I’ve tried to make sure that Roaring Mouse provides a completely unbiased look at small business (instead of a thinly veiled advertisement for Lenovo products) and tried to focus on topics that are relevant to small biz owners, but also slightly off the beaten path. In previous posts, I’ve argued why this is a great time to start a business, discussed effective outsourcing techniques and explained how cloud computing will proliferate and have more and more of a presence in small business. Little did I know that the considerable amount of research and time spent fashioning these posts would have more immediate benefits and relevance to me! I hope that though the number of posts have been slim, that you’ve derived some value from them. Small business is extremely fascinating to me and I will soon have a firsthand view of its inherent challenges.

I think it would be remiss if I didn’t provide some commentary on my working experiences here at Lenovo. I’ve worked with some amazing people around the globe and can wholeheartedly say that a tremendous amount of effort, dedication and passion goes into bringing you every ThinkPad we produce. It’s easy to overlook the human element behind inanimate objects and tools, but I can safely attest to the fact that each ThinkPad notebook you purchase has been touched by many people, in many different ways and is imbued with the unique personality of each one. Our superb quality numbers and multiple awards for product excellence are proof that these people are top-notch, something that generally escapes the attention of people outside the company. Of course, I have first-hand experience with them and am using this opportunity to tell you that and to thank them for helping me learn and grow professionally.

The PC industry is a challenging one and places many demands on all who are associated with it. As an example, I’ve worked on 6 different products in the three years that I’ve been here. It’s because of this fact that I’ve had very little time to devote to Roaring Mouse, something I regret a great deal. Now, though, I’m joining the ranks of those of you I’ve been writing for and I am very excited to be a part of the small business community.

I thank everyone at Lenovo who trusted me enough to be a public face for the company for the opportunity to share my thoughts with you, I wish great joy to my soon-to-be ex-co-workers and I wish all you small business owners the greatest success.

P.S. If you’re on Twitter and want to follow my progress, I’m @bming1. Take care and all the best.

brandon..

The natural starting point is a description of what social media is. There is an uber-geeky Wikipedia definition here, but I far prefer the simple, context-sensitive definition provided by the great folks at Duct Tape Marketing.

“Social media is the use of technology combined with social interaction to create or co-create value”

In practical terms, social media as we know it today equates to web-based tools and services such as blogs (Blogger, Wordpress), microblogging (Twitter) , social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn), media sharing sites (YouTube for video, Flickr for photos),  podcasting, social bookmarking (del.icio.us), social content aggregators (digg.com) and vlogs (video blogs).  One or all of these tools can help you increase your presence and relevance in the social media space. In order to make effective use of these tools, though, it is important to first understand a very fundamental tenet of social media.

Where social media differs *significantly* from your traditional web presence is that it is a medium where your customers are actively engaged. Information is now multi-directional and in many cases, shared in real time. This changes the nature of your company’s web presence from a static website to a web presence that is highly dynamic. Through social media, customers can interact with you more fluidly, more rapidly and more personally.  This provides many opportunities to gauge your company’s performance and to find out how customers feel about your products and services. It also allows you to perform market research somewhat anonymously or broadcast marketing communications to your customers expediently at relatively low cost.

Naturally, there are potential downsides to social media tools. Anything your company states can be re-broadcast or shared with a large number of people quickly. This, of course presents a new set of challenges. Before the advent of social media, a mistake on a website could be repaired and over time, forgotten. The impact would probably be limited to the customers who saw the mistake and not many other people. A gaffe through a social media channel, on the other hand, may have far more severe implications, given its kinetic nature. This calls for a thoughtful, sound approach to your social media strategy, which of course, requires a good understanding of what can go wrong. One of the goals of this study is to create a set of ’social media best practices’ that everybody can benefit from. That means that I will explore what TO DO, as well as what NOT to do when it comes to using social media effectively.

I personally believe that a social media presence and strategy will soon be the de facto standard when it comes to a company’s web presence. I hope that this study and exploration of the subject and of the individual tools I listed above will be of benefit to you as you embark upon your own social media journey. To those of you who are far more experienced in the subject than me, I make the humble request that you share your experiences and insight in order that all of us will benefit from the collective wisdom.

In Social Media in Small Business #2, I will explore Twitter, the famous micro-blogging engine.

* This really isn’t an empirical claim, but merely based on the fact that my 62 year old mother on the other side of the world now has a Facebook account and invited me to be her friend. I accepted, yes, but not before pondering some interesting philosophical questions at great length. She ‘poked’ me after I accepted and no, I won’t respond in kind.

While details are relatively sparse, the following statement from the announcement hints at a full-on foray into the cloud computing space

“They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files. Even more importantly, they don’t want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates.”

Personally, I think that the announcement of the Google Chrome OS is a welcome bit of news. The operating systems that are currently preloaded on netbooks are either dated or unintuitive and this highly legitimate competitor to the incumbents will help to force improvements, making customers the winners. In a previous article on Roaring Mouse, I argued that cloud computing and a move to an all-Internet based software environment for most business software is imminent. I believe that this announcement is a major step toward making that claim a reality. What do you think of it all?

http://bit.ly/2cPcu3

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/kiva_now_allows_you_to_invest_in_us_small_business.php

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/10/kiva-brings-microlending-home-to-us-entrepreneurs-in-need/

• WHAT SHOULD I OUTSOURCE? – “Stick to what you know best and outsource the rest”
  • You work for yourself because you believe that there is one or a handful of things that you can do better than anyone else. Whether that’s baking bread, creating Drupal-driven websites or selling music to a discerning local community, you are good at what you do and should spend the majority of your time offering that unique ability to your customers. The likelihood that you have the expertise and bandwidth to perform all tasks related to growing your business is slim, so choose the two or three things that you believe you can do well and look for other people who can do the rest. Over time, you will develop a more intimate knowledge of the general management skills necessary to conduct a business successfully, but it’s tough to try to develop those abilities while you’re just starting out.
• WHO DO I OUTSOURCE TO? – “Check out the RAP – References, Accreditation and Portfolio”
  • Once you’ve overcome the hurdle of thinking that you can do everything related to a business well, the next step is to find the right people to help perform the tasks you’ve decided to outsource. Web-based businesses such as oDesk.com, guru.com and Elance.com are available to help you find contractors for a variety of different outsourcing functions. The rating system, previous client reviews and the ability to view the providers’ portfolios allow you to make a more informed choice about the provider that you end up choosing. On a local level, there’s the tried and trusted method of word-of-mouth referral. Try your local business contacts or your local Small Business Administration office for recommendations. For functions such as accounting and business law advice, be sure to ask for proof of certification and accreditation. One would think that this is a given, but I’ve heard terrible stories about people getting bad advice from self-proclaimed subject matter experts whose only claim to expertise is having worked in an accounting firm or lawyer’s office in the past! Here, the adage “You get what you pay for” rings true. While not every expensive service provider is worth the money they charge you, markets have a funny way of shaking out those who overcharge or undercharge for their services and for the most part, the value you derive from someone’s services is commensurate with the amount you pay them.
• HOW SHOULD I APPROACH OUTSOURCING? – “Outsourcing is akin to a Hollywood romance movie”
  • Now that you’ve decided who to work with, what’s the right way to approach an outsourcing relationship? A few important things spring to mind immediately. In the same way that modern day Hollywood romance movies prescribe a “get to know you slowly” approach to building a relationship, the most successful outsourcing relationships are formed upon the foundation of a few small, successful ventures. By choosing less critical tasks as your first outsourcing projects, you risk losing less if the relationship doesn’t work out and also have an opportunity to get a feel for how the relationship will develop. After choosing the projects you want to outsource, the next step is to set expectations. This is probably the most important step in the relationship-building process, as it completely outlines what both parties expect and deliver to each other. Important things to consider when setting expectations are milestones for the project, the costs associated with each milestone or checkpoint, the timeline that each milestone lines up with and the quality of the deliverable. While it’s not always easy to do this, a Hollywood style pre-nuptial agreement is no less applicable in the business world. If the relationship doesn’t quite work out for any reason whatsoever, it’s good to have something committed on paper that clearly states what each party is entitled to if the relationship is terminated before the project is complete. Even if the issues do not stem from trust and integrity, expectations and results are frequently misaligned as there are many tasks that do not always lend themselves well to written descriptions. It’s best to protect yourself in these instances.
• HOW SHOULD I TREAT MY OUTSOURCING SUPPLIER? – “Your supplier is a remote employee”
  • Anyone who’s managed an employee or been one knows that lack of communication can easily result in unmet expectations, even if there’s frequent daily interaction between employer/manager and employee. Working with an outsourcing supplier is very much like working with a remote employee. Opportunities for personal interaction are rare and the onus is on you to ensure that communication is frequent and accurate. After all, you’re the one who stands to lose the most if the relationship doesn’t work out. And of course, like any other employee, an outsourcing supplier expects two very basic things from you – your respect and on-time payment.

I have tried my best to capture the steps necessary to ensure a successful outsourcing experience. This list was born out of my own personal experiences, and is certainly not exhaustive. If you’ve had successful or painful outsourcing experiences, I’d appreciate it if you’d share the lessons you learned with us in the comments section.

There are several reasons to co-work instead of merely working at home by yourself. Alex Hillman, a co-founder of IndyHall, a co-working space in Philadelphia does an excellent job of listing and describing 6 reasons to co-work. I have listed them below in summary, but it’s instructive to read the detailed explanations from Alex. You can access his article here.

1.      Helps you avoid the feeling of loneliness from working by yourself

2.      Provides an external source of motivation

3.      Easy way to learn new things from other people

4.      Allows you to keep abreast of what’s going on in your community

5.      Keeps the separation between work and life distinct

6.      Resource-sharing helps you lower costs

Arguably, the most fundamental benefit of co-working is in the sense of community that it fosters. You can say “no (wo)man is an island” or insert a ton of other overused clichés about working solo here, but the fundamental truth is that people often work best when challenged and complemented by other people with different experiences, talents and resources. Brad Neuberg, one of the founders of the co-working space movement says his desire was to “create a means to an end; to be able to invent, within a community structure, without having to join a company”. Chris Messina, another of the early founders of co-working environments, describes the benefit of co-working spaces as “accelerating serendipity”. 

If you’re a solo-worker who believes that you can benefit from working together with a community of like-minded individuals, co-working might be for you. To learn more about co-working and where and how you can get involved in a co-working space, check out the links below.

http://blog.coworking.info/

http://groups.google.com/group/coworking

http://wiki.coworking.info

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/14/technology/start-ups/14startup.html?emc=eta1

Cloud computing in its rawest sense is not a new idea. If you had a Hotmail email account when it first launched years ago, you were an early adopter of cloud computing. After webmail, the next step in cloud computing was web photo-sharing. Web photo-sharing allowed you to upload your images to a server somewhere and display them without forcing you to learn how to create a webpage in HTML. Web photo-sharing was a big step in helping democratize photography, as it made it easy for people to share their photos with friends and family.

While email and web photo-sharing were the first cloud computing services, cloud computing wasn’t much of a hot topic until more recent times. It can be argued that the real fanfare over cloud computing truly began when commercially-focused pieces of software migrated to the ‘cloud’. The advent of Salesforce.com placed a spotlight on the promise of cloud computing to improve employee efficiency and productivity by providing them easy access to important information, at any time of the day. Salesforce.com’s online CRM offering led the way to prominence for other ‘cloud’ enterprise, productivity and storage offerings such as Netsuite (an Enterprise Resource Planning app), 37 Signals’s suite of software, Google Apps, Zoho and even Lenovo’s Online Data Backup service.

The advantages of cloud computing for a small business are manifold.

1.        Low cost: Cloud computing software companies charge a small monthly subscription fee instead of large per seat licenses. Now, instead of needing a large sum of money for capital expenditure, you’ve turned your software into a monthly operating expense, helping you lower your capital financing needs. In the event you don’t like the software, you can simply cancel your subscription and take a loss only on a month’s worth of subscription fees.

2.        Device independence: You’re not tied to a specific computing device, since all you need to run the software is a web browser. Use your smartphone, desktop, notebook or netbook on operating systems as diverse as Mac OS X and Linux to conduct business. Small businesses that don’t have a big IT budget can use a “bring what you got” approach to run their business.

3.        Anytime, anywhere access: Since your files are stored in the ‘cloud’, you can work on them even if you’re not close to your primary PC. You can leave your computer at home when you’re traveling and use a friend’s laptop or use the desktop at the library to do some work.

4.        Automatic backups: Cloud computing companies may provide multiple levels of redundancy to ensure that data you store in the cloud is safe. Data backups are automatic, and while you may pay for storage in the cloud, you don’t have to buy backup software and extra hard disk drives to store your data.

5.        Automatic and transparent software updates: You don’t have to spend your hard-earned money upgrading your software every so often, or bite your nails as you upgrade your software to the latest version, hoping that the upgrade doesn’t cause any instabilities or crashes in your system. Cloud-based software will update itself without you telling it to do so. The only time you’ll notice is when you see the nifty new feature you’ve been requesting for months suddenly appear in your browser.

6.        Email-less collaboration: Some cloud-based software such as Google Docs and 37 Signals’s suite allow you to collaborate in real time without having to email files back and forth to each other. Changes you make are updated immediately, eliminating the lag time between when you complete your edits or changes and when your business partner or employee has access to those updates. Add VoIP or video chats to the mix and you have a great collaboration platform.

7.        Security: Since your application and data files aren’t on your hard disk, the threat of viruses, trojans and worms corrupting your important information decreases significantly. You can now entrust your data to enterprise-class security, without spending the dollars to do so.

Cloud computing promises a lot of great things, but there are reasons why it has yet to become more prevalent. Here are some of the things I believe will need to exist in order for cloud computing to take off.

1.        Ubiquitous connectivity: Since all interactions happen through the Internet, being connected is a fundamental requirement for cloud computing to become successful. With the proliferation of smartphones and mobile broadband on notebooks and netbooks, we are making major strides towards realizing the positives of cloud computing.

2.        99.9999% Reliability: If you’re accustomed to your software always doing what you want it to do, you may occasionally be frustrated when your cloud-based software is down, even for a few minutes. The reality is that though not all cloud-based software suffers from any appreciable downtime, some do, and until everyone’s software works as consistently as their hard-drive-based counterparts, en masse adoption of cloud computing will not happen.

3.        Offline capability: While you may be connected to the Internet most of the time, there will be times when poor WiFi or cell reception will force you to work on a local copy of your files. Being able to work on your files while you’re not connected is an important requirement for widespread adoption of cloud-computing. Thankfully, technologies such as Adobe Air and Google Gears enable offline use of cloud-based software.

Cloud computing is changing the way we perceive software, allowing us to work and collaborate in ways we could never have done in the past. The addition of value-add, secondary services that are attached to cloud-based software and services changes that paradigm even more. I believe that the move to an all-Internet based software environment for most business software is imminent. Perhaps you’re an early adopter and have already made the switch completely. I’d appreciate it if you’d take the poll below and share your thoughts on cloud-based computing in the comments section.

P.S. This is a list of cloud-based software that I’ve personally found useful.

TO DO LIST: Remember the Milk – www.rememberthemilk.com

PROJECT MANAGEMENT: Basecamp from 37 Signals – www.37signals.com

CRM, including Inventory Management: ZOHO CRM – www.zoho.com/crm

PERSONAL FINANCE: Mint – www.mint.com

Motivation – If you are unemployed and having difficulty finding new employment, chances are that you are extremely motivated to take control of your own destiny because (i) There simply aren’t any jobs out there for you and/or (ii) You swear that you’ll never allow someone else to determine your professional destiny.

Talent -With the sweeping, industry-agnostic layoffs that are taking place these days, there is probably no better time to take advantage of the fact that there is a large number of talented people who are looking for employment. Chances are that they’ll be willing to accept less than what they’re accustomed to earning to do the same job.

Lower Expenses - The sad reality is that business is down for most people, but out of that grim fact comes an opportunity to procure the goods and services you need for your company for less money. As a decreasing client base intensifies competition, companies are more likely to make concessions, provide discounts and add ‘bonus’ goods and services to secure your business.

Discipline - What better time to force yourself to be disciplined in all your decision-making than when times are hardest? When cash flow is not as free as in times past, increased financial rigor is crucial to starting and growing your business. The discipline that you instill now will always serve you well, making you more efficient and more prudent in your choices in future.

Timing – Economic downturns are part of the natural business cycle, and there’s a strong likelihood that your business will start to hit the upswing in the economy as your entrepreneurial efforts start to mature. While trying to time anything precisely in the business world is a little dicey, the aggregate improvement in the economy over the span of the next 2 or 3 years should bring a corresponding return that’s favorable to you.