Time for reflection

One of the features of the lockdown, for most of us at least, is having more time.

Less time on commuting, socialising, shopping etc means more time for, well...whatever takes your fancy, as long as it doesn’t involve non essential travel or mingling with other households.

I’ve been working from home, doing a bit more gardening and had more time to think. 

I’m reading, ‘The Passion Economy’ by Adam Davidson and one of the chapters is about a behavioural scientist who is motivated by influencing lots of people to make positive changes in their lives. One of her techniques is to write a long list of things you are good at doing. She is evidently a person of many talents as her list took a few days to compile. I think mine will be finished much sooner.

When you have the list you then draw a circle around the things you enjoy or are passionate about. If you can make these things part of your career or your business, that’s a very good place to be.

This is not too far away from the Japanese concept of ‘Ikigai’. Broadly translated this means. ‘Reason for living’. If you can find enjoyment and purpose in your work, you will be more fulfilled and probably do a much better job.

Before starting my business 17 years ago I read, ‘What colour is your parachute’, the seminal career planning book by Richard N Bolles. This has a similar approach to helping you choose your career path if you reach a fork in the road. What are you good at? What do you enjoy and what kind of environment do you like to work in? It helped me reach a conclusion that I wanted to be my own boss and shape my own destiny.

So most of us have more time. Time to reset and reevaluate things.

I might just have a go at my list today. Not because I’m at a particular crossroads, but because I have the time and it might lead to something positive.

Who knows, a new career as a wine-maker or bee-keeper may beckon?

www.base52.co.uk

How many businesses do you need?

Running a business can be pretty intense. But very now and then, there is a lull. Maybe it's a summertime thing? The volume of emails goes down, the phone is not ringing quite so much, there are no major issues worrying you. What next?

My tendency over the years has been to dabble with something new. Kick off that new business idea I've been thinking about but have not had the time or energy to do anything about. Being an optimist, I inevitably focus on the upside and getting started and think less about what is required to keep things going. So let's go for it. This is going to be big! 

But with me at least, it never quite turns out like that.

Inevitably the lull in your core business ends. Your intensity returns, the phone starts ringing again, issues crop up, you get stuck in and the new idea has to take second fiddle. It kind of bubbles along in the background, sometimes for several years but never reaches its potential. Eventually you kill it. It's become a drain and it's time to concentrate exclusively on the main business.

There are entrepreneurs who make a success out of starting several business and running them simultaneously. Nigel Botterill famously built up  5 (probably more now) £1m businesses within a few years. Felix Denis, the late publishing billionaire, used to start new 'baskets' for his new ideas and run these alongside his core business. Some of our clients too have had modest success with running multiple businesses side by side. 

So it might be just a failing in me that I've not been able to make this work. These days, when I get that new idea and rush of enthusiasm, I stop and think a bit more before diving in. Have I really got time for this? If I put the same effort into my main business would that deliver more benefit? 

Let me tell you about my new idea for a great on-line shop though...

www.base52.co.uk

A case for outsourcing

In the early days of running a business, often the business owner does a bit of everything. Looking after customers, sure, but doing the accounts, paying the bills, fixing the computer, cleaning up, sorting out problems and anything else that comes along too. The phrase, 'Chief cook and bottle washer' describes it well. From the interesting and important stuff to the plain boring and mundane, it all needs to get done...somehow.

As the business grows the business owner might start to bring in help. They then need to decide what tasks to let go of and what they need to keep hold of. Michael Gerber's, 'E-Myth' describes this dilemma well. He advocates that over time the business owner should delegate the 'technical' stuff and in due course, the 'managerial' stuff and end up being the entrepreneur who develops and guides the business. It's a difficult journey and many don't stay the course. Many stay stuck in the mire of dealing with technical matters, often where they are not an expert and fail to focus on developing their businesses.

A good solution can be outsourcing. Outsourcing is passing responsibility for a set of tasks to an external party, usually a specialist in this line of work. There are many advantages but these include:

• It's often cheaper than employing someone to do this work for you as you only pay for the support you need
• They are are experts and have the knowledge and resources to do the work better than you can
• It's scaleable - as you grow or contract you can adjust your level of support accordingly
• It leaves you to focus on the entrepreneurial stuff

 It's almost a no-brainer but I see many businesses of a reasonable size who deal with their own IT (if something breaks they get someone in to fix it), have no HR back up, do their own marketing (when they get time) and yes, do their own bookkeeping, payroll and VAT, not always in the most effective way

Since starting Base52 we made an early decision to outsource IT and HR support, website maintenance and aspects of marketing. I've never regretted this. It's a monthly overhead but I feel it is an essential cost of 'doing business'. Similarly we offer an outsourced accounting service to many of our clients covering bookkeeping, VAT, management accounts, payroll and well as year need compliance. I believe this arrangement works very well and many of these clients have stayed with us for many years on their business growth journey. 

I found this quote from a chap called Alphonso Jackson, 'The other part of outsourcing is this: it simply says where the work can be done outside better than it can be done inside, we should do it'. 

I think that's pretty good. Cost is also a factor of course (you'd expect an accountant to say that) but if it's affordable, I'm a big fan.

Outsourcing at Base52

How do you write a letter to a lord?

My mother-in-law is a bit of a raconteur. One of her many family stories is how her father started up a filter cloth business in the 1960s. As the story goes he was listening to the news on the radio and became very exercised about something he heard. He came running into another room and shouted to his wife, 'How do you write a letter to a lord'?

What had caused his excitement was listening to a lord (it would be a better story if we knew his name) bemoaning the fact that a local firm was having to import filter cloths for commercial vehicles from overseas despite the fact that (at the time) we had our own cotton industry. My wife's grandfather, who at the time was a bus driver, thought he could do something about this by supplying filter cloths from a local cotton mill in Lancashire. He knew people at the mill and felt sure he could use his contacts and knowledge to good effect. 

He wrote his letter to the lord who agreed to arrange an introduction to the firm looking to purchase the filter cloths. He managed to secure the contract and his business was launched. It became a thriving and respected small family business supplying filter cloths to firms in the U.K. and overseas. It improved the income and quality of life of my wife's grandparents in the latter years of their working life and the business was eventually sold giving them a comfortable retirement.

So that may be a good family story but what are the business lessons to be learned? Well the main one for me that my wife's grandfather didn't just have an idea, he acted on it. He wrote his letter to the lord, used his contacts at the mill and won the contract. Every business starts with a first step towards winning that initial order or making that first sale. Something needs to be done to follow up on that great idea or flash of inspiration. So what will your 'Letter to a lord' be this week?

www.base52.co.uk