Archive for the 'Home-based business' Category

Dispelling the myths of ownership

Published
by
Jim Blasingame
on March 16, 2011
in Home-based business and Start-up
. 1 Comment

As the economy recovers, you’re likely to meet a starry-eyed human babbling on about becoming a business owner.

Probing for the object of this person’s entrepreneurial infatuation will precipitate the what, where, how and when questions and, finally, the most important question: Why do you want to own a business? Answers to this last question, unfortunately, often produce what I call, “The Myths of Small Business Ownership.” Here are four:

Myth 1: When I’m an owner, I’ll be my own boss.
That’s right; you won’t have an employer telling you what to do. But you’ll trade that one boss for many others: customers, landlords, bankers, the IRS, regulators, even employees.

Modern management is less “bossing” and more leading, managing and partnering. In a small business, everyone must wear several hats and the dominator management model doesn’t work well in this modern multi-tasking environment.

Myth 2: When I own my own business I won’t have to work as hard as I do now.
This is actually true, you will work much harder. Ramona Arnett, CEO of Ramona Enterprises, said it best: “Owning a business means working 80 hours a week so you can avoid working 40 hours for someone else.”

The irony is you will actually want to work harder when you understand that everything in your business belongs to you. Even the irritating, frustrating and frightening challenges will take on a new perspective when you realize that you also own the opportunities you turn them into. You’ll turn the lights on in the morning and off in the evening not because you want to work more, but because you won’t want to miss any part of your entrepreneurial dream coming true.

Myth 3: When I own my own business I can take a day off whenever I want.
Well, maybe. However, you may find that your business has such a compelling attraction that you won’t want to take off. Indeed, it’s more likely that whatever interests you had as an employee will become jealous of your business.

Myth 4: When I own my own business, I’ll make a lot of money.
If the only reason you want to own a business is to get rich, you probably won’t be a happy owner. It’s true ¬ you actually could get rich. But it’s more likely that you’ll just make a living.

Being a successful business owner first means loving what you do. Pursuing wealth should be secondary and, ironically, is actually more likely to happen when in this subordinate role.

Consider teleworking

Published
by
Jim Blasingame
on December 5, 2010
in Home-based business and Human Resources
. 0 Comments

What do you do when a key employee tells you that, due to circumstances beyond their control, he or she is now required to stay at home at least part of the work week? If you don’t want to lose a valuable team member, the 21st century answer to this management challenge is teleworking.

Teleworking - where an employee works full or part-time off-site, perhaps from home - is becoming much more prevalent in the marketplace. In truth, the need to be able to work off-site isn’t new, but only in the past few years have the technological tools been available to make teleworking a viable management option. Here are some thoughts on how to establish and execute a teleworking relationship:

The first step is to determine, with the prospective teleworking employee, how much work can realistically be done off-site. Then determine how the off-site and on-site schedule would be coordinated.  Anticipate the need to make adjustments, so schedule a periodic review with your teleworker, to discuss progress and modifications.

Next step - the tools. Get your teleworker a notebook computer (which will allow work to be taken back and forth) and pay for a broadband Internet connection at their home.

Finally, talk with your other employees about why this step is being taken so they can support the new plan. If handled properly, I predict you’ll get major points for being such a cool, 21st century manager.

If you have trouble imagining having an employee who’s not under your roof, here’s how to get over it: think about how many hours a week your key employees are in your building without you actually seeing them. I’ll bet that number will surprise you.

Recently on my radio program, The Small Business Advocate Show, I talked with TJ DiCaprio, Microsoft’s Senior Director of U.S. Small and Mid-Sized Business Marketing, about the results of a recent study on technology and teleworking. I also recently interviewed long-time Brain Trust Member, Jeff Zbar, on teleworking as part of a business interruption strategy. Take a few minutes to listen to each of these discussions, and, as always, leave your comments or experiences.

Why you should have an employee teleworking strategy with TJ DiCaprio

Making your business ready for an interruption with Jeff Zbar

How small businesses produce sales by producing words

Published
by
Jim Blasingame
on January 22, 2010
in Communication and Home-based business
. 1 Comment

For a dozen years, I’ve been telling small business owners that one of the keys to their future success is the ability to create content to post online, which means they, or someone they hire, has to be able to write.  Alas, not nearly enough small business owners have heeded this advice.

Now, in this age of social media, my admonition on this topic are no longer recommendations, they’re imperitives.  If you can’t write about what you do, how you do it and about your customers’ experiences with your company, you’re going to be less competitive as each year goes by.

Recently, I talked about this on my radio program, The Small Business Advocate show, with a long-time member of my Brain Trust, Jeff Zbar. Jeff and I talked about innovations like local search, driven by words you post your businesses online platforms, are a key to success for even the smallest of small businesses.

As the Chief Home Officer, Jeff is a newspaper and online columnist, corporate copywriter, author of several books and home business and small business expert. Take a few minutes to listen to this interview and, as always, leave your thoughts. Listen Live! Download, Too!

The accidental small business owner: “Hobbypreneur”

Published
by
Jim Blasingame
on January 12, 2010
in Entrepreneurship, Future thinking and Home-based business
. 0 Comments

A carpenter by profession, William Ackerman, was also a pretty good guitarist.  So much so, that he was in demand by his friends to bring his guitar and entertain at to their gatherings, which he did.  Soon, Will’s music, including his original songs, was in so much demand that he had to start recording his compositions on a cassette (yes, this was in the 1970s) and send them to his friends to play when he couldn’t be there in person.

As his guitar/songwriting hobby started to get out of hand, it occurred to him that this demand could justify more of his attention, and thus, Wyndham Hill publishing was founded from Will Ackerman’s hobby, to produce and sell Will’s music as well as other artists, most notably, George Winston. At one point, Wyndham Hill was the only record label that customers bought because of the quality and genre of the product, regardless of the artist.

Will Ackerman’s story is just one of a legion of other accidental small business owners that have recently become known as “hobbypreneurs.” Steve King, a partner at Emergent Research, joined me recently on my radio program, The Small Business Advocate Show, to talk about what he learned about hobbypreneurs when he conducted Intuit’s New Future of Small Business Report: Like Will Ackerman, many small businesses are started by people who turned their hobby, often accidentally, into a going business concern.

Take a few minutes to listen to what Steve and I talk about and leave your own experiences as a hobbypreneur. Listen Live! Download, Too!

The growing phenomenon of women business ownership

Published
by
Jim Blasingame
on November 4, 2009
in Entrepreneurship, Home-based business, Minority business ownership, Start-up and Women business ownership
. 2 Comments

For the past 30 years, marketplace forces and the evolution of business technology have continued to move in the direction of democratization. This means more productive tools designed for the size tasks of small businesses and offered at incremental price points that fit their diminutive budgets.

Today, technological leverage for small businesses is comparable to big businesses. And when you take their inherent flexibility into consideration, it’s easy to see how smaller and smaller enterprises are, within their scale of operation, increasingly able to compete with the big guys.

One of the groups that falls into that “smaller and smaller enterprise” category is women-owned businesses. Historically, women have not started businesses at the same rate as men for many reasons, not the least of which was access to capital. But for the period of time that not coincidentally tracks perfectly with the incrementalization of technology, women-owned businesses have become the fastest growing segment of the marketplace. With more powerful tools at prices that fit their smaller caches of capital, women business owners have become an entrepreneurial force to reckon with, and there is no reason to believe that this trend won’t continue.

Over the years I’ve made a commitment to regularly cover this growing phenomenon of women business ownership on my small business radio program, The Small Business Advocate Show. Recently, I’ve interviewed several experts on this topic, including Kim Lavine, author of Mommy Millionaire, Mary Cantando, author of The Woman’s Advantage, and Janet Christy, author of Capitalizing on Being Woman-Owned. In these interviews we’ve discussed the issues that are unique to women in business, including both the challenges and the opportunities.

Here are links to these three interviews, plus a link to the body of work I’ve amassed on our website where you can find dozens of interviews with women-in-business experts.

Kim Lavine Listen Live! Download, Too!
Mary Cantando Listen Live! Download, Too!
Janet Christie Listen Live! Download, Too!
Full list of women-in business archives

Take a few minutes to listen to these experts and, of course, be sure to leave your thoughts.

Can social media be dangerous to your small business?

Published
by
Jim Blasingame
on April 14, 2009
in Home-based business, Marketing - Branding - Advertising and Social Media
. 5 Comments

Social media for individuals is as easy as falling off of a log. But for a business, could social media actually be dangerous? In my opinion, absolutely.

“Blasphemy!” you cry. “Heretic!” you say. Guilty as charged. Remember, Martin Luther was a heretic with a blasphemous message. But today’s heretic may be tomorrow’s prophet.

For a business like mine, which creates content for the consumption of an audience, social networking is pretty logical. But for a Main Street business, like a restaurant, dry cleaners, contractor, etc., these folks struggle to create an effective social media strategy, if they even try at all. And by effective, I mean one that brings in business without shifting too many resources – especially time – from classic strategies that have worked. And that’s where the problem arises.

Sometimes I fear that some business owners, especially start-ups, get caught up in the social media whirlwind and, since it’s all the rage, actually believe that spending time “connecting” will cause the sales dollars to roll in. Connecting is a good plan; connecting at the expense of executing tried-and-true marketing practices – not so much.

Even so, social media as we know it, with all the attendant sites and applications, may be a craze, but it’s not a fad. It is real, and it will last. And just like the evolution of websites, in time we will use social media less as entertainment and more as a tool. But for the time being, the social media phenomenon is pretty obnoxious and yet to be a universally beneficial tool for every small business.

So the rest of the answer to my blasphemous question is this: To prevent your social media marketing strategy from being dangerous – or almost as bad, not having one – practice the concept of both/and rather than either/or. This means that while you continue to develop and execute on your traditional marketing strategy, simultaneously get involved in and learn about life and business in the 21st century social media universe. Get a LinkedIn page and use it, but don’t live there. Acquire a Twitter address and do some following, but don’t get sucked into the time drain.

Nevertheless, to demonstrate that I am an equal opportunity heretic, consider this: With every year that goes by, social media will become a bigger part of the marketing strategy of your business, while traditional marketing strategies will become less.

Recently, on my small business radio program, The Small Business Advocate Show, I talked with one of my favorite heretics, marketing expert, Ilise Benun, author of The Designer’s Guide to Marketing and Pricing. Ilise is even more skeptical of the immediate benefits of social media for Main Street small businesses than I am. Don’t miss this opportunity to hear a couple of heretics/prophets. And, of course, I would love for you to post your own blasphemy right next to mine.