Small Business Workshop

Apart from aesthetic considerations, the state of your desk could be a 'tree rings' indicator of whether you are winning as a small business entrepreneur. But probably not for the reasons you might think.

The old saying says that a messy desk is a sign of genius. Genius or not, it could be a savvy strategy for leveraging your abilities according to some experts. It's not a matter of 'how' your desk is messy. It is a matter of 'why' your desk messy:

1. Procrastination or action? Taking a hard look at the archeology of the piles on your desk. Review the individual decisions that caused each item to be where it is. Is it there to extend the range of your awareness radar and thus improve the decisions you make? Or was it there because of a failure to make a decision, and thus a symptom of procrastination? Are some of the piles so long untouched that they might as well be an extension of your file cabinet, or trash can?

2. Progress or regress? This is a matter of the direction your messy desk is taking you. Does it make you more effective with telephone or online tasks to have those things in easy reach? Are most of the piles old enough that you have to shuffle through long-unused items to get to items that matter?

3. Purpose or happenstance? Assuming you made a specific decision for items to be on your desk, did you also make specific decisions for how they would be organized? Do the items in a particular pile relate to each other in a way that supports what you do with them? The longer an item has been untouched on your desk, the more likely it needs to be logically related to other items to be of benefit to day-to-day goal fulfillment.

4. Peace or chaos? How does your messy desk make you feel? Does it feel like that car seat position that is just right, like the familiar pair of running shoes that fits well and that you can forget about as you take off for a jog? Or is it a tyrant that reminds you of unfinished tasks and procrastinated decisions? This could be argued to be an aesthetic factor, except for the impact it has on your day-to-day effectiveness in achieving what you went into business to accomplish. Walk in to the office sometime, and write down quickly the first 10 feelings you have about your desk as you look at it.

A good manager would coach a valuable, contributing employee on how to be more effective. Does your messy desk assessment reveal opportunities to enhance your contribution to the success of your business? Since who you are in your small business has a huge impact on your long-term success, that answer holds more than the visual impression it makes on visitors to your office.

In my younger days, a friend acquired a 1969 Charger Daytona, to the envy of many of the rest of us. Although his particular model did not have the legendary 426 Hemi powerplant, the 440 under his hood was VERY attention-getting when you stepped on the throttle. Deep-throated and quick-to-run, it was an exhilarating experience when the driver decided to 'punch' it.

And you knew it would before you even slipped into the seat.

Knowing the results that you can expect as you evaluate your next home-based business investment can be like that, too. So let's wear out the performance car illustration completely.

1. Are you up on the reputation?
Is it brand new, or long-time proven? Is it widely-accepted, or the subject of controversy? If there are public criticisms, are those fact-based? Demonstrated prior success is a powerful predictor of future success when you choose that opportunity.

2. Is the design what you need?
An off-road rally vehicle won't serve you as well in a oval track race. Does your home business opportunity involve products or services that fit your goals and passions? Is the target market your target market? Is the compensation structure what you need?

3. Does it have enough power?
What will happen when you step on the throttle? Is the dollar-per-effort performance what you need? As you gauge the success outcomes of others, also gauge the effort behind their successes. If you require something that works within a 10-hours-per-week time commitment, but your target financial return has required others to give full-time effort, you need a different vehicle.

4. Is what you see what you get?
Determine whether what is proposed to you is the same as any examples of dramatic results claimed. Drive the car that will be yours before that final commitment to be the owner. Are there levels of participation to choose, and are the results described based on the participation parameters that you are considering?

5. Is the support deep and available?
Even if you have bumper-to-bumper mechanic skills, your leverage over your time erodes quickly if you bear the support burden all by yourself. If your goal is to complete a coast-to-coast trip as quickly as possible, having lots of skilled, engaged, and available support help along the way ensures that you will achieve your goals in the timeframe you want. Meet the team who will support your home business venture, and evaluate them as thoroughly as the vehicle itself.

6. Ready to go?
You don't invest in a working hi-performance vehicle to look at in the driveway. You're the proud owner, so it's time to turn the key, step on the throttle, and head to the destination.

Jumping into a network-style home business, it was immediately obvious how vital effective marketing was to my success. The experts were saying it. My mentors were saying it. It's clearly the 'motor' that makes any business vehicle move. And the more motor you have, the faster you can go.

It's been eye-opening to travel the learning curve on what kind of marketing fits my opportunity, fits the market in front of me, and even fits me personally. The learning continues, but I'm settling into a blend of person-to-person and internet-based attraction marketing that looks like the right fit.

But when the marketing motor is running well, what else is critical to getting my business down the road?

Industry segment: For example, one of the businesses in my portfolio targets the soon-to-be trillion dollar wellness industry. I have a passion around this because of its potential to positively impact individuals and families. And the size and growth trend of the wellness industry offers lots of headroom for my business to grow, and not be affected as much by short-term ups and downs, what I know, what I decide, and how I execute. Growing demand covers a multitude of a still-learning entrepreneur's 'sins'!

Products: In my wellness home business proprietary, cutting-edge, consumable products backed by in-depth and unique science are significant success factors. The products do what they are designed to do, have industry-leading quality, and lead to consumer satisfaction that drives ongoing sales - all critical to staying competitive and successful over the long term.

Supplier services: All of the suppliers in my home business portfolio provide order management and fulfillment, shipping, product and order-related customer service, as well as managing the compensation for all of the partners that I've recruited for my businesses. This provides tremendous leverage for my time and effort, since these are functions that are critical for my long-term success but are not ones to which I must commit my resources. On top of this, the compensation plans are industry-leading for network-style businesses, meaning valuable return on my efforts.

Supplier position: My success is also affected by the track record, market position, and future direction of the suppliers I partner with. For example, the discount and savings membership supplier in my portfolio continuously leverages their sales growth to add to their member benefit offering. This strengthens my position without additional investment on my part.

So, no marketing effectiveness, no business success. But the realities around the industry I target, the products I market, and the supplier I partner with, also govern how rapidly and how far my business will grow.

Much of the spotlight on small business success stories focuses on the creative or high-energy entrepreneur who seems hard-wired for working for themselves, owning the enterprise to which they devote time, energy, and money. But a different sort of small business owner is taking the stage in recent years.

Elizabeth Pope's December 1 article on
'reluctant entrepreneurs' in the over-50 crowd, mirrored many of the comments I hear from my peers these days. More and more of these Baby Boomers are either currently coping with job loss or downgrades, or wrestling with the fear of that possibility.

"Despite their years of experience, older workers ... are facing the highest unemployment rates since the Great Depression. They are also remaining out of work longer than younger workers, with over 40 percent staying jobless six months or longer. And once they land a job, they often must settle for lower pay than they're used to."

And, unfortunately, that lower-pay possibility is common even when experienced Boomers are finding work in their field.

"So it is no wonder a growing number of older adults are becoming 'reluctant entrepreneurs,' creating their own jobs." "Nearly a quarter of age 55-plus workers who were laid off last year say they're considering starting their own business, according to a July 2009 Careerbuilders.com study."

As Pope outlines in her article, the small business opportunities that these reluctant entrepreneurs choose to pursue run the gamut from low-capital home-based enterprises, to complex ventures requiring considerable funding and planning. The ability to control your own destiny, and to work in an area of passion or keen interest, are big attractions for those considering owning their own business. But those factors are not always sufficient to assure success.

"One-third of start-ups fail within two years, according to the Small Business Administration."

Which leads many to explore rapid-build, low-startup-cost home businesses as a less-risky alternative. Especially opportunities that are based on a network marketing strategy, a model that Robert Kiyosaki terms "the perfect business". The best network marketing opportunities can offer considerable return on a modest initial investment, hard work, and lots of persistence.

Whether confronted with an unexpected, unwelcome fork-in-the-road, or just taking a proactive step away from a current job or career, a growing number of older workers are exploring the potential of owning the business that they work for.

You are convinced that you have a home business winner - the machinery is moving toward greater success. What else would you want?

More speed!

Your supplier-partner offers a compensation plan with the profitability that you need, based on a unique and proven product set that can consistently drive the sales volume which delivers that profitability.

Your business choice has positioned you in an industry segment that is rapidly heading to the upper atmosphere of commerce, such as the soon-to-be-trillion-dollar wellness sector.

And you are finding a number of others who also see what you see, and are choosing to partner with you.

Let's push the turbo button:

1. Adjust your home business so that it primarily involves your passion. This could be painful if you chose a home business for other reasons, even if they were good reasons. But unless the success activities required for your business closely match the activities that you love to do, your business will be trying to accelerate while you have the emergency brake on. And in an important way, you are what you are selling with your home business. So check the alignment of your day-to-day business activities with your passion. Would you do those things every day even if you weren't compensated to do them? The better the passion alignment, the faster your home business will grow.

2. Complement your home business marketing with services or systems that give maximum leverage to your personal marketing efforts. If the marketing activities required to succeed with your opportunity are not activities that you are passionate about, you should consider outsourcing most of those to someone who is. (Or choose a different business!) As John Assaraf says, "You need to engage others who play at what you do not do well." For example, you can leverage internet marketing systems as effective front-ends to your home business. With the right system you can significantly turbo-charge your business growth, while continuing to focus your own energies on the activities that you love to do.

3. Make sure your entire universe of friends, family, business contacts, neighbors, etc. knows what you are doing. According to Bob Burg (Endless Referrals, The Go-Giver), there are more than 200 people in this group. Convincing every one of them to pursue your opportunity today is not your goal. In fact many network marketing experts recommend that you do not do that. Rather, simply leverage the fact that they are likely to have an interest in your product or opportunity at some point, either now or in the future. You want to position yourself in their minds so that the connection with you is easily made whenever their interest does arise. This is faster (and more enjoyable) than trying to overcome each one's objections to your opportunity the first time you talk to them. And it makes it simpler to increase the numbers of people who know what you are doing, to avoid the relational friction of trying to push them, and thus leave maximum room for them to refer their contacts to you.

Time to fasten your seatbelt!

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.