I want to tell you here about someone I have known for years. He is an acquaintant of mine. I am not calling him a friend because we are so far apart in our attitudes to life and everything else really, so we keep falling off over anything!

He used to owns a small business , but  before that we used to work together about 10 years ago for a very large investment bank. He was my boss, and was quite a nasty one. You know the kind of bosses who  would time every second you go out for lunch. Count the number of times you went to the toilets. Made you miserable by staring at your screen whenever he was passing by. It was horrible, so I never took any liking to this guy. Anyway, I was working in one of the off-shore branches and it so happens that the branch got shut down because it wasn’t profitable enough.

We were all 20 something and very eager to climb the corporate ladder, but since the place we used to live at the time was very small there weren’t many opportunities. So many of us opened our own businesses, basically doing what we used to do on a consultancy basis.

I moved to London and continued working my way up the corporate ladder in other large corporations. But this guy stayed there and opened his own financial consultancy firm. Initially, he did very well for himself. He got his old connections back and advised his old clients for a couple of years. This got him floating quite nicely, but then there was a serious decline in his business and he was about to go broke.  He failed to recruit new clients, he was running out of money very quickly and had to fire his old friends who worked as his office manager and a fellow consultant. He was there on his own, probably very frustrated and clueless.

Last year I went back there for a short holiday, I was shopping for new sunglasses and when I was about to pay, I looked up the cashier and there he was! embarrassed and smiling. “You haven’t changed a bit” he said.

I felt for the guy, after all, he used to be my ruthless boss and now he is there taking my money while I was shopping for my Gucci’s.  It was early evening, so I waited for his shift to end and we sat down for coffee. I genuinely wanted to know what went wrong.

And! as it turns out, this guy did everything wrong. He made many mistakes that small business owners make, and the inevitable consequences have emerged as expected.  He was so immersed in his work and his clients that he never had the chance to look at the business and where the business was going.  He never even had the time to sit down and think about his business model. What his unique selling point was and how he was going to increase profits and get more clients. He had no online presence at all. There he was trying to run a business and had no website to begin with. Literally!,every mistake in the book! His excuse was…”I never had the time”…

Well, you know what I always say, make the time, automate your work, it will repay itself many times over. Get yourself a professionally designed website. Get yourself noticed. Don’t just expect work to turn up out of the clear blue sky. In nowadays, you really need to have the complete package to succeed. The alternative is just not there if you are working for yourself. There is NO alternative.

With this in mind, we decided at iQ Desk, to offer our readers a complete package of a professionally designed website through our parent company S-Development with the iQ Desk automation software. These package should really give you the edge to compete in the 21st century. We truly want all of you out there to succeed.

You probably know how hard it can be getting new clients and keeping a good relationship with them.  But sometimes you are much better off giving your clients to your worst competition, and this is why…

At the time I was setting up one of my businesses and already had existing clients from years before. I was very stretched , as I just had my first newborn baby boy and I was struggling to juggle between taking care of the clients I had, helping my wife with the baby,and setting up my new business. Needless to mention, I desperately needed more hours in the day and in the night. 

I spoke with my then exhausted wife and asked her for advice, and she, despite being  very tired and half asleep made sense as usual, and asked me to look into the things that rob me of my precious and so little time. That was good advice.  The next morning, I sat down and analysed my time. The cocnlusion was so so clear. There was one client, only one client that was literally robbing me of my time. This specific client was not an email type of client, which is perfectly fine, but each phone call took hours and on top of that, he kept changing his mind over and over again about what he wanted.  So, I spent hours on the phone and then hours making endless changes to what he had originally asked. It was not a one time thing, it was a pattern.

After finishing the job for this client ,I decided not to take a new one and cut the cord with him. I actually realised that this client  was LOSING  me money. I recommeded a competitor of mine to this client explaining that I was no longer taking any new jobs.

The beauty of this was not only did I get my time back, I also let a competitor of mine deal with him now.

I want to tell you about a client of ours, who was so frustrated one day that she nearly pulled her hair off! She manages a very profitable yet a small translation company and one day, she realised she was chasing endless admin chores and never getting to promote the company. Off she went to the most natural space, and googled with the following keywords: 1. Small business software. 2. small business automation. 3. Small business solutions…you get the drift of the search.

Basically, she was looking for a SMALL business software, but almost everything that showed in Google ads was big names…Oracle, IBM, SAP, ERP,Orbit. She kept looking and looking and got so confused she had to stop the search and go home.

When you are a small business owner or a freelancer, you naturally want something quick to fix your problems now. You have no time to waste on learning how to start working with SAP or what ERP is all about. Or, getting to terms with complicated words such as “integrated software collaboration tools”.

Do the big names add to your business the value you actually need? Do you pay a lot more just so you get a very complicated system, you don’t even use half of what it has to offer?

I can tell you from my experience, even huge companies and I mean  huge, are sometimes better off with a simple, easy to use application. In one of the places I used to work , we had a new change manager, he decided that the entire firm should start using one of the big softwares out there and that this will revolutionise the entire business, cut costs, reduce headcount and will basically work wonders.  We were all asked via email to embark on a rigorous training and pass an exam…

Up to that day, we worked on a very efficient, brand-less software that did a GREAT job, and I mean great. Never failed us, didn’t need weeks of training, it was very intuitive to use. We had no problems with it whatsoever. But yet, being on someone payroll you have to oblige.

We went on training via web-casts, training in classes, training in PDF formats, training from experienced colleagues. Training seemed to have landed upon our heads from just about everyone! We wasted so much time training on this software, that we could have finished our day to day work for the entire month.  Now, we indeed started working on it, we had to work through endless functions and endless errors! it seems too complicated to use and very heavy compared with what we actually needed to do. We slowly reverted to using the good old software without anyone knowing just because we wanted to finish our work in time and go home!

Now, you know what happens with big organisation once the money has already been spent? They have to justify the expense somehow, no one will admit to the mistake.  This very expensive software was just laying there on our desktops, totally neglected and ignored eventually.

You probably want to know what happened with this organisation. Only a year after I left this company ,It went bankrupted, completely belly-up. 

Bottom line is  all that glitters is not gold.

I would like to challenge one term I find very annoying, and we keep hearing it again and again especially when it comes to software. The term is “User Friendly”. This basically means that the system is so easy to use, that any child can download it and know instinctively how to use. Now, most people who design software aim to define it as a user friendly system. I ask you dear readers, how many of you purchased or even looked at a system when on the box it said user friendly and once downloaded or installed it, it was anything but?

I have developed a theory my friends, the theory is, because the software developers are most likely IT programmers with many years of experience, and spend most of their free time developing other systems for fun, the system is most likely user friendly for THEM only.

Let me tell you a little story, from my past posts you probably know that I came and had a lucky escape from the corporate arena. Now believe me, when you live in the corporate life, like I did, especially in the field of automation and straight through processing projects like me, you come across many off the shelf solutions to your problems. One day, my manager called me into a room with a glint of joy in his eyes, he said that the solution to all our processing problems was found. Apparently,there was a new software out there that however very very costly, we are talking in the millions here, it was very user friendly and we should be able to be up and running in no time. This way, we could easily outsource pretty much everyone to India… Well you can imagine the horror on my face and the lack of future popularity I was about to face from my soon to be don’t want to ever see your face colleagues.

I was asked to look and test the system first, I spoke with the salespeople and the term that kept coming up again and again was how so User Friendly it was. Now, I consider myself as a quite techie person who occasionally enjoys a little bit of software. But, once I had one look at the help files, I knew it was anything but.. Here there were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them, divided to folders and subfolder and sub-sub folders… Surely, if it was anything near User Friendly it shouldn’t have so many help files???

Well, anyway, I will not tell you the whole story about this particular software, but you to make a long story short, last I heard was that people were still trying to figure out how to use it..

My point is, don’t fall for User Friendly, when you Google software for small businesses, you will see most promise this friendliness, but my friends be ware be very ware. Now, and I am not being salesey here, if you want to see User Friendly go to check out our iQ Desk Demo

In my next post I am going to disclose some of the chaotic life behind a simple root canal… Or, what our dentists needed to learn to keep their business in order.

Yesterday, I was discussing the problems people face when they start working for themselves and how a simple automation solution such as what we have to offer at iQ Desk, managed to help one of my ex-colleagues get a lot more work, simply because he had a lot more time to work ON his business, rather than IN his business. Today, I want to tell you about Susan, now Susan has become one of my really good friends and I think one of the reasons is, that we are just so so different! Well , you know how Google became a verb, to Google something? or to Hoover? well, I believe this Susan could have easily qualified for a verb..to Susan someone should be, to make a complete MESS of something. Now, how did I get to know Susan in the first place?

As I told you before, I used to work in a very large investment bank, so large each employee had an employee ID number of 6 figures ! I was so unhappy at some point of my life, I heard of something called a Life Coach! Great, I said to myself, there is someone who can sort me out and get me on the right track..I Googled “Life Coach” and there she was , sponsored links! of all things. I thought, this can’t be bad, this person is serious enough to pay for her services, and there she was ..Susan.

Well, I don’t know if you know much about life coaches, but basically the idea is, they help you set goals and you follow the goals towards a life target or destiny..well sounds neat huh? We met at a local Starbucks in my part of London, and she started talking about models and goals and what I should be doing, and how EVERYONE, should follow their dreams..I left very motivated..This woman made me scribble down my To-dos, and that was a miracle, as I never hand-write anything! even though, I am a girl, I can’t read my own handwriting, it is just this bad.

I have had three meeting with her, and with each meeting I felt very motivated and ready to conquer the world, this woman was a very good Life Coach, but boy, was she THE worst business woman I have ever seen, she was really lousy in numbers and following up on her clients and meetings, that I WAS NEVER BILLED! NOT EVEN ONCE! Being a generally honest person, I sat down with her and asked her what was going on. She looked at me really really puzzled and she said: ” no, I am pretty sure you are wrong, I am sure you paid me in full”..I smiled and was very tempted to keep silent and let me get away with not paying , after all it can be quite expensive to hire a life coach..but hey I figured this is my life, surely it was worth something? oh..well, I just looked her in the eyes and said: “Susan, believe me dear, I have not paid you a penny, why do you think I did? how do you keep track of the clients and invoicing?” She looked at me confused, what do you mean,she asked. And right there and then, I heard THE most ridiculous answer ANY person who conducts ANY business should ever say..”IT IS ALL IN MY HEAD”.. This woman was probably losing a small fortune, just by the way she was managing her business, or not managing it..

Years have gone by I didn’t need a life coach anymore, but I always thought of her fondly, and I have to be honest, when we developed iQ Desk, I had Susan and other freelancers and business owners like her in mind, honest people who do a great job, but constantly lose money because they can’t , or don’t know how to manage a business in the first place. Once we had the first version of iQ Desk, she was one of the first people I called, I didn’t need a sales pitch, because it so happens, life coaching became such a great success, she was so overwhelmed by clients and money and billing and meetings she actually needed my help.

Today, Susan is one of our clients, I think she stopped losing money, or at least, not losing as much :).

Next time, I want to challenge a phrase people use quite freely, “User Friendly”..or as I put it IT: engineer- with -10 -years experience -user friendly..

From my recent posts, you have probably got the picture by now that my background is automation. I used to work for a very large corporation on the project side, my job was to look at gaps in our processes and boy were there gaps!! and come up with automation solutions for the manual processes. Although this job was probably one of the best schools in the world to learn all about automation, my passion was and still is the small businesses the people who took the initiative, cut the corporate cord and went out on their own.  I have come to know many ex-colleagues who left the corporate life and became freelancers, some went to become freelancer IT consultants, some went to become marketing freelancers, some went to become freelancer project managers . As you probably get the drift, they all took their corporate experience and started working for themselves. The one thing in common was No one has ever looked back…

Now, here we come to the inspiration part, these ex-colleagues of mine, i.e. the new to the market freelancers, were all great friends, we used to go out for a drink occasionally, but since they became freelancers, the ALL started complaining constantly, and they all had the exact same complain! WE DON’T HAVE TIME! I was really puzzled, some of them had only a few clients, so I really couldn’t get why was that, that they didn’t have the time?  As one of them put it, we have to take care of everything now, the clients, the tasks, the phone calls, the invoicing, we basically do several departments used to do for us in the company. and BINGO! having done this automation thing during all my corporate career, I suddenly realised, there wasn’t any reason why we couldn’t do the same for freelancers? Literally build a software from scratch, to automate all the daily to-Dos a freelancer needs to do? And this is what we did. I wouldn’t lie, it took us months to get to the perfect software that answers to what a freelancer needed to do, we went back and forth to the drawing board again and again, added and deleted modules until we felt it was now ready for it’s first test drive..

We gave it to the biggest complainer! Just to stop hearing him constantly moan about his difficult life as a freelancer. Now, don’t get me wrong, this person hated changes and even more hated technology more than anything..so we naturally figured it would be the best test drive we could ever have on the software.

We gave it to him, no charge no obligation, just his honest opinion..and we waited and waited for his comments..but nothing..waited a few more days that turned into weeks and then we called him..Martin? how are you? we asked, I am very very busy he said..Damn..we thought, he obviously hasn’t been using the software at all and we wasted all this time on him..so..we said..you haven’t been using it at all? What do you mean? Martin asked, of course I have, but since I started using it, I got so much work coming I don’t have time to chat or have a drink..

So, we sorted out his work problems..but we still haven’t sorted us his complaints, or managed to go out for a drink!!

Tomorrow, I want to show you the true powers of  iQ Desk, and how it actually transformed the life of a customer of ours, who happens to be a freelancer life coach!.

Yesterday, I told you about a meeting that I attended back then when I was still a hopeful employee in a large corporation. For those of you who have just come across this blog, I will make a long story short by saying that in this very high profile meeting I did the unthinkable and it was to challenge the big executives, which is a complete NoNo in most corporations. My idea to handle high volumes was to automate some of the business, but the executives were all under the agreement that the company should hire more employees instead of automation. In fact, the chairman dismissed the idea completely saying that there was no need to automate anything and everything worked just fine! Well I knew that there were many errors and many problems with all the manual work we had to endure. I even spent nights and weekends along with my other hopeful colleagues to try and cover a fraction of the volumes we had. And guess what? It was only going to get worse much much worse!

The predictions were that volumes were going to double or triple in the next quarter, we were all exhausted by this stage and many people wanted to leave and have a better quality of life for themselves.

Now I am going to tell you what happened next, what made the big executives run like headless chickens one Tuesday morning. So this is what happened….

We had a big client, not only big, but as corporates like to put it , very very Sensitive!! We were all asked to come to a meeting and not disclose the identity of the client, we were asked to give this client the best service we can ever give, treat this client as if our life depended on it.

This client delivered a lot of work on the first day of business with him, we were all so so busy and getting really tired by the end of the day. Remember we were using Word and Excel to document all the transactions? At the end of the day or shall I say late evening, we all went home only to come back the next morning and see all the big executives already sitting in a room with very worried faces!!. Now, you ask what happened?..as faith wanted there was an enormous mess, actually it was one of the worst mistakes ever to have happened and with? you guessed right, with the new super sensitive client. Apparently, one of my colleagues typed in the wrong client details on the word documents and ALL the client’s top secret transactions went out to ANOTHER client..talk about mess, it can’t get bigger than this..

Now, big boys had only one word in their mouths that day, and it was AUTOMATION…

I heard this sentence a few years ago when I was still an employee in a very large corporation. I was sat in a large meeting room, filled with well suited executives. On the meeting agenda was to get suggestions on how the company could cope with higher volumes of transactions. The consensus in the room was that the company needed to hire more employees, train them quickly and get them to turn around the higher volumes.  When the meeting was about to close, I said and I remember my exact words :” Why wont we automate some of the processes, so we will be more efficient and save the new headcount and a lot of time and money?”

There was silence in the room and my direct manager had this look on his face begging me to be quiet, but I kept talking about how easy it was to automate some of the simple daily tasks we had to do on a daily basis, such as To-do lists, sending invoices, clients’ updates and how much time this could save the company. As the employees were using Word and Excel to document all their work and it was all very manual and error prone, I was sure everyone will like the idea and thank me for the enlightenment…..

But guess what? the answer I got from the chairman was :”Why should we automate our business? It seems to work anyway? I didn’t answer, but the realisation came a few days later..

Tomorrow I will discuss why EVERYONE should use business automation and reveal what happened in the company.