2. SMALL BUSINESSES success
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“We warriors of light must be prepared to have patience in difficult
times and to know the Universe is conspiring in our favor, even though
we may not understand how”. – Paul Coelho, The Alchemist
The opportunity for small business owners to grow their businesses has
never been greater for many reasons that include the ability to:
o Develop mutually beneficial relationships with customers that large
companies, by virtue of their size and scope and the need to
continually feed their machine, cannot
o Provide customers and potential customers with high quality, timely
and relevant information on a consistent basis
o Build community around our businesses and, without asking, have
our customers become our best ambassadors
o Generate very accurate, timely, decision enabling financial and
other information at low cost, allowing us to alter our plans in order
to take advantage of new opportunities
o Create and keep customers in a very cost effective way
“Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude” – Zig
Ziglar
In the mid 1980’s I opened a small accounting office and bought the latest
and greatest IBM desktop computer with a – stop, take a deep breath – 40
megabyte hard drive. Yes, megabyte! (I believe the purchase price was
approximately $5,000). My tax software arrived in a box containing 35
diskettes which I dutifully loaded onto that 40 megabyte hard drive; it took
me at least 4 hours! Look how far we’ve come!! My smartphone (I am far
from a smart user) is now measured in gigabytes and we all use some form
of cloud-based storage because our files are so large. I know you know all
this better than I do but I say this because I am fascinated by the
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advantages technology provides to small business and how it more than
levels the playing field. Small businesses have the ability to provide high
quality information (I define high quality information as “information that
is relevant, readily available, accurate and helpful to me in making the
best decision possible given the current circumstances”) to their
customers and potential customers who can either store it for future
decision making or act on it almost immediately. No more paper fliers, no
more expensive ads the benefit, or huge cost, of which can only be
measured after the fact – oftentimes too late, as in “guess the ad didn’t
work like the ad salesman told me it would”. I see an opportunity for small
business owners to honestly influence the decisions of their potential
customers in a timely manner and in a mutually beneficial way.
ADVANTAGE – SMALL BUSINESS!
“If you are failing to plan you are planning to fail.” – Benjamin Franklin
Engage in some simple advance planning and some simple “score-keeping”
- we have the ability to accurately measure the results of our customer
education process and make changes based on real-time feedback. By
using a simple email communication system that provides information to
our community we are able to understand how our community values what
we are sending them by knowing how many people opened the email and
when, did they share it, did they (heaven forbid!) opt out? The question
customers ask themselves is “why should we believe what is being said?”
In my opinion it comes down to trust and the gut feeling the customer gets
as to whether the small business owner is interested in mutually beneficial
relationships or one-off transactions. When I was a little kid growing up in
Brooklyn inevitably someone would ask “what do you want to be when you
grow up” and my response was always “a lawyer” – but it wasn’t really
true. I grew up speaking Italian and didn’t begin to learn English until
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Kindergarten; we had oil heat and I wanted to be the guy who came with
the truck, set up the delivery hose into the tank in the basement, and then
went over to this truck with dials and gauges to start the delivery. He was
in charge – and all the cars had to wait for him to finish if he came on a
day without alternate parking! I was trying to say “oiler”, with my accent
and lack of language skills it sounded like “lawyer”.
Like the little kid from Brooklyn, small business owners also need to decide
“who their businesses want to be when they grow up”; do you want to be
known for offering the lowest price, the highest quality service, the
education you provide to customers so they can make the most informed
decision, the shopping experience, having the largest selection, etc. The
most successful small businesses are the ones that want to be who they
are at the time; things may change over time – the most successful
businesses innovate, and innovate and innovate – however being congruent
is really important, or as the old saying goes “who you are shouts out so
loudly that I can’t hear what you are saying.”
The world we live in provides us with a really great platform for
conversation. I am really lucky – I love cycling and am a part of Gruppo
Sportivo Gran Fondo NY, the ambassador team for GFNY. I am not a racer,
I am a teacher and coach, and yet I have had the opportunity over the past
5 years to communicate with cyclists all over the world about my passion
for cycling and helping people. I am able to do that for free – absolutely
free. Email, Facebook, Skype, Twitter, Web – cost very little and provide
you with a tremendous reach and with a little bit of planning and
congruence you can talk to anyone in the world about what you love – your
small business. How do you feel about your small business? Is it your
passion, do you love what you do, is it something you are good at?
ADVANTAGE – SMALL BUSINESS!
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“Creativity dies in an undisciplined environment” – James C. Collins
Creative thinking requires some basic information – a springboard if you
will. Many small business owners wear too many hats to count and once
the behavior pattern is established it is difficult to break. Successful small
business owners make an investment in passing off some of those hats as
early as possible and let people do what they do best, freeing up their time
and energy to continue to build their businesses. In business, anticipatory
thinking, planning and innovation are the key to survival and growth and
it is nearly impossible to do that kind of thinking without some outside
perspective - there is too much “success and knowledge prejudice”, as in
“I’ve been doing it this way for 35 years, what can you tell me that I don’t
already know”. It is never too late to work with an outside business
advisor; it requires some trust, but better to try and be unsuccessful once
or several times until you find the right fit than to remain static.
In the old days, small businesses were relying on their local accountants
to provide them with “write-up” services; the accountant would take their
check stubs and bank statements every month or quarter, reconcile the
accounts, pay the taxes and prepare a simple P & L letting the business
owner know how they did or didn’t do. Small business owners that were
a little more progressive and at some point decided to work ON their
business rather than IN their business created some form of internal
mechanisms to account for their business and had more timely
information. Still, if you are as old as I am you remember 14 column green
paper, pencils and at some point, really bad eyes! These days all that is
required is a little bit of simple planning to setup your chart of accounts,
revenue categories, reconciliation spreadsheets, payment and credit card
processing that is customer-centric, and a simple calendar; have someone
guide you as to how to set these up properly based on your industry and
business and you will have a scorecard that makes sense to you and will
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help you manage our day to day business using real information. Gut
instinct is wonderful and a real competitive advantage if you have it – not
everyone does – gut instinct layered with professional advice and
information is, in today’s language – “the killer app”! Imagine managing
and growing your business where daily information contained in the POS
and accounting system is automatically available to you, your business
managers and your business advisor so that each of you can review the
information using your own perspective and then sharing your thoughts in
order to further grow and develop the business based on your business plan
– how great would that be? Those systems are available today for amounts
that any small business can afford. Sure, they are available to large
businesses as well – chances are they are more sophisticated, bigger, faster
– but think about this – what is the impetus required to turn a cruise ship
compared to a speedboat? What is the turning radius? What is the
response time?
ADVANTAGE – SMALL BUSINESS!
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My goal in life is to help improve people’s lives through my business
advisory work at MBV Advisors and by inspiring people to get involved in
the cycling lifestyle.
This is the first in a series of articles I am writing that I believe will provide
information that is supportive of small businesses and small business
owners because I believe you/we are one of the backbones of our
communities; as our communities go so goes the world. Some articles will
be more specific than others.
Thank you for taking the time to read this article; if you have any
questions, would like more information about how we at MBV Advisors can
help you further build and develop your small business, or just talk about
your business, irrespective of size and stage of development, please
contact me as follows and we can arrange a call:
My email address is : vito.valentini@humanpotentialcatalyst.com
Thank You
Vito Valentini
March 17, 2015
