What’s the difference between a business and a hobby?

The way I see it, you run a hobby for FUN and a business for PROFIT. Let me ask which you have? Now there are plenty of people who can survive quite well with a hobby but if they think they have a business then they’re fooling themselves. Sadly I think most smaller IT providers delude themselves into thinking they are running a business when they in fact simply enjoy fiddling with the technology. In other words they have a hobby. Like I said, there is nothing wrong with having a hobby but don’t confuse it with a business.

So, if you want to run a business then you must be in the business of making PROFIT. The next question is what can you define as PROFIT? Put simply, it is income less expenses, nothing more. Profit can mean more time for you family, it can mean a better lifestyle but generally the easier measure of profit is in dollar terms. Unless you are generating more INCOME from your business than it is COSTING you then you are not making PROFIT. Take a cold hard look at how many hours you are investing in running your business, are you getting a return for this? If you simply dismiss that as ‘part of the environment’ I’m sorry to tell you that you are engaged in a hobby not a business. A true business person would never dismiss extended hours as ‘part of the environment’, they would be making sure they PROFIT on this time. If you aren’t making PROFIT then you have two choices, change the way that you run your business or get out.

Making PROFIT can require some hard choices at times and means that you always need to remain focused on the goal of making more PROFIT. This doesn’t mean having greater revenue, it doesn’t mean having more customers or more employees, it means GREATER INCOME and LOWER EXPENSES. Again, many people get fooled into think higher revenue means greater PROFIT but is doesn’t. The aim is to make the most INCOME with the least OUTLAY, i.e. the greatest PROFIT.

What’s the first step to generating more PROFIT? Again, simple – measurement. If you don’t know how much you are earning or spending then how are you ever going to determine whether you are making a PROFIT? How does your results compare to last year? Which are you most profitable (again NOT highest revenue) customers? Where are most of your expenses? If you can’t answer these basic questions at any time, then I’m sorry to say you don’t have a business.

If you want to have a business rather than a hobby then you have to focus on PROFIT. This can take some getting used to and can reveal some cold facts that people may have previously chosen to ignore. The first step in focusing on PROFIT is to measure it.

The fact is that the business landscape has changed and tougher times lay ahead. If you want to guaranteed your survival then ask yourself whether you are focused on PROFIT or just getting a buzz from technology?

100,000 views and climbing

I am very proud to announce that my videos on YouTube have now surpassed a total of 100,000 views! Truly amazing I must say as I never thought they would even get past 10,000, but hey I’m happy to be wrong again.

I’m currently working on a new video that will hopefully go up over the weekend. I’m planning to do some SBS2008 videos but I need a 64 bit operating system somewhere so I can run SBS 2008. I’m just scouting for a suitable piece of hardware now that can be dedicated to this. So hopefully in the near future I can start uploading some videos of SBS2008 as well.

Until then I’d like to take this opportunity to thanks all those people who have viewed my online videos, provided feedback and subscribed. It is because of people like you that I’ve been able to achieve this level and I will do my best to keep them coming. Don’t forget to contact me if you have any feedback or requests for content.

Next milestone = 1,000,000 views!

Turning the frown upside down

I’m a ‘glass half empty’ kinda guy. Well really I’m a ‘who the hell made this glass twice as big as it needed to be‘ type of guy but for the purposes of this let’s just stick to the half empty metaphor.

Now the other day I was really pissed orf about something (if you will excuse my French, but I was). Now the rational part of my brain was saying – ‘Look this is a total waste of time, there ain’t anything you can do about the situation so just forget it!‘. However the emotional part of my brain was saying ‘Yes I know this is a waste of time but I am still pissed orf and need to vent this‘. A classic power struggle, which in most cases results in my rational mind simply stepping aside until the emotional part cries itself out feeling pissed orf.

For some reason my rational mind just could put up with the wasted energy on this occasion and decided to find a solution. What it came up with was pretty clever. Now we all know we have negative feelings that do no good but we are human beings and that is just the facts but imagine if you could redirect that negative energy into something positive? Let’s say that the next time you get pissed orf instead of dwelling on the fact you redirect that energy into accomplishing or thinking something positive.

I agree that it isn’t going to work every time but I have been giving it a try of late and am impressed with the results. Firstly, redirection gets my mind away from the thing that is pissing me orf and secondly I feel much better actually accomplishing or thinking about something positive. Every time I feel my emotions about a situation rising up again I redirect that energy to something far more rewarding.

Don’t get me wrong, you just can’t flick a switch and redirect the emotion it takes a bit of practice and patience but I can see the benefits even after a short period of time. I know that I am not always going to succeed in my aim but I think it is good a solution to at least try. Firstly, my rational mind can take the negative energy and put it towards something more useful and my emotion mind can vent all that it wants since it is being used for good and not bad.

That’s the theory anyway.

Awh ma gawd!

Just have a look at what we found when we opened up a prospect’s server recently to take a look:

Notice something outta place? Maybe that hard disk lying on the bottom of the case is a hint? What about the fact that two hard disks actually in the case are disconnected? Now, that’s not all folks. It is an SBS 2003 R2 server with only 1GB of RAM! Apart from SBS 2003 and Anti virus, the server is also running in this 1GB of RAM, a virtual machine that had a linux distro to do the anti-spam (not very well either – hello Intelligent Message Filter).

Strangely enough (well, not really), the old IT person moved interstate and now won’t return any of the client’s phone calls. Strange that eh?

This is the battle we face everyday trying to convince potential customers:

A. All IT companies aren’t trying to rip them off.

B. There is a big difference between IT providers. You get what you pay for basically.

However, I do understand this from a customers point of view. How the hell do they know if an IT person is good or bad? They don’t know IT, that is why they pay someone to do this. It seems today that businesses only understand the difference after they have been burnt! However, it really does give the rest of us that are trying to do the right thing a bad name. Thank goodness that I believe in karma (really nasty payback karma, but karma none the less).

The relationship bank

Now I think this applies as much to personal relationships as it does to business relationships but I’ll examine this in light of a business relationship.

So you “network” with someone new and you exchange business cards and promise to contact each other in the future, as we all have at sometime or other. Now what has really happened is that you have both opened up a “business relationship bank account“. In most cases neither party actually uses it because they go their own separate ways and never talk again (great networking eh?) but let’s say that the parties do want to develop this relationship into something.

So both parties now start conversing, meeting and getting to know each other. In other words both are making deposits into their “relationship bank account” in more or less equal amounts. Now let’s suppose one party needs something from the other party. To do this they must make a withdrawal from the “relationship bank account” but that is no problem since they have plenty of credit built up. Once they have made this withdrawal they will continue to make deposits to pay back this loan and continue improving the health of the account.

In a perfect world this continues on with both parties investing more and more in the relationship and making withdrawals when required. However, as time goes by each party is happy to keep the “relationship bank account” open and making payment because they know they are getting a return on their investment. Neither party’s account is ever in the red and the relationship continues to flourish.

Ah, now to the real world. Typically, these days when someone opens a “relationship bank account” with you in business they want to make withdrawals immediately. They want a line of credit before they have even invested dollar one! Also, in many cases the contributions they make are so small that the other party begins to question whether they are getting taken for a ride. So many people in business want to have a relationship with your business but then either don’t contribute to that relationship or want to start making withdrawals immediately.

If people don’t try and make withdrawals immediately from the account they try and deposit bad cheques. You know this when you hear, “Oh, yes I’ll do that and get back to you” or “Let me arrange something and let you know”. What happens? You hear nothing. These people aren’t interested in making “real” deposits into the account. Clearly they don’t see any value in holding up their end of the bargain so they simple deposit bad cheques that that are worthless but are easy to write. Come on, if you don’t want to contribute to our “relationship bank account” just say so and we’ll go out separate ways.

Unfortunately, many people in these sorts of relationships don’t look at the relationship with a “banker’s eye”. By that I mean they need to assess whether the partnership they have formed is actually providing them value. If they are providing credit to the other party and making the bulk of the investments in the relationship are they getting a good return? At some point they should say, look this isn’t working out so either you invest more in our mutual “relationship bank account” (with interest and penalty fees for being a fathead) or I’m closing the account.

Sadly, most “business relationship bank accounts” you have should be closed if you examine them pragmatically but for “emotional” reasons people don’t. If you feel you are getting the short end of the straw somewhere, examine the relationship in terms of an investment. Are you getting good returns? Are you likely to get good returns in the future? If not, cut you losses and invest elsewhere because relationships of all forms are a two way street!

Planning

Ask a room of people who would like to make $1 million dollars and you’ll probably find that most hands are high in the air. Now ask, of those people with their hands up to leave them up if they ACTUALLY have a plan to make $1 million dollars? I will bet that almost every hand in the room will drop.

Interesting isn’t it? The gulf between desire and achievement is very wide for most people. Most seem happy to wish, wish, wish for something, hoping with blind luck that they’ll achieve their goals. There is a chance that they will, don’t get me wrong, but generally that chance is so slim that it isn’t worth contemplating but there still is a CHANCE. So how do you increase the odds of achieving something you desire? Planning.

If you want to get somewhere what do you need? Two things. One, you need to know where you currently are and two, you need to know how to get where you want to go. Planning helps you work out how to get where you want to go. Planning is really not of benefit once you are in motion it needs to be done before you act. Now, I’m not saying that you won’t have to adjust your plans along the path to your goals but planning involves investment up front before committing resources towards the goal.

Planning may also help you realize that perhaps the goal that you thought you wanted is not really what you wanted after all. Smart people and businesses plan. Why? Simple, they want to increase their chances of success. You can never guarantee success in this life as luck does play a part but planning greatly improves your odds so the chances of failure are almost minimal.

If it is so simple why doesn’t everybody do it, you may well ask. Again, simple. Planning requires work, effort, sweat, investment, etc prior to any result. In today’s society we have brainwashed into the concept of have now, pay later. That works for a while but sooner or later the bills come in (sorta sounds like the current financial mess the world is in at the moment eh?). I am always surprised by the number of people I know who live by the seat of their pants. Many seem to be able to skate by but I know that sooner or later there is bus with their name on it coming around the corner.

Sure planning does involve work up front but it is a little like financial interest, you gotta invest before you can get paid any interest don’t you? The more you invest the bigger the payoff becomes right? Problem is most people want to start drawing on their interest BEFORE they have even invested a dollar. Come on, get real. Don’t waste your time telling me you’re going to be a millionaire unless you are going to tell me how you are planning to do it. Anyone can claim they are going to be a millionaire, very few can actually back it up with a plan!

80,000 views and beyond

Well this week my YouTube videos have exceeded 80,000 total views. Quite a milestone I think. In all honesty, when I started doing them almost 2 years ago I did it mainly for client reference. It is much easier to point a customer to a video on how to reboot an SBS 2003 server than it is to send them a document or try and explain it over the phone. Since video files are typically large and it is better if they are also streamed I decided that hosting them on YouTube was the optimal option since there was no infrastructure cost and they would always be available and delivered quickly to all customers.

Before long I was starting to receive emails and comments on YouTube that other people were not only watching the videos but that they also found them useful! Wow, the Internet is an amazing place I thought. Inspired by this feedback I created more videos that I though would be of benefit. As the number of videos I uploaded started to grow I began to keep track of their weekly performance via the KPI webpart on my public Sharepoint site (http://supportweb.ciaops.net.au). Each week I track figures like total views, average views, subscribers and so on. Each week I am pleased to say that all these KPI’s have been increasing. Although I doubt they will continue on this path in the long run, it does provide some confirmation that people are benefiting in some way from what is produced.

So now it is on towards the 100,000 views mark. Unfortunately, YouTube currently has a limitation of only 10 minutes and thus it is becoming harder and harder to squeeze content into this time frame. I did apply to YouTube to have this limit increased but they said that what I present doesn’t meet their criteria to warrant an upgrade. My guess is that I need thousand’s of subscribers not hundreds. I know there are other mediums that allow videos of greater length but at the moment YouTube is the premier portal for video broadcasting technology so I’ll stay there. Hopefully, one day I’ll be able to uploads of greater length allowing me to add deeper content and detail on what I present but for the moment I do what I can in the time frame provided.

So to all those who have subscribed and all those that continue to watch what I have produced – thank you.

The difference between IT and real people?

One simple word “No”. Seems that every time you talk to someone in IT they are always saying “no” or being negative. What do I mean? I was talking to a friend who is a developer and I mentioned that Picasa is not only free and a great way to organize your images BUT also provides online storage. Why the hell would you store those bulky pictures on your own equipment when you can get someone else to do it? I asked.

The immediate reaction to my suggestion was “What about this …” and “What about that…”. Come on man, enough with the negative waves dude! But afterwards it got me to thinking about how negative IT people can be. They always seem to be raising issues, always saying that something like that isn’t secure and telling you how much trouble it is. Most users can’t understand why something simple can’t easily be added to a program. Truth be told that in the IT business the simple things are usually the hardest to implement. So any idea a user may suggest will be seen by an IT person as simply more work. It may seem simple to the real person but only an IT person truly understands what’s involved.

This leads me to believe that these days “real” people are simply bypassing IT people and forging ahead with what they want to do regardless of the consequences. They would say,”I want to listen to music so I’ll download and install iTunes” or “I want to communicate with others, so I’ll access facebook” and so on. Because the Internet not only allows you to access information quickly but also to find it quickly, those people who think they understand the technology are quickly being bypassed by people “who just can’t wait”.

Will real people and IT people ever see eye to eye? I doubt it. Why? Simple, the Internet is creating a level playing field where people with very little knowledge can do stuff that used to take heap of knowledge. If you are an IT person who reckons you know a lot, consider how many places there are on the Internet that give more detail about anything you care to name. Now consider how fast this amount of information is growing. So no longer do I need the knowledge, I simply need to know how to find it. Yes?