Wednesday the 26th of April, 2006 | Business | Must Read | SMB Guide |
I’m not sure I like the tone of this article, it sounds like a great way to piss off the IRS. However, what you should take out of this article is how to make the gradual transition from being a corporate cog to getting paid for doing what you love.
Wednesday the 1st of March, 2006 | Articles | Business | SMB Guide |
When starting a business, one of the first things on the To-Do list is finding out what to sell. The best way to be successful in your efforts is to find a niche then specialize in that niche. Some niche markets are still too broad, which will allow you the possibility of finding a great sub-niche.
REI is a large retailer that specializes in Outdoor Goods. They provide their customers a wide array of options in camping, snow-sports, rock-climbing, biking and much more. REI is very successful in their niche market and provide a wonderful experience to their patrons. As you may be able to see, even though they specialize in a niche market - Outdoor Gear, that niche can be broken down even more. If you are starting a business, it is best to find a niche within a niche.
Paul Sullivan owns RackOutfitters.com and is a perfect example of a sub-niche. Rack Outfitters sells car racks for your outdoor equipment. He also only offers two brands. According to Paul, there is so much to learn about items in his sub-niche that an REI employee can’t give you the level of expertise that he can. This is because the REI employee has to know general information about all the items they sell in every department.
Paul sells his products by “click and mortar,” meaning he sells to foot-trafficers through his Austin-based headquarters as well as online. It’s important to do enough research on your niche to know whether you’ll have enough foot traffic to compliment your online sales should you choose to do both. Austin is home to an intense community of outdoorsman. There are plenty of bikers, hikers and kayakers to sustain his local business should he not be successful online. Not to mention Austin is only a 16 hour trip to any slope in Colorado, another example of why car rack sales are successful in Austin. Opening the same type of shop in a less outdoor friendly community would not provide the amount of brick and mortar sales that allowed Paul to grow his online business.
Choose either a niche or sub-niche market that doesn’t have any direct competition. RackOutfitters has REI, Walmart and others, but that competition is too broad to be a real threat.
Be positive that your choice in niche has plenty of potential customers in the surrounding area. As I mentioned before, Paul would probably not have been as successful in a community that was less active.
Offer a limited number of brands to avoid confusing your customers and have confidence in those brands. It may be easier to sell a cheaper product up front, but expect to receive a lot of complaints if the quality doesn’t measure up.
Follow these simple rules and your click and mortar store has a great chance of being a success.
Wednesday the 25th of January, 2006 | Articles | SMB Guide |
Many trepps fail in their efforts, most within the first few months. There is no secret to being successful. However, we all know from History class that we can learn from others mistakes. Michael Ames, the author of Small Business Management and Gustav Berle, author of The Do it Yourself Business Book list the following as the top ten reasons small businesses fail.
1 - Lack of experience
2 - Insufficient capital (money)
3 - Poor location
4 - Poor inventory management
5 - Over-investment in fixed assets
6 - Poor credit arrangements
7 - Personal use of business funds
8 - Unexpected growth
9 - Competition
10 - Low sales
Look at the above list and try to come up with solutions to all of them. If you solve the problems before they occur, you’ll be ready for battle if one or more of them tries to break you later.
Wednesday the 18th of January, 2006 | Articles | SMB Guide |
Becoming an Entrepreneur (trepp) is a fantastic experience, but it’s not for everyone. There are a lot of things that must be considered before taking the plunge. The first secret to being successful is making sure you are ready for what lies ahead.
First things first, you must be a good manager. Not a manager in the traditional sense, you’re not managing a group of people in a department of a company. You are now managing all aspects of the company. You must be able to budget your time properly and follow through with tasks. Rationalizing not completing a task or waking up on time in the morning is a sure fire way to fail.
You’ll now be dealing with a lot of differing personalities between your vendors, employees, customers and so on. Some will be very serious needing things done a certain way at a certain time. Others will be laid back and possibly disorganized. Make sure you can deal with the varying degrees of people you’re bound to come into contact with on any given day.
Even though you’ll have more free time to yourself during the day, you’ll have more stress and less vacations. Making too many wrong decisions is not an option. Be ready for 12-16 hour work days. When things go wrong, people will be contacting you for a solution.
Family is another issue you’ll need to be thinking about. How will your new schedule affect them? Make sure you have enough money to last long enough so your family doesn’t have to frequent the soup kitchens in a few months.
This isn’t meant to scare you off. It is merely something you should think about before publicly condemning your boss to hell as you walk out the door. Think long and hard whether you can handle the above issues. If you think you’re ready then more power to you!