, trading with each other and carrying the same messages in villages, towns and online all over the UK that we can harness the power of plenty to make life better and fairer for micro business owners.

Our #MicroBizMatters campaign will make people aware why it is important that Britain is more micro enterprise friendly. This in turn will improve the future prospects for micro-business owners including start-ups.’

Why this way works?

For me, it is really important that everything we do is really positive. As micro enterprise owners we are and have to be positive people and we’re used to just getting on with ‘doing the biz’ so we’re certainly not moaners and we’re not looking for hand outs.

We’ve made very little progress in the last twenty years consulting with Government Ministers and their officials to try and get a better deal on skills and support for start-ups and enterprise owners. So the Enterprise Rockers movement is a welcome change of direction.

As one in seven of the adult workforce in the UK are running their own micro businesses there can’t be many of the population that don’t know, and more importantly, would like to help a micro business owner to earn an honest living.

Politicians are only interested in what the public think around election time but by the next UK election we’re pretty sure that we’ll have enough public opinion on our side so that they, for the first time, will need to state what they are going to do for micro business owners (0-9 employees).

Fact: Micro-Business Matters

Influencing public opinion and in turn government is a small part of what we’ll achieve. After all, we’ll never be as important to Ministers as Big Business and the Banks but we can hopefully stop 95% of government funding and support going to bigger business so that the 95% of all UK businesses that are micros get a fairer deal and an even break.

We’re growing. We already provide most of the new jobs, innovation and best help to communities and we contribute a third of all private sector jobs and a fifth of UK turnover. The thousands of Enterprise Rockers actively involved on Twitter, Facebook, Linked In and ready to champion our #MicroBizMatters campaign will make life better and fairer for us all.

The #MicroBizMatters campaign already has 750 signatures on its ‘Tell Us What You’re Doing for Micro Enterprises Not for’ SMEs’ government e-petition. This already puts it at Number 14 out of over 600 e-petitions to the government’s Department of Business, Innovation and Skills.

Whilst the Rockers are not campaigning, through #MicroBizMatters for government funding they are requesting that government reduces its funding and support to Bigger Business. For example for every £50 million of government support 4.5 million micro businesses get 6000 big businesses get £1 billion.

Time to join our band?

The launch of #MicroBizMatters takes place in the Penthouse, the Sands, North Bay, Scarborough at 12 noon on Monday, 9th January. If you know a journalist then ask them to either register here http://enterpriserockersofficiallaunch.eventbrite.co.uk/?ref=enivtefor&utm_source=eb_email&utm_media=email&utm_compaign=invitefor&utm_term=readmore&invite=MTU1Nzk2OS90b255QGVudHJlcHJlbmV1cnN1ay5jb20vMA== or they can arrange to interview the founders of the Enterprise Rockers by e-mailing tony@entrepreneursuk.com with their requirements.

There’s also no better time for you to get involved with the Enterprise Rockers. It’s free and you can join our Enterprise Rockers discussion groups and MicroBizMatters discussion groups on Facebook and Linked In or follow us on Twitter @EnterpriseRocks or check out our website http://enterpriserockers.co.uk and sign our Government e-petition at http://t.co/QK36cLlU

Thanks lots – enjoy 2012 the year of the Enterprise Rockers.

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The Best Biz Mentors Can Be A Tad Crazy

Nov 23, ’11 2:30 PM
Author Tony Robinson OBE Categories Business Ideas, Business Mentoring, Business Startup, Business Trends, Entrepreneur, Getting Things Done, Home Business, Micro Business, MumEntrepreneur, News, Personal Business, SOHO/SMB/SME/Micro, Self-employed, Sole-Trader, Start-Up, be successful, grow your business, start-up in business

My Dad

I reckon my first business mentor was my Dad. He started his own business, working from home, because, like many people I know, it was the best way of earning a living. His health was very poor so he had to pack in his job. In the five years between me being 13 and 18, when he died, he built a very big business. It was always a micro business, like 95% of the businesses today in the UK.

It became big in income but never had more than six employees. It was a sales agency in the wooden box and pallets industry. Many years later, when I started my own business, I realised that nearly everything useful that I’d learned about enterprise had come from my Dad as my business mentor.

He was an unlikely ace business mentor. My Dad left school at 14, picked everything up as he’d gone along, and was a complete eccentric, a showman and a storyteller who instinctively turned anything formal into a party. At football, Hull City, he had a seat just behind the Directors’ box so that he could hurl abuse and one-liners at them from start to finish. I wouldn’t sit with him.

Corporate Crackers

The point is that what I’d learned in Senior Management, even Managing Director, at two major American multinationals didn’t help me much in my own business. This was despite having received the very best business training and completed two Post Graduate Diplomas in HR Management and Business Administration. All this was next to useless in my own micro business as against the valuable help I gained from my mentors.

My business partner of twenty five years, Clare, felt the same thing. She hadn’t realised it at the time but her corporate jobs and training hadn’t prepared her for running her own business but what she’d learned from her Dad, who had his own property business, was invaluable.

No surprise then that we decided to have a mentor, another micro business owner, for our first couple of years in business. We gave him our corporate contacts and in return he asked us wise questions which stopped us doing many of the foolish things we were about to do. No money exchanged hands although a heck of a lot of money went behind the bar during our, frequently scheduled, mentoring sessions.

Sitting or Standing Up Mentors?

One of the many theories I have, which perversely academic research and government policy has yet to pick up on, is that if you’ve got a primarily ‘standing up’ business you’re best to have a mentor that has a ‘standing up’ business too. ‘Standing up’ businesses would include most building trades, cafes, shops, blues bands, chocolate makers, ice cream makers and micro-breweries.

Similarly if you’re in a ‘sitting down in an office’ type business then choose ‘a sitting down in an office’ type mentor. I’m definitely not saying only get a mentor from a similar trade or industry, only government and BigBiz think in sectors, but do get someone who really understands what you have to do each day.

Oh and beware of men in suits if you’ve got a ‘standing up’ business’ or you’re a woman. I’m sure there are exceptions to these rules of mine for choosing a mentor but there won’t be many.

Sir Jimmy Fixed It for Us Every Day

Wrestler, DJ, marathon runner, TV presenter, volunteer hospital porter and the greatest charity fund raiser of all time, Sir Jimmy Savile, died recently. He was buried in Scarborough, where I live. Thousands turned out to acknowledge his real achievements for the people of Britain both at his service in Leeds and his burial in Scarborough. He was truly a man of the people, an inspiration to many of us, and the very same person on the telly as he was in the cafes and streets of Scarborough.

He made us feel better about life and he genuinely helped many thousands of people through adversity. He was eccentric to the last. He was buried in one of his trademark track suits, in a gold coloured coffin placed at an angle in the grave, so that he ‘could see the sea’. He was also a highly successful micro business owner, millionaire and a cracking volunteer biz and personal mentor.

Two of his proudest possessions were on his mantelpiece in his Scarborough flat. They were individual letters from Princess Di and Prince Charles thanking him for his help to them, as an informal mentor.

Lots of my business owner friends seem a bit crazy. The craziness is often just appearance and behaviour that shows we’re our own boss with our own values, passion and beliefs. Some can wrongly view this, like Sir Jimmy Savile was viewed, as not professional or not to be taken seriously. We are passionate about what we do and it’s bloody hard work doing it but we can be very useful business mentors too.

Get Mentoring

My businesses have benefited a great deal from the handful of business mentors I’ve had down the years. Most of the mentoring I’ve had is over the phone or nowadays by Skype. I usually contact my mentor when I’ve got a problem or see an opportunity that I want to talk through before taking a decision. I’ve also had a great time and learned a lot as a mentor to others. I have had some training on being a better mentor and I’m going to do some more shortly.

There are lots of places around at the moment where you can find a mentor or get some training to become a better mentor yourself. One such place is the Institute of Enterprise and Entrepreneurs, which I help run, and you can find out more here about Get Mentoring – free mentor training and free mentors.

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There are 3 of us in this relationship: Mum, Business Woman, and Me

Nov 8, ’11 1:44 PM
Author Lorraine Allman Categories Entrepreneur, Freelancer, Home Business, Lifestyle, MumEntrepreneur, MumEntrepreneur, Self-employed, Work/Life Balance, Work/Life Balance

There’s no doubt that being a Mum and running your own business has its challenges. I’ve been talking to a number of women recently who are doing just that (myself included) and one of the issues we struggle with most is finding a balance between family and business without losing the fact that we ourselves are occasionally in need of some breathing space!

For many mums, the freedom of being able to work around the child/ren (as opposed to the children around the work) is a key factor in deciding to start a business in the first place. It’s no good, however, if the guilt you feel when working and not focusing on your child/ren is transferred to your business so you end up feeling guilty about not working on the business when you’re spending time with the family.

This balance of family and business is further challenged by the immediacy of technology resulting in emails, texts, and calls constantly vying for our attention. The key here is to have the willpower to switch OFF that Smartphone (yes, I said off, not just put on silent!) and resist the temptation when you’re sat in Pizza Express to quickly check on something using their free Wi-Fi  (been there, done it, scanned the QR code!). Here are some more ideas to help Mums (and Dads) find a better balance and less guilt:

Set boundaries – boundaries are an important part of clearly communicating when you’re working and when you’re not. If you run your business from home, then a physical boundary such as a dedicated space (rather than the kitchen table) will really help. If you simply don’t have the space for that then check out the ‘Communicate’ idea below for making a chart. Don’t forget to set your ‘emotional’ boundaries either – by this I mean be clear in your head when you are ‘business person’ and when you are ‘mum’. Give yourself at least 15-20 minutes before you do the school run/they finish their nap/they return from grandparents (add/delete as appropriate) to clear your head of business things and get back in to ‘parent mode’.

Stay focused and work smarter – It’s easy to get distracted by social media, texts, emails, and calls. Put together a list each week (or each day if you prefer) of business and family related tasks you want to achieve. Allocate time for each and keep a note of how much time you are actually spending on them (you’ll be surprises). Prioritise and re-prioritise as often as you have to. There’s no need to be on social media all the time (or receive distracting ‘push notifications’ on your phone) that’s what systems like Hootsuite are designed for so you can schedule your tweets in across the day. Use the technology to get things done rather than distract you.

Communicate – this may seem obvious but it’s surprising how often we forget to let other members of the family and friends know what our working plans are. If you have an important call to make and you’re worried your child is going to shout out “mummy, I need a poo” in the background then let other members of your family know when this is scheduled and ask for their support in keeping little people occupied. If you don’t have a dedicated work space then a chart on the fridge indicating the times when Mum has the kitchen table for business will let everyone know when you’re working. Include information on this chart such as meetings and important calls too.  If you’re a very tech-savvy family you could set up your own system on Outlook or Google to share plans!

Make some time for yourself – I know this is often easier said than done, but it doesn’t have to mean going away with your friends for a weekend! Making time for yourself, even if it’s going for a quick run, having a manicure, reading the next chapter of your current book or going for a swim, can give you some much needed time out. It’s not unusual to hear that whilst exercising thoughts and solutions to problems become clearer so there are business as well as health benefits to taking some time out if that helps you feel less guilty!

Involve the family – getting the family involved in your work is a great way for them to learn about running a business. From a young age, children can enjoy for example sticking labels on envelopes and going to the post office. As they get older you can get them more involved in tasks such as answering the telephone or monitoring spreadsheets. The more they understand the more likely they are to support you.

Being a parent means there are always going to be unplanned events such as little people becoming poorly very quickly or having an accident at school.  Most people will understand your need to change business arrangements at short notice if there is no-one available to cover. Of course there will always be those that don’t understand, but perhaps it is time to reconsider those particular business relationships?

All the ideas here are equally applicable to Dads who are looking after children and running a business too, although you may want to substitute the manicure for a trip to the steam room or sauna!

If you’re a Mum or Dad running a business or freelancing, I can highly recommend the web site and magazine Work Your Way. It does what it says on the tin and is full of expert advice and support.

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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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Q & A: How can I grow my business.

Nov 7, ’07 3:38 PM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Health Check, MumEntrepreneur, Question & Answer, SOHO/SMB/SME/Micro, Self-employed, Small Business / SOHO, Sole-Trader, Start-Up, grow your business, start-up in business

I received this question form a lady working from home, she emailed and explained her business had started of well, she got some clients and kept her costs down. But her turnover is not high enough and she wants to grow her home business. Interestingly she does not want to grow the business more than 20 to 30%, she wants to stay at home with her business. This is not unusual for many small businesses and start-ups, a home business is an ideal way to run your own business.

Getting back to her question, there are really four answers:

  • Increase the number of customers - this in turn will increase the your turnover, yielding the extra business you want, while at the same time make your business more recession proof;
  • Increase the order frequency from your existing customers – this could be more difficult, you need to find out if you can replace someone else as supplier, or diversify your offering;
  • Increase the average order value – same as before, offer higher quality or premium service.
  • Increase your own efficiency – outsource more if you can, cut costs this will not grow your turnover, but increase your bottom line, so you can take more money out of the business for yourself.

Once you start thinking about these options you will find out what you can do, often it is a combination of things to do. But you need numbers, so plan your business, get an overview and find out where you stand.

Remember what you can measure you can manage. 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.

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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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