Working From Home Advice

[wynn]

How much more would it be to rent a house in the same or a more suitable area, a house that offers more of what you need.

Perhaps a smaller house with a roomy granny flat, you can run the business from the flat while you stay in the house to start then move into and stay in the flat and run the business from the house when you need the space.

By the time you need more space in the house you will probably be in a financial position to buy and renovate the perfect property.

[iLLuDeano]

Good point. The flat we stay in atm we don't pay for since it was given to us as a gift from our parents. Renting a house in my area,,, mmm, id say about R12000+- a month, that is my guess. I will go find out tho, you have a good point Wynn, thanx.

[adrianh]

A lady friend of ours runs a hair dressing salon from home. She has a nice client base and earns a good income. One of the big issues with working from home is that your clients get to see your lifestyle. Most of my clients are average people like ourselves who work from home themselves but some have a lot to say about our house looking like a workshop. I don't really care because the clients buy our products and services and not anything else but I do think that if you are trading in the "arty" industries then you will be judged on appearance.

[pmbguy]

Adrian why dont you build a wood wendy house. I helped a friend put one up in two days. He paid about 30k if I remember correctly. But spent extra on insulation and air conditioning. Later he attached beautiful wood cladding on the front face so it does not look like a toy house. This way you can get those dam machines of yours out the lounge.

[adrianh]

I've already got 2 wood Wendy houses up. They are both full.

I'm closing the shop as of today. I've spread myself too thin and I do not have enough cash to put in enough stock to create enough turnover. Both lasers are now running 24/7 at the house and my builders work at the house anyway. We didn't make an emotional decision, its pure economics. The damn thing just wastes too much time and energy which can be better spent finding more big customers so that I can buy more lasers.

[pmbguy]

Hey sorry to hear you closed the shop Adrian, but you are fully set up at the house so I guess its business as usual. At least you have the clarity of mind not to keep pushing at it when it was not working out. Some people will get so emotionally attached that they lose sight of the big picture and loose everything in the process.

Do you place your products on consignment by craft shops around CT? It seems that it would be rather easy for you to partner with various craft shops where they advertise your products and services.


I partner with various IT shops where they advertise “printer repair” and outsource all the work to me. They pay for the advertising and do lots of the leg work. For their part they get 20-35% of the labour charge for each machine. The first IT shop I did this deal with I was stupid and said 50% just to get the deal, but after that I learnt to play hardball. I get about half of my work this way. I basically tap their client base with little effort from my side.
These 10 machines I got today to repair over the weekend come from one of these IT shops – from a government department I would not otherwise have access to.


So it looks like both of us will be fondling machines all night long

[adrianh]

I'm not fazed about the shop, it's all part of the great experiment. If I had a business-minded / admin / prioritize etc. partner we would be making lots of money. I am just too scatter brained. I can make stuff etc. but keeping an eye on everything that goes on in business is just not my thing. The only answer is for me to focus on a handful of customers and simply not allow myself to become distracted. The nice thing about the lasers is that they are extremely simple to operate and all that one needs to do is to keep them fed with materials. I spent the afternoon running the two lasers on my own and I can do it no problem. It's just like minding large printers. I'm going to be doing vinyl cutting and pressing T-shirts and stuff tomorrow and the nice thing is of course that when all the machines are at the house I can do all of it simultaneously. Some of the machines were at the shop before and that created a serious problem.

Advertising at the IT shops for you is like me advertising at the local tertiary institutions and stationary suppliers. I've always shied away from it because the one laser was always fully utilized. I never wanted to get more work for the machine because we could already not cope. I do think though that the time has come to start marketing.

Fondling machines all night, that's about right. The new laser is still a bit out of alignment so that needs to get sorted. I spent a couple of hours today servicing it, I don't think the previous owner ever cleaned the linear rails, let alone oiled the bearings. Its amazing that somebody would allow a linear rail to become grimy brown from rust. A bit of Q20 & 1200 grit sandpaper goes a long way. I also replaced the X axis rail and bearing yesterday. The machine just needs a bit more TLC and it will be humming along nicely. Once its nicely aligned it will be put to work again till about 11....along with its buddy..

The joys of being a techie small business... aye well, I enjoy keeping company with my machines!

[pmbguy]

You know Adrian if I had a shop in town I would either only get 50% of my work done or I would live there. I find it hugely beneficial to have my business here in the yard. I can work all night if I have to. I have been trying a few apprentices over the last few years but I have had lots of problems, most of the young chaps that I tried out don’t know what hard work is, or they just break everything or both. I often have to spend the entire next day fixing their stuff ups. I do understand it is a big learning curb and I also went through the same struggle so I do understand, but its hell frustrating at times. I do get a qualified guy in every now and then when I get big orders, but I still prefer doing all the work myself. I don’t know if that’s because of greed or stupidity. It’s just that I know I can do all the work even if I have to work late, which I enjoy anyway.

I generally use Saito all purpose oil and silicone oil, but if I have something that is really rusted up I spray the one and only WB40, that stuff will free anything. I once repaired an OKI where the client poured cooking oil all over the machine, so much so that it ran all over the main board which fried it.

[adrianh]

I find that I get very little real work done when I am at the shop. There are often people coming in who just want to talk rubbish. I can't say to the people "look, you're wasting my time and I've got work to do so p1$$ off" you just stand around and act all interested. Of course there are also the really interesting people who you end having a genuine conversation with.

Although staff is a problem I am happy with the guys that I now have. They know what they're doing and they get on with it.

Do you get to deal with dot matrix printers at all?

[pmbguy]

Do you get to deal with dot matrix printers at all?

Yes I do what problem do you have?

[pmbguy]

Jeeez Adrian your dot matrix printer problem can’t be that bad unless you logged off because you have an OKI 3320 open and you touched the power supply..zzzBA.. knocking the PC of the desk and then you fell into the fetal position with receded balls

[adrianh]

I had to go to sleep...Back at it though. No, I'm just interested to know because the machines just seem to be rarely used these days.

What are the most common problems you encounter with printers? What about maintenance, I don't think anybody ever bothers to give the insides of the machines a clean now and then.

[pmbguy]

Dot Matrix is a very old technology, but it is still is use because it is still the cheapest way to print in duplicate.

The most common problem I would say is paper feeding (jams) which is caused mostly by dust, paper fluff and toner that make the rollers slide on the paper causing miss-feeds and jams (rollers might be worn – needs replacement). Dusty sensors, faulty cartridges, fuser unit failure. Dust on the optics and laser unit. With inkjets it’s mostly faulty printheads or no lubrication on the bar and dust on the rollers (miss feeds, jams). This would basically cover about 75% of all problems, which a normal service would remedy.

Usually people don’t bother about giving the insides a clean. As a rule of thumb you should have you printer serviced about every 6months. A machine that has a very low volume of work may only need a service after 2 years but getting it serviced will prolong the life of the machine and maintain a good quality of print. A printer will usually be very happy with you if you blow out the dust now and then.

[pmbguy]

Do as I say and not as I do. Boundaries – I have clients who phone me on a Sunday to bring a printer in, I never say no to work and I will bend backwards to get business, BUT trust me this causes problems. My wife absolutely hates it. For example I was meant to go to a family braai today, but I have a client coming in this afternoon so I probably won’t be joining them. The client desperately requested it to be done today and I will comply with their request. It’s not unusual for me to get a call at 5am in the morning from a farmer coming into town. I even get calls at night, my phone rings all the time. Its not that I am a softy, quite the opposite, but I want the business I want to make the dollar.

I can’t imagine carrying on in this manner forever, my family suffers as a consequence. So I will have to make some changes and set boundaries for myself and my clients. Once I have a permanent qualified technician in place things will settle down. But I fear that I might just take on more work anyway...oh dear

[Dave A]

I can’t imagine carrying on in this manner forever, my family suffers as a consequence. So I will have to make some changes and set boundaries for myself and my clients. Once I have a permanent qualified technician in place things will settle down. But I fear that I might just take on more work anyway...oh dear

Perhaps I need to relate the flip side of my "working from home" experience, which might be food for thought.

While I was a one man business, working from home was the obvious way to go.

Then the operation grew to four in the business. And it was still OK, but it did need a property that could allow a clear separation of space between home and business.

When I added the electrical side, (that took us to 8 in the business - 6 field staff, one admin and one sales rep) we were right on the ragged edge of what the property I was in could bear. The choice was move to a much bigger residential property more suited to this duality of purpose, or the business had to move out.

I went for the business moving out into proper business premises - driven more by a desire to tweak the culture of the operation than the pursuit of physical space.

And it did tweak the culture of the business. I saw it as a transition point in the growth line of the business, and indeed it was. We were no longer a pretty successful "home business" - we were now a business operation to be taken seriously.

It's hard to describe in words this change in culture.
About the best way I can describe it is to say it changed from a "full time hobby" that happened to pay all the bills and yield up some spare change, to the way we were all going to realise a much bigger future.
You could literally see everyone in the organisation puff up and become more professional.
The structure and interactions became more formal.
Everyone got more mission driven.

To some, much of that may look like a step backward in terms of the culture of a business, so I must hasten to add -
We didn't lose the camaraderie we had in place when working from home - we gained a whole new layer of professionalism on top of that layer of camaraderie.

I had better also say I'm certainly not trying to be disparaging of the home business. They can be, and often are, really effective operations. And it's a great way to start a business where reducing risk and minimising overheads is just so important. However, there comes a point where trying to keep it in the home is actually stifling your potential to realise more.

Certainly, "moving out of home" is not a decision to be taken lightly, and I urge anyone contemplating doing it - don't do it for the wrong reasons (particularly false pride / ego or any kind of notion it's a magical solution to achieving a bigger operation - it isn't, not on its own). And it certainly adds a big chunk to the overheads.

But there are moments when it is the right thing to do.