Control Freak
In small business I strongly advocate small business owners ‘staying in control’ of every
thing in their business, until it becomes financially viable for them to act ‘over’ their business by outsourcing some of the daily operations that take them away from focusing on its core elements. The key here is organisation and doing the basics regularly.
Big call for a newbie right? Right! My words ought to echo in the ears of new business owners everywhere. They’re particularly true, in my opinion, in the beginning. In the business beginning, there is YOU, the business owner and unless you really trust anyone else or others to partner with you in that venture there’s the Others. For my money, and less of a headache, just one other is manageable.
The great thing these days is that start up companies can get alot of help from Government Departments especially dedicated to giving you the tools you need and to assist you throughout those early and new beginnings.
Starting a new business is NOT for the faint-hearted. It oftentimes requires grit and determination. It oftentimes requires a definite solidness of character that many when they start down this road have no idea will be required of them at a personal level. Infact, sometimes much more is required.
I’ve been noticing lately as I mentor a couple of great women just how challenge-riddled the course can be for them as Small Business owners. Granted their business types are hugely different but the challenges remain similar and different. Critical among those challenges is, how to get the proverbial ‘more bang for your buck.’ Personally, I think established business has failed them on many levels.
For one, moving to a completely new region poses the expected challenges of forming new networks and being accepted into others that go with that ‘new kid on the block’ syndrome. I’ve always loved the opening lines of theologian Leon Morris’ introduction to his book, “The Gospel According to John”. He writes, “I like the comparison of John’s Gospel to a pool in which a child may wade and an elephant can swim. It is both simple and profound.” Business beginnings can be like that too, shallow and deep all at once, frightening and frustrating too as a person finds their sea legs.
For my new lady to the region, the costs of newspaper advertising were precipitous (I thought they were just plain criminal myself) and the outcomes proved less than satisfactory given the financial outlay involved but perhaps that says more about the medium than it does about her first-time judgment of what that medium was capable of doing for her. We live and learn, the key is learning the lesson and still moving forward.
But it’s a two-way street. Myself, I would have asked for their best price for a new business account. If they didn’t budge, well, there’s not much point me speculating because the reality is, for me, the internet as a business platform has leveled the playing field significantly.
I reckon I could have got 6-9 solid months (probably more if I ran the figures a lot tighter) of advertising on Facebook for the amount of money she outlayed AND I know I would have had a much better idea of who was looking at the ad, the age groups, where they came from, the gender ratio, so much more data-awareness for future ad campaigns.
I admit I’m a control freak but there’s so much more you can sometimes have no control of that it seems ridiculous to me not to reign in those ones you can. I’ve been working in an electronic medium for years now and building a solid business reputation simply requires business owners to up-skill on new technologies, overcome their fears of it and make it work for them.
I prefer to drive a manual car (most people these days get their license driving an automatic and actually don’t know how to drive a manual car) chiefly because I feel I can be in control of passing or slowing or overtaking maneuvers requiring greater or lesser driver control.
I hate that feeling of being in the middle of a passing maneuver in an automatic and the gear change still hasn’t kicked in, it gives me the heebie jeebies! When I’m driving one I tend to throw it into overdrive a whole lot earlier. Same-same with small business. Hard to say, maybe I am a control freak or maybe it’s just wishful thinking on my part. I don’t mean anything by it but I do always know which way is forward.