July 20th, 2010 by Duane Jackson
Here’s a thought provoking question I got asked the other day:
Would you like to manage people in the same way you’d like to be managed?
The knee-jerk answer is a simple yes.
But here’s the thought provoking follow up to a ‘Yes’:
So do you think that everyone else is the same as you in terms of their motivations and how they respond to different management styles?
The obvious answer is no, which shows immediately that you shouldn’t manage everyone in the same way you would like to be managed.
Bottom line: everyone is different and needs to be managed differently to others.
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Tags: management
Posted in Ramblings, Small Business | 5 Comments »
July 13th, 2010 by Duane Jackson
Ben Weeks, a KashFlow customer, made a blog post recently about his move to the cloud for all of his business software needs.
He included this great diagram showing all the different products he uses, with arrows showing the integrations/data flow between the apps.
For the full post from Ben, click here.
Tags: carry the one, cloud, SaaS
Posted in Cloud Computing / SaaS, Small Business, Technology | 3 Comments »
June 22nd, 2010 by Duane Jackson
It’d be easy to assume there are no winners in the “tax and axe” emergency budget.
You’d be wrong.
It’s a great budget for entrepreneurs.
If you sell a business, you only pay 10% on the first £5m of gains, as opposed to the previous £2m limit.
OK, it’s a “lifetime” allowance, so you’re only incentivised to build your first business in the UK before disappearing to sunnier climes. But it’s an improvement none the less.
And for those expecting a gain of over £5m, there was good news too. The rest of your windfall “only” gets taxed at 28% instead of the expected 40-50%.
Looking historically at CGT it’s gone up a LOT in recent years, so a good job of “managing expectations” by the spin doctors I think.
If you’re starting a business outside of the south-east then you’re exempt from the first £5k of employers NI contribution for each of your first 10 members of staff. A great way to encourage small business to take on more staff.
It’s a shame it’s not been extended to include businesses that are already trading and growing though.
The tax you pay on your profits has been reduced to 20%. Still not as low as more friendlier territories such as Ireland but still an improvement
VAT is being fiddled with again – rising from 17.5% to 20%. Not too big a deal for those selling to other businesses. More of an inconvenience. Ofcourse, web-based accounting software like KashFlow will make the change very easy – just one click of the mouse.
Sensibly, this change comes in on Jan 4th instead of Jan 1st as per the recent changes to VAT.
It’s good to see entrepreneurs and start-ups have been largely protected from the cuts and tax rises. Whilst big firms are making redundancies, many start-ups and SMEs including ourselves are creating jobs, so it’s nice to see the important role we play in the economy being recognised.
Tags: budget, cgt, entrepreneurs, ni, VAT
Posted in Small Business | 1 Comment »
June 9th, 2010 by Duane Jackson
There’s been a lot of talk in the blogosphere this month on the topic of organic growth or bootstrapping vs taking external money (ie, VCs, Angels, public listings, etc).
I think this is mainly fueled by Tony Hsieh talking on inc.com on “Why I sold Zappos” and Sridhar Vembu’s post on why Zoho haven’t taken VC money.
A couple of the articles have referenced my company, KashFlow, directly.
- At KashFlow, we’re bootstrapped – spending only what we make.
- Our main competitor is a publicly-listed company that has raised a LOT of money from the markets and is spending it very quickly (to great effect I might add).
- Another established competitor is trying to raise €5m to fund growth
- A small startup recently announced a “financing deal” from “strategic investors”. No names or amounts.
I had quite a lengthy conversation with Ben Kepes at CloudAve which resulted in this post – I won’t repeat everything I’ve said there but I do encourage you to go read it if you’re interested in why we didn’t look for big money early on and haven’t since.
I would however add a P.S. to my comments to Ben:
I’m not against the idea of VC money entirely. It has it’s uses. But not for us, not right now.
A time may well come when it’s the sensible thing to do for a number of reasons or an attractive deal may present itself. That might be next month, next quarter or next year. But right now, we don’t need external money to execute our strategy so I’m not getting distracted by looking for it.
The only reason for taking money right now would be to get Mike Butcher at TechCrunch to give us some exposure and a massive spike of traffic.
Update: Mike picked me up on my closing comment above. He also flagged up an interesting post he made a couple of years back about how to get coverage on TechCrunch and other media outlets. Well worth reading in full.
Tags: bootstrapping, cloudave, VC, zappos, zoho
Posted in Ramblings, Small Business | 4 Comments »
June 3rd, 2010 by Duane Jackson
Apparently there’s some important football games going on some time soon. I don’t know my John Barnes from my Ronaldo, but a lot of the guys in the office want to watch one of the games on the 23rd that’s on in work hours.
If I say no, they’re only going to be constantly refreshing the sports websites for the score. Or worse still I’ll be getting multiple streams coming into the office hogging all the bandwidth.
What to do? I’m sure I’m not the only one in this situation, so I thought I’d share what we’re doing.
The majority of the guys that want to watch it are in the sales team.
So we’ve said that if by the 23rd they’re on target for the month then they can have the afternoon off and go to a local pub to watch the game.
If they’re 15% over target then they can go to the pub and have a drinks tab running on me.
If they’re 25%+ over target then they get lunch bought for them too.
So I now have a happy and motivated sales team, plus I wont have to put up with the jubilant cries if that bloke off the crisps advert hits a hole-in-one.
Seems like a win-win situation all round
Tags: football, incentives, world cup
Posted in Ramblings, Small Business | 5 Comments »
May 24th, 2010 by Duane Jackson
When you’re starting a new business, every penny counts. So I thought I’d share a lesson I’ve learnt on how you can get free PR for your business.
Engaging a PR firm can be expensive, doing it yourself can be time consuming and frustrating.
So how about getting some of the very best PR firms in the industry getting your name out there for free?
It’s frighteningly simple. Odds are, although you’re a small business you use a number of suppliers that are big established businesses that spend a lot of money on PR.
Find out who looks after PR for your suppliers, call the agency and find out who handles the account. Let them know you’re a very happy customer of Big Co, and you’re more than happy to go on record to say as much, to be used as a case study, to provide quotes for press releases or to attend events as a customer and talk to journalists about how Big co are helping you to grow your business.
Very simple, but very effective. And more importantly, free.
Tags: free, pr, startups
Posted in Small Business | 4 Comments »
April 15th, 2010 by Duane Jackson
I’ve blogged before about dodgy leaflets, but here’s another one.
This is a leaflet that was being given out on Tooley Street in London yesterday. Spot the obvious mistakes?
(click to enlarge)
Tags: leaflets, Marketing
Posted in Marketing, Ramblings, Small Business | 1 Comment »
March 8th, 2010 by Duane Jackson
I’ve commented before that support is the one side of the business I have trouble letting go of and letting others take full responsibility for. It’s just so important that we get it right as it’s essential to encouraging those taking our free trial to become paying customers and to keep existing customers happy (and therefore continue to recommend us).
Whilst we have a procedure document detailing how support requests should be dealt with, I thought it might also be useful to distill this into to 10 golden rules. I’m publishing them here so that customers and trialists know what they have the right to expect from the support team.
Perhaps if you’re starting a business where there’s an element of support then you could take and adapt these for your own uses too.
We’re well known for being very quick to answer support emails, whatever the time of day or day of the week. We need to keep it that way. If when you first look at a support request you can’t answer it right away -perhaps because you need to do some investigation or you need to speak to someone – let the customer know. It’s not ideal that you can’t give them a solution straight away, but at least they know they’re not being ignored.
Don’t try to fob off a customer. If they’ve found a bug or we’ve cocked up, acknowledge it and deal with it. Trying to pull the wool over their eyes wont work and breaks Rule #3.
Yes, we sometimes get asked what seem like a silly question. But if we’re not making the process intuitive enough or the solution easy enough to find, that’s our fault – not the customers. So don’t patronise customers.
Occasionally we might get someone be rude or hostile on a support ticket. Help them and they’ll calm down – and usually apologise.
I know that what the customer is saying has happened is technically impossible, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a problem. No one is going to send us a support ticket and lie for the sake of it. Don’t assume it’s a PEBCAK issue. Work with the customer to get to the root of the issue.
It’s so frustrating when you email a support desk with 3 questions and their reply answers 2 of the questions and totally ignores the 3rd.
Yes, we’re busy. But not taking the time to deal with things properly in the first place is going to make us even busier. Check and double check you’ve answered all questions asked of you before you send the reply.
Don’t guess. If you don’t understand what you’re being asked then ask for clarification. An answer to a question they didn’t ask helps no one.
Don’t guess the answer either. If you’re not 100% sure that the information you’re giving is accurate then check with someone or test your solution.
If you’re telling someone they need to activate the laser guided missile function to resolve their problem, tell them HOW to activate it. It’s better to not assume anything and give a comprehensive answer than to be vague.
If you tell a user you’ll let them know when a feature is available or that you’ll get back to them tomorrow after checking with someone – make damn sure you do it.
Your mother didn’t give you the name “Support”, so don’t sign off as “Support”. Use your real name, be friendly and own the problem. People prefer to deal with real people rather than someone that sounds like a computer.
I’m leaving 10 open for you, the reader, to suggest. Based on your experience of our support desk and other support systems, what really frustrates you? Use the comment form below to submit Rule #10.
I’ll update this post in a week or so with one of the suggestions
Tags: rules, support
Posted in Ramblings, Small Business | 12 Comments »
February 26th, 2010 by Duane Jackson
A thread on UK Business Forums caught my attention today.Kelvin White is a driving instructor and asks for accounting software recommendations for his small business. He is in fact a sole trader driving instructor. He has no need to file VAT returns or issue invoices to his customers. As well as the usual recommendations, some people suggested that as his requirements are simple, he should just use a spreadsheet.
Forgetting for a moment the room for human error in using a spreadsheet, it is in fact a perfectly good tool for simply keeping a record of the income and expenditure for this type of business.
So, should Kelvin just use a spreadsheet? If all he wants to do is record basic accounting data, it’ll probably suffice. What those that recommend a spreadsheet seem to overlook is the fact that your accounts are much more than just the data needed for the tax man at the end of the year.
Your accounting data is the underlying information about your business and if it’s recorded in a proper accounting application like KashFlow then you can get so much more useful information from that data.
As an example: with a spreadsheet Kelvin would have a hard time analysing where his new driving students come from – ie, how they hear about his services. With KashFlow you simply tag each new customer with the relevant source of business from your list of sources. This means you can, in just a couple of clicks, see instantly what sources of business work for you and which don’t.
Income By Source
This is just one of the many non-accounting type reports that can be generated from your accounting data and give non-accountant types insights into their business.
Additionally, the services Kelvin sells and the business-related purchases he makes can also be tagged so that when it comes to self-assessment time, the majority of the work is already done and the numbers for most boxes on the self assessment form are calculated. Thus reducing the bill he’ll get from an accountant at then end of the year.
An accounting application will give you the tools you need to reconcile your accounting entries against your bank account to make sure everything is entered correctly.
Yes, in theory a spreadsheet can also do all of the above. But the more you want the spreadsheet to do, the more laborious data entry becomes and the more room for error.
In summary, I think it’s quite short-sighted to see accounting as just something you have to do to keep the tax man happy and therefore opt for the most basic option possible for inputting data without considering the importance of getting useful intelligence back from that data
Posted in Accounting, Ramblings, Small Business | 6 Comments »
February 24th, 2010 by Duane Jackson
I attended a shareholders meeting last night for a small start-up.
The marketing manager mentioned their “viral coefficient”.
I had to raise my hand and ask what a viral coefficient actually is. The embarrassment was only slightly lessened when the majority of other people in the room confessed they’d never heard of it either.
Embarrassment quickly turned to shame once it was explained to me. It’s such a simple concept and one I really should have known.
I’m operating on the assumption that some readers of this blog may not be familiar with the concept either. So to save you embarrassment , here it is:
A viral co-efficient of 1 means each of your customers in turn brings you one more customer. It’s as simple as that. So a coefficient of 0.5 means every other customer brings you a new one. 0.1 would mean one in ten customers bring you a new customer.
So the goal is to achieve as high a number as possible. I’m told Facebook has a viral coefficient of 12. So each user brings in 12 others. A nice position to be in as once you pass 1, your users/customers grow exponentially.
Tags: coefficient, facebook, Marketing, viral
Posted in Marketing, Ramblings, Small Business | 2 Comments »
