The business

and there are excuses

We're not really in the realm of big excuses yet. We haven't got far enough to fail and we're still bullish about the business proposition.

A few things have hindered progress recently:

- a few personal accidents and a pregnancy
- focussing most of my daily efforts on gettting another job (after my last contract was completed)
- communication problems.

We're both now on broadband. We've tried video links but haven't been able to get audio working with them.

Next stop is to try using Skype to provide the audio component and let Microsoft's Messenger provide the video component.

Although Peter and I have known each other for two decades having conversations when we can view each other would be so much better.

Despite the long absence in writing some work has been done on the business.

As you know we've set up a web domain and that is now working, along with the email redirection.

About a week or so ago I finally worked out how to do a cash-flow spreadsheet.

No, it's not that easy. A lot of guides seem to exclude issues on VAT. That is a major ommission. Sure, leaving it out makes it easier to explain basic cash-flows. But really, it's the VAT which could cripple your business.

Once I got the spreadsheet correct the whole comprehension problems vapourised. I felt daft in having problems before.

I'm taking the view that the cash-flow spreadsheet is the financial model for the business. Balance-sheets, profit and loss etc seem incidental. As far as I'm concerned they can be a consequence of good cash flow. As can the financial ratios and NPV figures.

My web problems seem to have settled down.

Emails should all now work as well.

I had a phone chat with Peter today. He needs to review the business plan - make it more succinct. I need to review the financial model and make sure it's correct. I also need to read some articles about doing business in our target country. So that's the homework for this week.

We now have a fully functioning web site. Albeit of one page with very little text. But it's a business presence.

I've been suffering from a bit of impatience. First the web redirection didn't work. (When a browser types in your company's domain name, e.g. www.newbusiness.com, it redirects to where your web pages are really hosted, e.g. www.anisp.com/username/newbusiness/ or whatever. But the brower only sees www.newbusiness.com).

When the domain name register company says you need to wait for 24 hours they weren't being cautious - you really do have to wait this time.

Then email redirection didn't work. (When you send an email to the company's address, e.g. enquiries@newbusiness.com the email is sent to my own email address, e.g. john@john'sisp.com).

So I put in another helpdesk call. They replied today saying "does it work now?" and indeed it did work now. I don't know what had gone wrong yesterday.

Looking throught their web site again I noticed something I hadn't spotted before. Telephone calls to their support line costs 50p per minute. Ouch. So I kept to emails. And although they say responses could take up to 24 hours in reality it was only a few hours.

No big deal. It's not like we needed the web presence today. And once the redirections are set up, which they are, everything remains pretty static - so problems are unlikely.

Last couple of days I've been looking for domain name register services.

I eventually decided on the first one I looked at. Today I bought their services on-line and registered a .com domain name.

It cost in total about £20.

Knowing a bit about HTML I also knocked up a web page which will do for a parking page and indeed for the company's home page. At the moment it's very basic and only in English. There's very little text but I'm hoping to get that translated into our main business area's language.

The colours (for text and background) corresponds to the design created by our advertising/marketing/design agency for our business cards. The agency chose internet safe colours as default.

Looking at the draft web site the colours work very well indeed. They're not colours I'd have thought to use but then I'm not a graphic designer.

I posted the page onto my own website and redirected the domain name to that site. Users will only see the company's domain name, not my own ISP's domain name.

Rather annoyingly I can't yet browse to the corporate website. I think the DNS tables need to be updated which can take at least 24 hours. Damn, I'll have to wait.

Just because I haven't been updating this site doesn't mean nothing has been happening.





Although until recently not much had been happening.

I went over and visited Peter and his family. Whilst there we talked about the business and had a very good meeting with an advertising/marketing/design agency. The art director was very enthusiastic and came in to meet us even though he was on vacation.

After the meeting I wrote up the minutes. This took a while as I wanted to get the format right. This is one of the, er, joys of setting up your own business. You get to do things your way (sort of). My views on minutes is that they're often far too brief to the point of ambiguity. Especially around the who does what, when and how much. So, doing the minutes this time I could expand on this area. It was only a bit more text but as a result much more information.

We now have an agreed solution for our logos, business cards, stationary, brochures etc.

And in case you haven't been paying attention the business has been registered. And our product name has been trade marked.

At a very cool 80s style bar I chatted with Peter about some elements of our product placement. To the left of me there was a table of five young women and one bloke. To the right of me there was a table of five men and one woman.

We found some issues with our positioning strategy and we'll need to review this (sober and undistracted). The problem only emerged because we sat down and had the time to discuss it. But this is by no means a show shopper.

Coming back to England my task has been to secure a domain name and create a web page.

Spent yesterday and today trawling through web sites who offered domain registration and hosting.

I eliminated ones who were based in America. No other reason than the timezone differences and that I'd have no recourse if they failed. I only stuck with UK ones because that way I'd have less language problems. I really wanted to chose one which accepted payments in Euros. But there were only two and they didn't feel quite right.

Some providers were down right tacky in their approach. Some had obvious typos as well. Not reassuring.

I eventually decided on one which seemed just about right. It was actually the first one that came up on my search engine yesterday.

They were very low cost and were owned by one of the major UK ISPs. All round not a bad proposition. We'll see.

It's latish but hot (for me). Now have to start prototyping the web pages.

... in that it´s still too hot.

Last day here. Yesterday didn´t do too much. Met up with some people, had a few beers and an Italian meal (past al-cheapo).

I´m trying to hide form the heat in the cool of a cyber cafe. So that´s my excuse for writing this. What´s your excuse for reading it?

The Spanish should really do something about the weather.

Spent a few hours yesterday in a bar watching the cycling.

Great...

... isn´t the word I´m looking for.

The Spanish tend to be very keen on cycling. Explains quite a lot I think.

Then went for a curry. Nice looking Indian place in central Granada. But service and quality of food was poor. I know the curries in England are ersatz curries but they´re jolly nice.