With back to school coming, are you planning to start a new business?
For students across the country, the lazy days of summer are coming to a close and a new school year is right around the corner. As an entrepreneur thinking of starting a new business, where to begin can be your biggest obstacle. In our previous blog Getting the Kids Back to School is a Reason to get Serious About Business, we talked about how many parents start thinking about their business when their children’s summer is about to end and the are going back to school. But what about those stay-at-home parents who do not yet have a business? Maybe it is time to start a home-based business that allows you to send the kids off to school and be home when they return from school each day. So where to begin in starting a new business? Do your homework No small business is guaranteed to be successful. One way that will improve […]
How to Gain Trust for Your Home-Based Business
As we mentioned in our previous blog “How to Gain Trust for Your E-commerce Business,” trust, in general, is the key to the success of your business. You not only have to build and maintain trust with your clients, customers and vendors, you need to have the trust of employees and freelancers. Some say that if you lose that trust, you may just as well pack up your business and go home. But what if your business is a home-based business? How do you gain trust? As business owners and marketers, the assumptions you make about your target customers and the purchasing motivations you think they may have, will have a powerful affect on the health of your business. As a small business owner, your reputation means everything and you cannot afford to damage your personal brand. But trust is also very fragile. If you lose it, it’s very difficult, […]
Office space versus a virtual office: Which is best for you?
There is no reason not to have an upscale professional business address. But you do not necessarily need to have a physical office at that particular location. Sometimes a physical office space is important to your business, but what if it is not? Let’s talk about the best options for your small business. There are a range of business address options to choose from, including traditional raw office space, serviced office space and virtual offices. But which one is the most flexible and cost-efficient fit for your small business? Many small businesses owners and entrepreneurs may not have the financial capacity to lease traditional physical office space and pay for the infrastructure that type of space requires. The cost of office furniture, telephone systems and other office equipment such as photocopiers adds up. This has caused serviced offices and virtual offices to increased in popularity, because small business owners want […]
Why a Business Centre is the Best Solution for Opening a Canadian Branch Office
Opening a branch office or other corporate or legal Canadian business type in Canada is much like starting your business all over again! You have an expansion plan; researched the best business “entity” for your business and decided upon whether to have a virtual office from your home or rent office space, warehouse or storefront. Then you have to set up a legal entity to do business under and to carry out setting up the business. All of these activities will require a Canadian address. Without a Canadian address, you are in bureaucratic ‘quicksand.’ The Virtual Office Options There is not much to consider when deciding whether a P.O. Box is appropriate over a virtual address because a P.O. Box is not a legal address for the purposes of incorporation or almost any legal business entity that a U.S.-based or foreign company can use. A Business Centre’s virtual office and office space services provide your business […]
Virtual Office Services Provide the Perfect Corporate Image
When you are starting a new business, you want to establish yourself with as much credibility and present the most professional image for your new business. Have a professional business address is one of the first steps in building your brand. Even if you cannot afford to rent office space when you first start out, a virtual office service can be a great place to start. Simply put, using a home address or a P.O. Box as your business address does not help in establishing your professionalism. These days, people are very weary of doing business out of a P.O. Box, because they worry that the business might disappear overnight. When you are trying to obtain business credit for your new venture, banks and other lenders will be more likely to take your application more seriously if they see that your business has a professional address. If you work from […]
How to use Offshore Resources
While there is an abundance of outsourcing companies and freelancers in North America, sometimes, for more economical quality work, you may find your small business considering offshore contractors to fill your needs. When choosing to do business offshore, you need to consider the public relations implications. Some of your customers may find out that you use offshore resources, and this may in turn cause them to reconsider doing business with you. Whether it is having your website designed and built overseas, or having your call centre located in places like the Philippines, Jamaica or India, the cost savings for you and the customers you are serving can be great. Choosing the right provider in the right country is important, because some of the traditional offshore providers are no longer the least expensive option – and could even end up costing you more than what it would in local or other […]
A Guide to Virtual Workplace Technology
In today’s business climate, a lot of companies are looking to save money on renting office space and have employees work from home or remote locations that are not situated in prime real estate areas. The head office or primary work location may be at a prestigious address, but all the workers do not need to work from there. To successfully have remote workers, just having them working from home is not enough. You need technology to help manage a virtual workplace. You have to decide on which technologies you’ll want to use to help your virtual workforce communicate, hold meetings, share documents, manage projects and track progress. The best virtual technologies are “cloud-based” services. So, you do not need your own servers, and your workers can connect from anywhere and often from any type of computer or mobile device. As well, because the data is stored remotely, there is […]
Is a Virtual Company the Best Option for Your Business?
There are very few people who will tell you that they enjoy the morning commute to their office and the late afternoon or evening commute home, but what is the alternative? What about an office commute that’s as short as the walk from your bedroom to your home office? The idea of having a virtual office for a “solopreneur” is not a new one. For years entrepreneurs who wanted to work from home or on the road have used virtual office solutions to maintain a professional business address. Virtual office providers are not just a prestigious address and mail-drop location; they are, in fact, a professional image provider! When the professional live receptionist at your virtual office provider answers your phone number (as your company name), the person who is calling knows they have reached your office. Depending on the nature of the call, the receptionist can transfer the call […]
Suggestions on managing the virtual office revolution
In a previous blog Ways grow your Small Business quickly, we mentioned that one of the fastest ways to grow your business is by hiring virtual office staffers that you do not need to create office space for. To some companies this might be easy; but others have the fear of losing the ability to track employee progress. The trick to making it work is by having the right tools and constant communications with the remote team. Implementing a remote-workforce team allows you to source talent from any location, meaning you have access to the smartest, most capable workforce in your industry. This means that not everyone on your team needs to live within driving distance of your main office. In most cases, you will want a new hire to spend their first weeks at your office for training and meet the rest of your team in person. This not […]
Creative ideas for Home Offices
Telecommuting and operating out of a virtual office has become more and more popular with businesses today – especially for small businesses who cannot afford the monthly cost of a long-term lease in a traditional office environment. Finding creative ideas for home offices is important not only for function, but for style. For those who work for a business or even own a small business, finding that space or extra room for a home office is not always easy. Having to find or take up space that is already designated for another function requires getting creative on how the home office blends with the rest of the room or space. It might seem easy to find a nook to put a desk, but upon second consideration it might not fill your home office needs. You have to think of the other things you need for an office that you can […]
Tips for building a productive virtual office
A growing number of companies are allowing their team to work remotely from home, but still wonder what they can do to keep their virtual team productive. If you, like many small business owners, choose to run your company from the comfort of your home, we have some tips for you to keep your virtual office place productive. The most important thing about running a virtual team is keeping the communication channels open and equal. To keep the communications that are most important flowing, you need to be organized and have a plan. Your virtual workplace needs structure to have good record keeping of communications that can be searched for later use, and so that you know what your team is doing. Some of the various tools that you would utilize in a physical office to keep communications flowing and records up to date, may not be the best for […]
Preparing your Virtual Office for the Holidays
More and more small businesses are running out of a virtual office, rather than physical office space. Companies large and small use virtual office situations so that employees can telecommute to work from where they live or even from a coffee shop. All mail and calls are routed through a central virtual office provider and forwarded to the appropriate person in the organization. But when it comes to the holidays, there may be something missing when it comes to only communicating online with management and coworkers. Christmas provides a great opportunity to build team morale and help alleviate one of the biggest issues for those of us working from home or a virtual workplace. People who go from a traditional workplace to a home based or virtual setting miss the feeling of being connected to the workplace through the relationships they have with other employees. The feeling of isolation is one […]
Top 10 tips for Starting a Business That Will Succeed
A lot of people want to be their own boss and look to become an entrepreneur. But not every business idea will succeed. There are many reasons why a small business can fail, but we wanted to share some top tips that will help your small business succeed. While many of these tips are quite common and make sense, many entrepreneurs don’t follow these kinds of tips and wonder why their start-up did not take off. No business is successful in one day. Actually, almost no businesses are successful even after one year. 1) Is the product or service you want to offer, something that people want and is there a market for it? Too often, people jump into a business built around a product or service they think will be successful, rather than one that is already proven to have a market. It is important that you do your […]
Virtual Office or Brick-and-Mortar Office: Which is Better for Your Small Business?
There comes a time when every small business needs to move out of a home office, or at least have a professional business address. When that time comes for your small business, you need to decide if you want a virtual office or a brick-and-mortar office. In order to make this decision, you need to understand the value of both options and see what works best for your business. One of the first steps in deciding between a virtual office or brick-and-mortar office is to establish your needs and your budget. Do you want to spend $30/month for just a business address, $75/month for an address and phone service, $225/month for a shared office, $350/month semi-private office, $495/month for a private office or $900/month for an upscale window office? The next step is considering options if you need to meet clients in person. If you expect potential customers will be […]
Your Small Business can go Green with a Virtual Office
Your small business needs a business address, but do you always need a physical office? This is especially true if your company wants to reduce your carbon footprint and be greener. One way your small business can go green is with a virtual office. Thanks to technology, you do not always need to be chained to a desk to conduct your business. Even many larger companies are now allowing and encouraging their employees to work from home. This is mainly because of technology that allows employees to work remotely, and not have to take up large physical spaces in office buildings. There are now companies that do not have physical office space. Rather, they utilize the services of a virtual office provider to be the hub of their business as well as a centralized telecommuting centre. Consider how many trees are saved when businesses go paperless (or reduce paper usage) […]
The Professional Image Of Your Small Business Begins With You
A small business can only look as professional as the people who are running them, your job as a small business owner is to project your own professionalism. If your potential or existing clients do not see you (the owner) as being professional, how do you expect them to see your company as being professional?
Making the Most of Your Virtual Office
Do you really know what a virtual office is? When was the first time you heard the term “virtual office”? I never heard the words until I started my first small business and could not afford an actual office. But a friend suggested that I might consider having a virtual office to look more professional than working from my home. With business rents throughout much of Canada and especially the GTA continuing to increase, the virtual office solutions seemed to be sensible alternatives to the high costs of renting office space, particularly during those precious early years when working capital was limited. I needed a business address that was not my home address and I needed to look professional. I spend days looking at office space rentals that I thought I could afford, but the out-of-the-way addresses did not look appealing on a business card. They also did not look […]
What Happens to a Small Business When it ‘Graduates’ out of Coworking?
An often talked about term in the coworking movement is “graduating” out of coworking and into your own space, but what if you are in need of more private workspace and are not ready to set up your raw office space in a traditional office building?
Evolving Technologies are Redefining What Canadians Look for in a Workplace
Technology has dramatically reshaped the average workplace in North America over the past few decades. The office environment of the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and 80’s is no longer the norm. Instead, the office and work environment has been taken over by rapid technological advancement. Technology now allows workers to interact with a global market, and even work from home or take work with them while on the road. Advancement of technology has changed everything in terms of how we work and where we work too. Evolving technology has opened doors for innovation, efficiency, research and further education. Technology has become an integral part of how we work and how we deliver our products and services to our customers. The influx of new technologies that has been making an impact on our personal lives has also affected our professional lives. It has greatly affected the way we conduct business and the […]
Why Your Small Business Needs Both Virtual Office and Cloud Office Solutions
We have often talked about the value of having a virtual office, but we have also discussed the virtues of having a cloud-based office too. Some recent events brought the two topics together and we knew we had to share them with our followers. Some are funny and others are not. A recent virtual office client told us why he decided to become a client with us – for security reasons. He had been running his online product sales business from his home and doing quite well at it, until a customer showed up at his door looking to make a direct purchase. He had put his home address as the return address on his packages, but did not think anyone would show up at his home. That is when he decided that he needed a real business address that was not his home address. Working from home, a coffee […]