Posted: Thu 31 August, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Cynicism, Getting Organised, Own Business, Thoughts |
One thing I absolutely hate about starting up a business is : the business plan. To me they’re always a masterwork of bullshit, balancing out all the aspects of what might happen. And yet, over the last week or so, that’s what I’ve been doing. Writing a business plan.
It’s not for anything that’s going to happen just yet. This is stuff that’s all still in the offing. But for once I’ve seen some sense, and decided to get it written down. That way, I don’t have to keep it in my head, and it’s got rather more chance of actually happening.
The business name (well, the potential business name, and the concept that’s linked to it) is sorted, and so it’s more about just brain-dumping the stuff onto some paper, and/or onto a Word® document, so I know where it is. That way it’s just some more space that I can free up in my head, and use for useful stuff.
All the same, dear god, the business plan itself is still a load of old shite. Just figuring out the basic costs, profits, and predictions – it’s all shite. You can say “What If” ’til the cows come home, and basically a business plan is just a way to get banks/investors to lend you money, and so they can have some figures to say “well that’s what you said would happen – why hasn’t it?” Of course, the other side is that you can massively underestimate, in which case the banks/investors might just look on you favourably as being bloody great instead of bloody useless.
But for now that’s a worry for the future. Right now I’m just glad to have it somewhere that’s not in my head.
Posted: Sat 26 August, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Own Business, Thoughts |
A quick question :
If you were to go to a restaurant (and think more ‘pub-restaurant’ here instead of ‘silver service specialist perfection restaurant’) what meal would you most like to see on the menu? What would make you go “Oh, I’m SO having that?” as soon as you saw it?
I realise that these things can change on a daily basis, but for now I’m just thinking about the “ideal” menu, and what you would have on it.
You can have starter, main course, dessert, or all of them – it’s “perfect meal” I’m looking for…
Posted: Wed 23 August, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Own Business, Photography, Thoughts, Work-related |
Currently, I’m looking at what I need to do with regard to sorting out some business stuff for myself. Up ’til last year I had my own company through which I did all my IT contracting and so on, and then when I moved down here with Herself, and settled into working for other people again, I folded up the old company. In theory I could resurrect it, but it’d involve going back through Comapnies House etc., and a buttload of extra paperwork which frankly I can’t be bothered with – besides, if I’m going to do that, it’s much more fun to do it with a new company rather than some resurrected revenant.
Anyway, with the new company (the name of which has already been pretty much decided, although the paperwork and ‘official’ stuff hasn’t been done, as currently it’s more ‘Sole Trader’ than ‘Limited Company’) I have a few options. They are:
- Option One : Have one company. This then becomes the umbrella for all my activities over the next few years (of which more at some other point) which includes possibly IT contracts, but also photography, and other business ideas.
- Option Two : Have one company purely for IT contracting, and then figure out another one for all the other stuff, the photography, creative gubbins, etc. etc.
- Option Three : Don’t form any limited companies, and instead just work as a sole trader, still using the company name as a trading name, but without all the extra gubbins involved in a limited company (but also obviously without the limited liability advantages of a company)
Option Three is probably easiest, but does mean that should things go horribly wrong then there’s a lot of potential issues that I’d rather not have to deal with. But ’til things get going it’s one that has a lot of possibilities.
Option One makes a lot of sense – but I’m not sure how the website would work, without being horrendously complicated. Although I suppose I could do it, with a bit of thought. Hmm, that’d be novel. But is it me, or do Photography and Web Design not really go together as an easy concept?
Option Two is, of course, just a buttload of extra paperwork and hassle, so I suspect that’s been struck out immediately.
Bah, I’ll figure it out, I’m sure. Maybe it’s going to end up as Three for now, with an eye to One in ’07?
Posted: Tue 22 August, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Getting Organised, Own Business, Work-related |
Oh, how I wish Arsehole Boss would read this article about why a happy workplace makes sense. It’s certainly in line with my own ideas, and if certain plans come off over the next few months or so, it’s something I’d like to be able to take forward in my own stuff. We’ll see.
At the moment we still don’t know whether he’s actually going or not. No-one’s bothered giving us any more information about it at all. Which gets very frustrating very quickly.
But you can be sure I’ll write more about it as soon as I know anything…
Posted: Sat 12 August, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Depression, Own Business, Sweary, Work-related |
Recently I’ve been building a very heavy database-driven website for a private clown client, which has a lot of interactivity and social-networking features in it. As usual, I’ve set it up to be hosted at the start by 34sp, who I’ve never had any problems with, and who I tend to use for most of my sites and clients.
Anyway, because of problems on this new site (one of the so-called ‘expert’ designers managed to upload 90Mb of images on to the site ‘by mistake’) we went over the 150Mb file quota during the week. Raising this problem with the person who has commissioned the entire project, she had a bit of a panic, and started asking how come we’d used up so much webspace already, and would there be enough once the site goes fully live, etc. etc. Nothing special, just a standard tizz.
But of course the ‘expert’ designers had to stick their oar in, and say “Oh, well we normally use the Easyspace ‘Gold’ hosting package, which gives us 500Mb of space, and works for the sites we do”.
My response was – shall we say – succinct.
Hey, great – let’s move a database-driven website to a hosting company package that doesn’t have a database as part of it.
I haven’t heard anything else from them since. I wonder why?
Posted: Fri 11 August, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Geeky, Own Business, Work-related |
Aaargh – it’s been one of those days, work-wise.
Do you ever have a day where you come up with a really good idea, one that could (in theory) make something a hell of a lot easier? And then spend some time thinking about it, and fail to see any problems?
So of course you start to make this idea into reality. And it becomes more complicated. Suddenly – no matter how long you thought about it first – problems come in that you hadn’t considered. And the problems are actually quite complicated, and make things a lot more difficult. But hey, the idea was still really good, and you still think you can do it, so you go on, and (in this case) write some more stuff to fix those problems.
And then another set of issues come up, and you think “Ah, bugger. That’s getting ugly and nasty now. I’d best go back to the easy (but dull, and rather uninventive) way I was going to do it originally.”
So, having been busy for most of the day, you come out of it with absolutely nothing worthwhile, except for learning that even really good ideas can suck utterly in practice.
Yeah, that’s the kind of day it’s been.
(Of course, I’m a tenacious twat, and really really bad at admitting defeat. So I’ll probably see if I can suss out the second set of problems over the weekend, without making it into a truly ugly piece of code.)
Posted: Thu 27 July, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Own Business, Travel, Work-related |
Actually, last night’s meeting went quite well – and I didn’t upset too many people. Then again, I managed to activate the self-censoring part of my brain, so the expression “Workshy bullshitting incompetent” didn’t pass my lips, no matter how many times I thought it.
The real pain in the arse was that I got a late train back from London to Reading, which eventually came in 15 minutes after the last train to Bracknell had departed. Arses.
So yes, a taxi home, in a thunderstorm. Thirty-fucking-five quid later, I was home…
I don’t mind too much, as it was primarily my fault for not paying attention to time etc., but still, it’s that kind of thing that can really knacker one’s profit margins if you’re not careful…