Small Business Guru | Advice, Stories, Tips, and Resources

If you are a small business owner, and there are a lot of them, you don't want to stay in that group for very long. Even if you think that you're in too much of a niche industry, you can, if you play your cards right, turn that niche into a mainstream item. You don't want to stay a small business for a few reasons. One of the main reasons is resilience. You may be a very resilient person, but you don't always have control over what your business will do. So many new businesses fail because of undercapitalization. If you are a small business owner and your industry, country, etc. hits a rough period of under-consumption, you are toast.

As someone who has been doling out small business advice, I advise anyone with a small business to work toward a medium business as quickly as possible. That way, during a recession, if you hit a roadblock, you can typically downsize into a small business while you wait out the storm.

Some of the most successful small businesses are those constructed in the moment of opportunity and not as a reaction to job loss. Start a small business when you're rich, when you're poor (college student) or when you have an idea and the business resources that are so great and fantastic that you would have to have someone hold you back from proceeding with something as logical as this.

Don't start a small business if you just lost your job, if you don't have a network of allies to draw upon, or if you don't have a high level of talent in a core function or skill that others find valuable. Be extremely, pessimistically honest with yourself here. After all, all small business owners find value in the product or service that they offer. The question is how much value do others see in what you offer?

You may think you're destined for success when you have an idea for a product or service that nobody else is offering. Novelty is a two-edged sword though, especially for small businesses. The idea hasn't caught on yet, so half of your time will be spent trying to convince people that they can't live without you. And by the time the fire has spread, others have perfected your idea and are making more money than you. Just be cautious.