Carsonified

I love posters in Airports becuase they have to convey a simple idea to you very quickly. You’re walking by and the poster has about 1 second to capture your attention, communicate a message and make you remember it.

I saw this DHL poster in the airport in Berlin and loved it:

Ithink it’s the perfect summary of good customer service. I’ve made some customer service mistakes in my time, but the one thing I’ve learned is that you just need to practice saying “Sure, I’d be happy to do that for you.”

Real Life Example

This happened the other day with DropSend. I had a customer email me because he wanted to cancel his account. Well, one of the nice things about DropSend is that you don’t have to ask us to cancel your account. You can do it yourself by just going to the ‘My Account’ page and clicking ‘Please cancel my account’. Bam, your done.

I started writing this response:

Hi xxxx,

We’re sorry to lose you as a customer! All you have to do to cancel your account is login, go to the ‘My Account’ page, and click ‘Please cancel my account’.

All the best,
Ryan

However, after a second of thought, I changed it to:

Hi xxxx,

We’re sorry to lose you as a customer! I’ve cancelled your account for you.

Hope we can serve you in the future.

All the best,
Ryan

It meant I had to spend time logging into the DropSend Admin, searching for his account and clicking ‘Delete’. Time I didn’t want to spend, but looking back, I think it was important.

I never heard from that customer, thanking me for doing this. And I didn’t expect to. But hopefully it made his life a little easier.

I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw this poster at the airport in Copenhagen:

That’s the myth, isn’t it? Bigger is better, therefore every company should be bigger. Bullshit. Maybe if more companies stayed small and focused on quality, instead of revenue growth, the world would be a better place.

By the way, if you own a business and you can only read one book this year, make sure to pick up a copy of Small Giants: Companies that Choose to be Great Instead of Big

P.S. Before I get torn to pieces in the comments, let me say this: I understand that certain companies need to be big in order to function. Visa is a good example: the more places it’s accepted (which means they need to be bigger to support the business), the better.

As a small business owner (there’s just five of us at Carson Systems), I’m always wondering how much cash reserves we should be keeping in the bank.

At what point should you stop saving for a rainy day, and start spending on growing the business? The answer is different for everyone, I’m sure.

However, it just hit me: We could do a little anonymous survey and it would help all of us to get a better feel for what everyone else is doing.

If you’re a business owner, please fill out the form (it’s completely anonymous, don’t worry) and I’ll reveal the results here on Carsonified in a few days.

Fill out the form here. Thanks for participating

I was brave (naive?) enough to introduce myself to the ex-CEO of one of Britain’s biggest publishing companies (I cornered him in a coffee shop). Why? Because I want to learn more.

I’m 29 and in the big scheme of things, I just don’t know that much.

Thankfully this kind soul didn’t mind me introducing myself and we’ve just finished our second meeting. I’ve got a huge amount of respect for what he’s achieved and it’s been really interesting to sit down and ask for his advice on a few things.

We went over our cash flow and talked about our goals and it’s amazing how I’ve already gotten fresh insight on a few important issues.

The best thing about finding a quality business mentor is that it helps you to see things from a new angle. No matter how much you know, you just can’t see everything without a little help.

We’ve made a pretty important decision on DropSend, based on our last meeting. I’ll share more on that later.

If you’re building a web app and you don’t have a lot of cash to play with, you won’t be able to afford a full time developer.

If you’re a young startup and you can afford a full time developer, you’re probably spending too much money and will quickly go out of business. (This still applies to those who’ve taken funding. Don’t waste your cash on expensive payrolls).

Ummmm … now what?

This is a major long term problem and it’s one we’re wrestling with right now at Carson Systems.

Our two web apps (DropSend and Amigo) were built by two different (and very talented) freelance developers. We got them built quickly for a very affordable price (around £6K each).

Feel the pain

When you’ve outgrown your freelance developers, you’ll know it. Trust me. Here’s the dead give away:

Getting bugs fixed and new features implemented starts taking fricken’ forever.

So what if you find yourself in this situation, but you still can’t afford a full time developer?

You’ve got three options:

1. Figure out how to increase your revenue so you can hire someone
2. Raise some funding
3. Go offshore

We’re taking option #3. DropSend and Amigo don’t really generate enough revenue at this point to justify a full time developer (we could, but it wouldn’t be a wise business decision).

The problem is that things are stating to take way to long to get fixed.

So we’ve decided to create a two person team (one full time developer and one part time project manager) in Russia that will work for us full time. Gone are the days of battling our freelancer’s other clients for their time!

It’s working

We just started with our Russian team, and you know what? I absolutely love it.

We were fortunate enough to have friends who already had in-roads in Russia, so they could help us find the right team. This is vital. I don’t think you have a prayer if you hope to go through rent-a-coder or some other 3rd party service.

You really need someone you can trust, and that can only be done through recommendations.

So we’ve got a full time developer for a very affordable price. This includes: desk space, hardware, broadband and a little bit of project management by a second person (our developer doesn’t speak fluent English so we go through a project manager).

Rock and roll. DropSend and Amigo are really going to get a kick up the pants and you should see some great new improvements and bug fixes soon. I can’t wait!

When your business is small, you should focus 100% on your cash flow. However, when you start to grow and cash isn’t as tight, it’s really important to get to know your balance sheet.

For those who don’t know, a balance sheet is a report (usually generated by your accounting software or accountant) that shows the current value of your business.

You’re building something valuable

Why is it so important to regularly review your balance sheet?

It’s simple: you want your business to be worth as much as possible. The amazing thing about running your own company is that not only are you paying yourself a salary that you’re (hopefully) happy with, you’re creating something that you can sell for quite a bit of money some day!

You should be actively monitoring the value of your company (your balance sheet) and be aware how much it’s worth. Has it gone up in value over the past quarter? Down in value? Why?

Knowing exactly what’s going on is vital to keeping your business growing and valuable.

Give me the nitty gritty

So how do we do it at Carson Systems? Well, we use QuickBooks. This is unfortunate, as its reporting capabilities are very poor. It’s great for viewing Accounts Receivable/Payable and other cash flow related issues, but it really sucks when it comes to viewing a valid Profit & Loss Statement (P&L), or the Balance Sheet.

So what we do is have our accountant prepare a monthly report with both our P&L and our Balance Sheet. We have him compare the current month to the last month and also the current month with the same month the previous year. This gives us a good idea how we’re preforming.

How do you do it?

If you’re a business whiz, please share your tips in monitoring and keeping your Balance Sheet healthy!