GoFaxer Blog

So I was recently working with a small business owner, a successful businessman in his own right. He needed to approve some proofs for an advertisement. I had emailed them to him. He hadn’t responded to the email. Guess why?

His laptop was being repaired. He didn’t know how to check his email without Outlook. I said, “Is there another way that you can check your email?” He responded, “I guess I can log onto hotmail with our computer at the store?” I said, “Yes, try that.”

He said that if that didn’t work I could fax it to him, which I’d be happy to do with my fax to email service. But I still couldn’t figure out why this man couldn’t open his email. And more importantly, how was he doing other business without it.

Using email effectively has become a necessity of any well run business. Yet I’ve seen small business owners still using dial-up and not replying to their emails regularly because they don’t understand the technology’s importance to their ability to generate sales.

If you don’t understand technology, it will kill you. Because many of your competitors do understand technology and they’re working at a much more efficient level because of it. So don’t allow yourself to be disadvantaged by something that is out there to help you.

You’ve got one of those businesses that is so cutting edge, you’re constantly cutting yourself. Do you have Internet fax? Yes. Do you have an email savvy business? Yes. Do you have modern approaches to marketing and business management? You’re on your way to becoming a great big business.

But not yet. And because of this, you have to consider, that not only can rough times comes to an economy, but disaster can strike as well. I’m talking about natural disasters. But there is an agency that is there for you if you ever find yourself in a time of need.

It’s called the Office of Disaster Assistance. It’s been in place since 1953 and it’s there to provide low interest, long term loans for people and businesses after they’ve been hit by a disaster. You can find there website here.

Because when a disaster hits, and you’re trying to turn the lights back on in your office, you’re not as concerned about being cutting edge. You’re fighting for basic survival. So I think it’s good that there are Federal Agencies like this which help companies and individual residents get back on their feet, open for business, and stimulating the economy again.

The news about the economy has been nothing but bad over the last few months. I wish I could say that changing to an email fax service will save you enough money to make it through, but frankly, it won’t be enough.

So I’d like to review a series of posts I wrote a couple of months ago, when the recession was still a question rather than a near certainty.

I said in Part 1 that recessions can actually be a strengthening period for your business that will yield stronger growth when the economy rebounds.

In Part 2 I outlined opportunities that don’t typically exist outside of a recession.

I discussed in Part 3 some serious ways of cutting costs.

In Part 4 I talked about ways that you want to actually spend money during the slow-down.

And in Part 5 I talked about new and interesting lending opportunities that were available for good businesses while the Fed cuts interest rates to try to stimulate the economy again.

The best businesses find the opportunity, wherever it is. And even during a recession, there will be opportunity. You just have to know where to find it. So please review this series of posts, and start finding new and interesting opportunities to keep your business strong during the weakened economic state.

Today I’m starting a series of articles about business principles that small companies can learn from big companies.

Some people are content keeping their small businesses small. They want their company to feel ma and pa. But I know that many of you are far more ambitious in your hopes and desires for success.

So we’ll be looking at what big businesses are doing to maximize their profits. We’ll look at what they’re doing to move toward a big and unknown future. We’ll look at what they’re doing to stay ahead of the competition.

Improving your business might be as simple as switching to fax to email, and it may be as big as completely redefining your business model, business plan, and marketing strategies. Some of these big companies have truly brilliant leadership and it’s clearly in your best interest to hear what they have to say.

Take Jack Welch’s classic book, Jack: Straight From the Gut. This man outlines his performance as CEO of GE during a time of enormous growth. He attacked his job like an entrepreneur building his business up from nothing, even though GE was hardly nothing when he took over.

There’s much to be learned by looking to the big dogs. I hope that this examination will help.

There’s a huge draw for many young business people to start their own startup. We live in a digital age where email, email fax, and the Internet make starting a business as easy as buying a computer.

But with that easiness, comes a temptation to use your parents as mentors during the process. This can be a tempting proposition if your father or mother has a lot of successful experience in the business world. Having their knowledge in your organization can be a huge asset.

There’s a fascinating article at BusinessWeek.com by Eileen P. Gunn about this issue. She suggests:

“Today’s young adults are comfortable having their parents as mentors, coaches, and advocates throughout their lives. As for their parents, Lloyd Shefsky, co-director of the Center for Family Enterprises at the Kellogg School of Management, points to all the folks reinventing themselves in their 50s and 60s.”

The disadvantages are the same as working in a business with any family member. It’s so hard to extricate yourself from what can be a complicated relationship. if there’s any dysfunction in your family, it’s going to seep into your business.  And sometimes a perfectly good relationship can become strained when the pressures of day-to-day business hit.

Ultimately it depends on the individuals involved. If this is the right path for you, go for it. Your parent’s experience can be a boon.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but software is on the way out. Online applications are on their way in. With faster and more efficient Internet access everywhere, companies that can create online services that don’t require you to purchase software are finding enormous success.

The recent attempt by the world’s largest software company(Microsoft) to acquire one of the world’s largest online businesses (Yahoo) bears this out. Microsoft sees Google as a huge threat to their profits. Their attempt to thwart off the new giant in the industry which offers free gourmet food to all of it’s employees is a defensive and telling maneuver.

What this tells young entrepreneurs is that this would not be a good time to go into the software industry. If you want your business to be high tech, ground breaking, and relevant in the coming years, you’ve got to make sure that it’s accessible online.

Strong new business’s that fit this trend include: Internet fax, streaming video, email services, entertainment web pages, etc. Basically, if it’s web based you might be onto something.

Startup business creators who can understand the shifting technologies, not just following the trend, but see the trends a few years off will have enormous success in building strong and extremely fast growing businesses.

A recent interview at Businessweek.com with legendary business guru, Michael Gerber, suggests that entrepreneurship is a learned set of skills. This goes contrary to the popular belief that entrepreneurs are born. My belief is that anyone can become a successful business owner if they want to be. But you can’t teach desire.

Gerber says:

“I believe that every single one of us has the ability to be creative; it is an instinct that we are born with. It is part of our nature that is not very developed.”

This is a noble cause, but I think that many people are happier not owning their own business. Many people prefer being specialists. Entrepreneurs need to be generalists, not just as a learned skill, but as a natural way of thinking. Even if you are a specialist by nature, you can learn to think as a generalist, if you want to badly enough, but there’s still no guarantee that you’ll enjoy it.

You can teach someone how to balance a P&L sheet. You can teach someone how to use technology like fax to email to give a business an economic advantage. You can teach someone how to choose effective advertising. But if a person doesn’t like to learn about such things, they’re fighting a no win battle.

With that said, I still think that Gerber’s new book, Awakening the Entrepreneur Within, would be a great read for anyone desiring to learn the skills of running their own business, as long as they want them.

As I’ve said before, I’ve read many business plans in my day and they all usually stink. They’ll say something like, “This location brings a lot of tourists that we can market to.” And that will be it. They don’t bother to mention exactly how they plan on marketing to those tourists. I read an interesting article at BusinessWeek.com that confirmed my belief in good planning.

This article tells the story of two brothers, John and Tony Calamunci, who dreamt of owning their own chain of hot dog restaurants. But they waited over 25 years before taking the entrepreneurial plunge. Why? Because they wanted to do it just right, planning every detail.

When I say they planned every detail, I’m not kidding. They hired a Mapinfo, a location research consulting firm that did vast and detailed location analysis. The firm identified their target customer as college students and lower-to middle-income families with children. With this knowledge they then identified 4,500 possible locations nationally that would be right for their business.

I know that a lot of small company owners like to get down to business. They like to open their doors and work out the details afterwards. But judging by the quick growth of Johnny’s Lunch Franchise, I think that all that planning might be the right way to go. Planning everything from the type of fax machine (I recommend email fax) to who you want as your neighbors makes all of the difference in hitting your growth projections.

I have a lot of experience working with small business owners and I have to confess a little frustration with y’all. Too many of you are thinking too small too. Yes, you have a “small” business but that’s no reason to keep it that way.

Too many companies are still using a fax machine instead of email fax. There are too many small companies that still use dial-up for their Internet connection. There are too many small companies that do zero marketing.

And here’s the worst sin of all: There’s companies out there that actually don’t want to grow. I’ve spoken with business owners who have told me that they are fine with the way things are. They don’t want to grow their business. I was floored.

The web offers almost unlimited opportunity to turn your company into something big time. But too many small business owners have a lot of misperceptions about how the web works.

There’s a great article by Lindsay Holloway at Entrepreneur.com where she interviews Justin Kitch, the creator of Homsestead.com, a company that helps entrepreneurs create a web presence. He outlines 11 myths about the Internet world. He says that too many business owners are “cautious and conservative; they’re afraid of technology and change.”

For the next eleven days I’ll be reviewing each of these myths.

Internet fax is one of the best tools for entrepreneurs starting a new business. So what kind of businesses can make use of this wonderful technology? What kind of new business ideas are out there?

Today I’m starting a series of posts highlighting really interesting new concepts out there. To start this off, I want to share a little bit about Houston mother, Lori Pope, who realized that her little boy lost interest in his toys after a while, leaving a huge clutter of unused toys.

So she went online to see if there was a site that she could rent toys from. None. Bingo! She found herself a great new business nitch. MSNBC.com reports:

“Pope started with 10 customers, shipping toys out of spare office space in her business. Now she’s got about 200 customers nationwide, including about 40 grandparents, and is preparing to move into a 3,000-square-foot warehouse next door.”

Families sign onto the service, which costs about 30 bucks a month. They then get several toys that they get to keep for a month and then the send them back in the box they came in. If the child really falls in love with the toy and wants to hang onto it that’s not a problem either. They can keep it for several more months if they want to.

I think this is a great idea. You can rent movies online. Why not toys?