When I was young, Thanksgiving was about turkey, getting out of school for a couple of days and the sign that the Christmas season was starting.  It took a while for me to really appreciate the idea and the importance of being thankful for where I am and what I’ve got.

With that in mind, as a business owner I’ve got a different perspective than I would have had in previous years.  Here are some of the things I’m thankful for now:

1. My clients:  I really enjoy and appreciate working with people that are smart, interested in learning new things and trying to accomplish big things.  My clients all have these characteristics and more!  This was why I wanted to get into this business and it’s been great.  The next step is to get more great clients like the ones I’ve got now…! Read More…

There’s a pervasive cultural image of the Entrepreneur as the new age Superman (or woman) that not only is supremely creative, but extremely business savvy, smooth talking and only requires 3 hours of sleep per day.

In the E-Myth Revisted, Michael Gerber starts out his book with the following:

The E-myth is the myth of the entrepreneur.  It runs deep in this county and rings of the heroic.

Picture the typical entrepreneur and Herculean pictures come to mind: a man or woman standing alone, wind-blown against the elements, bravely defying insurmountable odds, climbing sheer faces of treacherous rock – all to realize the dream of creating a business of one’s own.

…Well, while there are such people, my experience tells me they are rare.

Gerber originally wrote this well before the dot.com boom (and bust), but the Silicon Valley mystique only adds to the myth.

The thing is…it’s not true.  There are definitely people out there that fit the descriptions above, but 95% or more of business owners and entrepreneurs are down to earth, regular people that like what they do and want to make a business out of it.

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This is probably a rhetorical question for a small business owner.  You’ve got a million things to do ranging from:

• getting your bookkeeping and payroll updated (or at least reviewed),
• checking into the details of an HR question an employee brought up last week,
• a vague sense that you ought to have a PLAN for your marketing and not just buying an ad from the nice person that came into your office last week and finally…
• focus on delivering the product or service that you are in business for in the first place!

It stresses me out just writing that…!

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I’ve previously mentioned the Business Effectiveness Analysis that we offer to clients (in the last newsletter).  If I do say so myself, it’s a pretty powerful tool that provides an industry benchmark comparison and  ’what if?’ scenarios to preview your businesses’ future financial performance and answer questions like these:

• Do we have enough cash flow for next year to make my loan payments?
• How do we compare to others in my industry on critical financial measures?
• How much will it improve my cash position to collect receivables faster?
• What would be the impact if we improved inventory turns by 10 days?
• What changes could we make to increase profitability and growth?
• If we increase sales by 5%, what does this mean to the bottom line? Cash flow?

I thought it might be useful to share an example of how this analysis can have a significant impact on your business.

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When I completed my tour of duty at my corporate cubicle farm a few years ago, I was going to take a totally different direction…escape the rat race and buy or start my own small business.

Despite that conviction, I will admit that I fell for one of the more pervasive myths that are out there – the astoundingly high percentage of business failures!  I think part of the reason that people easily believe the idea that 80+% of businesses fail in the first couple of years is that you feel like you can support it anecdotally by just driving around.  I remember a wrap sandwich place that opened up about the time I started considering a change.  It had a great location – the product was different and interesting, the price was reasonable and the service was good. 

They didn’t make it 6 months.

I still feel bad for the owner – I didn’t even know his name, but I’m sure this wasn’t the outcome he was planning for.

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