See also Finance Management (Research on Bad Debtors in NSW) | Sydney/NSW | Queensland | Canberra ACT | Orange NSW
Up to 2007, we have had plenty of bumsteers in NSW especially since the dot-com crash in 2001. We found for a few months in 2008 that QLD is much easier place to do business in open source-based software development. We returned to NSW later in 2008.
Over the last 10 years, we detested NSW debtors as they create a very stressful environment for our small IT business due to high debt costs being moved onto us by them making everyone fight over money and savings to survive.
On 10 Oct 2008 the music stopped with an 8% drop on the Australian Stock Exchange as part of the worldwide financial meltdown and now we are all fighting for the last chair or dollar to survive.
We have had nothing but misery and hardship since we based our business in NSW due to
Due to constant losses through bad customers being nearly 100% from NSW, we are looking for business in other states like Queensland, Victoria, Canberra, ACT, South Australia and possibly West Australia and Tasmania which are more productive for our line of business - IT via the Internet, not face to face - with better profits and prospects.
About 20% of customers in NSW are any good. The remaining 80% just create ongoing debt problems for themselves and all they deal with because they want more than they can afford or have no contingency plans - 'Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!' (1 Corinthians 15:32)
As of January 2008, after waiting out the months required to get slow payers to pay, and becoming mainly an accounts receivable department and not doing any new work, we moved to South-East Queensland for a period. Working on another job in Queensland while waiting for late NSW payments reduced risk and made the most money as overheads decreased, giving a shot in the arm to our weakened business. Our attempt to move to Queensland has paid off in 2010 but also had some risks from locals attacking our expertise which set us back and made WWWalker take off again on its own, not in partnership any more. We also successfully worked on our NSW slow payers and got some money owing and will now get the final amounts with gradually more success so that we won't have to wait much longer (it took 4 months till the first payments arrived!).
We moved back to NSW under our own steam to stay safe. Because we were new to Queensland, we worked on interstate work and eventually a local job by having a local office in Logan.
We will work on not just being a programmer as people seem to kick programmers round as they undervalue them and it is easy to cheat them by not paying or delaying payment. Being someone higher up the chain like a project manager or lead programmer gives us much more power over what we are paid and how the project pans out rather than wait and hope the customer will be fair which they rarely are.
Small customers are the pits and have caused us endless lost income and pain in retrieving income. They come thick and fast despite attempts to not get that sort of dodgey customer again so we just bounce them off when they attempt to get us to do a non-profitable job.
Being more positive about the direction and prospects of our business we believe will attract more high quality customers with a win-win situation to us and them. If we are down, the poorer customers are attracted to us leading to a downward spiral for all concerned and little incentive to do IT work.
Music is better value.
In June 2008, we managed to connect to several entrepreneurial (Sydney OpenCoffee) and NSW State Government (Western Sydney IT Cluster) gatherings in Sydney that have helped our business refocus and start getting on top of bad customers and find good customers in NSW.
Home-Based Businesses, of which we are one, are 70% of the NSW small business community in 2008 and contribute a large part to the economy of NSW. These microbusinesses are helping my business develop and go somewhere, not the dead-beat small businesses!
In November 2008, we transferred our principal place of business back to Orange NSW as Brisbane, Queensland was too hard to find a place to setup or get customers since we were from NSW, a rival state. Parochialism blocked us getting off the ground in Queensland so we retreated to Orange NSW again but moved our registered office to Brisbane which worked as we were over the border so a local.
After being squeezed out of Orange in June 2009, we ventured into Victoria to see why we can't win any work down there. They are already very hitech and independent so we got nowhere there as we did not have a Melbourne office. We did a survey instead and learnt from the Victorians approach to technology deployment!
In October 2009, we visited Canberra for a month. It is a hi-tech city. We revisited in November 2009. According to 'Postcode' by Wayne Swan, Canberra has 58% internet adoption in 2005.
In December 2009, we have started moving a large proportion of our business to Canberra as it is so much easier to find hi-tech and music work here than Sydney or Melbourne. Orange became too bureaucratic to work there except for brief visits to do admin.
Created: 4 Dec 2007 23:04
Last Updated: 14 July 2010 12:43