A Few Of My Favorite Things

There's a ton of business information out there. I've read probably a full half-ton of it. Most of is not worth the time it took to look. The vast majority of business information out there is out-dated or unreachable - stuff that just doesn't make sense for your business and doesn't tell you anything about what you need to do now. I have found some awesome stuff that has been extremely helpful. These are my favorite resources of 10 years of business ownership. These are the ones that have actually helped me run a better business. Books: Instant Cashflow - by Brad Sugars. Sugars is a little insufferable - likes to talk about his jet skis and his penthouses in Las Vegas - but he does know what he's doing when it comes to business. In this book, he presents a formula for increasing your business revenue that actually works. It's not quite as cut and dried as he likes to makes it seem, but it does really work. He writes in a story format that's approachable and easy to read. It gives lots of practical advice that you can start using right away. All of Sugars' books are useful but I definitely found this one to be the best. Self-Counsel Press: Financial Management 101 - by Angie Mohr. This is a MUST READ. This book gives all of the information you need to understand in order to run the money side of your business and set your financial goals. This is the single most important book I have ever read for business. It changed everything about the way I do business and is the reason I was able to open my store and stay on track financially - even when I was under a load of debt to start with. All of the Self-Counsel Press books are great but this is the one that will change everything for you. Blogs/Websites: Marketing for Hippies - Tad Hargrave - Tad's intro workshops are an absolute must for any business owner. I learned more in a three hours workshop with him than I did in a four week micro-business program. He has a great formula for the ten things you need in order to be set up and ready to go. It gives you a guide that you can follow when you're overwhelmed and not sure which of the 1000 things that seem to need your attention are reallly important. Tad focuses mainly on holistic health care practitioners and environmental businesses but his tips and advice work for anyone. His blog is full of great resources and links to other people offering great workshops. Capital Ideas - Edmonton Journal - just last fall, the Journal developed a program called 'Capital Ideas'. It features business advice from dozens of successful business owners in the Edmonton region. They posed questions and get answers from all kinds of business owners. They offer events a couple of times a month - mainly panel discussions and forums on topics specific to small business owners. Every Wednesday, parts of the Capital Ideas website are published in the Journal.

Be Ready!

One of the most important business lessons I have learned over the years is that you need to be ready. I have seen so many business owners start their business exactly backwards. This can only lead to disaster. When you start a business, you have to think about the whole process before actually launching to the public. You need to think about how people are going to find out about your business, what kind of experience they're going to have when they contact you, and how you will meet their needs. Too many people jump into a business without a lot of planning and then realize they have shot themselves in the foot by not thinking about the plan. What's use of attracting customers if they are going to come to you to find an unfinished business that's not able to meet their needs? What's the use of setting up a great business if there's no way for people to find out about you? Here are some examples of businesses that weren't ready: - a business that put up a great website and facebook page with a number of notices announcing when they would be open. On their opening date, they did not have a sign outside their place of business. The store was inside a small mall and could not be seen from the outside. They didn't even have a sign on their actual store windows and door inside the mall. The floors and walls were not finished and most of the fixtures were not installed. They opened far before they were ready. People who hear about the store come there and get an awful impression of a place that just does not have its act together. The owners can explain to people that they are just getting started but chances are, most of those people will not come back because they had that initial poor impression. - a very small business that decided to do a groupon offer to bring in new clients. The offer was outrageously successful and they were flooded with new clients. But they had not prepared for the massive increase in volume and had to take a very long waiting list for services. Eventually they had to turn customers away and offer them refunds because they just didn't have enough staff and capacity to handle all those people. They attracted lots of new customers but they left the majority of them with a bad impression and most of those people will never come back. Even worse, they are likely to tell other people not to go there. - an internet based business that scored an appearance on the CBC show Dragon's Den. They did not score a deal but I was really interested in what they were doing so I went to their website. It was not yet up and running! They had a home page but all of their other pages said 'coming soon' and you could not order anything from the website. They got a golden opportunity to reach thousands of people for free and they didn't take the time to make sure that website was ready to go when the TV show aired. I never went back to that site and I'm sure most everyone else who visited it after the show never came back either. - Scott Stratten (an excellent marketing expert, blogger and writer) tells the story of how he launched a video to promote his speaking services. He offered a free package and his services to anyone who requested it. That video went viral and received thousands and thousands of views. He went from getting one or two requests for packages per week, to 50 a day! He had been preparing those packages himself in his house! His e-mail box actually collapsed because it could not hold all of the mail he received. His newsletter client was not large enough to handle all of the influx. He finally had to wipe out all of the contacts and start over with a new system. He lost thousands of contacts and potentially hundreds of paying clients because he wasn't ready. Before you launch your business, or before you launch a new product or service, you have to sit down and think about all of the pieces that will need to be in place in order for it to run properly. Will people be able to find you? Once they find you, what impression of your business will they get? If they go to your website or call you or walk into your store will they get an impression of a company that is professional, organized, friendly, and able to help them? Do you have all of your systems in place to make sure you can meet your customers demands right through from initial contact to fulfillment of a sale? Are there any spots where people can fall through the cracks? Do you know what your capacity is? Do you know how many people you can reasonably serve in a day or week? Do you have a good system for handling them? Do you know how much stock you will need to handle your desired level of sales? The key to running a really successful business is not so much getting customers but keeping them. You want to be sure that when you launch, the customers you do get will have the best experience they could possibly have. That will keep them coming back and they will probably tell their friends to come to you too. Don't make the mistake of being too eager to get started. It's better to spend the time and money it takes to wait until things are properly in place than to risk losing a pile of money and customers because you couldn't meet their needs.

Why Local Business Matters

This is my very first post on a blog I've been thinking about starting for a long, long time. I have been a small business owner for the past 10 years and I've picked up a lot of knowledge along the way. When I think about how little I knew when I started, it pains me. But I'm grateful for that because, had I known then what I know now, I might have been to scared to even try. We all have to start somewhere. Even if you think you know nothing about business, or if you really do know nothing, you can learn along the way. I encourage anyone who is interested in starting up a small business to go for it - but please go for it with your eyes as wide open as you can so that you can avoid as many of the pitfalls as possible. I thought a great place to start this blog would be with answering the question of why you should start a small business in the first place. Why would anyone want to do this when it is so risky, takes so much work, and is fraught with tons of competition from the big guys. This is why. We need small, local businesses. In this time when the corporations seem to be swallowing everyone and every city and town you drive into looks like an exact blueprint of another, locally run business are in danger of becoming extinct. It's so important that this doesn't happen. The big box stores and chains are certainly convenient but if we let them take over completely, we are risking some serious losses. This is what small businesses give to us: 1. Choice! You may think that a huge chain store will be able to offer so much more range than you ever could as a small business but that is actually not the case. Big chains have their product lines and they will choose a selection from each category for them. They will rarely deviate from that. Often, if it's a franchise, they are not even allowed to deviate from that line. It is a rare thing to be able to walk into a big chain store and have them custom order a product that they do not carry in stock. Small businesses, on the other hand, have much more control over their product lines and are often able to bring in exactly what a customer is looking for. 2. Service! The big stores have a large customer base and they know that if one customer walks out, another one will walk right in. They aren't as hungry to get and keep that customer as a small business owner is. A small business owner is much more likely to give a customer personalized service - to help them understand products and pick the right ones for them, to cater the services they offer to their customer, and to help them when things go wrong. Big chain stores often don't have the time for that or they don't have the designated staff for it. If your request deviates from their standard protocol for customer service, you're probably going to be out of luck. As well, staff as big chain stores are often there just for a job. Although some of them are they because they love the product or service they offer and they know a ton about it, it's really a crap shoot as to whether you'll get someone like that or not. Small business owner have almost always opened their business because they love the topic they are dealing with (if you don't, you should probably think twice about getting into that business). We know our stuff and we love to talk to people about it. Nothing makes me happier than someone walking into my store and asking me detailed questions about toys and toy line - because I LOVE toys and I love to talk about them. If we lose all the small businesses, we lose the people who have the time, knowledge and interest to really help us meet our needs. We are left having to settle for the product and service we could get rather than the one we really wanted or needed. 3. Community! A small business owner lives where s/he works. S/he hires locally (in most cases). S/he pays business taxes into his/her home town and supports the local economy. Many small business owners are invested in supporting their local community because they live there and they use all the services too. They are often the businesses that give to the local charities and get involved in area activities. When you start a small business or when you support a small business, you are keeping money in your home community. Running and supporting small businesses is am important part of our local economy. Don't ever think that you shouldn't start up because you can't afford to compete with the chains. Chains are so ubiquitous now that people are actually starting to seek out something different. And don't think that you need to be big to be successful. There are a lot of small local business owners who make a very nice living for themselves without all of the hassles of starting franchises or huge corporations. Big may be beautiful but small is stupendous.