The website www.hellocleaner.com.au allows households to find a cleaner with minimum fuss. Cleaners pay a small fee to advertise their services and potential customers pay a small fee to advertise the type of cleaning work they want done and the amount they are prepared to pay. Confidentiality is important and only registered members are provided details if there is a potential match.

I interviewed them about what the first couple of years has been like and what they learnt along the way.

Getting Started – It Always Takes Longer than Planned

In 2008 they started the process of building their website. They received many quotes in the $20,000 to $30,000 range but eventually found a local designer who would build a website for around $5,000. Lesson number one says Rod, you must do your research and keep talking to people, don’t just accept the first quote that comes your way.

It took about 12 months to get the website up and running mainly due to Rod having to spend so much time at sea. On the 16^th September 2009 Hello Cleaner was launched. They made a few thousand dollars to start with but became frustrated when their dreams of quickly expanding the business around Australia and then overseas didn’t happen.

They had a “loose sort of business plan” says Rod and no financial model that clearly outlined the sort of revenue they needed to run and grow the business. After some initial success with their marketing, things started to slow down and although they were spending a lot of money on advertising, the results just weren’t there.

Getting Some Help

Neither Rod nor Chantelle have any formal business education and they realised this was really holding them back. They didn’t know who to talk to or where to go for information so they started to look around for some help. They couldn’t afford the services of a business coach which can be up to $2500 per month so after some research they purchased the Your Business Success program that comes with support of an experienced business coach, Owen Joyce.

Getting Some Focus

Since they started improving their business knowledge and skills, Rod and Chantelle have made some major changes to the business which they would never have done without help. One of the first things Joyce had them do was develop a Financial Model for their business using a template set up in Excel. Rod and Chantelle could then easily work out what sales they needed to break even and then make a profit.

From their Financial Model, they updated their original business plan and made more concrete strategies and action plans. The strategy they decided to pursue first was to just focus on getting the model to work in Sydney first, then NSW, before expanding to Australia and taking on the rest of the world. This decision has taken a lot of pressure of them both and given them more focus.

Rod says that he also now has a better understanding of the capital they need to take the business to the next level and how to present their business to potential investors in the not too distant future.

Getting Your Marketing Right

The focus for the Hello Cleaner team over the next few months is getting their marketing right. “Before you know it $12,000 has gone out the door and you are wondering what happened” says Rod. They have tried a lot of marketing initiatives but didn’t measure the success rates of each activity closely enough and they realise they need to be more targeted. Rod says it is daunting looking at all the options like Google Adwords, SEO, Facebook, Twitter, local newspaper advertising, Yellow Pages, public relations etc. They now have a more focused approach and understand what they need to do to get their marketing right.

Business Tips for Budding Entrepreneurs

It has been a tough couple of years but on the way they have learnt a lot. Rod’s words or advice for other budding internet entrepreneurs are:

1. Research, research, research. Find out who is doing what on line and work out a business that is either totally new or “edgy” – you need to be offering something different.
2. Focus on your advertising from the beginning, measure the results of everything you do and be prepared to change or dump what isn’t working.
3. Have an understanding of the capital required to give your new business a good chance of success.
4. Be prepared to ask for help from experienced business advisers.

How the Your Business Success Program Helped Us.

I asked Rod and Chantelle about what they got out of the YBS Program to date. They said they have completed the watching the four discs and workbook in Volume One – Marketing and Winning New customers.

Rod said that “the beauty of all the material is that we can work at a rate that suits our time constraints and business progress which is great!”

Rod emailed me a list of the min things that he has found useful so far:

Disc 1: Building Your Brand

Have a Unique point of Difference

• Getting the message across that our business is unique in the market and the importance of getting that message out there.
• Plan, Do, Check action.

Protecting your Brand

• How we use our Trademark
• Ensure we use the same font, colour and logo every time.

Funding Asset Growth

• The importance of looking for investors or a bank instead of funding the business with our own money.
• Draw a wage and implement it in your business plan, this will be important in the future.

Disc 2: Promoting Your Business

Word of Mouth

• Get the message out there.
• Don’t take no for an answer!

Advertising Options

• Implement a long term advertising plan. (Yearly)
• Keep track of all account enquiries.
• Is the enquiry new or referred?
• How did the potential customer find us?

Newspaper Advertising

• Keep using the same ad layout, logo, colour, font etc…
• Ensure the headline creates impact.
• Clear images and messages attract customers.
• Aim the advertisement at one person not a collective group of people.

Tracking Results

• The use of Yellow advertising to track results of advertising campaigns
• Provide effective design of advertisement.

Disc 3 – Power Networking

Press Releases

• The benefits of press releases.
• Be open to suggestions.
• Don’t be afraid to change.
• Meet above and beyond people’s expectations.

Live Marketing

• The use of conventions to showcase your business.

A Business Quickie

• Know your buyer.
• Follow up enquires.
• Understand customer needs and expectations.
• Use vital feedback to increase or change your product.

Updating the Plan

• Update the business plan yearly.

Disc 4

Marketing Plan

• Have an objective.

Strengths and Weaknesses

• SWOT process incorporated into your business plan.

Your feedback.

What are the two or three key things you think people need to get right when starting a business?

Written by Andrew Vincent, Business Coach, Your Business Success

The first reason I think is that people feel like as long as they stay in it they haven’t failed. We’ve spoken to business owners that are unhappy, poor, working around the clock and their families are miserable. They’ve been doing this for 5,10,15 years. But at least they haven’t failed right! If you have tried everything (truly tried everything) and your business is not working, wouldn’t you be better to redesign your model or go and do something else? The question is have you really tried everything? Do you even know what you should be trying? The solution: Face the facts head on and either try something new or look for another opportunity.

The second reason I think is that people wait for some divine intervention. We often hear people say “We’ll wait until next year and see what happens” or “Things will be better next year”. If you wait and see what happens, nothing will happen. You need to make things happen. The same business owners look for overnight, magic-wand solutions to their business issues. There is no such thing. The solution: Act or be acted upon.

The third reason. We often hear people blame their issues on the environment, the economy, their staff, their spouse, lack of time or money, the elections, their customers, someone from their past or some other external factor. The big problem in thinking this way is that you are essentially admitting that you yourself have no control over what happens to your business and therefore what happens to you. I’m not suggesting these things don’t have an effect but you should always accept responsibility for everything, control what you can control and make decisions accordingly. The solution: Don’t make excuses and take responsibility. Control what you can.

I think the fourth reason is because there is no real plan. There is no vision of what the business should look like when it is successful. Imagine for a second what your offices, your staff, your bank account, your customer base and your own personal lifestyle would need to look like in order for you to think “I’ve done it.. my business is a success”.  Without some sort of an indicator a business will plod along and never really get anywhere. The solution: Make sure you know where you are headed. If you can’t get there consider if you would be better to look at other opportunities.

Finally, I think there is a lack of innovation. I spoke to a business owner recently who owned a ‘run of the mill’ type of business with lots of competition. She was wondering why she couldn’t get her business to make millions of dollars. If a business does what all of its competitors do, charge the same prices, offer the same products or services, is not innovative in its products/services or marketing how can it become really successful. Innovation doesn’t happen overnight and that’s part of the problem. Have you ever had a headache when you tried to come up with a solution to an issue? The headache is because you are missing some information and your brain is going round in circles. The solution: Learn more and look for unique opportunities. Be patient.

On a positive note, we’re proud to announce that Marnie Douglas who we told you about a few weeks ago won the NSW Telstra Womens Business Award for Innovation. I’m  very proud to have played a small part in this story. Talk about having a vision, taking action , being responsible for her own business and being innovative! 5 years ago Marnie’s business was one of 168 physiotherapy practices in Sydney CBD. Now Marnie is selling a one of a kind software solution (which she owns) to national and multinational blue chip clients. Marnie is evidence that following the rules does work!

Written by Owen Joyce Business Coach with Your Business Success.

We often find that business owners continue along the path that they set out on even though years later they might be miserable, getting nowhere and making little or no money. It’s vitally important to get the ‘business model’ that you follow correct as early as you can.

I spoke to someone before Christmas who described himself as a ‘busy fool’ which I thought was a great expression. He elaborated by saying that he was busy all the time but wasn’t getting anywhere, had no exciting prospects to speak of and his business was barely breaking even. These are just a few signs that your business model is not working properly.

Here are the reasons why I think business owners sometimes get caught in this trap:

• They often want the grand plan to unfold overnight and when it doesn’t they lose patience and motivation.
• There’s often a sense of being trapped; they can’t stop what they are doing otherwise the money will stop and they wouldn’t survive for more than a month.
• They avoid the things they don’t like doing mainly marketing, sales, debt collection, budgeting or managing. These things require them to be out in front of others or focusing on areas they are not strong in when they’d much rather be doing things they like.  
• They don’t do a good enough job measuring what’s happening in their business – targets, staff performance and marketing effectiveness which leaves them ‘flying blind’.
• They don’t recognise that their own skills and knowledge are a big part of being successful and are often missing key pieces of information.  
• They wait for opportunities to come to them rather than go after opportunities. They don’t realise that unless they make something happen, nothing will happen and they often depend on ‘low hanging fruit’.
• They think that there are magic wand / quick solutions to problems or that doing something the wrong way over and over will eventually lead to a favourable result.
• They let their pride get in the way of sound decisions even when deep down they know that they shouldn’t do so.

We want to encourage business owners away from making these mistakes so that they can make good business decisions and develop a business model that will deliver sound results over time.

By investing time on yourself, you will learn the skills and attitudes you and your staff need to avoid the thinking that leads to the issues above. Making mistakes is part of being in business but continually making the same mistakes is not.

Thinking about your model, is it a good one? Do you have all of the information you need to make good decisions? It’s not uncommon to feel overwhelmed by the amount of work that needs to go in to correcting flaws in your model however remember that you don’t need to fix everything .. just choose one problem and persist with it until it’s a problem no more.