Scale down the plans

I can’t do both jobs together but perhaps that is a good thing.  This way I get to test the market and slowly introduce the services and test the waters that way.  It is just “one of those things” I guess?  It would have been good to get completely involved in this first but the other job needs an enormous push to get going and I can evaluate it after I have given it a fair crack of the whip.

Life’s like that

You can never quite determine what is around the corner and the new opportunity really looks to be something that I would have to devote full time to.  It would have been nice to do a couple of days a week at that and a couple of days on this or something like that.  Of course that would be in an ideal world. 

I will know soon enough and then be able to decide exactly what I am going to do.  The other thing is that is it possible to do two jobs?  That would need to be the next question to be asked.

Decisions, decisions

It is a bit of a nuisance getting this other job which sort of came in left field and has thrown my plans around quite a bit.  Generally, if it were a small assignment or something similar I wouldn’t have worried as that would have been controllable but a full time job is a different thing altogether.

It gives me a number of days to think through the pros and cons of either going with that job, setting up the site or trying to do both. 

Work gets in the way

A bit of a nightmare – just as I was in the middle of planning, a job that I looked at some weeks ago sprung to life and I went to visit them a few days ago and it looks as if – subject to agreeing terms – they want me to go and work for them.  This sort of throws things into a spin as I really wasn’t expecting it at all.

Now you can plan for most things but as I hadn’t heard back by the deadline for the job I thought that I had missed it or that they weren’t really interested.  Of course, that is far from correct and the thing is that it will bring me in far more money than the web site to start with so I’d be foolish not to work there and then finance this from there.  This way I can grow things gently rather than taking a big bang approach.  The trouble is that doing it this way I may not have sufficient time to undertake both at the same time. 

Well – no one said it would be easy.

Big Bang or Evolutionary

It is difficult to build an all singing, all dancing web site straight away.  I have been working on the business process and exception handling of just one element of the service and it is complicated to get right.  Because there are other processes also at work on the site and some of them interact with the others and to make it possible to undertake multiple buying (shopping cart) I think that the initial plans are too ambitious.  What the exercise has proved is that in order to make the site and the business work slickly, a lot of automation and customer experience work is needed to be done.

Starting off small may well be the answer and bringing on services in a piecemeal way after thorough testing is definitely the way to go.  Additionally the high value work is the area to target first and the high volume low margin work can get tagged on if it is necessary.

I am continuing to document the processes but, with a view to build these onto a solid platform rather than to attempt to do it all in one go.

Now the real work begins

The name is chosen – that is a big step forwards and the business plan and all the planning documents have a new title Of course, this is just the start of the main phase of the work as the specification for the web site and the back office start to come together and I get the notes sketched out over the past 4 months and the ideas in my head in to some form of order and start to put flesh onto the cash flow forecast.  In order to grow the business needs funding and in order for that to happen sales are required and in order for that to happen you need to spend money It’s the way of things of course and so I need to set myself a realistic series of milestones to tackle growing the business.

It would be great to have the fully automated B2C web site with all the knobs and whistles on it but that wont happen.  What must happen is that the plans to make it happen are in place and that the business is operated in such a way that changes in the future (from manual to automated) become easy transitions because it was planned that way.

The Name is Chosen

After a long period of checking and double checking and making sure that the company name wasn’t in use and that the domain names were available, the name is:

Unlock My Past

The unlockmypast domains have been purchased and I’m just about to sort out the bank account and other details so that I can get trading as soon as possible although I don’t really expect that it will be for a good few months yet as I need to work on the back office areas of the business.  At least now I can call it by its real name.

Competing with and differentiating against the Cowboys

Here in the UK the term Cowboy is used for someone who does a bad job or isn’t a professional who takes the money and rides off into the sunset never to be seen again.  The trouble with all industries, especially those who aren’t particularly well regulated is that anyone can set themselves up as a professional and how do you tell and how do you distinguish between them?  Some people of course will always fall for the cheap Rolex or the Cheapest option and then find that they have bought a pup.  the trouble is that the Genealogy industry actually does have a professional institute that should cover all of this AGRA – I doubt though that many people have heard of it or know what it does.

If you are starting up, you have to wait a year before you can tell anyone that you have signed up to AGRA’s code of conduct – surely a mistake as after a year if you are trading well enough why bother and as no one else advertises the AGRA sign why should you bother.  Many of the institutes and researchers I talk to aren’t particularly bothered either.  Perhaps the only people who are concerned is the IHGS and again they promote professionalism in the industry but you need to be in the industry to know who they are.  Ask “Jo Public” and they may well tell you that the Institute they think regulates Genealogists is the Society of Genealogists (SOG).  I don’t think they actually do that from what I know of them.

Somewhere I need to promote that the work will be to a standard and undertaken in a professional manner.  I need to differentiate my services from those of the eBay and cheap as chips look up businesses who, cannot be properly set up in business (they cannot make enough to cover the professional subscriptions and costs to trade).  Most probably use personal subscriptions to their data and are not allowed to re-sell that or to use it for profit and reward, I doubt any will have professional liability or indemnity insurance or that they are complying with all Statutory and Legal requirements.  Many are probably not keeping proper records, are not registered to hold your data and many probably aren’t set up to be paying their tax and National Insurance, VAT, Corporation Tax or business rates.  Sure they are cheap but are they accurate, are they working within the law and are you protected?  It is like buying fake goods, do you have any statutory rights or did you give them away the moment you bought something “off the back of a lorry”?

As a final side swipe at the hobbyist and those who aren’t really in business, one has to wonder that if they haven’t researched how to run their business properly, can they really be trusted to undertake research into family histories with accuracy or indeed to any level of quality?  I tend to think that these people (some well intentioned) really need to examine what they are doing in business and whether they comply with the Law.  I was very surprised to see one such on-line competitor state that they would not correspond through their home/office address or on the phone only by e-mail.  You cannot do this.  All businesses and web sites in the UK must display an office or registered office address. 

Anyway – a bit of a rant but buyers need to be aware that when they buy cheap they may not have any rights and the terms and conditions will be scant if any available at all.  I intend to have a policy, terms and conditions and to conduct business in a professional manner and to AGRA code of conduct (even if I can’t tell you that I am going to be an affiliate member – really AGRA wake up!!!)

In God We Trust

All others pay cash – the sign in the local shop used to say.  The trouble with being in business is that someone will always be happy to take the fruits of your labour and not pay for them.  Believe me I have a couple of very good stories about this.  They see it as acceptable behaviour rather than what it is and that IS theft.

In a business that is low margin and occasionally high volume and across frontiers around the world, you cannot run it on a credit basis, there has to be payment up front and so, there needs to be a guarantee from my business to the purchaser that the money is used for research and that results are provided.  I need to set up a good merchant accounting system that acknowledges the money received and assigns that money to a customer account.

Competitors

Of course, if you were to believe the recent spate of TV programmes (Who do you Think you are?) then you will know that you can trace your family history with a subscription to Ancestry and over a cup of tea in front of your PC.  In fact so many people believe this that they have set themselves up in business to provide a service tracing family trees at a fixed price.

So why not I hear you ask?  Well, of the 3500+ people in my tree only about 2000 of them actually fit in the tree the rest are disconnected as there is insufficient evidence (and I use that word advisedly) to state that they are members of the family.  One of the problems I have seen with on-line research is that assumptions are made about who fits where and trees are built that have no basis in fact.  Certain key things would be a woman’s ability to produce a child (roughly every two years in some cases) beyond their 50th birthdays – a feat extremely rare today let alone 150 years ago.  How a family can all be born in one area except great uncle Fred who was miraculously born 300 miles away.  Reading the Transcriptions as if the Transcriptions are “fact”.  Even the transcription of my birth in the GRO is incorrect and my Mother’s maiden name is misspelled!! So all of these things are why you would employ someone like me who actually uses the records, the evidence, the possibilities that what you are given may be incorrect and by applying strict rules to the evidence can confidently state whether someone actually is a relative or not.  In this respect NOT JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS is paramount.

The eBay types and one page web sites (you can tell those who don’t give you a telephone number or address) will have you believe that they can give you a three or four generation family tree for £90 or can do research and look-ups for £3 each etc.  They are commoditising something that can hardly be commoditised.  Perhaps a look-up can be priced this way but ask any Record Agent what you’d actually get for £3 work these days and again, you would find that what you want looked up will be played directly back without any real value being added for your money.

Additionally, there are those who do genealogy for a hobby and sell their spare time to undertake research for you.  I can understand that and the problem is again one of perception of the business.  Those who have to make a living cannot compete with those who don’t have to run and office, phones, corporate fee structures, copyright and other fees payable, data protection act compliance etc.  So the £6/Hour is fine for them as it is a bit of “pin” money.  They enjoy what they do and you’ll probably get a very good personal service but you are dealing with a part time worker who’s only customer this year might be you.  You’ll probably get good value for money from a hobbyist as they will take on your family with the same determination as their own in trying to sort out your records.

DIY is fine – researchers are there to help you when you need it.  The problem facing the DIY is that it isn’t a full time piece of work and you have to keep coming back to it and remember what you did last month.  A researcher is doing this sort of work full time, has well kept records and can pick up very quickly on where they are with a problem.