I am a very busy person. A typical workday for me (that's in
the office) lasts about 11 hours. Add about another hour at home
and at least a couple more on the weekend, and you can see my days
are nearly as busy as yours. So I try to maximize my time,
constantly striving to figure out ways to do things faster and more
efficiently. I've always assumed you all did the same. But I
was wrong. Too many of you are wasting time. At the risk of
sounding like a scolding mother (or a nagging spouse), I want you
to stop dawdling and start working more effectively. Now!
How? First, why are you still using dial-up? Every survey
I've ever seen shows that most Americans (whether at home or at
the office) use dial-up connections to connect to the Internet.
While I can understand why a casual home user might stick with
dial-up (though in all honesty, I have a cable modem at home), I
cannot fathom why a business owner would. Here at Entrepreneur, we
use the ultra-high-speed T1 lines. (And remember, we're a small
business just like you.) While you may not require that much speed,
most businesses could benefit from some sort of broadband access. I
don't care if you choose DSL, cable or satellite-it's time
for business owners to (as chef Emeril would say) "kick it up
a notch" and upgrade to broadband.
Last month I was traveling at the time my column was due. I knew
I was going to write about Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) and
asked the group to e-mail pictures from its competition straight to
our art department. Instead, they e-mailed them to me. The problem?
I was on the road and using dial-up. It not only took me one hour
and 50 minutes to receive the e-mail, but it took even longer to
forward it to the office. That was essentially four hours of my
time totally and completely wasted. Imagine wasting that kind of
time every day. Even better, imagine how you and your employees
could be using those hours. (Dial-up's cost savings do not make
up for the time wasted. Time is money-especially for
businesses.)
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D&B's "Survey of Small Business (2001)" showed
that 80 percent of businesses with 25 or fewer employees used
computers. Two-thirds had access to the Net (mostly using dial-up),
and 50 percent had their own Web site. Of those, 40 percent of the
businesses did not accept orders online.
That's the subject of rant No. 2. I know most Entrepreneur
readers are more connected than that, but as a general
representation of small business, those numbers are pathetic.
I'm going to repeat what I've been saying for the past five
or six years: You cannot grow a business to its full potential if
you are not using the Net. (If you are the exception to this rule,
I want you to write me and tell me your story.) In fact, a report
from the American City Business Journals shows small businesses
that use the Net have grown 46 percent faster than those that
don't.
There are plenty of other ways to work more efficiently. But
I've run out of room in this short space. Seventeenth-century
clergyman Robert Burton implored his contemporaries not to be
penny-wise and pound-foolish. Nearly 400 years later, I'm
asking the same of you. You can't make money without spending
some. You can't grow if you don't work effectively. You
won't succeed unless you adopt and adapt. America is depending
on you. You fuel our economy, employ our citizens and create the
products and services we all rely on. If you don't grow,
America won't either. So stop wasting time, and let's get
down to business!