Brandie Kajino’s Soho Solutionist site provides resources for everyone working from home

Soho Solutionist is the second site to be highlighted from my Top Sites for home business owners.

To explain the site’s purpose and focus I doubt I could improve on the words of site author, Brandie Kajino:

This site, and my business, are about making technology and small business tools accessible and understandable to real people. As a Professional Organizer, I also have a unique approach with my clients. I hope to transfer skills you can use in your business. My mission is to be helpful to you, so you can grow your business and change your corner of the world.

Soho Solutionist is definitely not one of those sites, sadly multitudinous, which have no evidence of intelligent human involvement and have some recycled articles on setting up a home office, surrounded by lots of advertisements for various products.

The Soho Solutionist site, like its owner Brandie, is practical and shows respect for the realities professionals face in working from home.

You can get a sense of Brandie’s practicality and intelligent approach to the challenges of working from home from the discussion I had with her earlier this year on my Des Walsh & Friends show on BlogTalkRadio – you can listen to/download the podcast here.

Home based entrepreneurs can use the Soho Solutionist site with the confidence that comes from knowing that Brandie has tons of experience in empowering busy professionals with information, technology, tools and simple organizing solutions.

On the  site you will find lists of resources, articles on home office organization, and of course details about how you can explore possibilities for working with Brandie to help your business.

There is also a blog and there are podcasts.

I’m open to adding more sites about professionals working from home, preferably authored by home based professionals themselves, to my Top Sites page. If you know of such a site, please let me know via the Contact page.

A personal klutz moment prompts some thoughts about risk management for home based businesses

I had an unpleasant encounter with a Danger sign recently, on a local beach where we go walking most mornings. Once I had recovered from the initial shock, the experience made me think about risk management.

To get this in context I must explain, more than somewhat to my own embarrassment, that this sign is, as far as I can tell, on a stretch of a couple of adjoining beaches where we walk most mornings, the only object where I could conceivably bump my head.

So you would be perfectly justified in thinking that would not be an easy thing for me to do.

Well, on the morning in question I did.

How could I have been so dumb?

What happened was,  I was climbing over some rocks at the time, heading for the pathway connecting the two beaches, all the while looking down, watching intently where I was placing my feet so I didn’t stumble.

Which is how, straightening up, I got to bang my head on the only item conceivably available for the purpose in about half a mile or more of beach area.

I had in fact given myself a nasty bump, even drawing some blood (the sign is made of good old-fashioned sheet metal). Fortunately, my cap protected my scalp to some degree. The external scar has gone, embarrassment lingers.

Anyhow, after getting over the initial shock, and on the principle of turning lemons into lemonade, I wondered how I could put the experience to good use.

Need to consider all the risks

The lightbulb moment was that intelligent risk management takes account of all known risks, not just one most obvious at the time. And this has a special relevance for those of us who choose to work from home.

Iowa based business risk management expert Thomas M. Bragg has a thoughtful post on risk management and home based business, making the following very pertinent observation:

Home-based businesses don’t have a free pass that exempts them from the need for risk management. In fact, I would argue that they have a more urgent need because each risk that becomes reality has a much larger relative impact on a sole proprietorship than it does on a larger business. (100% of a sole proprietor’s employees will be involved in dealing with a crisis, while only a portion of a larger business’ employees will probably be affected by a similar crisis.)

Being entrepreneurial doesn’t mean ignoring risk

Making a broad generalization which I am quite unable to substantiate empirically, it’s my belief that professional people who make a decision to work from home rather than be employed elsewhere are in a real sense entrepreneurs.

One of the words I associate with being entrepreneurial is “courageous”. And that’s because another word that goes with “entrepreneur” is risk.

A lot of things can go wrong when you work from home, for example getting seriously ill and not having adequate health cover or income maintenance insurance to get you through that time. Then there are the clients who turn out to be more trouble than they are worth, or just don’t pay or at least don’t pay in a timely fashion.

Managing risk is part of our job description. And we will manage it better if we don’t wait till we’ve banged our heads on it, so to speak.

Need a risk management plan

And while I believe most home based professionals I know are well aware of the risks, I wonder how many of us actually have a risk management plan in place?

A plan that takes account of all the risks we need to consider. More than just a SWOT analysis, although that would be a start.

What plans do you have in place for risk management?

Top home business related sites news aggregator: the first eight sites on the list

Yesterday I posted about the new configuration of my Top Sites page here as a news aggregator for sites related to working from home.

Today I want to recommend you visit directly the sites that are included on TopSites here and the very switched-on people behind the sites.

Carrie Wilkinson  Barefoot Executive

Shirley George Frazier  Solo Business Marketing

Brandie Kajino  SOHO Solutionist

Kate Lister  Undress for Success

Becky McCray & colleagues Small Biz Survival

Randy Duermyer   Randy’s Home Business Blog

Dane Carlson  Business Opportunities

Peter Lee   Work from Home Business Blog

And part of my plan for this week is to start a series of posts, highlighting each week one of the sites on the Top Sites list: Top Site of the Week.

Remember if you have a site that you believe will fit on the Top Sites page, or know of one, please let me know via the
Contact page.

A recent guest on my Des Walsh & Friends program on BlogTalkRadio, Shirley George Frazier, shared valuable insights and tips on marketing and business generally.

Shirley is a Solo Marketing Specialist, Best-Selling Author and Professional Speaker. Shirley is recognized worldwide as one of the foremost experts on marketing strategies for small businesses and independent owners who work without employee assistance.

One of the people in small business I most admire and respect – as well as being a totally delightful person to meet online or IRL – Shirley has been in business since 1990. She is President and CEO of Sweet Survival®, a consulting firm specializing in business and marketing support. She speaks at conferences, trade shows and business meetings worldwide.

In the best tradition of the new world of social networking, our friendship developed first online. We then had the pleasure of meeting face to face, a.k.a. in real life (IRL) in New York City in late 2008.

Some of the topics on which Shirley shared her experience, insights and wisdom:

• How to manage multiple activities effectively, focusing on what you want to accomplish on a yearly, monthly, weekly and daily basis
• How she has traced her entrepreneurial inclinations and talents back to a great-great-grandmother and other forebears
• The wonderful story of how an amazingly successful gift basket business got started
• How someone who has suddenly been put out of work can look seriously and practically about starting their own business
• Practical guidance on how to do due diligence on business opportunities
• How people without special technical expertise can cut through the mystification and get started with a website and a marketing campaign
• Why although offline marketing is a necessity, businesses still need to do offline marketing as well

And much, much more.

[Click here to listen if player above does not appear]

Some details for more information about what Shirley does and thinks and how to reach her:

Solo Business Marketing and on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ShirleyFrazier

If you have a relative or friend who is even vaguely wondering about the possibility of establishing their own business, or who is in business already, I urge you to share the link with them. I know that if you do, you will be doing them a seriously good favor. Know someone like that?

Networking breakfast at the beach and an interview with a champion networker

Just a week ago today I had a reminder that, while it’s great to connect with colleagues and customers globally, via the Web, it’s also very healthy for business to go to live events.

Just before Christmas, at a local Chamber of Commerce function, I met up with a good friend, although lately we have not been frequently in the same place, local businesswoman, coach and superb networker, Kym Kranen, I learned that Kym was running some networking breakfasts in the local region.

I attended one of the breakfasts last week and was very glad I had done so. Good conversation, some excellent business ideas, dynamic people.

Actually, a good touch with these events is that if you don’t want a breakfast as such you can just have a coffee or tea – or water! And there is no admission charge, so for people working from home and on a very tight budget, “can’t afford it” is not a viable excuse for staying away.

It was also good to be able to get a few minutes of Kym’s time and speak with her about what she is doing with business networking in the region and how this can help, especially but not exclusively, people with businesses from home – and on the latter topic she shared some interesting statistics.

Here is the video of the chat we had.

You can find out more about what Kym does and make contact, via her site Solutions4Success.

Do you have a story to share – good or “cautionary” – about the value of attending local networking events?