I’ve been tackling my business launch to-do list this week. A week that started with me pulling my hair out in frustration with ongoing internet issues which had me almost wanting to close up shop. Thanks to a special delivery from Vividwireless you could say I’m well and truly back in business on the internet home front!
WHEN GOOD THINGS GO BAD
I’m at the tail or business end of my business diploma studies right now, it has me one step closer to launching my new business, a Blog Agency. With each step though, all manner of obstacles and roadblocks have come my way. It’s certainly been an interesting 12 months so far.
Each obstacle throws a few more doubts into the mix and into my mind. I find myself questioning and overthinking the simplest of things. The not so simple things have me at a constant crossroad, wondering if the entrepreneurial life is for me and if I haven’t left my endeavours a little too late.
The unexpected temporary house move/relocation at the beginning of the year didn’t help one bit. Our 23rd move and a move that should have been smooth sailing. It seems though, nothing with me is smooth sailing.
Losing my over-sized home office when I work from home, for the most part, was one thing. Losing the internet for almost a month, when our regular providers advertise they have a dedicated moving team and it only takes the one phone call, almost did me in.
In terms of my study, I was at a stage where there were several 1 hour plus webinars that needed to be watched online before completing activities and assessments. Try doing that with no internet. WIFI cafes are easy to find but they’re not the most conducive place to study. There’s only so many coffees or teas I can physically drink to justify taking up a seat and abusing the free WIFI. When internet was finally connected it wasn’t without issue and we once again lost internet, for no known reason for almost a week. It was at this point that I was ready to throw in the towel.
My long term business plans do involve having an official, possibly shared, outside of the home office. Grand plans are grander than that but they are realistically on the wish list for now, with plans for our new forever home, to have a more suitable and professional home office set up. For the time being though, the business plan needs to factor in a home office approach. Preferably with great value unlimited internet. It is an online business after all.
My biggest fear, given my recent experience with my internet provider, is hitting the launch button (in my mind it’s a massive red button) and losing internet for an extended period of time, especially considering another move is on the cards soon. What a nightmare that would be.
Factoring in nearby 24 hour WIFI cafes and local libraries, should not be part of my business plan. The reality is more often than not with our current provider it has been. Even if I wasn’t running a business from home, our girls are in year 9, 11 and 12. The majority of their homework and study is also online. Losing the internet for a week just prior to major exams was a complete nightmare.
There’s been other obstacles. So many obstacles. I’m choosing not to see them as signs that I’m on the wrong road, more temporary roadblocks. You might recall I tackled the different levels of roadblocks and how to manage them in an earlier blog post {Roadblocks to Success}.
What I didn’t address at the time were the obstacles we throw at ourselves through negative thinking and from fear. In my mind these aren’t roadblocks at all. More, self-inflicted hurdles. Obstacles that are within our control to an extent. In the end though they are roadblocks to some extent. Something that stops us moving forward smoothly, something that has the ability to paralyse our efforts, stopping us in tracks. I honestly think it’s the self-inflicted obstacles or hurdles that have the ability to stop us before we’ve really even started.
I must confess being at the business end, the fears and doubts about launching a new business can be overwhelming and that’s where I’m at right now. So close but still so far away. I have my eye on the prize but there’s still so much work to be done and then so much more work ahead of me. I’m not a fan of busy. I’m not a fan of stress.
The whole point of launching a blog agency and completing a business diploma, so I know I’m on the right track is to enable me to have more of a work and life balance. My goal is to ultimately work smarter not harder. Something that isn’t possible right now while I’m knee deep in the nitty gritty.
MOVING FORWARD with Vividwireless
The thing is, when it comes to nitty gritty and roadblocks, sometimes you just need to see them for what they are. A challenge. Then roll your sleeves up and do what needs to be done to move forward. Anyone that knows me and has been following the blog would know I LOVE A GOOD CHALLENGE and I’m not one to let something beat me. I’m going to speak about this more in a future blog post. One that looks at my online endeavours to-date, in particular the personal blog and why I think things may need to change here once I’ve launched the business.
Right now though, I’m keen to share how I’ve tackled my latest challenge which was my internet at home because this was one thing that had me spooked in terms of launching the business.
Thanks to Vividwireless I’m back to business this month and feeling a lot more confident moving forward with my new online business. My family are also enjoying the spoils of great value unlimited 4G LTE internet access with our wireless internet connection.
I must confess I was skeptical about the Vividwireless ‘plug and play’ modem which claims it can have you online in minutes with no fuss. After all the hassles we’ve had with internet following the move, I couldn’t believe it could be that simple. It seriously was. NO FUSS at all. I’m use to the fuss factor when it comes to the internet, so you have no idea how weird it felt when everything worked as it should with Vividwireless’ 1,2 3 easy set up…
1. Check your coverage: www.vividwireless.com.au/coverage
There’s such a huge coverage area that I would be surprised if your place wasn’t covered. I not only checked our current house but with our plans to move in less than 12 months I checked areas we’ve been looking to purchase in as well.
2. Buy the modem and pick your plan
You can head online to order (www.vividwireless.com.au) or make a quick phone call to the Vividwireless Call Centre (1300 327 837). Your other option is to head in-store (either Harvey Norman or The Good Guys) and purchase the modem outright for RRP of $199. My suggestion would be to head online or phone and then sign up on a 24-month plan because there’s $0 upfront costs for the modem, just $10 for delivery.
Plans start from just $29 per month (unit cost per MB $ .0015) to unlimited GB access for only $89 per month. Depending on your budget and your internet habits, there should be a plan to suit everyone.
There’s an acceptable use policy that applies to the Unlimited Plan which I haven’t really looked into. I suppose given we are in the middle of school holidays here in Perth, with five of us (2 adults, 3 teens) hammering the internet, with most of the girls’ study online (much like my own) I probably should?
3. Self-activate your internet in minutes once you have your modem
It’s seriously as easy as plugging in the modem to the power (no phone lines needed!) and then self activate the modem. So simple and absolutely no fuss.
SIMPLE | CONVENIENT | GREAT VALUE
PUTTING VIVIDWIRELESS TO THE TEST
I just can’t believe how straight forward and without issue the whole process has been so far with Vividwireless. The complete ease we’ve experienced with connecting, makes me feel like I’ve been living in the digital dark ages with our old internet providers.
I love the fact you don’t need to be on a plan and you don’t need a phone line. Just month to month if you purchase the modem outright. It means no breaking contracts if and when we move. The coverage area has me confident that this modem and our internet can easily move with us. Something that is important to me with the home business launch just around the corner. I’m yet to try their support call centre. I just haven’t had a reason to need to.
I’m really looking forward to continuing to put the Vividwireless modem to the test this school holidays. Which probably sounds like all kinds of parenting wrong but with four out of five of us knee deep in major study right now, there are no real holiday plans apart from study. Mind you we are still planning on having down time and a whole heap of fun.
Keep an eye out for my round up post that might just include a spoiler for the new business and some interesting online school holiday activities for your hard to drag away from the screen teens. Actually who am I kidding my girls need dragging away from their books just as much as their screens and I’m at a loss or more preciously they’re at an age where I don’t have much of a say in the matter. So if you have any tips in either regard… I’m all ears!
Being school holidays, there may also be a bring your three teens to work and still be productive challenge.
Are you a mother that works from home? How do you manage the school holidays?
#Vividwireless have provided me with a modem and unlimited internet access this month for the purpose of review. As is always the case, opinions and any crazy antics that I may or may not get up to while using the said modem are my own. Which makes me think I really need to investigate their acceptable use policy for the Unlimited Plan.
I can’t wait for your Blog Agency launch. I mean, how cool. A BLOG AGENCY!
As for coffee shop office space, I do so much business drinking tea in cafes that it’s little wonder I have a dodgy bladder. But hey, you’ve gotta pay the rent right?
Thanks Leanne, I still do a lot of cafe catch ups over tea and coffee. Time will tell with the Blog Agency.
Like Leanne, I can’t wait to see your blog agency launch. I think you’ll be totally fine with it.
I had never heard of Vivid Wireless before and was actually looking up some 4G wireless providers recently so this is one I’m going to keep in mind for some longer term plans I have! Love finding a new company – and uh, internet! You can’t get more relevant for bloggers 🙂
Thanks. Can’t wait to hear about your longer term plans. The blog agency launch still seems so far away. I need to finish the business diploma studies first, so I know I have the time to throw at it.
Pretty much the same boat – great ideas, but I have a semester of uni to do before much can progress. I’m slowly learning to not over-extend myself. Currently just doing random website updates when I want a mental break from other projects. Hopefully 2017 is the year for progress for me!
Sounds like you’re on the right road to me! How exciting to be on the verge of launching your very own blog agency! So pleased to hear you now have your internet sorted. Its SO FRUSTRATING when it doesn’t work (I have teens too!) 🙂
Thanks Lyndall. I will get around to explaining the blog agency line up in more detail soon. Like everything else I do it is a little left of centre. So not a talent agency.
Go unlimited.NOW. You do not need to be concerned about that then. I am sorry that this year has been what it has ended up being for you…but, you are a gal who likes a challenge as you say, so onward. For me, I would have to get the BIZ diploma stuff done before starting the BIZ but that is me! Cheers, Denyse
No change there Denyse. I still want/need to finish the study first before I launch. The thing with the study is, it overlaps most of the time with the business launch prep and the business startup itself. Which means I’m still working on my to-do list, creating the new website and ticking a lot of boxes behind the scenes while studying. No rest for the wicked springs to mind.
Can’t think of anything worse than moving and having no interest for a month especially as a business owner. Crazy! Glad that you found some help. Can’t wait to see your launch xx
I honestly can’t believe in this day and age it would take that long. While it was a combination of moving at short notice and moving to a place without internet, the internet provider needing to go through Telstra also came into play.
Internet has become an essential utility like power and water in my mind and I’d be fuming if I were having the troubles you did. When we moved they advised some ridiculous switchover time of weeks, I tweeted something along the lines of “How is it possible to have a Puratap installed within less than 24 hours of notification and [whatever timeframe it was] for my internet to get switched over?” tagging in my provider and what do you know; I was connected by the end of the day.
How strange that you can go from weeks to a matter of hours.
VERY STRANGE INDEED. *side eye*
I received this pitch also but have had so many nightmares with internet providers I thought it sounded too good to be true!!! So glad to hear you had a good experience. We are VERY unhappy with our current ISP so must be time for a change, but I have been putting it off because I thought it might be a case of better the devil you know … But you have given me hope that there could be a better answer!
I’ve also been secretly mystery shopping in this area lately. Well not so secret now, I suppose. I was skeptical myself. You know how many issues I’ve had with previous providers. So I took this on knowing that if it didn’t work out, I would just send the thing back and not blog. I’m that impressed that we will be jumping ship. I was much like you better the devil you know. But no more.
Unfortunately we don’t have Vividwireless coverage here but at least I haven’t experienced the internet issues you’d had recently. As for working from home in the holidays, I’ve given up – it just doesn’t work with younger kids!
It doesn’t does it! Especially when friends see you as a free child minding service because you’re already home with kids. When mine were little, I ended up setting up the house like a play group and gave up working during the day. I would work after they were in bed, often into the early hours of the morning. Grab a couple of hours sleep and up with the girls at 7am to start the day. I was lucky my girls were not early rises.
Argh that must have been so frustrating for you! I know I can get a better deal on my internet than I currently am but I’m hesitant to change providers because *touch wood* my connection has been reasonably stable. A friend who lives a couple of streets away is forever having issues with her connection.
It’s no fun when the internet doesn’t play right. Especially working from home. I’ve had almost a month with my new modem and really impressed. I did lose internet briefly when they were doing scheduled maintenance but unlike other providers they kept me informed and the disruption was minimal. I’m impressed. So is the whole house. I’m sharing some of what we got up to soon.
I am one of the lucky ones and I have NBN to the home but vividwireless could be something my friends who living in Wollongong can’t even get adsl would be interested in. I will certainly keep my eye on it for them it isn’t available at their address yet though.
I am looking forward to you launching your new business! I have heard or read somewhere that roadblocks don’t necessarily mean you are on the wrong path but that they are there for you to learn and ensure that you have thought about it from every aspect or something like that. So they aren’t roadblocks but learning opportunities.
School holidays can be really tricky when you work from home and have kids. I was never very successful with it I did a lot of really late nights and autopilot functioning the next day. xoxo
How are you finding NBN. It is coming to our area soon but you need to sign on for 24 months. Given we are moving sooner than that, I really like not being on a plan with Vividwireless and hopefully having the opportunity to take this modem & connect with us when we move.
It is great from the perspective that we have 3 kids all have compulsory ipads for school (though I am certain if I could do an audit of what they actually do on them I would suspect it is 5% school usage and 95% Youtube including my son the eldest in highschool!) our son has a iphone, plus hubby and I have iphones plus hubby has an ipad and I have a macbook all of those devices are pretty much constantly being used via wifi plus we have Optus Fetch TV that we have hard wired via cat 5 cable. So I think it is really fine hubby gets annoyed at times that there is a little bit of a lag at times but seriously with 9 devices (oh and I forgot the playstation that streams the stan or netflix plus son’s gaming and the apple tv in the bedroom also streams stan, netflix or itunes).
We used to have really fast adsl because we are close to the exchange but it couldn’t cope with that many devices at all. We used to not be able to watch one tv without buffering certainly couldn’t have two tvs running at all. So with the NBN all of that runs 98% of the time with not a single buffer! We could do with a wifi booster because sometimes that can be an issue as wifi doesn’t like going through walls but that isn’t the quality of the NBN.
There is one thing I don’t like about it which is that if the power goes out we will loose our phone line. So I am paranoid about keeping my phone charged! Not that we have power outages often I think the last one was in 2003 from huge storms! But still.
With the contract you know that if you move you can break the contract that isn’t an issue it is one of the break clauses that you don’t have to pay out the contract (well with optus it is especially if they don’t provide the same service in the new area!)
I’ll be honest and it was a pain in the butt to set up. It was meant to be a seamless transition between adsl to NBN but the NBN installers broke the cable when they laid it (yes truly they wrote on the notes pit lid dropped on cable possibly broken!) so when everything was installed here it didn’t switch on. So the NBN service ppl had to come and replace the cable and he did that and switched on our cable. Once the Optus system started getting a signal from our NBN that triggered a cutoff of the ADSL only they had pushed back the start date of the contract for 6weeks so didn’t deliver the modem and our adsl modem from them didn’t work with NBN. This went round in circles we were billed for two modems and still didn’t have the bloody NBN but in the end I got a contact with a direct number and it was all sorted in 24hrs (after 5days!) The most frustrating was we were staying with the same company and our adsl couldn’t be reconnected (or phone) because the reason our area got it was because our exchange was dying so once the phone line was switched off they couldn’t do any reconnections.
But that could have easily happened with any company as annoying as it was I eventually got online and got an incredible amount of credit on our bill for the trouble!
So I think this is my really long way of saying yeap it is so worth it especially if you have tweens or teens needing it for school or wanting it for gaming or youtube or tv viewing. As I said we can be streaming movies or tv on three tvs at the same time plus using the internet for fb or mucking around etc and not a single buffer. Sorry for the long winded reply!
I really appreciate the long reply! Keep them coming. It’s really interesting. Definitely not something I will look into until we move. I’m keen to keep things as simple as possible and we had so many dramas in the last move with internet. I almost threatened to lodge a naked protest due to lack of naked wifi.
What a great idea! I know a number of people that are just using little 3g dongles. This would be so much better!
I never had much luck with the 3g dongles, given we have five in the house needing internet. The Vividwireless modem is really working for us.