Small Business

Having worked for the Government or large corporations most all of my adult life I really know very little about the small business man other than what I have observed in my friends who have chosen to follow that path. However, I do believe teaching our children how to become entrepreneurs will become progressively more important as the number of “good jobs” has been declining for over three decades.

I remember one church dinner in particular. I was sitting at a large table with a number of other folks. I started up a conversation with a young man of early high school age sitting next to me. He was interested in all sorts of electronic contraptions, particularly microphones and sound equipment. As the conversation progressed, he expressed an interest in ultimately turning his hobby into a business. I tried to be very encouraging and supportive. I also tried to ask intelligent questions such as what kind of niche market would allow him to compete against the likes of Best Buys. I pointed out, Mapleshade as an example of a successful high end niche marketer. The make extremely high end stereo accessories, rebuild tube amps, and sell their own recordings of jazz and folk music. This conversation was obviously making his mother nervous. She started interjecting questions like, “Don’t you want to go to college?” I hope that someday he gets a college degree, runs a successful business, and lives a happy fulfilling life.

I recently listed to an abridged edition of How to Make Big Money in Your Own Small Business, by Jeffery Fox on CD. A couple of items were repeated so often they actually stuck with me.

First there are only three things any business can do for their customers.

1) make them feel good
2) solve their problem
3) some combination of numbers 1 and 2

The author also believes his 60/30/10 rule is critical to the success of any small businessman. He believes this rule applies to 1 man companies or even companies with even 10 full time employees.

60% of your time should be spent marketing and selling your product
30% of your time should be spent producing your product
10% of your time should be spent on administrative and managerial tasks

Of the 60% of the time spent in sales and marketing:

60% of the 60% should be spent in contact (personal visits, telephone, email) with existing customers. The author considers this so important that he recommends hiring a part time driver to allow the small businessman to work on his computer and telephone when going to visit customers in order to make certain they are happy.

30% of the 60% should be spent developing new, short term customers.

10% of the 60% should be spent developing new, long term relationships with short term customers.

By the way, the author considers a 60 hour work week a minimum for the successful small businessman (no exploitation like self exploitation). Now you know why I was never tempted to be a small businessman.

I have wondered how far I should go in comparing a local church to a small business. Obviously there are similarities in operations but differences in primary motivations. Still churches exist, at least in part, to make people feel good and solve their problems (the sin problem comes to mind). Pastors, like Joel Osteen, seem to understand this principle. A pastor I have met spent as much of his time as he possibly could manage with his existing customer base until at some point between 300 and 600 members he could no longer know everything about every one of his sheep. Moving on to a different role, as his church continued to grow, was the hardest task he ever faced.

I guess the real secret to running a successful small business is discovering something that you love and would do for free that makes people feel good, solves their problems, and can not be done by too many other people. Now, if I could just find a way to make money writing this blog (sigh).