Anyway if you have a fledgling business or a great idea and you really wanted to pitch it to the dragons (the original ones by the way ! ) but you didn’t fancy standing in front of them, now you have a chance.

The BBC version of Dragons Den have launched an online version with two new dragons where you can record your pitch and upload it onto the website. Thanks to Julie Hall from Women Unlimited who pointed this out to me.

You can see the details and also some of the pitches already submitted by going to this
website address

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dragonsden/onlinepitches/

If you do decide to pitch..don’t forget to let me know

Darina

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Come on over and join us

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I got a great reaction to the survey, thanks to everyone who tweeted and blogged, which really is just a quick snapshot not a scientific result to be used in evidence ! but I just thought it would be interesting to compare as much as we could, our predictions for home business in 2009 versus those in the UK.

There weren’t too many surprises in the results to be honest, I could see the patterns forming even with only a few answers in and they didn’t change dramatically at all as the numbers increased.

I see all of this as a positive, the UK are probably just a little ahead of us with home-business yet their thoughts and predictions aren’t that far off ours.

Have a look and I would be interested to hear your comments.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, please click here to see my earlier post

First Question

Do you think Home-Business will continue to grow in 2009?

UK
Yes - 95%
No - 5%
Don’t know - 0

Ireland
Yes - 90%
No - 2%
Don’t know 8%

We’re sitting a bit on the hedge with this one. while the UK have said yes or no for definite we still have 8% hovering at don’t know but yet only 2% said a definite no, so what does that tell us? We’re sorta confident it’s going to grow but not quite?!

What do you think will be the most popular kind of home-business in 2009?
This is one I thought may have fairly different results, and while there are a few differences, (we seem to think online selling is going to increase more, whereas the UK seem to be heading more towards creativity and hand-made), there’s nothing really drastic.

UK
Creative Services 18%
Domestic Services 5%
Handmade Goods 5%
Online Selling 36%
Professional Services 36%

Ireland
Creative Services 10%
Domestic Services 4%
Handmade Goods 2%
Online Selling 46%
Professional Services 37%

I thought the professional services was interesting, almost the same, and I have to say I agree I think there’s huge scope for all different types of professional services to be home based.

As a home-business owner are you looking to grow in 2009? if so how?

Now this one I thought did have interesting results.

UK
By Extending my products or services 57%
By Hiring Staff or Outsourcing work to contractors 7%
By working in Partnership with other businesses 30%
I don’t wish to grow my business in 2009 7%

Ireland
By Extending my products or services 49%
By Hiring Staff or Outsourcing work to contractors 4%
By working in Partnership with other businesses 32%
I don’t wish to grow my business in 2009 14%

Apart from the partnership area, which both of us seem to agree was a good way to grow. The differences are more obvious than on the other questions. 14 - double the UK- saying they don’t want to grow in 2009 surprised me. I think this also reflects back to question one where we still had a “don’t know” answer about home-business but the UK were more definate. Personally I believe it’s more a lack of confidence with everything thats going on, that people don’t believe they can grow their business rather than not actually wanting to do it. I think this one will change as we start to raise the profile and also quantify what’s actually going on out there and what difference are we making to the economy.

Will homes with home offices increase in value in 2009?
I thought this was an interesting question to see the results, particularly with the property market as it is.

UK
Don’t know - 40%
No - 22%
Yes - 38%

Ireland
Don’t know - 41%
No - 29%
Yes - 31%

Not a huge difference there, but still ours landing on the side of caution or experience, I don’t know which? Personally while I don’t think they will increase in value specifically, certainly not in the short term, I do believe that a house with a home-office will have a stronger selling postition than their neighbour and this eventually will create a demand which will increase the value, so my answer would be a cautious Yes.

Where will you be working from in 2009?

UK
Garden Shed (or purpose built home-office) 17%
Kitchen Table - 15%
My bedroom 3%
Spare Room 65%

Ireland
Garden Shed (or purpose built home-office) 16%
Kitchen Table 23%
My bedroom 3%
Spare Room 58%

Not a huge difference there, apart from the fact that a few more of us will be round the kitchen table as opposed to in the spare room !

Will we see more devices designed for home business owners in 2009

To be honest I didn’t quite understand this question myself, so I was interested to see if there was a difference in how we interpreted it versus the UK and whether that would reflect in the answers. Personally I thought perhaps it was to do with mobile devices or other stuff like that to make home-business easier, I’m sure that’s what most people thought.

UK
Don’t know - 22%
No - 10%
Yes - 68%

Ireland
Don’t know - 37%
No - 7%
Yes - 56%

Will social networking continue to prove useful to home businesses?
I was interested to see the results of this question. My answer is a resounding yes. I think it’s a huge tool for home-business. I have to say I couldn’t have got the response I did to this survey so quickly (most answers were in within couple of hours) if it hadn’t been for the likes of twitter, facebook, igopeople etc..

but not every one is as convinced as me ! again I would think more from lack of experience and from caution rather than pure belief. Our No’s lower than the UK but our on the fence higher !

UK
Don’t know - 0
No - 5%
Yes - 95%

Ireland
Don’t know - 4%
No - 2%
Yes - 93%

Will more home businesses trade online in 2009?
This was another result that surprised me, surprised me that once again we had so many don’t know’s? I know i’m an internet junkie so I have to bear that in mind but my initial reaction is if you have a home-business why wouldn’t you trade online? you don’t have a retail outlet (unless it’s a home-based one !) you normally don’t have access to your clients and customers to the same level as a non home-based owner so why wouldn’t you use the internet to balance things up? I think the UK’s “No’s” surprised me more than our “Don’t know’s” which I was beginning to get used to seeing.

UK
Don’t know - 8%
No - 3%
Yes - 90%

Ireland
Don’t know - 13%
No - 1%
Yes - 86%

So there you go. Very interested to hear your comments. As I said not hugely scientific, sample sizes were different, having said that I don’t think our results would change drastically with an increase or decrease in sample size, as Imentioned I could see patterns forming very early on with the answers and nothing much changed and I’m sure it was the same in the UK

Darina x

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It was a great evening held in a spot I’m becoming very fond of ! 1 alfred place and I met some very interesting home-business owners of which you will be hearing more about over the coming weeks.

Some of their predictions came from surveying a myriad of home-business owners across the UK, but I’m not going to reveal too much yet, because I was thinking it’s been a while since we’ve had a survey here, the last one showed some very interesting comparisons when we used the US so I thought it would be interesting for us this time to do a comparison with the UK.

I’ve taken Emma’s questions and put them in a survey form for here. If you work from home in Ireland if you could take a couple of mins to answer the survey that would be great. It’s just 8 short questions, multi-choice and should take less than 5 minutes to complete (I’d say about 60 secs max !)

Here’s the link http://tinyurl.com/cd6l4s

If you can pass the link on to anyone you know who works from home so we can try and get as many responses as possible that would be great, blog about it, tweet it or email the link and I’ll let you know the results as soon as possible.

Like Emma is in the UK, I’m a huge believer in and advocate of, home-business in Ireland, I don’t see it as the “poor man’s cousin to getting a real job” as is the feeling I get from some I’ve discussed it with ! and I believe particularly in these challenging and enterprising times we are going to see a huge growth in people starting a business from home, whether it’s from the kitchen table or a purpose built garden office the potential is huge and the contribution to the economy not insignificant.

One of my goals for this year is to try and raise the profile of home-business in Ireland and also to try and quantify a bit more what’s actually going on out there. I have a few things in the pipeline that will hopefully help with this :), but in the meantime if you could fill in the survey above and pass it on to anyone you know that it’s relevant for I’d be grateful. This particular survey is purely for predictions for 2009 and is not about getting a better picture of what’s happening in the home-business world in Ireland.. that one’s coming !

talk to you soon

Darina