Tips and Tools – Page 132 – Business Plus Baby

September 21, 2015

How to upcycle office furniture

Tired of your old, lifeless, office furniture? Instead of emptying your wallet by purchasing new pieces of furniture, upcycle your old pieces and put the ‘spark’ back into the office.

All you need to get started is permission from your boss – unless you bought your own office furniture, in which case, work away!

Wheels of Fortune
Office chairs often have wheels to allow easy movement but these wheels can become less ‘productive’ over time, scuffing around the edges and becoming stiffer by the day. Tente UK has every possible wheel that you could wish for to upcycle your office swivel chair. Now you can glide across the room on your lunch break as though the office was your stage.

Soft Furniture
If you want to add a splash of colour to your soft office furniture, consider using appropriate fabric paint to liven things up. If you’re lucky enough to have cushions in your office, why not personalise these by adding some decorative items such as buttons or pockets to store USB pens and other smaller office supplies? The same type of thing can be done in the cafeteria with chairs and sofas.

Office Desk
Are you sick of your old plain office desk? Bring some life into the office by reinventing an old favourite. There are many ways to do this, the most common being replacing the top surface of the desk completely or by changing it up a bit. According to www.diynetwork.com fabric accents and a few coats of paint are all you need to create a brand new desk workspace with unexpected patterns and textures.

Expanded Bookshelf
If you have a large or small bookshelf in your office, or any other type of ‘shelf arrangement’ and need some extra space to hold office files and folders, consider adding additional shelving to the original bookcase. You could even transform objects into extra shelving for the office. For example, Bored Panda has taken an old ladder and displayed it horizontally across the wall to act as a bookshelf.

Chalkboard Reminders
Sometimes it can be hard to keep up with everyday work tasks which is why hanging up an old chalkboard will provide you with a place to jot down all your daily tasks, goals and other notes. You can frame the board with a colourful wooden frame to add a bit more life into it. You can also do this with a white board if chalk proves to be a little bit too messy in the office.

Lighting
You can always spruce up an old lampshade or make a completely new one from scratch. You can use beer bottles, for instance, and combine them together to create a rustic styled chandelier or get even more creative and start thinking about new ways in which you can create fancy new lampshades for your office. You could paper mache the base of the lamp using old comic book strips to give the room an edge and a more youthful appearance.

September 9, 2015

Can you make a full time income from investing?

Something a lot of people wonder, is whether they can afford to quit their 9-5 job in order to invest full time. They want to trade stocks and make investments, and they want to get rich from it. However, it takes a lot of work, and even then you might not make a full time income. Although, people have done it before. Let’s take a look at the things that will leave you more likely to make a full time income from investing:

You Need to Do it for the Right Reasons

First of all, if you want to make a full time income from investing then you need to be sure you’re doing it for the right reasons. Doing it for the wrong reasons could end in disaster. People who make the most money from investing absolutely love it and have a passion for it! If you’re simply getting involved in investing because you don’t want a regular 9-5 job, you should probably reconsider. Making investments in still advised, but you probably shouldn’t try to make it your main career focus. It doesn’t always work for people.

Be Prepared to Treat it Like a Business

So, you love investing; you need to treat it like a business in order for it to work. When you’ve been doing it for a long time, you can afford to loosen the reigns a little bit and spend only a small amount of time on it per day. However, to start, you’ll need to treat it like your own little business venture.

Be Prepared to Take Risks

The problem with a lot of investors is that they don’t want to take any risks. They want to play it safe and still make a ton of money while not really doing anything. This probably isn’t going to happen! The richest, most satisfied investors all took a few risks to get to where they wanted to be. You don’t need to take any large risks straight away; you should get yourself used to investing first. Invest in the Morgan Silver Dollar, or something you’re really interested in and see how you feel. When you’re used to investing, you can then take some calculated risks and see if they pay off. What is life without taking a few risks?

Speak to People Who Know What They’re Talking About

It always helps to speak to people who know what they’re talking about. Get as much information as you can from seasoned investors and you’ll be more likely to succeed.

Have a Diverse Portfolio

A diverse portfolio is a must if you want to get anywhere with your investments. Investing in one thing is a big risk in itself, so be sensible and find multiple channels to invest your money.

Play the Long Game

Be prepared to play the long game. You won’t get rich in a few months or even a few years. However, by following the rest of the tips in this guide, you could end up with a substantial return on your investments.

Good luck!

Photo credit: Pictures of Money

September 3, 2015September 3, 2015

Watertight Marketing: Book review

Did you know it’s Small Business Advice Week (31st Aug – 6th September)? The aim is to help the UKs 4.5 million SMEs (small and medium employers) thrive in what can still be tough times for many.

So with this in mind, I thought I’d tell you about the book I’m reading right now, which is Watertight Marketing by Bryony Thomas.

First of all, it’s a really excellent book. And if you’re thinking it might cover stuff about sales funnels that you’ve heard before, then you’re in for a nice surprise!

A central theme in this book is to give your prospects and customers exactly the information they want, when they want it. And this book really does practice what it preaches in that it’s taken what could be rather dry business theory and made it speak to busy small business owners. It does cover how to set up a sales and marketing system that works in the long term – for both your business and your customers – that is built on solid relationships. But it uses lots of quick-to-understand concepts (buckets, funnels and taps) and looks at plugging the gaps we all have in our marketing systems.

One concept that really grabbed me was the logic sandwich. If you’re wondering whether to sell using facts or emotions, this could be just what you need. Because when people are first looking at your products, they need an emotional approach. Then they’ll want to know all the facts and figures about your product – that’s the logically part. Finally, when they are just about ready to buy they’ll switch back to using their emotions again. And those are the three layers of the sandwich. If you get this wrong, you can end up by hitting them with the facts too early and scaring them off, for example.

One thing that many small business owners are afraid of is being too ‘salesy’. Watertight Marketing shows you that a more subtle approach that goes at your prospect’s own pace is much more effective in the long run than selling fast and hard. That’s a big relief for those of us who aren’t natural sales people!

The book is very practical, and you can download workbooks from the website given in the book to make it easier to implement what you learn as you go along. I haven’t had a chance to do that just yet but I definitely will.

So I recommend you grab yourself a copy of this book!

September 2, 2015

Alternative options for businesses low on space

As your business goes from a start up to a success, you will probably find your space that was once half empty, is now bursting at the seams with staff, products and equipment.

But, just because your business is starting to succeed, doesn’t necessarily mean that moving to bigger offices or a space with a warehouse is an option.

This may be for financial reasons or because the space simply isn’t available – or both! Central London office space availability, for example, has fallen to its lowest rate in 14 years according to CBRE.

The first quarter of this year saw a 3% drop in office availability to 10.8million square foot, alongside the take-up of 3.1 million square foot. This high take-up and low availability is of course now causing a spike in rent as a result!

So, when you find yourself in this situation, how do you find the space?

Storage

If your business is selling a product, a rise in sales has probably resulted in a lack of space that has come from the rising stock, you originally kept in a storeroom out the back.

You now have so much that a warehouse to store it all in seems to be your only option. But after purchasing a warehouse, you would then require extra staff to work in it, as well as other costs and inconveniences. Have you thought about using self-storage instead?

Somewhere such as Kelly’s Mobile Self Storage will keep your items secure and allow 24/7 access, so you could see it as your temporary warehouse space. If at a later date a warehouse is the right thing for your business, your storage pod can be delivered directly to the door!

Think outside the box for meetings

Do you have a lack of meeting space? Or could the meeting rooms you do have be put to better use, as they are only used about 10% of the time? Then you need to think outside the box when it comes to meetings. You could, for example, hire a meeting room, or hold a conference Skype call if attendees of the meeting are a distance away.

Share/temporary office space

Maybe your lack of space is from a growing workforce. Your original small team has grown significantly and with that comes desks, IT equipment and the rest! So where do you put everyone? A temporary office would provide you with the space that you need, without getting tied into a long-term contract you can’t afford. Another option is to share office space. Team up with another company that require more room themselves or haven’t filled their office, and take advantage of that unused space.

Hot desking

An option, that keeps all your staff in one building, is hot desking. So rather than all members of staff having there own desk, they find an empty desk, set it up for the day and clear away in the evening. Hot desking can cut the running costs of an office by up to 30% and will of course provide you with much needed space, by cutting down on the number of desks that you require.

August 31, 2015

The types of workers who should use smartphones (Hint: it’s all of them)

The work phone is no longer exclusively for the executive, and it hasn’t been since 2007 with the birth of the first iPhone. This piece of technology changed business (and most notably small business) forever.

Fast forward to 2015. We now have the iPhone 6, a smartphone that makes the original look like an old Nokia. But all the bells and whistles aside, the one thing that makes the smartphone more impactful on small business than anything else is its access. It doesn’t matter if they’re a billionaire or lower class, almost anyone can own the world’s best cellphones. This means small businesses have an even playing field with major corporations when it comes to mobile technology.

So who should carry smartphones for work? The answer is everyone. The only aspect that will change is how they use them.

The Outdoor Labourer

Remember Nextel? Before it was acquired by Sprint, the cellphone manufacturer made two-way capable phones that acted like walkie-talkies over a mobile network to save on precious minutes (before they were unlimited). While the brand didn’t last, the phones were popular among blue-collar workers.

Now, the Voxer app has taken over this functionality. It’s a free two-way radio app for iPhone and Android that lets users send unlimited messages back and forth, just like a walkie-talkie. As more blue-collar workers carry cellphones, this has become a useful app while they’re on the job.

The Desk Jockey

The smartphone was seemingly invented for the desk jockey. It has everything he or she could ever need — web, email, calendar, task manager and much, much more. But where the smartphone is really shining for the master of the cubicle is in time management apps. When working a 9 to 5 job, every minute matters to have the most productive day possible. Hours is an elegant, simple-to-use iPhone app that tracks every minute of the day so workers can accomplish as much as possible in an eight-hour window.

The Personal Assistant

When it comes to managing someone else’s life, the native calendar app that comes with iPhone and Android just won’t do. Personal assistants need to organize everything about their boss’ life — where to go, when to be there, who to meet with, what to talk about and so on. The native calendar app for iPhone has come a long way since 2007, but there are better third-party options available.

Sunrise Calendar is consistently praised as the best option for the iPhone. It has all the bells and whistles of the native app as well as a beautiful UI and integration with popular services, such as Dropbox and Evernote. And when Microsoft acquired Sunrise in early 2015, it was just another sign that the app will get even more support and features in the future.

In addition to a sophisticated calendar, Wunderlist is another app that outdoes the native task manager (which is really nothing more than a basic list and reminders app). Wunderlist’s handiest feature is the ability to add reminders using basic language. Type “Boss meets with David tomorrow for lunch at Johnny’s Restaurant,” and the app adds the event, time and location, using only the info from that single phrase. While the personal assistant uses dozens of apps to manage the boss’ time, none get more use than the two listed above.