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You’re the Boss Blog: A Year’s Worth of Wisdom From the Trenches of Small Business

December 28, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Here at You’re the Boss, we believe that most small-business owners are really good at a few things, the things that allowed them to get their businesses off the ground. Inevitably, however, most owners are unprepared for the dozens of other tasks that are essential to running a business. We hope to help with those. But we don’t try to make it look easy.

Success rarely comes in a straight line from point A to point B. So we don’t emphasize the stories of rock star entrepreneurs who never seem to struggle; instead, we emphasize the struggle. Our bloggers try to show what life is like in their trenches, the ups and the downs, what’s working and what isn’t, the lessons learned. Along the way, they often benefit from the feedback of some of the smartest small-business readers around.

Here are highlights from a year in the You’re the Boss trenches:

Jay Goltz wrote about why there are more and more resources for small businesses — but failure rates still remain high. And the top 10 reasons small businesses fail. And the dirty, little secret of successful companies (they fire people). And why it can be a mistake to dismiss annoying customers (for one thing, “crazy” customers can have sane friends). And whether Groupon is ruining retailing. And what it takes to collect receivables, especially in a difficult economy. And why checking references isn’t a waste of time (especially if you know what to ask). And how to tell if you’re a good boss. And a surprise e-mail he got from an employee he’d tried to forget. And why if you can take a vacation, you should take a vacation.

Paul Downs wrote about how hard it can be to accept advice. And the surprising results when he experimented by turning off his Google Adwords campaign for a week. And the meaning of his falling health insurance rates. And his long-term struggle with pricing. And dealing with an extremely picky customer. And the reader comment that changed his business. And, best of all, how his business finally turned a profit.

MP Mueller wrote about coming to terms with being a boss. And using God as a marketing strategy. And figuring out that she’s not getting as much out of her accountant as she probably should. And two businesses that really understand social media. And how telling your story can help you connect with customers.

Barbara Taylor wrote about business owners who can’t bear to hear the truth about what their businesses are worth. And the four questions to ask before hiring a business broker. And how words can get in the way of selling a business. And realizing that you know you have to change as a business owner. And whether the term lifestyle business is an insult. And whether there is any way the iconic owner of an iconic business in Atlanta can sell her business.

Bruce Buschel wrote about the five things he wishes he had known before the fire. And what it took to reopen the restaurant after the fire. And how his customers say the darnedest things. And the events of an especially bad night in August. And the hardest part of running a restaurant. And how to defend against an unhappy customer who is trashing your business all over the Internet.

Gabriel Shaoolian wrote about why mediocre Web sites are so dangerous. And whether a small retailer can compete with the big boys and what’s wrong with this retailer’s site.

Tom Szaky wrote about choosing between profits and growth. And about trying to create a policy to cover romance in the office. And his top 10 sales tips. And whether green companies should partner with mega companies like Wal-Mart. And how a small company can go global.

Robb Mandebaum wrote a case study about a retailer who couldn’t get a loan. He also wrote about whether small businesses are over-taxed and over-regulated. And whether the health care overhaul will encourage businesses to drop health coverage. And how small-business owners responded to President Obama’s jobs plan. And how some small businesses have thrived without borrowing money. And he answered questions about Small Business Administration lending on C-Span.

David Freedman wrote about whether it pays to move to the cloud. And a company that has automated the process of starting a business. And a more efficient approach to hiring. And a tool to help businesses struggling with social media. And why, if you have a great idea, you should tell everyone.

Adriana Gardella created a business group of women business owners who meet regularly to discuss how they’re doing. She wrote about the struggles of one of those owners to overcome some bad decisions made early in her career, before she understood the dangers of growth. And how two of those owners think their fathers would react if they could see how the company they started is being run today. And the dark side of opening a store. And why women have an advantage in technology. And how a Rwandan entrepreneur lost her husband to genocide and then found her way into the funeral-home business.

Jessica Bruder wrote wrote a case study of whether it makes sense for a failing business to spend $170,000 for a consultant (in this case it did). And about a start-up incubator that floats. And a start-up that wants to eliminate “food deserts.” And starting the “Netflix of flowers.”

And every week, Gene Marks scours the Web so that you don’t have to — looking for all of the stories that have the biggest impact on small-business owners. On Tuesday, he selected the best of those stories.

Happy Holidays from the You’re the Boss team!

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=0c3ebe875589f451622992599e38a453

Filed Under: Small Business Tagged With: , ,

You’re the Boss: Waiting for a Recovery

August 2, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Thinking Entrepreneur

An owner’s dispatches from the front lines.

I have been selling a very popular poster in my frame shop over the last few months. It is a reproduction of a recently rediscovered poster that was printed in England before World War II, but was never distributed. It says “Keep Calm and Carry On,” and it has become quite popular all over the world. I think it’s good advice for dealing with fear, especially for small-business owners.

When I started my business right out of college, I had a lot of fears: of not having enough sales, of signing a lease, of having made a bad career choice. As the business has grown, I have learned that there are many other things to fear: cash flow problems, bad receivables, embezzlement, employee lawsuits, government offices, recessions, accidents and product liability, to name a few. That’s the bad news. The good news, to paraphrase Neitzsche, is that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.

Fear is not all bad. It keeps us on our toes. But it also puts people out of business who can’t or won’t make tough choices. I have seen many once-successful companies go broke. Companies go out of business for all sorts of reasons, but there are times, perhaps like now, when it is tempting to become very conservative, when it can seem too dangerous to take the risk of spending money to improve your business. Sometimes, though, in a competitive world, being overly conservative can prove as dangerous as being reckless.

Three years ago, many business owners were afraid they wouldn’t be able to pay their bills and weather the storm. Today, many of us fear that the storm has done too much collateral damage, and things are not going back to the way they were. I talk to many people in business who are still waiting for a recovery, and they are starting to look at their businesses in a different light. They don’t know if they are more afraid of doing nothing or of doing the wrong thing. They’ve never been through anything like this — who has? But difficult times can create interesting opportunities.

My plan for 2009 was to get to 2010. Mission accomplished. At some point, knowing there can be opportunities in a bad economy, I got back to looking for ways to improve my businesses. I bought a new building. It meant laying out a lot of cash at a time when that wasn’t easy. While it’s a much better facility, on a cash-flow basis, I’ve had to put a lot of money into it. One thing I’ve learned: when you buy a big building — this one is 85,000 square feet — you buy a big roof. Mine leaked. It cost a lot to fix.

My home furnishings store has been doing more and more business on the Web, so I seized the opportunity to redo its Web site. Again, I have no doubt the investment will pay off — eventually. I also started manufacturing a new line of photo frames, and I took out a booth at a gift show in Atlanta this month to introduce them. We did about a tenth of the business we expected, but we learned some things.

It was the first time we had gone to this show, and we didn’t have realistic expectations. Next time, we will go to the New York show instead; our frames are better suited for a more contemporary market. Am I afraid that the new line isn’t going to work? No. We went to the wrong show at the wrong time. I have gotten pretty good at determining when something can be fixed and when I am being delusional. This can be fixed. But I’m not sure how many more opportunities I can afford to seize before the economy turns.

There comes a time in business that you don’t look down, you don’t look back, and you just move forward. Am I where I wanted to be at this time? No. But I still believe that my recent investments will pay off. The results are not going to show up on this year’s financials, but I’m confident that in the long run, I’ll be better off than I was before the melt down.

Again, whatever doesn’t kill you …

9:40 a.m. | Correction A previous version of this post misstated the message in the British poster. (Thanks to the commenters who pointed out the error.)

Jay Goltz owns five small businesses in Chicago.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=dbd639e86d12ad8419058e8fffa2a5aa

Filed Under: Small Business Tagged With: , ,

Bucks: Why You Avoid Your Most Important Financial Task

July 18, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Carl Richards

Carl Richards is a certified financial planner in Park City, Utah. His sketches are archived here on the Bucks blog and on his personal Web site, BehaviorGap.com.

I’m not sure how it happened, but budgeting became a topic (along with life insurance) that people will do almost anything to avoid talking about.

I’ve had my own issues with budgeting, viewing it as something people do when they are overly focused on money or for people who have a difficult time being disciplined. For me, being put on a budget felt like a punishment, comparable to being grounded when I was little. So budgeting always seemed to land way down on my list of financial priorities.

But I was wrong.

I recently spent time with J.J. Sessions, a really good financial planner in Maple Grove, Minn., who changed my perspective on this issue. During our conversations, I asked him what excited him most about his work. For him, it’s having a massive impact on the cash flow of his clients, regardless of their income or net worth. He pointed out that managing cash flow (budgeting) is the key to his clients’ goals (and mine, too).

Financial goals get funded with dollars. Dollars tend to slip through our hands unless we have a system for plugging those holes. We can only plug those holes if we know they exist. So managing cash flow is not something that gets in the way of reaching financial goals; it’s the key to reaching them.

Successful companies understand that managing their cash flow is key. It’s not really any different for individuals. And no matter how stable your financial situation, I doubt there’s ever a time that it’s no longer helpful to manage cash flow.

So why does budgeting get pushed to the bottom of our financial priorities?

  • Budgeting requires being disciplined by setting and tracking spending goals. But being disciplined is hard, and we tend to avoid hard things.
  • Budgeting is not complex. Remember how we say that we want the simple, but still choose the complex? But it is not easy, so we keep looking for other solutions that only appear to be easier.
  • Budgeting is revealing. We talked about this last week. When we start to examine how we spend our money, we learn things about ourselves, and sometimes those things surprise us. Why did we buy that new television instead of adding money to our children’s college fund? Why did we take the trip when we knew it would take months to pay off the credit card bills? When we set a budget we have to take questions like these into account.

If you’re wondering how to get started, there’s been plenty written about ways to make budgeting easier, but here are a few of the ideas that Mr. Sessions shared with me:

Automate your fixed expenses

Automate your long-term savings goals

Track and review your discretionary spending

In the end, I’ve learned that while cash flow management might be hard no matter how much I do to make it easier, the outcome is worth it. The key to accomplishing the goals I really care about (and the goals you really care about) is to spend the time and make the effort to create a real budget. The hard work will be worth it in the end.

If you’ve had success creating and sticking to a budget, what’s worked for you? And what benefits have you experienced from committing to a budget?

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=89d6062fb602768ec62d03477bee3e25

Filed Under: Your Money Tagged With: , ,