Don't you just love it when your computer throws a wobbly?
Last night, my PR Planner DVD containing a massive media database and contact software started misbehaving. It caused the disc drive to spin round, but the DVD was not recognised. It then failed to obey the eject command. After a rather firm 3 seconds of holding the eject button the spinning stopped but it was 5 mins later before the disc drive opened, spitting out a spinning DVD, with a really nasty noise. Hm mm. Looks like a hardware problem. Mentally post a prayer of thanks upstairs to my foresight in wringing a free full 5-year extended warranty deal out of my local PC World branch manager.
Their technician had infinite patience and had me trying a number of discs in the drive which all behaved perfectly. But not the PR Planner DVD, which was collecting a few battle scars from its sudden conversion to Frisbee format.
Maybe it's a software problem, said the technician. So we un-installed it. Too late - I realised I'd need the licence code to re-install and I couldn't find it. And the PR Planner helpdesk was shut for the night.
As it turned out: no worries. The darn thing still wasn't being recognised so re-installing was not a current available option.
We tried it on another machine, where the DVD behaved perfectly, starting up the installation wizard, but - you're way ahead of me - there was the small matter of the licence code.
And that's when the technician started muttering about Brasso. Seemed a little rough to me, so he suggested mineral oil as an alternative: rubbed in the business side of the DVD, then carefully wiped off and polished with a specs cloth. Mineral oil is just posh for baby oil. I have some. I tried it. And lo: it worked!
OK, I had to wait until this morning for my code, but it's been running sweetly all day.
I've been using it to churn out press releases on a dynamic new client who run great (and expanding) networking events called Bacon, Eggs and Entrepreneurs. Coming to a town near you soon! They have 14 branches to date.
I expect all you IT support guys know the baby oil wheeze, but it's the first time in 20 years that anyone has suggested massaging my data.... but if it oils the wheels of business... (the rest is drowned out by the groans).
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
SmallBizPod
Re-visited the pioneering http://www.smallbizpod.co.uk/, the UK's first small business podcast and pleased to see it's growing with an impressive list of interviewees. Well worth a visit if you're in search of some inspiration from people who have been there and got the kilt. Especially if you don't want to be tied to staring at a screen.
And what a great opportunity for publicity if you have appropriate expertise for the sma biz community.
And what a great opportunity for publicity if you have appropriate expertise for the sma biz community.
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Confidence - and how to plug those knowledge gaps on the cheap
It can be hard when you're running a small business to feel totally confident all the time because we have to be so good at so many things. In my case it covers stuff like:
marketing,
selling,
PR (my core business),
producing DVDs,
photography,
networking,
R&D - turning services into bundled products,
admin,
finance including management accounting and Ltd company regulations,
IT,
CRM (customer relationship management),
CSR (corporate social responsibility/being green),
staff recruitment, induction, training, appraisals, basic employment law & management.
design on and offline, plus interior design to create a great impression and a good working environment
There's no way that I'm expert in all these areas. After all, each are capable of supporting an entire career. So it can be pretty easy to feel inadequate. On the other hand, it's the diversity of challenges that suits my particular mindset and I expect many entrepreneurs are similar: you could say we're narrow generalists.
Even when we delegate, we still need to know enough to manage the process and cover for any lapses of others - the buck always stops here when you run a business.
The longer I'm in business, the more I try to learn, which is probably why that sixth sense that homes me in on the trouble spots works pretty well.
I soak up freebie and low cost courses and seminars (good for networking too).
Whenever a high cost course is tempting me because it has exposed a need to know more about something, I have often saved thousands of pounds with a browse through the internet and Amazon's bookshop to find sources of enough know-how to top up my expertise. Sometimes I don't even need to read the thing: it's enough to skim the contents or file the article and know it's there if I need it.
Best of all: sometimes I don't even buy it. I just add the tome to my Amazon wishlist and a few months later, the need for more info in that area has usually faded. And if it's hardened into an absolute need to know, I'm just one click away from ordering it.
But that this is no uncontrolled process. I and any staff have a individual training plans and a budget, with success outcomes to achieve - often sparked off by that initial temptation to go on an expensive course!
marketing,
selling,
PR (my core business),
producing DVDs,
photography,
networking,
R&D - turning services into bundled products,
admin,
finance including management accounting and Ltd company regulations,
IT,
CRM (customer relationship management),
CSR (corporate social responsibility/being green),
staff recruitment, induction, training, appraisals, basic employment law & management.
design on and offline, plus interior design to create a great impression and a good working environment
There's no way that I'm expert in all these areas. After all, each are capable of supporting an entire career. So it can be pretty easy to feel inadequate. On the other hand, it's the diversity of challenges that suits my particular mindset and I expect many entrepreneurs are similar: you could say we're narrow generalists.
Even when we delegate, we still need to know enough to manage the process and cover for any lapses of others - the buck always stops here when you run a business.
The longer I'm in business, the more I try to learn, which is probably why that sixth sense that homes me in on the trouble spots works pretty well.
I soak up freebie and low cost courses and seminars (good for networking too).
Whenever a high cost course is tempting me because it has exposed a need to know more about something, I have often saved thousands of pounds with a browse through the internet and Amazon's bookshop to find sources of enough know-how to top up my expertise. Sometimes I don't even need to read the thing: it's enough to skim the contents or file the article and know it's there if I need it.
Best of all: sometimes I don't even buy it. I just add the tome to my Amazon wishlist and a few months later, the need for more info in that area has usually faded. And if it's hardened into an absolute need to know, I'm just one click away from ordering it.
But that this is no uncontrolled process. I and any staff have a individual training plans and a budget, with success outcomes to achieve - often sparked off by that initial temptation to go on an expensive course!
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Keeping Motivated
Sometimes it's hard to rise above a sea of email, phone calls and client demands to think about interesting new offerings so your business stays fresh and interesting, keeps selling more to existing customers and staves off competitors who are tempting your customers with their novelty factor.
My business coach, the redoubtable Phil Olley, always says that people already have all they need to know to take their business to the next level. The problem is not lack of training, knowledge, money or anything else we think we need. These are just excuses we make not to get on and do it.
Whether you think you need to tidy your desk before you succeed or do an MBA, just make a list of 5 things you could do today to make your business better. And don't have that cup of coffee or touch a pile of emails until you've done at least one of them.
Phil is a breath of practical fresh air. He spends his life dreaming up tools and strategies to strengthen the right core vision for you, so that you tap into your own natural enthusiasm to drive your business and life in the right direction. His website has some excellent free downloads in his Treasure Chest to get you started and a free newsletter to keep you thinking about ways to work ON your business, not IN it.
And no, he’s not a client. He’s very good at doing his own PR and has been on mainstream TV as well as being featured in a number of national newspapers and magazines.
And on my list today? Make my blogs shorter and more time effective for everyone!
My business coach, the redoubtable Phil Olley, always says that people already have all they need to know to take their business to the next level. The problem is not lack of training, knowledge, money or anything else we think we need. These are just excuses we make not to get on and do it.
Whether you think you need to tidy your desk before you succeed or do an MBA, just make a list of 5 things you could do today to make your business better. And don't have that cup of coffee or touch a pile of emails until you've done at least one of them.
Phil is a breath of practical fresh air. He spends his life dreaming up tools and strategies to strengthen the right core vision for you, so that you tap into your own natural enthusiasm to drive your business and life in the right direction. His website has some excellent free downloads in his Treasure Chest to get you started and a free newsletter to keep you thinking about ways to work ON your business, not IN it.
And no, he’s not a client. He’s very good at doing his own PR and has been on mainstream TV as well as being featured in a number of national newspapers and magazines.
And on my list today? Make my blogs shorter and more time effective for everyone!
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Spam, spam, spam, spam
Much as I love Monty Python, I'm increasingly fed up of spam, but as a small PR business owner who represents clients, my details appear on press releases posted in places where web crawlers go.
For a while, my ISP (BT broadband) seemed to be doing an OK job of filtering spam and my own message rules and blocked senders list took care of much of the rest.
But there's been a recent increase in US investment-related trash trying to talk up low value shares (apparently it works fleetingly, but by the time we get the emails, the early birds have mostly extracted the inflated value, generating a reversion on the share price).
Plus phishing attempts on behalf of banks and payment systems, some of which I've never even heard of, despite being in banking for 13 years.
Not to mention all those people out there that, for some reason, think I need a bigger, better willy (in case you haven't twigged, I am not a bloke), or any other form of med$ (my body is a temple although some wine and malts do slip in on high feast and priest days).
Like many small business owners, I know enough IT to get by (and after twenty years, I have all sorts of useless bits of DOS and other arcane OS floating around my head). But really, expecting individual computer owners to deal with this avalanche of 'stuff' is patently ridiculous. And it's instructive to note that my MS Word spell-checker doesn't even have the word 'spam' in its dictionary!
ISPs are in a much stronger position to spot a flood of material, evaluate it and stop it in its tracks, or forward it with a spam? flag in the subject line so we can trash it using message rules.
I have been doing my bit, patiently forwarding offending spam to my ISP in the full knowledge that most spam uses a once-only source address, so it's a waste of time. And recently, it's been taking up far too much time.
I can't help but think that the prospect of facing an enormous fine would focus ISPs on finding a solution in no time and look forward to the first prosecutions of ISPs for inflicting this time-wasting rubbish on us.
Just think of what spam is doing collectively. It must be sapping millions of years-worth of endeavour all over the planet. What could we achieve if we aggregated all the time wasted by spam? We might have conquered climate change, cancer and most other diseases of the mind and body, fed the world and colonised the moon before breakfast!
In the meantime, a free download of Mailwasher from ComputerActive magazine's website (the only source of software downloads I like) and I am bouncing spam with fake emails saying my email address doesn't exist (heh heh) and creating blacklists of entire domains. Plus Mailwasher allows you to apply other well-known blacklists to beat the spammers.
In just 24 hours, spam has all but gone: wheee heee!
And while you're at ComputerActive downloads, if your computer doesn't have antivirus, a firewall and spyware protection, there's no excuse because you can download AVG anti-virus plus the excellent Zonealarm firewall, plus Ad-aware to keep things protected.
For a while, my ISP (BT broadband) seemed to be doing an OK job of filtering spam and my own message rules and blocked senders list took care of much of the rest.
But there's been a recent increase in US investment-related trash trying to talk up low value shares (apparently it works fleetingly, but by the time we get the emails, the early birds have mostly extracted the inflated value, generating a reversion on the share price).
Plus phishing attempts on behalf of banks and payment systems, some of which I've never even heard of, despite being in banking for 13 years.
Not to mention all those people out there that, for some reason, think I need a bigger, better willy (in case you haven't twigged, I am not a bloke), or any other form of med$ (my body is a temple although some wine and malts do slip in on high feast and priest days).
Like many small business owners, I know enough IT to get by (and after twenty years, I have all sorts of useless bits of DOS and other arcane OS floating around my head). But really, expecting individual computer owners to deal with this avalanche of 'stuff' is patently ridiculous. And it's instructive to note that my MS Word spell-checker doesn't even have the word 'spam' in its dictionary!
ISPs are in a much stronger position to spot a flood of material, evaluate it and stop it in its tracks, or forward it with a spam? flag in the subject line so we can trash it using message rules.
I have been doing my bit, patiently forwarding offending spam to my ISP in the full knowledge that most spam uses a once-only source address, so it's a waste of time. And recently, it's been taking up far too much time.
I can't help but think that the prospect of facing an enormous fine would focus ISPs on finding a solution in no time and look forward to the first prosecutions of ISPs for inflicting this time-wasting rubbish on us.
Just think of what spam is doing collectively. It must be sapping millions of years-worth of endeavour all over the planet. What could we achieve if we aggregated all the time wasted by spam? We might have conquered climate change, cancer and most other diseases of the mind and body, fed the world and colonised the moon before breakfast!
In the meantime, a free download of Mailwasher from ComputerActive magazine's website (the only source of software downloads I like) and I am bouncing spam with fake emails saying my email address doesn't exist (heh heh) and creating blacklists of entire domains. Plus Mailwasher allows you to apply other well-known blacklists to beat the spammers.
In just 24 hours, spam has all but gone: wheee heee!
And while you're at ComputerActive downloads, if your computer doesn't have antivirus, a firewall and spyware protection, there's no excuse because you can download AVG anti-virus plus the excellent Zonealarm firewall, plus Ad-aware to keep things protected.
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