Learn Something

Posted on August 15, 2009 by No Office Needed

If there is one thing that i believe should be part of everyone’s day is making a little time to learn something new. This is primarily because in the current times if you are not learning then you are not growing. It can happen amazingly quickly that you can lose that edge you once had.

The time that you dedicate to learning can be as little or as much as you like. There is only one sort of need that i figure should be placed on this time. That is to ensure that you are learning something that is going to be worth the time to you. So you may be thinking what is worth learning and what is not worth learning. A lot of this decision comes back to What your most valuable task is. Because in reality what is the point in learning something that is not really worth your time.

A good example of this may be the manager of a reasonable size company, wanting to learn how to create websites, so that he can create one for the company, and save money. In reality this is not the most important thing that he could be learning. The first point is that his motivation to learn this is misplaced. The reality is the time he may dedicate to learning this and the final result is very likely to not show the value for what his time is normally worth. As a thing to learn, it would be a good start, but not really the best use of time.

Making the best use of your time is also a big consideration when you are learning. Using your time a little more effectively can not only increase the potential value of your time, but it can also potentially save you time dependant on what the task is.

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Your Guiding Principles

Posted on August 4, 2009 by No Office Needed

When you go into business there are a lot of different things that you may find that motivate you in business. There will be the original idea or concept that got you interested in start the business. There will be goals that you set that give you a sense of where you want to take the business. There may even be people around you that are helping you through support, or any number of other means that are part of your motivation.

Although all of these things often create artificial reasons for why you are in business. The original idea is really just something that guides what the business does, or what products it offers. The goals that you set, are a target and will mostly be guided by what the business does and what the expected work load will be. Finally the people around you that may have invested or be offering support otherwise are a guiding part of the business as most people don’t want to let these people down.

All of these things though are not specific to your believes. What you need to look for and be aware of is the specific things that guide what you do. Why you do it. How you do it. The way you make decisions. Essentially what makes you want to be in business, how you actually come to be doing what you are doing.

These guiding principles are something different for just about everyone. Of course there is going to be overlap, just like in appearance of people, everyone is different, but many people share similar features.

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Change needs to be managed

Posted on July 28, 2009 by No Office Needed

Many businesses depend on some form of management structure. While a business may last for an indefinable amount of time without proper management, it is not a recommended practice. Having management in place in a business helps to provide direction, and keep the controls that are in place working for the business instead of against the business.

The same is often true for growth. While growth can go unattended for some time it is not something that is recommended. Due to the nature of growth itself, leaving it to take its own course can leave you open to more likely a lower then expected outcome.

Providing management to the growth of your business is something that will ensure the growth flows and provides a benefit to your business. While you want to leave some freedom to the growth as it comes, there are many aspects of a business that require assistance in growing. Things like

  • Support structure’s – Growth often requires better structures in place to support it, warehouse systems, distribution systems, support systems and sales systems. All of these systems often will need additional consideration to help support growth, and often have the potential to fail without the proper support themselves in times of growth
  • Cash-Flow – Potentially one of the most important aspects of growth is managing how the cash flow will be affected. Maintaining a positive cash flow in a business experiencing high growth can be difficult, however if it something which you are aware of it can make it somewhat easier.
  • Business risks – When a business is experiencing growth there is inevitably more risks involved. A high chance of unpaid bills, more bills to pay from suppliers, more potential returns, and many other things. All of these if they are managed and are things that you are aware of being possible up front, are things that can have plans put in place to avoid them, or at least lower the potential impact.

While there is potential to lose a lot of time managing growth, if you take a smart approach and be aware of the potential issue’s up front, then down the track less management is required. Just being aware and planning for some of the above points before they actually occur can even be enough. What some of this comes back to is that a proactive approach to managing growth can often give a better and less time intensive outcome then trying to manage growth as it is happening.

Posted in Business Management | 2 Comments

Your Reason for No Fixed Office

Posted on July 21, 2009 by No Office Needed

Everyone that has No Fixed Office has a reason why they have chosen to go in the direction of having no fixed office. What i would really like to know is what is your reason, for choosing the path of No Fixed Office.

While i have more then likely shared this before i will go through some of my reasons again, to give you some thoughts on where to start.

  • The first and possibly most important point for me is the freedom that i can access by not having a fixed office. While my business could potentially benefit from a well placed office to pick up walkin clients, the fact that i would be tied to a single location as opposed to being able to work anywhere that i want.
  • The second point that makes having no fixed office even easier is the much lower costs involved. This i have discussed a few times. The costs of having an office, while often covered, make it much more difficult to succeed in the type of business that i have. The difficulty in generating thousands of dollars in revenue just to generate a profit to cover lease costs, make success much more difficult.
  • Creativity seems to flow more freely when i am not fixed to a single location. This of course is often a personal thing. Some people work better in a single set place that they have set up to their style. While others work much better in a external environment that can change and is more open. This is really my preference, being able to choose a large open space or really any space i like.

So i am interested to hear from those of you that have no fixed office, or even those of you that would like to make the move to no fixed office. What your motives and reasons are for wanting to change.


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Your most Valuable Task

Posted on July 18, 2009 by No Office Needed

All day everyday we are required to do different things, some of these things are work related some personal. Generally our personal tasks we don’t think so much about how they provide value to us. Sometimes they will provide us time savings other times we will waste time on them.

When it comes to business related tasks though there should be some thought given to how much a task provides in revenue or profit, compared to the time spent and the cost to the business. This really is how you differentiate what tasks are worth your time to complete, and which tasks are better to delegate to an employee. However there is no real specific path that will work for everyone, different businesses require different skills for different tasks and the value of a task for one business may be different for another business. So while i cannot provide a specific framework, i will give an example or two.

Firstly you need to consider the offset of one task against the other. First the task of sales. A sales person’s primary role is to sell the product or service of the business. Making sales generally should be the task that will give the most benefit for their time. If for example a sales person can generate on average $3,000 per hour in revenue when their only tasks is selling, then this is their maximum efficiency.

If however the sales person is required to also do ordering, take unqualified calls, and prepare marketing, this could easily take the sales persons productive time each day down to just 3 or 4 hours. So on an 8 hour work day the sales person would go from potentially creating $24,000 in revenue down to just $9,000-$12,000 in revenue. This is quite a substantial drop. The way to avoid this loss of productivity is where allocating other staff to fulfill the lower value roles can benefit. For example a staff member employed to place orders and answer the phone, may cost $200 for an 8 hour day, which would mean that the sales person now has the full focus to create sales to his full potential. An additional $12,000 in revenue or $200 for a staff member, big difference.

There is not going to be such a big difference for everyone, however for some it may be even greater. However it really all comes down to the fact that you will generally hire employees for one reason. To move the tasks that you are doing that take your time away from another task which provides more value. This value does not always have to be financial gain though. Lets have a look at another example.

You set up your new business a year ago, and you have been putting in some long hours sometimes60-70 hours a week plus more time at night when you get home. While you could continue like this and risk putting your family time at more risk, you look at the business and decide to hire two employee’s. One will be a receptionist, to answer the phone, prepare invoices, and any other mailings that may need to be done. This you figure should save yourself a good 10-15 hours a week and will allow for additional expansion.

The other hire that you decide to make is a sales person. While you do not want to take yourself out of the sales process entirely you see that there are a lot of sales that you do not have to be part of. Currently you see this could save you a further 15+ hours per week and will mean that there will be someone with spare time to look for more opportunities. While at first this may look like spending money, it is actually creating the ability to grow the business. at 60-70 hours a week there is little more time you could possibly give to the business, so adding employees is the only way to really grow or in this case to give you more time for your family.

In the first example you could see that by moving the unprofitable tasks from the sales person to another employee the sales person is able to spend more time on the tasks that are the most valuable for them. In the second example the most valuable time that you are looking for is the family time. By spending a little money on new employees you can regain some of this time, while also creating potential for the business to grow without adding extra hours yourself.

Finding what your most valuable task is and then finding a way how to focus on that task and move the other less valuable tasks away from you needing to do them, can provide a very valuable change to how you work. It really can give you a lot more time to create the value that you need to create to build a business that will last.

Posted in Business Management | 1 Comment

Tracking Twitter Stats

Posted on July 14, 2009 by No Office Needed

The absolute first thought that i had when i thought about this topics was, is it something that i need to even think about. The resounding answer that i got is yes. There are quite a lot of sites offering twitter statistics. Which really to me means that whether it is needed or not, there are people that want to offer these services and that really comes back around to the point that there are people that will use these services.

For my part i generally do not use them as often as i use to. There really are only three stats that matter to me, and they are all displayed every time i log into twitter. The first is how many people i follow. The second how many are following me. And the third is how many updates i have posted. In my opinion some of the other tools are possibly a little irrelevant, and possibly go to far towards over analyzing a system that is really quite simple.

There are really only three sites that i have used to view much if anything of stats on twitter. These sites can occasionally provide me with a little insight into how i am using twitter. But they far from guide anything much of how i use it on a daily basis.

1. Twitter counter (www.twittercounter.com) – A fairly straight forward site, which basically gives you a chart of how your follower count has changed over time. There are three settings, 7 days, 1 month and 3 months. The biggest thing that you can use this to track is how what you do affects the number of people following you.

2. Twitalyzer (www.twitalyzer.com) – The Twitalyzer website takes into account your activity over the past seven days, as well as using previous data, to create scores in 5 different categories and show trends on how you are using twitter, and how often others may connect with you. You can gain some insight into how often other Re-Tweet your tweets or how often you are referenced.

3. TweetStats (www.tweetstats.com) – This site is possibly the most useful stats though, it is a very simple layout giving just seven clear graphs that layout your twitter usage in seven ways. The first how many tweets you send each month, followed by a density chart of the most frequent times your tweet. Next charts of your tweets aggregated over both days of the week and hours of the day. Finally the last three charts are who you send @ replies to most often, the method you use for sending tweets and finally the total ReTweets you make and to who.

While i don’t see the point in checking your statistics multiple times per day or even on a daily basis, there are occasionally some good points that you can pick up from having a look every once in a while. I would say that all it takes is really a matter of 10-15 minutes a week to take a look at stats, you will quickly find which ones are important and focus on them. Any more often then a weekly basis and you are probably losing time you could be doing something else.

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Ideal for Multiple Streams of Income

Posted on July 7, 2009 by No Office Needed


Working with No Fixed Office, you can quickly begin to see the potential with what you are working on. You are no longer stuck working in a single place, and as such you should not be stuck working on a single project. Where this can really shine is the ability to work on multiple projects that can all offer opportunities to generate another income stream.

Having multiple income streams can really be one of the best ways to become financially stronger. Because you are gaining income from multiple different places, that all will generally vary of their own accord, independant of the others. You are creating a way to build income that is more secure than just a single stream that might be what you would expect from working in a job, or running a business from a fixed office.

Creating multiple streams of income while something that is often talked about it not something that is always easy to do. However can be easier when you have no fixed office. This is because you are not required to focus on the one thing all the time. It gives you more creative space to freely develop a range of different products and services. While it would be pretty much impossible to go into nay sort of detail on all the possible options, i just really want to give you some ideas today, on potential area’s that you can look.

So where do we start, well the best place is what your current business is. That is if you have one. But a business generating a profit, is your first stream of income. This for many reading here may currently be your predominate or only source of income, however of course you do have to start somewhere. Although a business may be classed as a single course of income for yourself, that doesn’t mean that the business itself may not have multiple sources of income itself. This could be through multiple product ranges, or different services or such.

So then you wonder, what other options are there. One option is to take a look at your hobbies, maybe you make hand made jewelery, that you have just given as present’s to friends and family so far. It may be a potential area that if people like the jewelery that you make, you could look to start selling it on a market stall or via the internet on your own website or even eBay. This may start off as a small thing, just selling the odd item or two to friends, and can really take as much or as little time as you can give it.

Another option could again come from a hobby, maybe you really enjoy photography. You could take a lot of photo’s of places or things that people could potentially use for their website or other graphic design needs. Then you can join a stock photography website that allows you to post your work, and have people purchase it and you receive a royalty for each photo each time it is downloaded. Again something that does not use a lot of time, and can be something that you do in your spare time on a hobby that you enjoy.

A third hobby might be writing, you may enjoy writing, and be able to apply this to writing something about a topic others may enjoy. Maybe you think about it and decide to write a short e-book on how to get started with Hand made jewelery. You can include information on the tools you need, the different types of jewelery that you can make and some simple step by step’s for a couple of different designs. Then sell this via a website. This could easily expand to offering the tools you may need, as well as the products to make the actually jewelery, becoming a couple of different income sources in itself.

Finally there are a number of options depending upon how you are positioned that could give another source or two of income. One option is if you have savings in the bank, ensure they are in an account that maximizes the interest you are receiving or a term deposit is another option. You can also look at making some investments in shares which may return some income in the form of dividends. If you have the finance available an investment in property may also be an option, which would return a rental income. These are just three other potential sources of income, of course they all depend somewhat on having a potential source of money to invest.

As you can see creating multiple sources of income needs not be something difficult. It does not have to involve a lot of time, and the money that you make does not have to be the sole form of income that you survive on. However combined the income can provide a very good point to start from, in adding even more income streams.

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Creating a Strategic Plan

Posted on July 1, 2009 by No Office Needed

While many people that go into business create a business plan or a marketing plan, of some form to keep in mind the details of the business. There is another form of plan that you should also be considering creating. That plan is a strategic plan for your business.

A business plan may deal with the specific’s of the business such as finances, products, the people involved and the overall view of the business. The marketing plan will deal with the overall view of  you guessed it the marketing of the business. What the strategic plan will deal with is your overall vision for the business, and how this is going to be achieved.

Creating a strategic plan is something that is always going to be an on going thing. This is the type of plan that should be reviewed and updated as often as you believe it is needed. This may be once a month, or maybe once a year. Relly whatever you believe is needed to keep yourself focused. This plan should deal with two main topics in relation to your business

  • The first part of this plan should look to outline your goals. Not just the make X dollars per month or have a certain size customer base. These should be your driving goals, the ultimate where you want your business to go goals. A good example of the difference in these goals may be. In your business plan you might have a goal to provide 100 customers a month with your product at the end of the first year. Where as the same goal may be expressed in your strategic plan as to be the number 1 provider of your product to consumers within 10 years.
    Often the goals that you are likely to set in the strategic plan are long term, driving and even visionary goals. They are things that you want to achieve however, are possibly bigger then what should really be part of your business plan.
  • The second part of this plan will primarily deal with the how. How are you going to work towards these goals. While knowing the how or every step that you need to take is not essential by any means. Knowing to some extent what may be required to get from where you are now to where your goal places you, are important things. On the example of becoming the number one provider for your product, you may need to do the following. Expand the number of customer service representatives to allow for the growth. Add additional warehouse space to cope with additional stock requirements.

    • These may essentially be mini plans in themselves, however what they do is give you insight into your long term goals. These are also parts that you can line up as they may be required to include within your business plan.

So  what you are really doing is, creating a plan that outlines your long term goals, and how you plan to achieve them in milestones, rather then details. This plan does not have to be something that is big with every little detail. But it needs to clearly spell out what the goal is and at the beginning at least what some of the steps that may need to be taken to achieve the goal will be.

Being that many of the goals that you may look to include in this plan are long term, with steps that may take considerable time, is the primary reason why continual re-evaluation is needed. This re-evaluation is something that can easily be connected to doing the same with your business plan. The two plans should always be connected or related in some way. Preferably where the steps in your strategic plan, make up some of the focus of your business plan. If not then you are taking the risk of creating a goal that cannot be achieved.

All you need to do is just get started on creating a plan, be it a single page, with just a few details. Or maybe something a little longer, but just remember all you are really looking to do is to hone in on the goals and the overall path to reach them. The details of reaching them are not so much part of what this plan should be but more your business plan, when those milestones come into the scope of your business plan.

Posted in Business Management, Twitter | 2 Comments

No Office Should not mean no contact

Posted on June 26, 2009 by No Office Needed

The idea of having no fixed office, should not mean that you do not have any contact with your current or potential customers. Even though contact via email, and other electronic means is going often be sufficient, meeting people in person should still be a part of your routine at least for the customers that you can create this connection.

Interacting with your customers is often one of the most important part’s of your business, and one of the parts that makes the difference between repeat customers or not. It can also make the difference between how well you connect with a client, there is a definite difference between an email communication a phone call and a face to face meeting.

Meeting new clients can also be much easier when you make contact in a direct person to person instance. So you may be asking if i do not have an office how do i meet these new clients in person. There are a couple of ways.

  • Join local groups – Things like the Chamber of commerce, or Toastmasters, may have people or businesses within your potential target market as members. Attending or joining these sort of groups are ways to meet new potential customers.
  • Attend Networking events – These are events purely designed to connect people, so attending these events may again have people that are within you potential market attending as well.
  • Tell everyone you meet – When you meet people have a fairly specific definition of what you do ready to share. Don’t drone on to long, but something that gets interest and lets them know what you do, in around 30 seconds, may gain you interest. Just don’t forget your business card.
  • Create your own events – It will take work, and require some extra effort, but you can create your own networking event or local business group and create a network of contact not just for yourself, but for the other members or attendees that you get along.

They may be fairly simple idea’s and they may be the same sort of things you have thought about doing, but it really comes down to the pure fact thinking about it, does not solve anything. You need to get out and actually do these things, for them to benefit your business.

Posted in Business Management, Communications, Customers, Marketing | Leave a comment

Where to Promote

Posted on June 23, 2009 by No Office Needed


The constant challenge of the having no fixed office is where to successfully promote your business to the largest number of people. Depending on the type of business that you operate there may be a couple of different options that you could pursue.

1. Trade shows and Expos – While this is discounted by some as a waste of money there are others that would not miss one of these events for anything. While they are not always a source of a lot of sales they do give you a lot of opportunity to get your name into the market and to get your information to a lot of people. So while they do not necessarily generate fantastic return’s at the time of the event, they can over the long term generate fantastic returns.

One of the things to remember with trade shows and expo’s is to ensure you have a way to get the details of people that you speak to or visit your booth. This enables you to market to these people more in the future, and because they showed interest at the show there is potential that they are going to be prospective customers.

2. Shopping Mall Sales booth – While you may not have a store or an office, there is nothing to stop you from having a temporary one. Many shopping center’s offer very short term leases to set up a small stall in the center which you can sell your products from. Of course this option is better suited to products that are of a retail nature that general consumers are likely to want to buy. However if you are a service business it can be a good way to increase the awareness of the service you provide and also of your business.

3. Markets – Again it depends on your product if this would be a suitable option or not, however with the right product this could be just the place to catch the attention of the customers that you may not normally be able to directly promote you business to. You do need to be aware of limits that are placed on the type of products offered at different markets, but it is always worth taking a look and seeing what potential may be there. It never hurts to try something new, the worst case you could get nothing out of it and have lost a little money. Best case it may be one of the better investments you made.

Three options you could use to better pormote your business in a temporary environment. Consider each option and you may just find something interesting to try.

Posted in Business Management, Selling your product | Leave a comment