See why using outside help for some of your business needs frees up time for you to do what you do best

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As part of the process of setting up my own business, I have had reason to look in different parts of the internet for all sorts of ideas. Sometimes these internet searches are planned and sometimes a little bit of serendipity comes into play (see blog here - http://245daystogo.blogspot.com/2015/06/stumbling-across-ideas-and-answers-when.html )

I think that as the business develops, I will need outside help in some areas of what I attempt to do. For instance, I won’t try to conduct my own legal affairs – I will leave that to the expertise of a solicitor. I won’t want to spend hours of my time checking and filing my own accounts – I will make use of an accountant that knows their way around the tax rules.

And it was while looking into different professional business service providers that I came across the company Adactus - http://www.adauctus-gmbh.ch/en/

Being a well-established company that provides more than one service gives Adactus a head start when it comes to helping out startup companies such as the one I am putting together. In the early days of my estate agency business I will be trying to run the show from home but will have to spend a lot of time out on the road. And the question that this asks is “how will I be able to provide an office service for my customers?” I want them to be able to pick up the phone and speak to someone from my company but I hope to have my time filled with appointments at client’s houses. Adactus could provide an answer. They will provide a high-quality and professional telephone answering service in several languages, call acceptance and transfer, and a virtual secretary from Mondays to Fridays from 8:00 to 18:00, outside these hours – a voicemail service.

Tax is always a taxing question for any business large or small, so looking at what might be a tax beneficial status is something that many companies have looked into. You can have a discussion with Adactus about their company registration services after contacting them via their website. They can offer potential tax-related benefits for foreign companies, as they are based in Switzerland. Switzerland has one of the most beneficial tax rates in Europe along with a politically, geographically and economically stable infrastructure. That is highly attractive to foreign companies which choose to change their address to Switzerland.

As I stated at the start of the blog, Adactus are experienced in several areas that could help the average startup or the slightly more established company to get ahead in business. I try to look at business from several angles and highlight companies that I have used or would consider using to help me set up my small business. Recently I have shown how RawShorts and Fiverr could help a new or small business and I will keep on exposing good companies to my readers of this blog. If you have any questions about this then please do not hesitate to comment on the blog or get in touch with Adactus directly via their website.

Photos from week 2 learnings on my photography course

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As I have mentioned in previous blogs, I have enrolled and am participating in a photography course at the local college. It's a 20 week course, so the idea is that I am prepared to take brilliant photographs of people's homes when the time comes and I am marketing property. I will also extend my current website, where I have exhibited and sold my photographs- My new photos for this week are as follows- This is another experiment with depth of view, where I set the camera up to have a clear view of the first cupboard handle, with the others fading out of view. This is by setting a shallow aperture, and leaving the shutter speed at 1/60. Another experiment with depth of view was with the kids sitting on the sofa, playing on their iPods-

 


The next two photos are in the same style, working with the depth of field to get the subject at the front in focus, with a blurred background-





 Both are just attempts to play with my new camera and have an understanding of what I can do with it. The final photo for this week is using a very fast shutter speed to capture a single moment in time linked to the movement of my eldest when playing in the garden. He was throwing a conker and I managed to capture it's movement just as it was reaching the edge of the frame-




 Obviously these are basic exposures at the moment, and I'm experimenting with my Canon EOS 1200 digital SLR camera that I've only owned for 2 weeks.

The camera is a
 

The tripod I've bought and used is -

Managing my home budget to save costs when the business first opens

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I've been looking at my finances, and how I can make them a little leaner for the first few months of the Estate Agency, when the income column will be at zero, or just above.  Family outgoings are a major concern of mine in relation to the cost of setting up an estate agency.  I currently have a full-time income that covers all of these costs with a little left over at the end of every month.  I would err on the side of caution with when the income starts to flow, and I think that probably 6 months is a good estimate for the process of-

• setting up the agency
• gaining instructions
• getting a sale agreed
• avoiding any fall-throughs
• completing the sale

On that basis, I have adapted my current spreadsheet as follows-

Date	Who	How much	First few months of estate agency
1st	Kids swimming lessons	£38.00	£38.00
2nd	Income Protection	£21.44	£0.00
2nd	TV licence	£12.18	£12.18
3rd	Car Insurance 1	£23.95	£20.00
3rd	Water	£43.28	£43.28
5th	Pension	£60.00	£0.00
8th	Car Insurance 2	£26.04	£26.04
8th	Home Insurance	£15.80	£15.80
9th	Critical Illness Insurance	£45.15	£45.15
10th	TV & Broadband Package	£96.35	£50.00
15th	Council Tax	£137.00	£137.00
15th	Gas & Electric	£120.00	£100.00
25th	Life Assurance	£15.32	£15.32
25th	Mobile Phone Bill	£23.20	£28.00
	TOTAL	£677.35	£530.41
	Plus-
	Savings Account	£100.00	£0.00
	I S A	£100.00	£0.00
	Petrol	£80.00	£80.00
	Car account	£20.00	£20.00
	Sundries	£50.00	£0.00
	Total Extras	£350.00	£100.00
	New full total	£1,027.35	£630.41

I can save on the extra savings I put aside, such as the pension, savings accounts and ISA, as these can be restarted when my income returns.

I can save on the TV by switching from the all-singing-all-dancing package I currently have to a more toned-down version or a cheaper supplier than Sky.  Anyway, I hopefully won't have enough time for TV!

My sundries is for snacks, drinks and meals when I'm out at work currently, but with the home office, these will all be taken at home from the food budget (the wife's department!)

The savings of £396.94 per month will provide a cushion in the first few months of the business while my attention is elsewhere, and I won't want the worry of having to focus on the day-to-day running of the house.

I don't know how I feel about laying this budget bare on the internet for all to see (should they want to) but in myself it aids the organisation of my life around the business and allows me to move forward in terms of control and understanding of where I want to be and need to be to make this business as successful as I possibly can.  It has also crystalised a discussion I had with my wife earlier today - I thought about opening the agency today, and then trying to piece it together as I went along.  I now know that I want it to be opened fully up-and-running and ready to trade from day 1.  So preparation is the key.

Budget Planners from Amazon

How will I dress? How will I project myself?

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I have a question

What voice to use when dealing with customers?

Now I know this may seem like an odd question, but bear with me because I think it's an important consideration. I have met many, many estate agents and I think I know part of the problems that the industry faces in terms of image. We haven't found our voices yet.

It's a problem that not only estate agents face, it's a problem that occurs in many industries. There are so many estate agents that want, need, desire to be seen as estate agents. There are certain characteristics-

The suit

The tie

The language

The 'professionalism'

And all of these make estate agents seem similar, without distinction, just the same.

After reading a book called The Cluetrain Manifesto, I can see where these similarities come from. Corporate estate agents require a certain standard of dress, they impose a certain way if talking about the market, they want you to have the same customer experience if you buy from them in Aberdeen or in Brighton. It's like the McDonalds of the estate agency world.

As individual people, I need to find my individual voice at work. As an independent estate agent I will be able choose what I wear to work, yet I've been thinking about wearing a suit and tie. Is it what the customer expects? But the customer expects me to sell their house. The customer expects nothing else. Everything else is window dressing.

What you say is even more important than what you wear, but I still hear agent after agent speaking in bland, industry-expected language - most of which will make you sound like the next agent, a lot of which won't mean anything to your customers, some of which your customer won't understand. So why do we do it? 

"It's what the customer expects."

I've made a conscious decision to be smart, but not necessarily a suit, and if a suit then not necessarily a tie. A smart pair of trousers, a pressed shirt and a smart quality jumper will do some days. I will be speaking as myself, rather than trying to project an image of what I think the customer expects an estate agent to be. Oh and I'll try to cut out the jargon.

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