Small Business Workshop

How big is a trillion? We write it as 1,000,000,000,000. But how big is that in terms that we are already familiar with?

This NASA mathematics perspective is one way to get your head around the magnitude of a trillion: one trillion seconds is 31, 546 years, and there are nearly six trillion miles in one light-year.

From an economic perspective, the U.S. national debt is about $12 trillion as of October 2009, or about $39,000 for every living person in the U.S. The total world economy is estimated at somewhere around $40 trillion.

We already have a few trillion dollar industries: food, energy, health care, automobiles, global military spending, tourism, to name a few. The internet, television, information technology are not that large at this point.

Renowned economist Paul Zane Pilzer asserts in two of his books, The Wellness Revolution and The Next Trillion, that total spending on all goods and services in the "wellness" industry will exceed one trillion dollars in the next five years or so. He also maintains that much of that many-fold growth in wellness will come from a rapid shift away from spending in today's health care industry, which he refers to as the 'sickness' industry.

You are doing your part with your day-to-day spending to make those trillion dollar pies. What's your plan for taking back a share?

It doesn't take a very big slice of a trillion dollar pie to radically change your financial status, and all the freedom to choose that comes with that. One thousandth of one percent of a trillion dollars is still 10 million dollars. If you're already in motion to grab your piece, all the best!

But if your pie is not trillion dollar size, time to do some homework. You're already helping to make the wellness pie as you change your spending along with the rest of the planet. Finding the right wellness small business can help you ensure that you're not just making that pie for someone else to enjoy!

Any small business owner who spent time as a large company employee knows the truth: it's hard to beat small business for productivity. At its best, this translates into financial efficiency and attractive profit opportunities for the entrepreneur-minded.

It also can mean good things for local economies.

From an April, 2005 research report prepared for the US Small Business Administration on the impact of entrepreneurship on regional economic growth ...
"The most entrepreneurial regions had better local economies from 1990 to 2001 compared to the least entrepreneurial. They had 125 percent higher employment growth, 58 percent higher wage growth and 109 percent higher productivity."

At the low end of the small business spectrum, home-based businesses represent an especially nimble and low-risk option for the savvy entrepreneur looking to be an economic difference-maker. With startup investment costs typically in the hundreds of dollars instead of hundreds of thousands, a successful home-based small business can provide upwards of thousand-fold returns on those low initial investments.

With the positive impact your business can also have on your local economy, here's your chance to become a hero with both your family and your local chamber of commerce!

An excellent new web site offers straightforward tips for using GMail that can help most small businesses that use email.

The presentation is structured in a series of short, easy-to-follow videos with a combination of informational bullet points and recorded screen sessions. The content includes a good balance of 'big picture' information, such as feature reasons why you should consider using Gmail, and how-to specifics on setting up and using Gmail.

The voice-over narrative for the videos is friendly but to-the-point, and works very well with the screen sessions to walk you through the actual steps that you would see on your system.

No previous experience with Gmail is assumed with this Tips presentation. But the pace flows well enough that experienced Gmail users can also benefit from the material, as a refresher or as exposure to Gmail features that may not have been used yet.

Well worth the time investment to check this one out!

According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, "The Small Business Act states that a small business concern is 'one that is independently owned and operated and which is not dominant in its field of operation.'"

Here are two key ways that some small businesses, especially home-based businesses, can deliver results that belie their modest beginnings.

1. Reach

Network marketing opportunities provided the initial opening for small businesses to have global reach that traditionally was the domain of much larger enterprises. The internet has further leveled the field for many types of small businesses to operate around the world, especially for conducting border-less marketing and support operations.

2. Scalability

Traditional types of businesses deal with hard realities around physical locations, inventories, payrolls, etc. when it comes to expanding operations. Not all expansion opportunities can or should be pursued because of this capital and operational requirement. Some at-home businesses can grow to orders of magnitude beyond their starting size, without the overhead required for traditional style businesses.

The network marketing business model is the most common illustration of this highly-scalable at-home business potential. Not all network marketing opportunities are created equal, in terms of their ability to deliver the long-term results that achieve this potential. But enough credible examples exist now, that proven network marketing opportunities are more often on the short list of entrepreneurs evaluating ways to start small without staying small.

Some of the earliest possibilities that get evaluated as ideas for new small businesses arise from either a strong interest or passion of the entrepreneur, or the entrepreneur's strong sense of potential commercial success with a particular opportunity. The wise business owner holds out for ideas that incorporate both.

Unless this emerging small business is intended to stay small, perhaps related to a hobby, for example, one of the next lenses through which to view small business ideas is "how do I gain leverage as the business grows?"

Ideas that are based solely on the entrepreneur's skill and availability have limited scalability. Beyond a certain point, no leverage = no growth.

So the next homework assignment for evaluating small business ideas is assessing how leverage for the entrepreneur's skill and time is gained as the business grows. Common leverage possibilities for small businesses include:
- Adding employees
- Subcontracting
- Mergers & acquistions
- Partnering

Partnering takes many forms, but is attractive for providing the opportunity for leverage without the management requirements of a traditional employee payroll operation.

One unique dimension of partnering for leverage is being taught now in business education programs such as University of Illinois-Chicago. This business model, network marketing, offers a straightforward approach for engaging other entrepreneurs who share in the work and the reward of growing the small business.

Network marketing businesses offer a very scalable version of partnering with very few limitations on how large the business can grow. The small business entrepreneur should consider the homework on selecting the right business idea incomplete if it did not include a close look at proven network marketing opportunities.

Conventional wisdom follows a familiar line: the more you know the better off you are.

But at two years and multi-thousands of dollars required to earn a traditional MBA degree, the savvy small business owner pulls back at least one notch from this perspective to ask: what is the cost/benefit of getting equipped with a particular set of knowledge? Specifically, how does it affect my business's ability to:
- compete in my market
- operate profitably
- delight my customers
- meet my personal goals for the business

An example of one alternative to an MBA-level time and money investment is the FastTrac program developed by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation:

"FastTrac® is a comprehensive entrepreneurship-educational program that provides entrepreneurs with business insights, leadership skills and professional networking connections so they are prepared to create a new business or expand an existing enterprise. The FastTrac program includes practical, hands-on business development programs and workshops for existing entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs, as well as entrepreneurship curriculum for college students."

Conducted in a small-group/laboratory setting over a period of a few days, the FastTrac entrepreneur program provides an information-rich environment of business knowledge that is applied directly to the development of a realistic small business concept chosen by the participant. The facilitators and peer group discussions expose the entrepreneur to business-impacting subjects such as business goals, marketing, capitalization, accounting, operations, regulatory factors, and long-range growth.

Even for non-traditional small businesses that are based on internet marketing or network marketing models which do not have traditional business factors such as inventory and payroll, the FastTrac curriculum provides vital information for succeeding and profiting with a small business operation.

Without the hefty investment of pursuing an MBA.