Business Columns

Small Business Articles by Karen Blotnicky

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Let Your Business Reflect your Values

There are many reasons for starting your own business. Often, it is out of sheer desperation when other jobs do not materialize. But, more often than ever before, entrepreneurs are making deliberate choices to "be their own boss". Many seek the freedom that self-employment can bring. Others seek to make their fortunes using some unique approach, or design, that they have created. But there is a new kind of entrepreneur. The business owner that pursues their goal to make a difference. To do something that they strongly believe must be done...and that isn’t being done by others.

For many, combining personal goals and a career has been a frustrating battle. Whether the issues involve doing the "right thing", or finding more time for home and family, baby boomers are making clear their expectations in the workplace. For those who cannot find a reasonable fit, spiritually and philosophically, business ownership is often the key to happiness and success. Their business impact has been exceptional. Today’s new businesses espouse a range of noble and fulfilling corporate missions, everything from saving the environment to finding personal fulfillment.

Those entrepreneurs who are driven by more than the need to make an income have developed unique products and services. Homemakers marketing to homemakers, stockbrokers selling ethical funds, travel consultants marketing eco-tourism services. Each works diligently to make the world a better place to be, while pursuing corporate goals, and making a profit. They are proving to the world that yes...it can be done. You can earn an income while meeting family needs and being true to your soul. But, for an aspiring entrepreneur, where do you begin to create such a fulfilling self-employment opportunity?

There are a few key considerations to guide you in your search for the path to self-employment and self-enrichment. First of all, what is it that you want to bring to add value to your life and those around you? How can you do this? As in any business, you need a sound business plan. Be prepared to champion your cause, because you will have many dissenters. The backlash can come from family (who are worried about the risks of your business), through to friends and even bankers who feel that good intentions are great, but they don’t pay the bills! Learning to market your idea to those around you will also equip you to better market your business to paying customers.

The second consideration is, who else shares your ideals? Do they make up a sizable market segment that you can tap into to launch your business? If so, where are they and how do you reach them? Read whatever you can find, do some homework, and if necessary, talk to a professional marketer or accountant. After all, a business is still a business, regardless of the mission that it is trying to achieve. Being able to tap into a ready market of people with similar values is a great way to start. Very often these potential clients are already part of your church, school, workplace or social network.

The third consideration: once you have done your homework and you know that your idea has merit, don’t let others talk you out of your dream. Many simply won’t understand why your primary objective is so important to you. They will try to persuade you to stretch your business to include aspects which don’t meet with your ideals. Maybe you want to stay small and comfortable. Don’t be talked into becoming a large enterprise if your heart is not in it.

Finally, never stop believing in what you are doing. With values-driven businesses the image of the founder is the key to future success and being true to yourself. The moment you stop believing in the values behind your business is the moment the business loses focus. For this reason, it may be difficult to leave your business to your children. Sharing the vision is what matters. Do you have what it takes to be one of the new breed of values-driven entrepreneurs? If so, put your money where your heart is!

About the Author: Karen Blotnicky is a marketing professor at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, N.S., Canada. She is also President of The Marketing Clinic, a research and consulting company which she operates with her husband, Michael, in Bedford, N.S. Karen conducts training in small business, marketing, exporting and sales throughout Atlantic Canada for both corporate and government clients. Her articles are published weekly in The Sunday Herald (Halifax, N.S.) and The Standard (St. Catharines, Ont.). She may be contacted at 1-877-401-9398, or via email at tmc@whatasite.com

Time-Management for Home-Based Businesses

The home-based business provides a wonderful opportunity for many parents to stay home and care for their children while earning an income. While self-employment can be the key to freedom and self fulfillment there are some things to consider before leaving the workforce to start a home-based business. The most critical issue facing the home-based entrepreneur is time management.

Success in your own business is largely dependent on the amount of time you have to spend to develop your client base and manage it. If you are raising a family while establishing your business you must make arrangements to allow yourself enough time to run your business and take care of the family. This workload can be the equivalent of two full time jobs.

Your may decide to operate a part-time home-based business. In the workforce, part-time employment often involves 20 to 30 hours each week. Operating a home-based business is no different, requiring an equivalent number of work hours in order to establish a new business successfully.

Many home-based entrepreneurs attempt to juggle the business and family by working late at night after the children are asleep and the household chores are done. It is not surprising that the business suffers when the only dedicated employee is too exhausted to function efficiently and creatively. This does not allow the entrepreneur to network with others, communicate with suppliers or clients, conduct research, or even shop for office supplies!

There are several things that you can do to have a successful home-based business:

Create a workday routine. Carve out blocks of time during the week to spend working in your business. Have a mixture of time blocks across mornings, afternoons and evenings.
Arrange for help with household and family chores during the blocks of time that have been carved out for your business. Young children might spend time at preschool or play group. School-aged children are away for part of the day making this an ideal time for you to spend running your business. Have a youth join you after school to care for the children in one room while you work in another.
Use your social life creatively. Attend trade shows and networking events on evenings and weekends. These are the life blood of a small business. You can bring along your spouse to many events making it an outing for both of you.
Make time for family. You will feel better about running your business if you also plan time for the family and stick to your plan. Your family will feel better about your other duties as well if they still feel they are an important part of your life.
Be realistic about the demands of your business. If you are serious about becoming a home-based entrepreneur, do some serious planning. Realize that establishing a business takes many sales calls and a lot of patience. The money won’t come flowing in immediately - it takes time. Don’t shortchange your business. It will take longer to establish which will frustrate you and your family.
Remember to "go to work everyday" even if your office is in your basement. It can be hard to resist distractions in the home, such as a crying child, or your favourite television show. When you "go to work", close the office door behind you, take scheduled coffee breaks, and record your activities in a daytimer. You will feel better when you can see what you have accomplished at the end of the day.
Remember to celebrate your accomplishments. When you land a new client take your family out to dinner. Such outings are just one of many rewards for managing your time wisely in your home-based business.
Work with your spouse to make family life run smoothly. The home-based business involves a partnership in time management between entrepreneur and spouse.
Make time for yourself. Entrepreneurs are notorious for not getting enough sleep, exercise, or nutrition to keep going in a stressful lifestyle. This often results in ill health which does not allow time family or business.

Manage your precious time as efficiently as you possibly can. The more efficiently you manage your time, the better you will feel.

Scoping Out Your Competition

In a perfect world, a consumer would only be able to purchase a product from one provider: your firm. Unfortunately, reality is quite different. Usually there are several firms that offer similar products or services. Part of the art of target marketing is selecting the best market niche. Competition information will tell you which of the niches is right for your firm.

In order to compete effectively, you need to have a product or service that is unique. The more unique the product or service, the greater the likelihood that you will draw competitors’ customers to your business. But having to compete aggressively is expensive. At some point the cost of promoting your product and selling it will exceed the price you can reasonably charge. This is the hallmark of a mature market.

A mature market occurs when there are no new buyers seeking the product, and a lot of firms are trying to sell it. This is a no-win situation for all firms, especially the small business which does not have the revenue base to cut costs and reduce prices. The secret to competitive success is to avoid such market situations. But how can you tell when competition is too intense for your small business to handle?

There are four signals of a highly competitive market. The first signal is when total industry sales are growing slowly, or have levelled off. This indicates that there will soon be less revenue to go around. This results in very aggressive selling practices which can drive out smaller firms.

The second signal of a competitive market is when there are many firms selling products or services which are very similar. The consumer has infinite choice and may not even be familiar with all of the products on the market. It is hard to keep your product in the spotlight when several companies are competing in the dark.

The third signal of a competitive market is extreme price sensitivity. Customers are willing to go out of their way to pay less. This also promotes what is known as "cherry picking" behaviour: shoppers buying only specials. After awhile, profitability is lost because specials are often loss leaders, designed to bring in customers due to their below-cost pricing strategy.

The fourth signal of a competitive market is the need to promote aggressively to sell your product or service. The market is flooded with companies selling similar things. The only way for your firm to stand out is "blow a bigger horn"! The bigger the horn, the more it costs. This may require small businesses to use broadcast media, like television and radio, to promote their business. This can seriously hamper their financial resources.

Not all highly competitive markets are mature markets. Some markets are just dominated by larger firms with substantial resources. Such large firms typically have larger cash reserves, lower production costs, and the ability to out-promote small business. It is not wise to choose a market niche which will put your firm competing head on with such a large company.

So, what does an entrepreneur do to choose a market niche with a level of competition that a small business can handle?

Choose niches where the competitors are other small businesses. Other small businesses do not have a competitive, creative or financial edge over your firm. This way, you can compete on a level playing field.
Develop a unique product and pricing approach. If you have a truly unique product it gives you a "mini-monopoly" which even larger firms cannot touch. If the unique product or service is your key to success, be sure that all of your patents and copyrights are protected. Such intellectual property can be easily duplicated if you haven’t taken the time to register ownership.
Cater to smaller market niches. Such market niches are usually too small for large firms to tackle efficiently. Large firms are not likely to try to drive small competitors out of such niches.

Once you have researched your market and understand the needs of your customers and the competition base, you can sit back and run your business without being caught in the competition crunch.

Growing your Business: The Pareto Principle in Action

According to the Pareto Priniciple, 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers. Any entrepreneur will tell you that this is true to some extent, although the numbers may change a bit.

Generations of managers have taken this principle to heart and attempted to grow their businesses by focusing on this small but select group of "heavy" customers. Such an approach is great for maintaining a strong market, but what about building it?

The secret to using any of these customer-segmenting strategies rests in having a information base about your customers that gives detailed personalized and purchase information. If you’re lucky, you may even be able to find out how many different products or services they buy from you.

One method of making each customer more profitable is cross-selling: getting them to buy several of your products instead of one favourite item. Banks are famous for cross-selling, trying to sell you everything from chequing accounts, to mortgages, personal loans, credit cards and investment services.

But how far can you go by only focusing on 20% of your customers? While you don’t want to continue to service unprofitable clients, at least 60% of those who buy from you probably aren’t "heavy" customers, nor are they "unprofitable". What about them?

New evidence is showing that these "mid-range" buyers may be the key, not to maintaining your market, but to growing it. While today’s bread and butter rests on the "heavy" users and those who shop every now and then, tomorrow’s revenues depend on finding new customers, or growing the ones that you already have.

When considering "growing" customers, some of the best prospects are not those who already buy everything from you, but those who spend some of their money at your business and the rest of their money at others’.

To better understand this group you cannot remain focused on the top of the ladder: your 20% niche of "big spenders". Instead, you should be looking halfway down your client list at those buyers who spend some money, but do not come to you for all of their needs.

Your future rests with getting the less than loyal buyer to become more loyal, or to purchase other products that you carry. These buyers are likely buy again. This means it will cost less for you to get them through your door than someone who shops loyally at your competitors’.

There are interesting ways of approaching the problem of making these "sometime" shoppers shop more often and spend more at your business. One of those approaches involves changing our view of customer rewards.

Customer rewards are incentives for doing business with us. They may consist of quantity discounts, coupons discount cards, two-for-one deals, points, Air Miles, free gifts, rebates, and many other kinds of premiums.

Often, we view customer rewards as a way of giving something back to our most loyal customers. When we take such a stand we fail to see the power such approaches have to generating revenue from those who we normally wouldn’t reward...non-shoppers.

Many of our middle-tier buyers are not loyal customers at all. We may not think of using rewards to service them, especially if it meant giving them more than we give our own customers. But, this may be required.

Research has shown that such rewards are best used where they generate the greatest return on investment for the promotional dollar. The greatest return on investment may not come from your loyal shoppers, but from those you win over because of the promotion that you use.

For example, maybe you can offer these newcomers a 20% discount coupon while extending a 10% coupon to your heavier product users. The return on investment from those who are not regular shoppers can be surprising.

Since you already service your loyal customers and they are likely to continue to buy from your firm, you need not spend as much in discounts or other promotions to get and hold their interest. Remember, though, to continue to deliver the best possible customer service and product quality in order to make them feel happy and valued.

Focusing on all levels of profitable customers (not just the top rung) will allow your firm to spread its risk over more customer shopping segments and build a market presence well into the future.

You Never Get a Second Chance to Make a First Impression

Nothing upsets a customer more than a waiter with dirty fingernails, or a grocery store with stained floors. We love to enter the supermarket and find a well stocked meat counter, nicely displayed with bright lights and lined shelves. But we don’t rush into the butcher shop to watch slabs of meat being cut or ground to fill those shelves. Why is it that if we work in a food service establishment we seldom want to eat there?

The answer, quite simply, is impression management. The restaurant environment is carefully designed to put diners in a comfortable mood while they flex their appetites. The supermarket is designed to be bright, well lit, clean and relaxing. After all, not many would prefer to spend their time shopping for groceries. Having an appealing, clean environment makes the task a little easier to bear, and in some cases, even fun! How is a service provider to create, and manage, such an impression?

Anyone who has ever worked in a service industry knows very well that there are two realities: what the consumers see and what the staff see. Most service operations spare no expense in making sure the two are kept quite separate. One is a behind the scenes, production environment. The other is a carefully orchestrated production in and of itself, designed put consumers in a "consuming" mood. These are "back and front" regions. Both have different designs because they are built to serve entirely different purposes.

The front region must be created to communicate the "personality" of the service. Everything defines how efficient and satisfying the service will be. From the floors, to the ceiling, to the staff. It doesn’t matter that you have spent thousands to create ambiance if your wait staff has dirty fingernails. All is lost.

The ambiance created must be designed to appeal to the market segment in mind. A second hand store with a boutique exterior is not as successful as a slightly tired, open retail environment because that is what people expect. A restaurant in a fine building with priceless antiques and silver is perceived as having a pricier menu than the eat and run fast food environment. Again, different strokes for different folks! The ambiance one needs to create in a service business is dictated by what consumers in the market segment demand. Everything has an effect on price and quality perception.

A service provider meaning to offer first class service to discriminating patrons must strive for the image of perfection. Attire, furnishings, wall and floor coverings, staff attitude, and overall cleanliness must be perfect. This will command a higher price for each and every transaction, which is what the target market is willing to pay. On the other hand, such an environment would be completely out of place in a drive through restaurant. Here, staff friendliness, and the uniform neat appearance of both staff and food are critical for success. One of McDonald’s claims to fame is that wherever you go in the world, a Big Mac is still a Big Mac, after all. This consistency is what fast food franchises are all about.

The back region must be designed to deliver service quickly and efficiently. The region may not have any ambiance at all, since those who are working there do not need such motivation to complete their tasks. Some back regions are very unsettling, such as the meat cutting room in the supermarket. Keeping these regions separate is critical to maintaining success and allowing the firm to turn a profit. Understanding the need for this separation is as simple as imagining what the world would be like without them.

For example, a dentist’s waiting room with huge windows into the dental office where patients could watch their doctor drilling others’ teeth! The hospital laboratory where those waiting could watch the grimaces of those with needles stuck into their veins! A veterinary clinic where the waiting room was open to the surgical suite! Back and front regions are important to a service business. Successful impression management means skillful handling of both.

Making the Service Real: Seeing is Believing

As consumers, there is always some security in buying a product that you can touch, see or taste. As always, "seeing is believing". But what about those things that you can’t see or touch? How safe do we feel when we buy invisible, intangible things like investments, insurance, dental care, or legal services? These are all tougher because you don’t know if it was worth it until it’s over. Did the operation work? Did the investment meet your needs? Was the hair style what you wanted?

Just as there is a risk in buying services, there is also a risk in selling them. They cannot be stored until later. For example, if you are selling tires you can keep several in inventory to account for peak periods of demand...not so if you are a dentist. If the appointment is missed you can’t get it back.

There is a risk in producing the service. Unlike most tangible products, the consumer is often part of the production process! You may not see the meal being prepared in a restaurant. You will definitely not see your car roll off the assembly line. But let the dentist slip with the drill and you know it all too well. Wouldn’t it be easier to leave your mouth at the dentist and get on with your day? Try having a medical procedure without being there! Quite simply, if you don’t show up the operation doesn’t happen. Being part of the manufacturing line isn’t the most pleasant thing for most consumers. After all, if you had to watch your meal being prepared you may not want to eat it!

How does an entrepreneur handle these risks? What can be done to make the buying of the service easier on the consumer? Making it easier on consumers can only make it easier for the service provider as well. Regardless of whether you hair is being cut, or your poodle’s, consumers have a vested interest in what goes on and how it happens. Here are some basic rules for making the task easier on everyone.

Streamline the production process to make it as smooth as possible for the consumer. This means a neat environment, friendly conversation, professionalism, and ability. There is no room for error in producing the service because you can’t always do it over to get it right! After all, if you over-shave Mary’s poodle, you can’t exactly glue the fur back on can you? Make sure there is a minimum of waiting time, which can lead to anticipation and discomfort, particularly for invasive procedures, such as in the dentist’s office.
Offer "service packages" whenever possible. Seeing how the services are combined or priced gives the consumer some advance notice of what is going to happen and how much it will cost. Auto repair shops are very effective at grouping together services and marketing them at a single price. This takes a lot of risk out of the purchase. Consumers know exactly what will happen and what it will cost. When consumers are happy so are the service providers.
Make the invisible more visible. Have a prominent brand or symbol to identify your firm or your product. The symbol will become synonymous with the superior service you offer. This visibility makes your service offerings more prominent, enabling consumers to identify with them easier. This also enhances the promotional strength of your firm.
Offer a risk reducer. A risk reducer is promise of either a refund or additional service to make consumers feel safer. This can be a money-back guarantee, guaranteed satisfaction, or a repeat service promise. Market this risk reducer actively. Consumers will not feel trapped if something should go wrong. This is roughly the equivalent of being able to return a physical product for credit.

Finally, use the heightened consumer involvement of the production process to increase customer service. This is an excellent opportunity to become a tremendous service-oriented service provider. The more at ease consumers feel the more often they will come. The more often they come, the more successful your business will be!

Timing is Everything in Services Marketing

The bane of the modern day consumer is the line up. While many shoppers throughout the world are accustomed to queuing for basic necessities, those of us in North America are not. The traffic jam, the bank line, the check out line, are all enough to drive up one’s blood pressure. Even those with laid back lifestyles don't appreciate the amount of time which can be wasted waiting, and waiting, and waiting.

Often we wonder, why do retailers do this to us? Why doesn’t our banker care? Don’t they know that we are customers? Don’t they know that we can take our money somewhere else? Well, that is hard to do because everyone seems to have the same problem. Line ups. So, we come and we wait...

Most service providers would love to solve the queuing problem. It reduces customer service, drives up costs and reduces profits. So, if everyone hates the line up, why do they continue to plague both consumers and businesses alike? The answer lies in the strange make up of services marketing. The act of providing a service, whether it is a root canal, or checking through a grocery order, relies on interaction. The direct interaction of the consumer and the business. There is no other way that this service can be rendered in many cases. So what is a service provider to do?

A service shortage is what happens when there are more customers than bank tellers, or cashiers. A service surplus is what occurs when you have more staff than customers, or idle employees. Of course, most consumers would swear this never happens, right? Ask a service provider and they will tell you it happens frequently, driving up their costs of doing business. So, what is the happy medium? This is actually an inventory problem! More customers, less staff. Less customers, more staff. Scheduling is the key!

So, how does one schedule correctly? Traffic flow is the issue. Every service industry has its peak hours. This is the time when all work stations are bustling, all appointments are booked, and there never seems to be enough service to go around. The slow period is when even few staff are idle. The key is to match supply and demand as carefully as possible. The secret success is to err on the side of the consumer. It is worth it to have limited idle staff, depending on the size of the operation, to keep consumer confidence. However, the consumer must also be fair in their expectations. Most line ups are fast, not slow. It just seems longer when you are waiting!

Streamline services. Having quick encounters speeds up the line and increases customer efficiency. This can be done by using computers to scan in items or consumer data. Have well trained staff who are able to handle most routine requests simply and efficiently. Smile! Customers are friendlier when they are served by friendlier staff. If your firm needs to use a numbering system to draw traffic through quicker make sure your reception area is well organized and clean, and that customers can easily view the number display. Use ropes and furnishings to organize your queuing area making it easier to navigate.

Transfer some of the work back to the client. While this may sound like it reduces service, most customers are pleased to do something simple to speed up the process. This may mean filling out forms, digging out receipts, or other identification. Use signage to indicate to customers what they will need when they get to the wicket. Make sure pens, pencils or forms are well stocked and organized.

Use technology whenever possible. Modern day bank customers can use automatic banking machines, telephone or the Internet to do their banking. This makes them happy while reducing line ups. The line up is here to stay. But it doesn’t have to be a frustrating experience!

How to Tell Your Family you Want to Be in Business

Many an aspiring entrepreneur has rushed home from work at the end of the day, filled with excitement and inspiration about a new business idea, just to be battered and criticized by less than supportive family members. Usually, they respond by putting their business idea on the back burner, thinking "if I can’t even sell my idea to my family, how can I sell it to bankers and clients?" Well, therein lies the problem: family members are not bankers or clients. They aren’t even an objective audience. There is a right way to communicate your vision to those whose support is critical to its success: your family.

An aspiring business owner should view their family members as "hostile witnesses"! One’s family may be the loving supportive environment which celebrates your every victory and mends your broken spirit when things go badly, but for many, the idea of a family business is truly intimidating. In most cases the would-be entrepreneur is presenting an idea that has a serious downside: less time for loved ones, financial stress or short-term instability, a change in schedule, more personal or relationship stress, fatigue and risk. This is tantamount to charging a customer an exorbitant amount of money for the promise of future use of a product which may or may not work! Not an ideal picture! In most cases, family members are quite happy with the status quo and have little desire to rock the boat.

Combine this image with the "rose coloured" glasses that many new entrepreneurs bring to the table for family discussions. Most only see the upside of the issue: being your own boss, excitement, challenge and the promise of tremendous financial rewards. Somewhere in between these two views of the opportunity lies reality. The business may or may not be successful. The road may be longer rather than shorter. Wise entrepreneurs make sure their image is clear, their plans have merit, and look out for their families before dropping the business bombshell! How can this be done?

The risk inherent in any business is frightening! Those who have families must be realistic about the risk, taking care of those who need them most while creating, and operating, the business. Most often, family members are responding from their own position of "what’s in it for me?" Or, "what do we have to lose?" These are both valid questions. It is the mature and responsible spouse that pushes these issues even when their better half may not want to go there! These fears can be handled by seeing that the financial needs of the family are taken care of during the early years of the business. Often, this requires considerable planning, or even a delay, in starting the business.

The personal issues of time and attention which can affect an entrepreneur’s family unit must also be dealt with. If you must always be available on the weekends for Little League, this doesn’t change just because you wish to start a business. Being there for Christmas concerts, piano recitals and ballet lessons is also a reality. When making the business plan care must be taken to allow for such personal obligations. Granted, it may increase the initial investment, or require taking on a partner.

Involve your family. Maybe they can stuff envelopes, deliver flyers, answer phones or send faxes. Giving everyone, even children, a role in the business can go a long way to gaining their support. Their role can be small (such as licking stamps) or large (such as doing the bookkeeping). Be sure that their role can be realistically done (without extra training or undue effort), and that it does not put pressure on someone who is already overworked!

Finally, give it time. It takes awhile for the family to buy in. By putting their needs first, making sure they are taken care of, and allowing them to participate in your new opportunity, you greatly increase the chance of success for both your family and your business. You will also sleep better!

Bigger Isn’t Necessarily Better

For years business has been driven by the need to succeed, but not just financially. There is an overwhelming emphasis on size. Bigger is better! Modern-day entrepreneurs are blowing holes in the theory that you have to be larger than life to succeed. In fact, today’s entrepreneurs are focusing more on the tiny market niche, the "micro-market". This is creating new and exciting business opportunities which work well with home-based businesses.

The "big business" philosophy focuses on size as the key to business success. In theory, the bigger you are, the larger your captive market becomes, leading to greater revenues, more promotional strength, and ultimately more "clout". With "clout" you can do anything. Your sheer size can intimidate competitors from entering the market. As you sell more, your cost of production goes down- the "economies of scale" concept. You can afford to cut prices to drive out competitors.

While the "bigger is better" theory has worked since the Industrial Revolution, it also led to a series of terrible blunders in North America in the early 1990's when recession wracked the markets. Struggling with the bottom line from quarter to quarter has led to a proliferation of "me-too" products, such as eighty brands of shampoo that do very much the same thing. It has also resulted in "paper castles".

Companies that expanded by gobbling up other companies that were, well, smaller. Some were acquired to develop into future juggernauts, others were taken over simply to be disbanded, robbed of all of their potential clients, patents and skill, simply to add to the short term bottom line. There is still merit in the "big business" philosophy. Some industrial sectors are simply too large to be viable without huge investments in fixed assets or infrastructure. Such sectors include automotive manufacturing and airlines, among others.

But, the tendency to build and acquire can catch up with you in times of slow economic growth, leaving firms top heavy and sluggish, and unable to perform competitively in the long run. This has spawned the "big box" merchandiser approach. Creating enough foot traffic to be very, very, big, but with very low prices. Cutting margins to a hair’s breadth means that if you don’t get the foot traffic you die a very quick death. The price wars that often accompany this approach may lead to less money for everyone. Suddenly, the "bigger is better" philosophy doesn’t seem to be the panacea it once was. Couple this with the modern-day consumer, savvy, intelligent, demanding, and value-driven, and you have a new market opportunity: "small is beautiful!"

The micro-marketer is a different kind of entrepreneur. Using careful planning and research, the micro-marketer is like a boutique. They offer the consumer the ultimate in meeting their needs, regardless of whether they are offering a service, and tangible product, or both. Their goal is to take on the big business, but in a unique way. Not by out-selling, out-promoting, or out-producing their competitors, but by doing what they do better than their competitors: the personal touch, increased customer service, better products.

An amazing discovery has propelled the growth of the micro-marketer...consumers will pay a premium for better service and superior products. This is the micro-marketer’s edge. Add to that the reality that the overhead of the micro-marketer is often small, or non-existent. They can work out of their homes, use personal selling with very limited advertising support, and engage in active networking to reach their markets. A highly specialized market niche, low costs and a reasonable profit margin are the micro-marketer’s recipe for success.

But what about those "big business" competitors? Surely they could easily invest legions of dollars into stealing the micro-marketer’s markets. So why don’t they? In a nutshell, the micro-market is too small to be viable to a large corporation. This insulates many micro-marketers from the competition of the huge corporation. Their only real competitors are other micro-marketers of similar size and strength that they can easily track and deal with.

So the next time you go shopping, what will it be? Big box or boutique? Remember, "small is beautiful". You may be pleasantly surprised!

Stressbusters for Entrepreneurs

Often, owning your own business feels like a life sentence of deadlines, stress and frustration. But, it doesn't have to be that way. One of the best parts of owning your own business is being your own boss. It isn't against the law to create a workable schedule which allows you to have a life and a business at the same time. Below are ten things you can do right now to alleviate business stress and reclaim your life.

Plan your work and work your plan: It is amazing how many hours there really are in a day. When you plan carefully (actually list tasks and allocate time to each one) it is amazing how much time you free up. Be sure to use self-discipline here. If you have allowed one hour to do bookkeeping, put the books away after one hour and move on to the next task. You will be more alert, less stressed and more effective.
Set realistic goals: Too often we bite off more than we can chew. While entrepreneurs are eternal optimists, it pays to be realistic in the amount of work you take on, or assign to staff. All things come in time. Taking on too many tasks only adds to the stress and increases the likelihood of failure.
Set aside time for yourself and your family: Book off blocks of time for personal reasons. When clients call simply tell them you have another "engagement". Life consists of more than work. Some time spent with family and friends is invigorating, restful and alleviates stress in the home.
Allow yourself to say "no". Much of the self-doubt that entrepreneurs experience comes from peer pressure. There are many more things that you "could" be doing, than there are things that you actually "can" do. Determine what matters to you the most and stick to it. Once you have said "no" to some things you will begin to feel more confident and are less likely to cave into the expectations of others.
Focus on what you can do well with your resources. Take note of what you have in terms of personnel, product/service, finances and expertise. Then, look for opportunities that match your resources rather than exceed them. Too much of business stress comes from overextending your resources and those of others. Remember, Rome wasn't built in a day!
Carefully choose your networking events. There is a veritable smorgasbord of networking opportunities, all of which promise the "goose that laid the golden egg". No one can do everything without seriously affecting their business, their personal life, or both. Choose one networking event weekly (fewer if you have many personal obligations). Choose carefully, enjoy it, and don't look back. Stop feeling guilty for what you don't have time to do.
Do not overextend your financial reach. Businesses fail regularly by relying too heavily on financial resources. Don't spend money you don't have. The stress you experience will be greatly reduced.
Ask for help. No one is a master of all trades. Unfortunately, entrepreneurs have to wear many hats. Part of the secret is knowing which hats fit and which don't. Don't be shy about asking for help when you need it. Otherwise, you will spend countless hours on tasks that others can complete quickly, easily and inexpensively. After all, your time is worth money and your health is worth even more.
Do not try to "keep up". Small business owners are pressured to look like "big business". This can mean getting many "things" which are the trappings of success (computers, luxury cars, fine offices). Unfortunately, styles change quickly. Technology is quickly obselete. Do not try to keep up, just make sure that what you have works for your needs.
When it stops being "fun" fix it. Most entrepreneurs go into business with joy and excitement. Unfortunately, for some, owning your own business becomes a burden. When it stops being enjoyable it is a sign that something is not what it needs to be. The joy of owning your own business is having control. The key is to find out what it is that has changed your business into something that no longer gives you pleasure or challenge. Once you have identified the problem you will find a solution.

These ten steps are not easy, but they are worth it! Eliminate the stress by taking control of your business and getting the magic back again.

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