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Derek,

I think that remote work can be a great option to give employees more flexibility, however, it really depends on your business and industry. If you are in retail a remote work strategy will almost certainly not work (unless you are only an online only retail (ecommerce) shop).

Remote work can help increase productivity because you have helped eliminated commuting time and other stressers that can lead to employee frustration. However, it can have some draw backs as well. Being 100% remote it is harder for employees to get to know one another (which means you'll have to put a lot more effort into team building and such).

If there is absolutely no office, you can benefit from reducing your overhead expenses (office space, utilities, etc.)

I think a better policy than 100% remote (unless the team is distributed worldwide) would be to have a focus on remote work, with an option to meet or work from a coworking space. This still helps lend an aspect of social interaction and doesn't lead to isolation.

I would avoid all non-essential debt. Debt strangles your cash flow and makes it harder to live the life of your dreams. Focus your money on experiences not things. The experiences you'll remember. The things you'll use a few times and forget or get rid of them.

Narine, I think the challenge you are facing is very common. Infact by and large all new entrants and small businesses are encountering this today. I personally think the solution lies in the marketeers "perspective and atttitude". The whole game revolves around this. How you can think about identifying your target audience and promising value to them. I will explain this with a brief story.
In the days of yore, a shoe manufacturing company sent its sales rep to Africa in the hope of expanding its business. The sales rep returned empty-handed, distraught, stating that it was the land of slaves and no one was wearing shoes. The Company sent in another sales rep to test the waters. The second person looked at the situation under a positive lens. He came back exhilirated exclaiming that everyone was barefooted, nobody had shoes at all! so there was ample opportunity to grow!

Bottomline: its all about attitude and perspective.

Ruslan Kogan.

There are a variety of reasonably-priced data analytics solutions for the solo or smaller company these days...have a look at some of the big companies, and find an end-to-end solution - one that takes the data and presents it in a useful, intuitive interface that is easy and accessible. Datameer have one like this, I came across it just the other day.

Before you shout it out loud to the world, get your friends and family to roadtest your new website for you. Having a few sets of fresh eyes can pick up any typos, tech glitches or missing content before the general public does.

Check page load speed and mobile viewing in a live environment to maximise user experience. 

Congratulate yourself. Getting to launch stage is an achievement just in itself!



 

Hi Kevin,

It really depends on what kind of role you are trying to fill. I've interviewed staff for more data entry type roles and the best way to handle them, and these are tips I have gotten from friends that run their whole business on offshore assistants is to allocate a budget and a very specific task for them to do that is reflective of what you are hiring for. And this has to be SPECIFIC, as in allocate a due date, a process to handle questions about the task, a way to submit the task and also allocate a time bracket in which to complete the task. If you are not specific the following can occur:

• They may do a great job, but spend many hours on it costing you more money in the long run, if this is not disclosed from the outset you could be walking into a troublesome relationship
• They may take too long and not meet the scheduled date. 
• They may ask too many questions and not be proactive in finding solutions which ends up costing you more time managing.
• They may not submit the task in the right way.

All the above issues need to be prevented and clearly stated so you can concentrate on finding candidates with the right skill set and not try and fish out ones that can follow basic instructions and processes.

Hire 10-15 contracts at one time, and then evaluate the top candidates based on task performance. You may want to give an alternative task to complete before then hiring a team.

It's also great to have some backups to contact in case your original hire goes astray. If it's your first time hiring I highly suggest you use an agency, this will ensure that if your staff is sick or away or leaves you won't need to spend time retraining or finding someone to fill in - you may pay more per hour but these are the little things that I think are worth paying for.

Make sure you are clear with the Agency regarding what they look after and what they don't. At minimum they should cover training, sick leave management and replacements.

I haven't had any experience remotely hiring higher level management type staff so I can't comment on that :) Perhaps someone else here may give that questions a shot?

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