MILWAUKEE, WI

By A.B. Dada
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I’m really amazed with Skype — the quality tends to be terrible, the software is buggy, the delay over their VoIP to POTS network is significant. Yet the upside is that it not only works, but it tends to make me more productive — as well as my staff and my volunteers. I’m amazed that more small offices haven’t embraced Skype for their “on the go” consultants or sales staff.

My favorite thing about Skype is SkypeIn: the ability to receive phone calls from the POTS network. Not only can you get a phone number for around $2 a month, but you can get multiple phone numbers. Since I do business in various states AND countries, I can get a local number in every market I’m in for less than $20 a month — that’s 10 numbers. I can also pick the numbers I want so I can get something vanity and memorable. I snagged 312-HAT-HEAD for $2 a month (I’m known as the guy who always wears hats and beanies). All the numbers can point to the same Skype accounts.

The other thing I love about Skype is ability to forward all phone calls to a variety of other numbers. I can put my cell phone on that list, as well as the cell phones of employees that can take calls. If no one is at the main Skype PC, the call automatically rings all the other phones as well. Very cool feature.

I run Skype on my PDA at home — Skype’s PDA support is actually pretty decent, and it works great over WiFi. The latency isn’t terrible. It really makes life easier for me since I don’t have to keep my laptop near me all the time, I can just toss my PDA on the nightstand if I’m reading in bed (I get a lot of late night phone calls) or on the lamp stable in the reading room. With Skype logged in on my PDA, I can answer the calls just as quickly as if I was at a PC or if they were transfered to my cell phone.

I even have some customers who we transitioned to Skype at their desktop, so the ability to communicate quickly this way is really impressive. We skip the POTS system entirely, and our calls come through fairly clearly. If a customer of mine decides to go with Skype as a backup system, I usually supply them with a $10 USB phone (basically a speaker and a microphone shaped like a phone that plugs into the USB port) for free. That $10 invested is a huge return over the long-haul.

There are a lot of downsides to using Skype — it really isn’t perfect, and the lack of caller-ID when a call is forwarded to cell phones is a bit of a pain (we do some billing based on call logs in the cell phones). We also can’t use Skype to dial out (they’re offering free calls within the US and Canada) because they don’t pass caller ID information to who we call — no one answers “Caller Unknown” calls anymore, it seems.

Skype says it works over 3G/EDGE internet connections, but the latency is terrible (250 ms sometimes). They’re working on it, but since I can find open WiFi routers about 30% of the places I work, I don’t really care much for it. The fact that I can whip out my PDA, find a WiFi router, and receive calls without a phone line amazes me — and must frighten the telephony companies who still want to charge a flat rate or a per-minute rate.

If you run a small business, consider testing out Skype — especially for your most important customers and inter-employee communications. Give it a try and I’m sure you’ll be amazed at how much time (and money!) you save.

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I found a link over at Darren the ProBlogger’s site to talks about the costs of web design. After reading the comments on both sites, I realized that most wannabe entrepreneurs are absolutely clueless in money issues, and it scares me to see people trying to earn money without understanding what it is they’re trying to do.

In business, costs are irrelevant. There is no “too expensive” or “too cheap” price to a product or service, since every product and every service is unique every time it is sold or bartered for. Web design is a huge business today, but not in the number of quality designers — there are hundreds of thousands of terrible web designers trying to sell their services. Does this mean these terrible ones are too expensive, no matter what? Not at all — “too expensive” doesn’t exist.

When you are in business (or even just a consumer), you have to look at every bit of money or time spent and see if the spending is efficient in your business (or life). Will buying a certain product or service be cheaper in the long run than making it yourself? Is the product that you can make yourself going to be as good as the one you’ll hire out? Unless you’re a great graphic designer, the answer is yes — it is often times better to hire a professional than to try to attempt it yourself.

I’m amazed that someone can look at a great web design for US$3000 and think it is too expensive. A great web design involves years of experience in knowing what code works, but also requires years of experience in knowing what graphics design is useful for. Understanding fonts, placements, layouts, colors and overall look-and-feel is not something that comes naturally to 90% of people out there. They know when something looks wrong or right, but they have no idea how to change things. This is where a pro comes in.

A good entrepreneur should have no problem earning US$80-US$150 per hour on a contract basis. Can you make a great website in 20-40 hours? I doubt it (many of my friends who think they could have shown me that they couldn’t do it in 50 hours or 100 hours, too). I’m no web designer (as you can tell), but as soon as I am ready to promote my sites more, I’ll be hiring someone to create something new and interesting and unqiue — this is what a good designer does for you.

In all my businesses I’ve owned, I never cleaned my facilities myself. I hired it out. A cleaning crew could do in 2 hours (and for under US$100) what took me a week and hundreds more in cleaning products and trash collection. I hired it out because they were cheaper and more efficient than myself. I never bothered to have my own answering machine or voice mail — I hired out answering services that took great notes, prioritized my messages and even paged me in emergencies. It was cheaper and more efficient to have someone else do the work!

Don’t automatically look at certain business expenses as “too expensive” or “worthless” until you realize how much time you’re saving, how much money you might save in the long run, and how useful the item or service will be to your income. People don’t charge more than they’re worth — if they did, they’d be out of business very quickly. Don’t mock or criticize others without understanding what is involved in their work, and if paying them to do something for you saves you time and money, be happy that you found someone able to make your life easier.

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