Tips and Resources For Small Business Owners and Professionals

In helping anyone considering a start-up or even a reorganization, it is important to begin with two questions, why is this important to you? and, what do you hope to accomplish? The answers to those questions are difficult and require self-awareness and discovery. The process of documenting those answers is the foundation from which the business values, the operational principles and the management approach spring.

I would also provide the following advice:

• “Be a student of what you do”. Read, study, and find the people locally doing what you do or operating businesses you would like to serve. Learn from and partner with them. In addition to learning locally, identify the premier players in the global marketplace and study their leadership practices and principles. Always realize you are on a learning curve.
• There are several good approaches to reach the right end for you and for your business. Your approaches must resonate within you. When you operate with authenticity, your customers and your employees feel it – as do you. Do the right things and do not succumb to the temptation to veer from that path.
• Do not focus solely on revenues. To sustain yourself and your business, your mission must be bigger than your job. Focus on who you are serving and why, and the financials will come.
• Build deep, reciprocal relationships with those you can support and who will support you.
• Recognize you will not please everyone, so always act with integrity, honesty and honor so as not to put yourself in the position of being broken down when the stones are cast.
• Be proud of your achievements, but temper them with humility, and within them, search for the tokens that can be shared with another. It is the ‘each one, teach one’ philosophy. When you enable another’s success, you enable yourself.
• Remember that you do have time for all that is important to you. Weigh your priorities and your values, keep them squarely in front of you, and make you decisions and choices accordingly.
• Celebrate the failures and the achievements. Mistakes mean experience. Own them and create a personal case study out of them. This leads to acting with consciousness, rather than going through the motions of routine. And, too often, we forget to celebrate the small stuff along with the milestones.
• Provide special treatment to those who help you serve your constituents. This does not mean deferential treatment. It means culling out the area that each individual who you serve or who serves you, will respond to by acknowledging it is important to them. Clones do not operate businesses. Individuals do. Appeal to their humanity and you in return receive their loyalty, trust and commitment.
• You chose business ownership. Now, choose to create the culture that allows you to enjoy it.
• View your business not as ridden with challenges….but riddled with tremendous opportunities.