Small Businesses Are Small For A Reason – It Could Be Professional Negligence

I have worked with – and interacted with even more – small businesses over my consulting career. Often, I am inspired, impressed and occasionally totally blown away by the talent of many of the small businesses and their owners. These professionals and work-a-day folks alike are all trying to live their dream, make a living, compete on their own or build a company out of a hobby or skill they have seen in themselves and enjoy.

I’d like to talk today about the businesses and business owners that do not fit into this group. Today I’d like to talk about the business owners that I have seen, met and worked with that are small for a reason. Perhaps they are small for many reasons.

Let’s not ruminate today on specific businesses, business owners or examples. Let’s try and learn something from our experiences and observations, so that the business owners and professionals out there trying to survive, grow and build lasting businesses and companies can learn from – and hopefully avoid – some prevailing mistakes made by small business owners.

Briefly, here are some of our top observations preventing small business owners from successfully building larger businesses:

1. Failure to understand the selling process, and prepare for the selling cycle.
2. Not understanding the importance of the lifetime value of a customer.
3. Allowing ego to override requirements of bringing onboard talented help (whether full-time, part-time or outside consulting services).
4. Allowing ego also to prevent business owner from seeking help, in new ideas, capital, etc.
5. Negligence in defining and communicating a clear vision and purpose for the organization and its employees.
6. Ill-defined target customers
7. Failure to follow through on efforts to build and promote their brand effectively at all times.

I’ll come back to explaining my thinking in future blog posts, however, I will make the following comments.

It is surprising how business owners who are staking their livelihoods, careers and sometimes their dreams on their businesses fail to follow through on building up the brand of their business. This is often true even for experienced business owners, and it is often clear to even the business owner themselves.

In fact, if there was a court of law for small business owners where observers could walk in and tell a judge that the business owner knows or has an idea what to do, but that they are not doing it and know it, we’d have business owners being convicted of negligence.

Now I am not talking about legality here. I am talking about just plain failure to act on what is known – or good ideas that you are aware of – in detriment to your own business. I’m clearly stretching and distorting the term negligence here, but it is congruent enough to meet our needs in this situation.

Don’t be negligent with your business. Act on what you know and see and hear and learn.

Perhaps we will single out some particularly horrific examples of grossly negligent business owners as case studies in future posts.

In the meantime, thank you for your continued interest and support.

Erik Bunaes
Endorphin Advisors
5/9/10.

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Endorphin Advisors – SlideShare

Endorphin Advisors has a SlideShare account where we post copies of presentations, courses, workshop content and a wide range of other useful information.

Please see our SlideShare account at: http://www.slideshare.net/ebunaes.

Let us know if you have any questions or would like to have us lead a workshop, class or training session on one of the business, strategy, leadership or marketing topics in which we specialize.

Thank you for your support.

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Endorphin Advisors – New One Page Menu of Services

Endorphin Advisors is a management consulting firm and marketing agency.

To easily review the range of services offered by Endorphin Advisors, we have published a new one page menu of services.

See the Endorphin Advisors “News” page to view this summary.

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Strategic Business Advisor? Who Needs a Coach (or Advisor)?

Some of The Smartest Folks Around Use Strategic Advisors or Executive Coaches.  What Can a Professional Advisor or Coach Do For You?

If we think of this from an athlete’s point of view, top athletes have a host of coaches.  From Derek Jeter of the NY Yankees to 7-time Tour De France champion and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong, from Olympic gold medalist and two-time World Cup overall champion alpine skier Lyndey Vonn to football quarterback Brett Favre.  They all have coaches.  Strength coaches, skills coaches, nutrition coaches, business advisors, agents and even media coaches.

Why not have advisors and coaches for what is likely one of the top two or three priorities in your life, next to your family?  That is, your career.  It may be wise to think of your career as if you were a professional athlete.  Get coaching, practice and drill skills, learn new skills, strategize and role play for big meetings, presentations or sales calls, learn new approaches to your business or career.

If you are a business owner or experienced professional, you know how many different skill sets you need.  These include:

1. Practicing and continuing to develop your particular skill, service or product

2. Creating new marketing strategies, products and services

3. Marketing your business

4. Building new customer relationships and maintain existing relationships

5. Hiring, motivating and managing employees

6. Hiring outside vendors

7. Managing the financial, accounting and tax side of your business.

8. Envisioning, purchasing (or building) and managing complex technology.

9. Keeping up with federal, state and local regulations.

That’s just a start.

Do you honestly excel at all of these, and can you with a busy work schedule maintain and manage all of these on your own?

As a business owner or entrepreneur, you have no choice.  You must manage and excel at all of these skills, and more.  Even as a professional or an employee working at a company, you must excel at one or more of these areas, too.

Who do you talk to for help in managing your work (as an owner, entrepreneur, executive or career professional)?

If you think that having a strategic advisor or executive coach on your side might benefit you, give us a call and let’s talk about it and how we have helped others.

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Endorphin Branding Services

1. Brand Consistency Audit

The Brand Consistency Audit is designed for those businesses that already have a full or partial suite of marketing materials in place.

These marketing tools may have been created by different designers, at different times over the course of months or years. There may be differing claims or benefits, inconsistent use of visual elements and/or colors, changing environmental or competitive factors or there may be conflicting information contained across the spectrum of these tools.

Inconsistent, or outright conflicting, information weakens your marketing message, and will create confusion about your brand and the value you provide. Confused customers mean they will shop somewhere else.

We will perform an on-site evaluation of all your existing marketing and brand-related materials and will provide recommendations on how you can make them more consistent with your image or brand.

We will determine which visual elements closely represent the image your business wants to project today, and what can be done to bring all of your marketing materials into alignment.

The Brand Consistency Audit package includes: on-site consulting session, evaluation of existing marketing tools, detailed marketing questionnaire, research of the company, industry, and competitors, written report containing recommendations.

2. Company Branding Package

Do you need a comprehensive marketing package that sets you apart from the competition? Is your current brand outdated or is it just time to breathe some new life into your image? Do your marketing pieces accurately represent your company today?

With our branding package, we can help you harness the power of a strong, clearly-defined company brand that attracts attention to your company and gives your staff renewed energy and excitement.

We begin with an in-depth analysis and discovery session which helps uncover your company and culture, your unique attributes, and what makes you different and exceptional. We listen to your needs, and help highlight your strengths and goals. We then translate this vision into a custom logo, stationery package, brochure, and pocket folder that speaks to your customer. The result: an invaluable suite of powerful and distinctive tools that projects a professional, sophisticated image to your customers.

Packages include consulting session, logo development, one (1) design for business card, letterhead and envelope, 8.5″ x 11″, 4-page brochure, and standard 9″ x 12″ pocket folder.

For clients who desire to take advantage of some of the features of this package, but not the whole offering, customized programs, individually priced, are available.

3. Logo Development Package

A logo should possess all of the following attributes:

1. Be descriptive
2. Be memorable
3. Be unique from competitors
4. Effective without color (black and white only)
5. Be scalable (readable in various sizes and media)
6. Create recognition
7. Communicate product or service’s message and personality
8. Speak to the audience
9. Create credibility

With so many roles and responsibilities, it is important to get the logo just right.

We have a time-tested, clearly-defined process that delivers results in developing powerful logos. Our Logo Development packages include: consulting session, detailed marketing questionnaire, research of the company, industry, and competitors, five (5) initial logo designs, two (2) sets of revisions to one (1) final design, color palette selection, font selection, and final logo file formatted for print and web.

Contact us today and take big, bold steps forward in your branding

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Business Workshop – Turning Numbers Into Valuable Information

Turning Numbers Into Valuable Information

Projections – A basic guide to the business practice every business owner needs for profitable decision-making

Date & Time: Monday March 15, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm.

Location:
BZHIVE Coworking
80 Mark Drive
San Rafael, CA 94903

http://www.bzhive.com

415-251-6454

Financial spreadsheets with rows and rows of numbers make most people’s eyes glaze right over. Most people would rather hit themselves in the head with a hammer than open an Excel spreadsheet.

However, business owners and entrepreneurs need their businesses to generate enough money to pay the bills to stay in business. To keep on top of how a business is performing – and to make the best decisions for moving forward – it is essential to have a clear picture of how much money you are spending and how much you are bringing in.

You have the numbers, so let’s turn those into valuable information to answer important questions: When can I hire more staff? When can I buy an office (or just get an office)? When can I afford to buy that piece of equipment? How much can I spend on marketing next month?

In this introductory course, we’ll help business owners, entrepreneurs, managers and independent professionals use the numbers they have to make the best possible decisions. We promise, no jargon and no acronyms!

In this course, we’ll teach you:

1. What are financial projections?
2. Why are they important?
3. How can projections help you?
4. 5 key elements of projections
5. How to develop a basic model for your business (and give you a sample)

This workshop includes practical application strategies that you can implement right away, the Endorphin Advisors PowerPlan™ Financial Projection template, plus a bonus 30-minute, one-on-one coaching session.

Workshop developed & presented by Erik Bunaes, Principal, Endorphin Advisors. For more information about Endorphin Advisors, please visit www.EndorphinAdvisors.com and http://blog.endorphinadvisors.com.

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Business Workshop – Build a Roadmap for Explosive Growth

Build a Roadmap & Playbook for Explosive Growth

A business planning process to dominate your competition

Date & Time: Monday March 8, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm.

Location:
BZHIVE Coworking
80 Mark Drive
San Rafael, CA 94903

http://www.bzhive.com

415-251-6454

“The plan is useless, but planning is essential.”

– Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander of Forces in Europe during World War II and the 34th President of the United States

Find out what you need to know now to perform a powerful business planning process that paints a picture of your vision and focuses your energy, efforts and your team on the essential work ahead.

This course is designed for business owners, entrepreneurs and managers interested in learning more about the process of building a business plan that empowers them to build strong, sustainable businesses that can compete with anybody in their field.

This information is applicable for start-ups, new ventures, solopreneurs, business owners and managers.

This workshop includes practical application strategies that you can implement right away, the Endorphin Advisors PowerPlan™ Business Plan template, plus a bonus 30-minute, one-on-one coaching session.

Workshop developed & presented by Erik Bunaes, Principal, Endorphin Advisors. For more information about Endorphin Advisors, please visit www.EndorphinAdvisors.com and http://blog.endorphinadvisors.com.

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Misinterpreting the Business Plan

The majority of people misinterpret the purpose of a business plan.  For most, it is an exercise is outlining their brilliant ideas, proving their business concept or perhaps a tool to raise funds or attract partners.

Business Planning, Not Business Plans

Perhaps business owners should begin to view business planning as an ongoing process that throws off occasionally a document called a business plan.  Therefore, it is a process not a result, nor is it a document.  It is certainly never a finished document (unless and until your business fails, and it is the last business plan written.  Then, that is a finished business plan!).

The ideas and decisions that come from business planning should be viewed as the game plan (or trip plan or battle plan or plan of action) with the written business plan simply documents for future use. 

A good business plan specifies goals, strategies, deadlines, responsibilities and the expected revenues and expenditures of a business over a period of time.  It should be the mundane workings of a business which are used to track the wondrous, exciting growth of your business venture.

Isn’t that what why we are entrepreneurs, to go out and make our mark on the world?

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Why is planning so important?

Why is planning so important?  Time

The act of planning, whether in business, for a trip, or just planning out your day, is important because of time.

As we all know, time marches on regardless what you are doing.  In business, that means your expenses march on regardless of what is happening on the “revenue” side of the business.  If your revenue side does not exceed your costs (expenses) side then you lose money.  This is a scenario that cannot go on forever.  For small businesses, particularly those with limited resources or without other sources of revenue, this will inevitably lead to the failure of the business. 

“The plan is useless, but planning is essential.”

– Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander of Forces in Europe during World War II and the 34th President of the United States

To use a mundane (yet very attractive) example, think about planning a ski trip to Chamonix, France.  Very few people have the resources, flexibility and, frankly, the personality to conceive of the idea of a ski trip to France (if they live in, for example, San Francisco, California) and just take off the next day for a week in this amazing French mountain paradise 5,864 miles away from their home (yes, I checked on Google maps).

Most normal people would need to plan a vacation from their jobs, coordinate schedules with their family, buy plane tickets, research and book lodgings, and perhaps spend some time saving up some money or researching what else they might do when they are not hurling themselves down some of the most treacherous slopes in the French Alps (or recovering from said hurling).

In other words, taking a trip like this would benefit from some amount of planning

Now you are not going to write up a Business Plan (or in this case a “Trip Plan”), but most people will do some amount of research, preparation, planning and even dreaming well before this trip happens.  You might make a list of things to do, create a budget and check the calendar to coordinate schedules.

Planning a big trip or other big projects are not unlike building a business or selling and exiting from a business.

Business planning of course is far more complicated than planning a trip.  It is also a far more critical discipline for a successful business venture.

In my experience working with, talking with and researching the activities of small business owners and would be entrepreneurs, two of the biggest failings is a lack of effective, disciplined planning and lack of available resources. 

Unfortunately, those two items go hand-in-hand when it comes to running a business.  If you foolishly use up your available resources (or fail to appropriately and carefully consume those resources), then you vastly increase your odds of business failure.

Why Not Plan?

Why is it that so many small businesses do not adequately plan out their expenses and revenues, and make the appropriate “business model” work out, at least on paper?

I would suggest that it is because it is hard work to create a real, comprehensive business plan.  It is time consuming, abstract and requires discipline.  It also requires careful thought and a great deal of creativity to imagine the future and see where you might be able to take your business over some finite period of time.

It is also quite scary for some people to put down on paper specific goals for themselves, and then re-visit those goals after the specified time period, and to measure performance versus goals.

“If you can imagine it, you can achieve it”

– Andrew Carnegie

Let’s go against the grain here and challenge ourselves to perform at a higher level than we believe possible.  Andrew Carnegie was an innovative thinker in his belief in the power of the imagination and the importance of written goals.

How about using the business plan to set out some goals that stretch the limits of what we believe we can do.  Wouldn’t it be an exhilarating thrill to revisit these goals and see that we achieved (or even came close to achieving) that which we only dared to dream?

Wouldn’t that exhilaration – and success – be worth a little work in the business planning area today?

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