GoFaxer Blog

In this day of economic uncertainty, your employees are going to get nervous. Even if you have a great company, even if you’re a cutting edge operation, where everyone’s got flat screens and uses Internet fax, your employees are going to stress. Everyone worries about their job security when the number one news item is the struggling economy. Add the daily pressures of business life, and it’s easy for a company culture to revolt.

Actually, they probably won’t openly rebel because they don’t want to lose their job. What will happen will be worse. They’ll quietly murmur amongst themselves about every thing that could ever cause one discontent.

How do you keep your staff optimistic? How do you motivate your troops in such a way that they stay focused on the things that will help your company survive through the coming storm? My advice: Be both honest and optimistic.

You have to keep it honest. If there’s bad news, admit it openly. And admit that it’s bad. Admit that you’re disappointed. It’s okay to suggest that things aren’t all peachy. Everyone knows or will know the truth. If you hide it and then offer a super positive leadership speech, you’ll come across like a phony. Being honest cuts down that wall and allows you to really communicate with your staff.

Follow up your honest assessment with a strong strategic vision for how you’re going to lead the company through the troubled time. Your team wants to hear an optimistic plan. They want some hope.

Let’s be honest. When you’re starting a small business, you’re going to be working a lot! There’s just no way around it. Of course, you probably wouldn’t even be trying to start your own startup if you didn’t love what you were doing.

But then again, you might have a life too. We’ve all got family responsibilities, friends, and the need to grocery shop every once in a while. Life does not totally exist in the office.

This is why email fax is so perfect for the 21st century entrepreneur. It gives you total freedom to do business, even if you’re not in the office. In fact, these services allow you to not even have an office. Whether you’re running your operation out of your basement, a small rented office, your bedroom, or your laptop in the library, email fax works. You won’t have to miss your son’s birthday party if you’re waiting for that important fax.

With Internet based fax technologies, all you need is a web browser and access to the web and you’re good to go. No need to worry about downloading software and whatnot.

If you’re working weekends, traveling, or working from a corner office, Internet based office services are absolutely indispensable. I haven’t even mentioned the fact that it’s cheaper than old school fax machines. You can’t argue with that.

A lot of new startups can make a lot of mistakes. This is why so many fail. They might rent out office space before they have the cash flow to support it. They might buy a fax machine instead of using simpler and less expensive options like fax to email. They might pick an industry that they’re familiar with, but where there’s less marketability.

Another big mistake that a lot of small businesses fail to do is focus their efforts on one product, service, or market. I think this comes from the desire to mitigate the financial risks. You want to diversify. But there’s so much effort required getting a small business up and running to a profitable level, it’s going to take all of your teams heart, mind, and effort to get it working.

So don’t sell yourself to thin. I’ve known entrepreneurs who have ten balls in the air, and they’re unlikely to be as successful as they could be if they would just focus on the business with the most promise and make it work.

I think it’s easy to do this because small business leaders are generalists instead of specialists, meaning they lose interest easily. They like having lots of things on their plate to keep them interested. If you’re one of these types of people, don’t fall prey to your personality by over generalizing your business. Stay focused and you’ll have the great opportunity for success.

There is a common perception that going into business for yourself is a dangerous approach to life. I read a great article by Bill Buxton at BusinessWeek.com about this issue. He make the distinction between gambling and risk taking. He says:

“. . . just because someone won a multimillion-dollar windfall by buying lottery tickets with their retirement fund, or survived running a treacherous river without any training, the fact is not altered that what they were doing was gambling, not investing. The end result is as unrepeatable as it can be inadvisable.”

He submits that running your own business is in fact a risky venture, but not a dangerous one. Dangerous is where you throw caution to the wind and allow fate to be your guide, whereas entrepreneurship allows you to mitigate a lot of the factors of the risk. By making smart decisions that decrease your costs, like choosing to use email fax, you decrease your risk. And by making smart decisions that increase sales, like hiring an amazingly talented sales manager, you further decrease the risk of failure.

When you consider the fact that there is no guarantee that the cushy and comfy corporate job that you have is going to be there forever, think again. With a constantly fluctuating market place, no job is safe. At least with owning your own business, you control the risk factors to a greater degree than you might working for someone else.

That, to me, doesn’t seem risky. It actually seems safer.

Every business, regardless of the size, needs to reduce costs to ensure profitability. Small businesses have even less cash available than big operations, making every cost savings count.

This is why deciding whether to buy a fax machine versus email fax is a no-brainer. Internet fax services are always the best way to go. Why?

When you calculate all of the added costs of a fax machine it’s kind of depressing. You’ve got the actual machine, along with regular maintenance and repairs, which are sure to happen. You’ve got all that paper. You’ve got the toner.

But here’s the major expense—time! Imagine all of your employees standing in line for the fax machine. Quite simply, sending a fax through a fax machine takes a lot more time. You can only send one document at a time. You’ve got to print it onto a piece of paper first, and then send it.

Email fax on the other hand is a revelation. It’s so easy. It’s as easy as sending an email. It’s done entirely through the Internet, so you don’t have to get an actual separate fax line. But to the recipient using a fax machine, it looks just the same.

As your considering these many options for your business operation, consider this suggestion. You’ll thank me.

It’s easy when you’re starting a new business concept to want immediate sales, quickly. One of the easiest variables in the equation is your price. You know that if you lower your price, you’ll be able to ensure a higher number of sales.

But this strategy might not be the best option for your little startup. The bigger you are, the more margin you have to play with. But when you’re small and trying to grow, you have to generate enough cash to grow your infrastructure. Even choosing smart cost cutting solutions like fax to email are not going to be enough to compete financially.

This is why business analysts, who study the factors of successful new businesses agree: Compete on service or quality, not price.

As a small business, you might have less wiggle room on price, but because you’re small you can control the quality of your product much easier. You can always provide better service than your competitors. But don’t think you can go up against the big players and compete on price.

Unless you have a small business that is almost instantly profitable, like a recent piece I wrote about Snap Fitness, you’re really best off keeping your prices slightly higher and guaranteeing a superior product to your consumers.

There are many issues facing new business owners. What kind of industry should they get into? Should they work from home or get office space? Should they buy a fax machine or use Internet fax? For many industries, the question of franchising comes up.

I just read a fascinating article at BusinessWeek.com about Snap Fitness, one of the nations fastest growing franchises. They found that there was really intense competition for new franchise owners. Their solution was to offer a flat franchise fee, regardless of the performance of the gym.

Many experts told owner, Peter Taunton, that this wouldn’t work. You have to make enough money in the initial startup to justify the expansion of infrastructure to support the growth. He said that although it was a risky move, they were able to grow so fast that it worked. They grew to 18 new stores in the first and 100 in the second.

This, according to BusinessWeek, “helped him realize what he calls a ‘tipping point,’ where he could comfortably provide infrastructure and support to new and existing franchisees. He now has some 1,350 franchise locations, says his company had revenues of $19 million in 2007 (nearly 100 times the $202,000 revenues of 2004), and he expects to have 2,000 locations by the end of 2008.”

Miriam is a marketing consultant for a big firm. Tired off working long hours for modest pay, she decided that she wanted to start her own small consulting firm. She wanted to work with small local businesses. She wanted to contribute to the business community of the town she had grown up in and leaned to love.

Being the smart and savvy businessperson that she is, she knew that there are a lot of opportunities for small business owners to keep their expenses small, but still look professional. Image means a lot when you’re trying to convince companies to hire you to communicate their company’s image. If you can’t do it well for yourself, how could you do it well for others?

Needless to say, Miriam immediately fell in love with the idea of email fax. She signed up through GoFaxer, which gave her a phone number to use for her business. This number could then be placed on her card, along with her phone number, which connected to her cell phone, and an email address, that she monitored on her home laptop. She had the appearance of being big time, while remaining small time, the way she liked it.

You’ve decided to start your own small retail store. It’s a great franchise. You’ve done the build out. You’ve set up your phone line and your credit card machines. You’ve got your fax to email service set up. Everything is in place.

You open your doors. No one comes in. Oh yeah. You forgot to do one thing—tell potential customers that you’re actually in business. Marketing is one of the most talked about things in business, and one of the least done effectively.

Small business owners often find themselves in trouble in this area for a couple of reasons. The first is that it costs money, something they might not have much of anymore after they’ve hired someone to put in the beautiful new tiling on the floor. The second reason is they might not know that much about marketing.

These are two tough challenges to overcome. On the first problem, make sure that you’ve planned ahead for your marketing expenses in your business plan. Know how it’s going to affect your P&L.

The second challenge may require some extra work on your part. If you know a really great marketing consultant, one that you trust, hire them. If you don’t, I highly recommend doing some serious reading. The best marketing book out there is Jon Spoelstra’s “Marketing Outrageously.” It’s brilliant and will help your small business immensely.

There are many key factors that can play into the success of the new small business. The best businesses use new technologies like fax to email to their advantage. They have a solid idea. They have a great team. There’s one other key feature: They write a business plan.

It is tempting, in the bustle and excitement of creating your new business, to see the writing of a plan as a superfluous formality. But studies show that startups that don’t go through this process are quite bit less likely to succeed.

The simple fact is the planning should be a fundamental element of your business. It should permeate your entire process of operation. Great companies think strategically. Planning facilitates this line of thinking.

Once your business plan is written and put in place, it should be followed. It should be adjusted if your strategic objectives shift. It should also be a guide for all tactical decisions. Short-term actions should be a reflection of the long-term plan. When this happens, you have a business moving forward toward its goals.

When writing your plan, making it as specific as possible. Plans that are simply going through the motions tend to be way too vague. Whereas a good business plan demonstrates that all of the major business issues have been thought through in very specific terms. These kinds of plans are the one which will be really relevant as the day to day operations are faced.