Tips for Small Business Success

By Alice Weiss Doyel, BOLD Consulting Group

I own and run BOLD Consulting Group, LLC. BOLD assists business owners with disabilities. Our mission is to help small businesses become more successful by providing a full range of services for the operational functions that support their business mission, goals, and culture. I’ve been working with small business owners since the 1960s. This article contains some of my tips for success. The are excerpted from my book No More Job Interviews! Self-Employment Strategies for People with Disabilities (2000). [Used with permission of Training Resource Network, Inc. TOLL FREE at 1(866) 823-9800]. I hope these tips help you, or the person you are supporting, achieve your business dreams. . . . Alice Weiss Doyel

_____________________________________

Starting a business is easy—succeeding in the long run is the true goal and ultimate challenge. The ongoing support—yes, for two or three years—is the key. You don’t learn about your business until you do it; only then can you learn how to succeed. The first years in business are crucial to the business planning process. The business must be set up to have real world business supports. It must create the most effective business design for the person’s specific disability needs. It may sound overly simplistic to say this: long-term success takes long-term efforts! Unless people have a strong business design and adequate business supports, they will usually remain in limbo or fail.

Twelve Assumptions
Underlying Small Business Planning

This design, regardless of what form it takes, should reflect mindful decision-making on the following effective business standards.

1. The business mission and goals must be meaningful and compelling to the company’s current and potential customers, as well as the owner and employees.
   
2. The business mission, goals, and strategies must reflect the strength of the business, its owners, its employees, and its resources.
   
3. All goals should have an action plan that includes action steps, accountability, resource allocation, budget items, milestones, and measurable results.
   
4. New concepts or products should be “piloted” before significant money and effort are put into supporting a start-up idea or an innovation.
   
5. Whoever has responsibility for accomplishing a business goal must also have the authority and resources (including budget) to reach that goal.
   
6. Businesses and business owners must stay very focused. Without this focus, the business loses direction and the owner’s time and energy are overtaxed.
   
7. Time is the most limiting aspect for any business owner, but especially when disability issues create time limits of their own. Judicious use of the owner’s time is a primary focus for any small business plan.
   
8. Business owners should spend the majority of their time on the two or three things that they do the best; the rest should be done by employees or outside resources.
   
9. Determining exactly what resources are needed, whether they are human or physical, internal or external, is critical to the business and its action plans.
   
10. Money in itself does not solve problems. Too much money can create more problems than too little money. Monetary needs and their timing must be determined judiciously–in alignment with measurable goals, viable action plans, and regular evaluation of results.
    
11. Communication is central to effective business management and operation, whether it is with employees, vendors, associates, customers, or prospects. High quality communication is necessary for obtaining good information for decision making, knowing the market needs and changes, making sales, and enabling the business to run in an efficient and cost-effective manner.
    
12. Good decision making techniques are crucial for small business owners. They must be willing to seek professional assistance, evaluate their businesses on an ongoing basis, look at alternative solutions to problems, be willing to make changes, and be willing to let go of ineffective products, services, and business strategies.

A good business plan translates a dream or vision into a pragmatic reality. Integration of these criteria into the design process will help to insure that the your efforts will be successful and ultimately flourish

Goal Setting Challenges

A goal is nothing more that “a dream with legs.” With it, you begin to anchor your vision to the practical community, market, and resource demands that face you. As you begin your journey through the business planning process, it is important to capture, through your goal statements, both the breathed and depth of your aspirations. Your dreams will have more powerful legs if you first exercise them by considering the challenges you are about to encounter.

• Determine if feasible action can impact the goals.
  
• Determine if the goals are measurable objectively or by a credible, outside observer.
  
• Determine if there will be any unhealthy trade-offs when the goals are implemented.
  
• Determine the best method to prioritize the company goals.
  
• Select specific goals to be achieved over a given period of time.
  
• Involve employees and external resources who can impact the goals, including your business advisors.
  
• Balance the emphasis between focusing on the key factors of the goals and the detailed activities that can make them happen.
  
• Let everyone in the company know the new or revised goals.
  
• Monitor for unanticipated external changes that can negatively or positively affect the goals, evaluate the impact, and modify the goals when appropriate.

What Makes a Small Business Successful?
(Adapted by Bold Consulting Group from “B.Y.O.B. [Be Your Own Boss],” Enterprise Magazine, March 2002)

The adage, “the devil is in the details” is a truism when it comes to planning. Not working out rough edges may spell out a fast end to your journey in self-employment. Likewise, over-planning may quickly take you down the wrong path, leaving you blind to new opportunities. Consider the difference between winners and wannabes.

Partnerships, Employees, Alliances, and Mentors

• Partnerships are often used to create a company where the owners have complementary business or technical skills. An owner with disabilities can find partners with the skills, time, or energy to compensate for his or her disability needs. The partners may be able-bodied, or they may be other people with disabilities.
  
• Key employees can take on a partnership role in the business. Although they may not be actual owners of the business, these employees can serve the same functions as partners for the owner with disabilities.
  
• Partnerships often serve as a means for bringing needed financial capital into the company. This can be particularly important for people with disabilities, whose assets and credit may not be adequate to start a business.
  
• Family businesses are a strategy for those people with disabilities who have strong family support. Sometimes these family members are partners in the business, other times they are employees. In either situation, family members can provide emotional support and disability assistance, as well as being productive employees of the business.
  
• Minority ownership is another way that people with disabilities can become business owners. They provide skills or assets to a company, which make them valuable as minority owners. The ownership levels can start at 5% to 10% ownership. This ownership can increase if the people with disabilities are able to bring more assets or “sweat equity” to the business. [Note: Legal guidance should be used to assure that there are exit strategies for both majority and minority owners.]
  
• There are informal partnerships, or alliances, where individuals from different companies work together for their mutual benefit. This is often a good strategy for people with disabilities, who may wish to provide a variety of services or products but want to limit the size of the business they own or the number of employees that they want to manage. These informal partnerships often become successful, long-term arrangements. There can also be short-term informal partnerships, sometimes relating to a single business opportunity.
  
• Mentors are an excellent way to find expertise and support for a business. Many small business owners enjoy helping individuals who are starting out in business. Their advice can save a company from making serious mistakes as well as giving the business support and direction. Mentors need not be business people; they can be people who are knowledgeable about the types of products or services your company sells.

Realistic Perspective of the Business World

In closing, my friend and CPA Bob Arnold has some good advice for you to consider. A successful business owner always has:

• a compelling idea or vision.
  
• the drive to make that business vision a reality.
  
• the successful owner has experience or learns about the business that they want to create.
  
• few worries about the financial needs to start a business. If the idea is compelling, then financing should be able to be found.
  
• the ability to put together a well-designed business plan, often with professional assistance.
  
• organizational skills, financial skills, etc. should be hired or purchased if the owner does not have these skills or the time to do them, or if his or her time is better spent on other aspects of the business.
  
• marketing and/or selling is essential but does not need to be the owner . . . and needs are variable with the type of business.
  
• adaptability is of utmost importance. The business plan cannot predict the reality of unforeseen problems, market changes, customer actions, and many other variables. Each year of a business will have variations and unanticipated turns.

Follow up on a regular basis is essential to understand changes and/or problems and making needed adjustments on a timely basis.

Rely on advisors before decisions are made or problems occur. Owners cannot do it all themselves. Rely on professional advisors and employees at a meaningful time in the decision process.

A business can take years to be successful and may see ups and downs before success is achieved. To achieve and maintain success, the company must adapt to changes in economic conditions and to market changes affecting its product or service.

Contact Information

Alice Weiss Doyel, Senior Partner
Bold Consulting Group, LLC.
1510 E. 10th Ave., Suite 7W
Denver, CO 80218
(303) 831-0219
adoyel@bold-owners.com

Next Article