Small business startup advice - SmallBusinessVoodoo.com

Hot, Flat and Crowded - Thomas L Friedman

The do-gooders have got it all wrong. They have been telling us for eons that we have to save our planet. Rubbish. Our planet is just fine. It’s our ability to stay living on a planet that’s becoming hot, flat and crowded that’s the problem.

You see, the planet doesn’t care if we are here or not. And the bad news is that we are living on borrowed time and not doing very much about it.

“Hot, Flat and Crowded” by Thomas Friedman goes some way to helping us understand this dilemma and puts together a broad template to help get us out of this mess. But it’s not going to be easy and success is by no means assured.

So what does Hot, Flat and Crowded refer to? Well, in a nutshell…

Hot - greenhouse effect, climate change, fossil fuels, rising sea levels and so on.

Flat - An increasingly connected and enabled world through the internet and improved telecommunications where individuals across the globe can prosper as never before. But this extraordinary expansion of the ‘middle class’ brings its own problems.

Crowded - A global population of 6.7 billion rising to 9 billion by 2050, where are they all going to go? What will they eat? How will they (ie we) survive? Read more »

So Ryanair are considering charging passengers to use their inflight toilets. Have they proved that customer service really doesn’t matter after all, or will Ryanair have stepped beyond the pail on this one?

Ryanair’s latest wheeze to charge for their inflight toilets is the latest in an unofficial socio-economic experiment being run by the company. To what level can they continue to strip customer service out of the system before people will stop buying their cheap tickets? Just how badly do customers want to get to destinations for next to nothing? And, to be fair, it’s a fascinating experiment to watch.

At the moment it seems OK that luggage is lost, flights are cancelled without warning or recompense, grumpy tetchy service is endured, surprise charges at check-ins are standard, customer service lines are unhelpful and stampedes for boarding gates are the norm. Read more »

OK, we’re half way through our preparation to face the Dragon’s Den. If you missed Plan To Face The Dragon’s Den Part I then refer back. Let’s move on to the next stage, steps 7 -12.

7. Proof

A business idea on its own is worthless. The world is awash with ideas. You must elevate your business idea to something of commercial value before you walk into the Dragon’s Den. You need proof. Proof essentially breaks down into two parts:

- Does your product work? Make sure you have a working prototype, or better still the real thing. A malfunctioning prototype and you can kiss a warm reception goodbye.

- Will anyone buy it? Research is of little value. Particularly on the scale that your limited funds are likely to reach. Try selling your product first. Get listings from high profile retailers/ wholesalers. If you can’t get listings, get a purchase order. Get a letter from the CEO saying how he will stock your product. Get anything that provides evidence that your product will have buyers. And lots of them. Read more »

You’re keen to subject yourself to the Dragon’s Den. But will you end up champ or chump?

The Dragon’s Den goes from strength to strength. We can’t get enough of it. You can now even take part in the online version of the show securing up to £50,000 for your enterprise.

Individuals endlessly expose themselves to the Dragon’s Den. Occasionally it pays off but we continue to be stunned by the ill preparation and idiocy of so many.

How we cringe when a Dragon fires a gentle opener “what’s your expected turnover next year?” to which the hapless entrepreneur replies “er, um, er… ten million pounds”. When pressed a little harder, it transpires that they meant to say “ten thousand pounds”. No, wait a minute, that’s not right um, oh, er… I don’t know, quite a lot anyway.

What the hell…who’s going to be interested in a plastic cucumber protector after all?

Anyway, if you really want to succeed in the Dragon’s Den and you’re name isn’t Levi Roots then here’s the first six of a twelve point checklist to see you on your way: Read more »

Business Credibility: Achieving Great Things In Stages

“A thick tree grows from a tiny seed.  A tall building arises from a mound of earth. A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step. Contriving, you are defeated; Grasping, you lose.” - Laozi Ancient Chinese philosopher

So for Man City, the bubble has burst. For the time being at least. Ka Ka has turned down a £500,000 per week salary and Robinho has gone AWOL.

It has been mooted that Ka Ka turned the offer down on moral grounds but I have a sneaky feeling that he has more business sense than the whole Man City board put together.

Ka Ka realises that if a business (in this case a football club) aspires to great things it needs to map out the journey in believable bite sized chunks. It needs credibility. And business credibility needs to be earned and not bought.

Ask a horticulturist and they will tell you not to plant a seed in a pot that is to big. Better to replant it repeatedly into pots that are progressively bigger.

If you’re launching a new small business into an already crowded market then aim to beat the competition in steps. Prioritise building business credibility. Find an energetic and competent intrapreneur to drive your business, but don’t throw money at Stuart Rose (CEO at M&S) and expect him to either say yes or actually be a good fit anyway. He may be right for a few stages down the line but not now. Read more »

Business Stripped Bare - Richard Branson

How did Virgin Mobile become the fastest business in United States history to reach a $1 billion turnover? (Yes, Faster even than Microsoft or Google)

How did a man who set out to sell records in the 70’s become one of the world’s most influential social entrepreneurs with friends to count on such as Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton and the Dalai Lama to name just a few?  Business Stripped Bare provides the answers.

Before you even make it to the opening credits you get a flavour of what being a truly global entrepreneur looks like. On the inside cover in rough handwriting (presumably Branson’s) are notes detailing some of the things he managed to achieve last year: Ordered 6 new 747 400’s; Opened a game reserve in Africa; Bought 5 miles of Majorcan coastline for new hotel; Secured site for largest cinema in the world in Tokyo;Opened first megastore in Beirut; Richard Branson is without question a truly global entrepreneur. Read more »

How many times have I heard small business management tell me “I don’t need a business plan”?

Let’s get this straight. All businesses plan. Whether they like to think they do or not. As soon as you order additional inventory or take on new staff in expectation of a greater workload, then you’re planning. So the issue is not whether you should plan or not, you can’t help but plan. The issue is how do you go about business planning ?

The only businesses who may legitimately say ”I don’t need a business plan” would be small scale and steady state – in other words not growing in turnover or contracting. In such a case everything stays more or less the same week in week out. Thus all the information is probably in the proprietor’s head anyway and that’s fine.

But as soon as growth or contraction is imminent, you can no longer say that you don’t need a business plan.  It becomes critical to make assumptions about how that growth is going to look and that means, you guessed it, planning.

Let me put it this way. Let us suppose that I have in my possession a piece of software that allows me to input your personal details. And from that I am able to map out a model of the next ten years of your life. Wouldn’t you at least be a little curious?

What if you could see that at the age of 39 you were going to die of sclerosis of the liver from excess alcohol intake. Wouldn’t you like to know that? Wouldn’t you like the chance to do something about it now and avert such a calamity? Read more »

How strange that we small businesses so often forget to target customers as a priority when hunting for that elusive increase in sales turnover.

Yet statistics consistently show that the cost of gaining business through prospecting is anywhere between 3 and 10 times as expensive as increasing sales through current customers.

Armed with that snippet of information it would be odd not to address the issue of how to target customers to maximise sales.

Target Customers To Maximise Sales In 10 Steps:

Make sure that you work through these steps in sequence. It’s important.

1- 80:20…Prioritise. Always remember that 20% of your customers will provide 80% of your profit. Work out who they are and focus on them. Now target customers who are in your bottom 20%. Ditch them.

2- Customer service.  I’m not just talking good customer service. I’m talking mind busting customer service. Good won’t differentiate you from the competition. 80% of customer service is giving the customer what they want when they want it. 20% is the personal relation building, touchy feely bit. Get the 80% right first without fail. Then worry about the 20%.  And don’t forget to give your customer some fun while you’re about it. Read more »

Christmas is a great time to pause for breath and that’s something that we small business people find difficult to do.

So in this enforced pause for breath let me use it as an opportunity to wish great things in 2009 to all people who’s business is business.

To those full of hope incubating an idea that has yet to blossom into a successful business: I wish that you ask yourself two questions: 1. Is your idea going to change the world and 2. Has it been done before? If your answers are yes and no then it is only you that lies between its success and failure.

To those in business for whom business has become a metaphor for pain, hardship, suffocation; for whom the promise of eternal financial and social freedom has become a distant footnote: I wish that your 2009 resolution be that you break out at all cost, whatever it takes. Visualise your exit with a renewed gusto and plan that you succeed without fail. Read more »

As an intrapreneur, it’s easy to get stuck between the dual roles of corporate visionary and day to day manager. You’re told to “work smarter not harder” and to “work on the business, not in the business”. But how?

The business needs you down there at the coal face right now. There’s not enough staff, you haven’t got time to train anyone else right now and, hell, you can do the job quicker anyway.

The problem with this mindset for the intrapreneur is that it’s not scaleable. You are not creating a framework for your business to grow.

Work smarter not harder. You are simply rushing from one crisis to another like an entertainer spinning plates hazardously on the end of bamboo poles.

With each stage of growth the crises are getting harder for you to manage. You are losing site of the horizon. The plates are about to come crashing down. You need help. Read more »