In the previous post we looked at the first challenge of what type of business to start in a bad economy.  The first challenge was to determine if you have a market with some depth for your product or service. 

Challenge #2 is about how vulnerable the market, you wish to pursue, is to economic cycles.  Most products and services can and will be affected by economic cycles.  The key is how large are the fluctuations will be. 

Of course, that is hard to know.  But, I would suggest that you research some history of how your market fared during previous economic downturns.  If your product or service falls more into the category of a “want” rather than a “need” then the probability of failure is increased. 

But, that is not always the case.  Let’s look at the leisure or recreational industry.  You may say, and correctly so, that leisure or recreational activities fall in the “want” area.  Yet, people still are going to do something to enjoy themselves.  Very often they will possibly go to more movies instead of concerts because of the expense.  Or, travel may be limited to seeing things in their immediate area as opposed to a large or expensive trip.

The goal is to find a market that will still be needed during a downturn.  Basic services such as cleaning, caretaking of others and bookkeeping are examples of services that should see a reduced negative impact during a downturn.

When starting up your own business, especially in a bad economy, you will move ahead much more quickly if the down cycles are shallow.   A successful performance strategy demands this.  And, to have more consistent small business growth it is critical that you know as much as you can about your market. 

Growing small business is not just about having a great marketing plan.  It is about having a product or service that is needed or will be in demand even when economic times aren’t good.

In the previous post we looked at four challenges or questions that must be answered to starting your own business during an economic downturn. 

Today we’ll take a look at Challenge #1: 

Do you have a market for the product or service you wish to provide?

You may be saying that answering this sounds pretty simple.  In many cases it is.  One of the major considerations in starting a business should be where is your business going to come from?  To whom are you going to market your product or service?  Are they ready to receive your product or service?

Very often I have watched people who work for a larger company and develop relationships with that company’s clients.  In fact they may have had conversations with the client about going out on their own and that when they do, the client will come with them.

There are a couple of problems with this scenario.  Studies have shown that for every 10 clients that will tell you that they are going to switch that only 2 do.  Secondly, in today’s litigious world, depending on the stipulations of your employment, you may be subject to a lawsuit. 

Even if you are totally in the right, a lawsuit, because of the time and expense it requires, may very likely sink you.  I have watched companies sue former employees in an effort to kill their business by tying up a major amount of time and resources. 

A better performance strategy for success and to grow your small business is to stay away from any legal problems. 

The second point to consider in whether or not you have a market that is good for your product or service is to study the obvious.  Too often, what may appear to be obvious to you may be full of problems. 

Too often it is easy to fake yourself out by thinking that your passion and enthusiasm for a product or service will make you successful.  Passion and enthusiasm are important ingredients in the success process.  But, they are not a guaranty. 

Look beyond your passion and enthusiasm for your market and be as realistic as possible.  Be realistic as to whether or not this market is a good market.  Be objective.  Once you have determined that the market is good, then you can let your enthusiasm and passion loose to create the business and life you desire.

All of us need water to survive and to thrive.  But, the quality of the water you are drinking will determine your success or failure.  The water, in this case, is what you choose to let your mind drink in.  Are you drinking in thoughts of success?  

Years ago in Africa there was this tribe.  They were healthy and prosperous.    All their water came from a beautiful spring that supposedly had medicinal and healing properties. 

Suddenly, people started to die or get very sick for no apparent reason.  Experts were called in to determine what was causing the problem.  Here’s what they found.

The experts went back up the mountain to the origin of the spring.  It turned out that a mother pig and her piglets had drowned and were stuck in the opening where the spring came out.  The water was contaminated. 

The mother pig and her piglets were removed and the water was once again pure and the health of the people of the tribe was restored. 

The key to having the success you desire in business and personally rests on your ability to keep your water as pure as possible.  Be careful about what you let your mind drink in. We all have bad things that happen to us.  Starting your own business or running your own business is about challenges and overcoming them.

The problem is that too many business owners will hold onto the negative.  They will keep drinking in defeating thoughts.  They will remember the negative customer or they will not forgive and employee.  Over time the anger that they carry simmers.  It becomes the fertilizer in which the root of bitterness takes hold. 

There are many keys to having small business growth and to taking future steps to have your business successful.  But, to truly move forward you cannot let the root of bitterness take hold.  It may sound trite but it is true. 

First, forgive yourself.  Stop using the past as a weapon on yourself.  The past is past.  There isn’t anything you can do about it.  Secondly, you must forgive others.  Without forgiveness you set up an invisible wall that may protect your anger but at the same time it will keep opportunity from coming in. 

Develop a successful performance strategy.  Get clear of your past and uproot any bitterness you may have.  Focus on keeping your mind as free as possible of the negative.  When you do, you are more likely to attract the success you desire.

Inflexibility is one of the deadly mistakes that can prevent small business growth or to cause a small business to fail.  A successful performance strategy for growing small business must include flexibility.  After all, if you don’t embrace change you will be run over by it. 

I came across this solution for dealing with inflexibility.  It comes from one of my favorite authors, John Maxwell.  Go to www.JohnMaxwell.com and find a book of his to read.  It will be well worth your time.  The following shows the humorous, and often truthful responses, that come when people are inflexible. 

Inflexibility is the enemy of personal growth, success and achievement. 

The Top Ten Strategies For Dealing With A Dead Horse

1.  Buy a stronger whip.

2.  Change riders

3.  Appoint a committee to study the horse.

4.  Appoint a team to revive the horse.

5.  Send out a memo declaring the horse isn’t really dead.

6.  Hire an expensive consultant to find “the real problem.”

7.  Harness several dead horses together for increased speed and efficiency.

8.  Rewrite the standard definition of a live horse.

9.  Declare the horse to be better, faster, and cheaper when dead.

10.  Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.

Most of you have probably seen these solutions enacted at some point in your business career or life. 

So, how do you deal with the challenge of inflexibility.  When your horse is dead and your inflexibility is causing you to hold onto something that isn’t working, dismount. 

Small business coaching is about helping people to learn how to dismount, let go of thoughts and processes that aren’t working and to bury them.  Only once the things that don’t work are buried or put in a safe place, may you move forward. 

And, the way to move forward is to come up with a new performance strategy. Embrace change.  Embrace flexibility.  When you do, you will be able to mount a live horse and gallop forward to the success you desire.

I will finish up this series on starting your own business with a look at “flexibility”.  There are many things that go into having a small business successful, to small business growth and ultimately to the success you desire. 

I have purposely chosen to take some topics that are on the road less traveled.  They are crucial steps to business success and very often they are overlooked. 

Flexibility is one thing that is often overlooked.  Think about this.  Whether it be a marketing business plan, a sales strategy or the decision to hire someone, all of these start with a thought.  If you aren’t flexible between the ears then you have embraced a prescription for “not much is going to happen around here.” 

As I heard someone once quote.  “Embrace change or you will be run over by it.”  When you get run over by change you have been flattened.  When you are flattened, like one of those cartoon characters who is run over by a truck, your business and life become one dimensional. 

To avoid being flattened by change you must remain flexible.  When you are flexible in your thinking you will be agile.  With increased agility you will be able to grab opportunities when they present themselves (one form of change) and avoid disasters (another form of change). 

Just remember that all flexibility and agility starts with that 5 inches between your ears.  Flexibility is something that you must practice.  There are some areas where you are flexible.  Others where you are inflexible.  Take a look at the areas where you are inflexible.  Loosen up a little bit and you will find more energy and opportunity coming your way.

To have a successful business whether you are starting your own business or running your own business you must have positive, forward momentum. 

In the last post, I spoke about your small business being like an airplane.  If it is carrying too much baggage then it can’t take off and get you where you want to go.  Small business growth requires momentum. 

The first step to gaining momentum is to lighten your baggage.  Then you can take the plane of your business down the runway and take off.  Small business growth is dependent on keeping your momentum. 

Now you are up in the sky.  You are sailing along.  You are above the clouds.  It took a great deal of energy to take off.  What should you do now?

Pull back on the throttle.  Too many business owners burn out even after they have achieved some degree of success because they never pull back on the throttle and cruise for a while. 

They don’t fully comprehend the importance of their mental and emotional health to their business.  They are the engine that drives their growing small business and creates the steps to business success. 

Yet, they run at full throttle and eventually that engine wears out.  The key to personal and business success is to keep the momentum but at the same time pulling back on the throttle when appropriate. 

Without pulling back on the throttle it is hard to keep perspective.  You make your own business decisions.  But, with a loss of perspective that comes from burnout or overwork you increase the odds of killing your momentum and taking the plane of your business back down through the clouds to a crash landing.

For most of us who are self-employed one of the most crucial measuring sticks for success is sales.  A good marketing business plan is a must to support consistent sales and small business growth. 

And, if you don’t address some of the other topics in the previous posts then you are more likely to have a more difficult time with sales.  A successful performance strategy in marketing is about finding prospects who are interested and keeping the pipeline full. 

In sales you must have a sound conversion strategy.  Obviously, when there are no conversions there are no sales. 

Successful sales and marketing is built first and foremost around identifying a pain or need of your market. 

After you have identified the pain or need then you want to show your market how you can be the solution.

Next, you want to show them the benefit of you as the solution. 

Then you want to add features. 

Let’s say, for example, that you are selling a particular type of car.  Benefits to this car may be safety, good acceleration and good gas mileage.  Features may be reinforced steel frame, a responsive engine type and low body weight to increase gas mileage. 

I think you get the picture.  Too often people try to sell features instead of benefits.  In the process, the customer gets disinterested.  Find out the benefits and solutions your customers want.  When you do, you will be on the way to having more sales and your small business successful.

What is marketing?  Marketing is the process that you will use to bring in prospects for your product or service.  Once you have the prospect’s attention then you can focus on sales. 

But, how do you plan to market your business to keep the pipeline full?  Before you get started in a business be sure of two things:

1. How to successfully market your business?
2. How that marketing strategy will be implemented consistently?

These two components will be part of any good marketing business plan.

Small business growth is about having a good marketing plan and executing it consistently.  Interestingly, the creation of the marketing plan is not as big a challenge as is the consistent execution. 

And, it is lack of consistent marketing that can doom a business to failure. Why does this happen?  It happens because the entrepreneur, business owner or solo professional does not have the skills to execute the marketing plan.  And, because the budget is tight they will not pay to have it executed. 

Making your own business the success you envision requires, in most instances when starting out, that you wear most, if not all the marketing hats.  It must be part of your performance strategy for success.

For example, for some businesses to be successful it may require consistent phone calling with a script from a targeted list.  If you are not good on the phone or don’t like it then it won’t happen. 

Maybe your business requires a great deal of face to face contact and networking.  If you aren’t comfortable with that then it won’t happen. 

Know what type of marketing your business needs.  Either be ready to develop the necessary skills to be successful or look for another business that caters to your strengths. 

I have observed many small businesses fail, not because the owner wasn’t a good person, but because the owner didn’t have or wouldn’t develop the marketing skills necessary to make his small business successful.

Need information on starting up your own business?  You can find more than enough on the internet, in books and classes to take up all your time.  Since time is finite the goal should be to cut down the cycle time to getting the business going to where you are focusing on running your own business. 

How do you do that?  Find the right relationships.  It’s that simple.  Keep a list of your questions.  Then go about seeking the appropriate person to answer them.  Here’s what will happen.

• You will get to establish a new relationship that could be helpful.  That’s a pretty good benefit.
• You will receive an answer that is much more likely to be on target because there is no substitute for verbal communication to establish the context for a good answer. That’s helpful.
• You will receive encouragement (not always, but most of the time) to continue your search and grow your small business.  A boost for you and your enthusiasm–you’ll like it.

Think about it.  You get the personal attention to your questions.  You receive the support and encouragement of others.  And, you build relationships that will help you and your business. 

When you are dependent on the right people you will be amazed at the good things that will start to come your way.

Whether you are starting up your own business, running your own business or just seeking small business growth the quality of your relationships can accelerate and simplify the path to designing the business and life you desire.

Deciding to start your own business represents a big change in your thinking.  That’s the first step.  The second step, which is the bigger challenge,  is taking the action.  Before you do that I want you to think about this. 

No amount of money spent on education, systems, equipment and personnel will enable you to successfully create your own business, let alone run it profitably, unless you truly build the business around you.  Small business growth is about growing you, the owner.

Building the business around you, your strengths and your passions is the first puzzle piece to successfully running your own business.

That’s right.  You must build your business around who you are.  If you don’t you won’t enjoy it.  If you don’t enjoy it you will, more likely than not, fail.  The path to failure is paved with good intentions spent on trying to build a business around the founder’s weaknesses and other people’s well intentioned perceptions of how you should do it. 

The key is take all the advice and education you are receiving and tailor it around you and what works for you. 

Step back before you start your small business and make an honest assessment of your strengths and weaknesses.  For your weaknesses figure out how you are going to cover for them.  The successful entrepreneur has figured this out in advance.  He does not spend a great deal of lost time and energy later on trying to fill the holes.   

Everyone can do things they don’t like for a while.  Some of this is unavoidable.  Invest your time in the beginning to acknowledge your gifts and talents.  Figure out how to cover the things you will not do as readily. 

To cut the first puzzle piece successfully you must honor “who” you are and in the process create a job for yourself that you like.  Create a job that you want to go to every day.  

After all, isn’t that why most of you become self-employed.  You want something different.  You want something better.   And, you want the control to make it happen.   Starting your own business is all about you.  And, that is good.