There are no shortcuts in business. Not really. People who sell shortcuts are invariably trying to cheat you.

However… There is knowledge, experience, strategy, tools, and methods for achieving results, which can be taught, or shared.

People get in trouble when they go into business with the naïve sense that they can just do what they want and not observe the rules of business. They also get into trouble when they start trying to fight fire with fire – big business competition can always outgun the little guy. You have to find another way to do it.

The trick is, to think outside the box, without letting go of the rules. The rules include things like:

• Proper licensing for your particular line of work.
• Reporting and paying taxes.
• Using sound business practices.
• Using sound marketing practices.
• Building on your skills and strengths.
• Avoiding the spirit of pure gambling in business (does not mean avoiding thoughtful risks)

There are many good back door methods for starting on a shoestring, or bootstrapping. It means relying on work, rather than money, and it means pinching where it won’t stop your business if you pinch there.

You have to use smart workarounds, and you have to know when it is time to let them go and gradually work into a different way of doing business.

Smart creative methods, and workarounds can allow you to accomplish something against great odds, if you are willing to back it up with hard work. They aren’t a way to run a business permanently, but they can be a great way to get your foot in the door – even if it is just the back door!

It is impossible to serve two masters. Many people think that it is easier to gradually become self-employed. They want to keep the health insurance, have a dependable source of income, or they just want to keep their foot in the door in the workplace.

Problem is, when you do that, it is hard to actually commit to your business. The business always comes last, and last never becomes a winner.

We noticed after Kevin came home for good, that the few days that he had to go out and work elsewhere, our business did more poorly. It was harder for him, and for me. When you aren’t depending on it, and when it is not the sole focus of your efforts, it is much more difficult to make it work.

If you want to really succeed in business, get rid of the safety net. Fly solo, and you’ll be well motivated to succeed.

Scary? Oh, yeah! I’ve been there, remember. I know what it is like to need groceries and have bills to pay and know that there is no money due to come in, and to have no idea when there will be any expectations. It is nerve wracking. But it gets you busy, and keeps you doing everything you can to make it work!

People just think and act differently when they know their actions matter that much. And they perform better in work when they have only a single area of focus, instead of having to split their efforts between two different jobs.

It isn’t something everyone can do. But if you possibly can, prepare well, and then jump off. It is worth it.

I’m getting a lot of mileage from a speaker we heard a week or so ago. He said to finish this question:

MicroManagement is…

I said, “Self defeating”. He said, “Absolutely essential.”

I realized quickly that he was defining micromanagement in a different way than most business professionals define it – but that his misinterpretation is a common one, especially among people who do not understand business concepts well.

They confuse staying informed and following up, with micromanagement. They are not the same thing.

He was defining it as a business owner having their finger on the pulse of what was happening – knowing what was being spent, knowing who was doing what, keeping up on the status of projects. That ISN’T micromanagement. Only the irresponsible parasites in business think it is! (Not that he is an irresponsible parasite, but perhaps he is around too many of them!)

Micromanagment is when you TAKE the responsibility from someone, and when you step on their toes after you’ve given them a job. It is when you interfere with their ability to actually DO their job. For example, a nearby Chamber wants control over every single decision – even though they have bylaws which provide for the authority for certain decisions to be made by other people. They do not trust the people they hire though, and they come in and countermand decisions, require that everything be presented at board meetings (which always end up too crowded with too much on the agenda). They could delegate, receive a report, and move on with simpler choices, but they don’t. This is because the people involved do not understand how to manage well.

A good manager, or business owner, has to know what is going on. They also have to be able to delegate tasks, then follow up with a check to see if they’ve been done, or to receive a report and see if the report matches the expectations. You cannot trust others to do what you ask them to do if you do NOT follow up. But if you do follow up, you have a chance to check in the middle to see if progress is being made, then to review the results, and act accordingly. That ISN’T micromanagement. That is necessary management – and it is one reason larger corporations have a problem – there can be just too much distance between the bottom and the top, and too many layers of people to go through, and it breaks down too easily.

But for bitty businesses, sometimes the hardest transition to make is the first one – going from being responsible only for, and to, yourself, to having to supervise others. It is easy to tip too far in one direction or the other. To either not LET other people do their job, or to ignore them when you oughta be paying attention.

Micromanagement isn’t necessary. Smart management is.

He said it was a stupid name. He was right. He called it “maximum Freud”. He had two reasons, one of which I cannot remember, but the other was that if you stayed there too long, you’d go crazy. I see things differently than he does. But then, I spend a lot of time there.

I’ve named it the Envelope of Functional Obsolescence. It is that place where one technology is dying, and another is being born to replace it.

As a MicroBusiness Web Developer, I spend most of my time on one side or the other of this state. A technology doesn’t die a quick death. It is gradually edged out. And new technologies don’t catch fire rapidly in most instances either. They come in slowly, have to prove themselves, have to BE improved to the point of stability, and then they have to come down in price. During that process, the old technology still has a large following. AFTER that, it slowly dwindles.

We live on the edge, making constant choices about the most cost effective solutions. They have to be stable, and affordable in the short term, yet not so close to obsolescence that they’ll fade in a year and compromise the investment of the site owner. Because our clients have limited budgets, we live closer to the edge than most businesses of this type. We cannot afford to adopt new technologies when the price is still higher, nor can we afford to adopt technologies which may still be having the bugs worked out, UNLESS it is one of those rare ones that is a clear and unquestionable leap forward in price and function.

It does not, in fact, make one crazy. It just requires balance and a good deal of knowledge and experience. You can’t do it without knowing your stuff, and you can’t be successful at it unless you know just who the customers are that it benefits.

Small businesses that have succeeded in the face of competition from large businesses have done so largely because they have found a way to turn their disadvantages into advantages, and a way to make those drawbacks into something appealing.

• No secretary? “When you call, you get to talk to someone in charge.”
• Only a few customers? “To us, you are a name, not a number.”
• Recycling packing materials to save money? Slap a label on, “This box proudly recycled by…”
• Can’t provide national service? “Looking for a local company that knows your needs?”

Find the advantage in the aspect that can be negatively viewed, and turn it around. Make it into something that a larger company CAN’T do.

People who succeed find a way to do this. Think outside the box, and use the flexibility that a very small business has, to do things differently. For bitty businesses, it is the key to winning against the competition.

It was a small class, hosted by a small organization. The person who was giving the class was in a position in one of the local businesses, and the class was titled in such a way that we thought it would be about general skills within the topic.

It wasn’t. It was about “how to do x, with business y”. It might have been of some use if we had been in a position to utilize the services of y, or if the information presented were more broadly applicable. In the entire 1 hour presentation, I learned exactly 1 thing of value, and it is something which I will likely never use personally. It may someday benefit a client.

The presentation was the equivalent of verbal spam. We came to learn, not to listen to a one hour advertisement.

Presentations, classes, seminars, and conferences are about good information. They aren’t about self-promotion. Ok, we all know we give presentations for promotion, but it is EXACTLY like article marketing. If you advertise outright, you lose your audience. Your presentation must be informational, useful, fun, unique, and contain a good measure of the “ah-ha” factor. You get a moment at the beginning to introduce yourself, just enough to validate your credibility. And you get a moment at the end to hand out something for them to remember you by. That’s IT. The rest is about building a relationship where you are attending to their needs – as in, giving them something they need.

You’ve sat through bad presentations where someone did nothing but promote themselves. Don’t be one of those! Prepare something of value that assumes the listeners WON’T be hiring you. Give them value, and give them the courtesy of choosing for themselves. You’ll catch more interest that way, and people will remember you longer. That means they’ll be more likely to pick up the phone and call YOU when they have a need.

People recognize verbal spam. And they are very sensitive to it. Shove your business at them, and they’ll leave in disgust. Avoid self-promotion, and they’ll come back to you because they respect your knowledge.

I’m not a power pusher. I don’t think I ever will be. My desire not to be made it hard for me to grasp a concept about networking. While it is NOT all in who you know, sometimes, who you know can make a difference to your business.

If you know the person who is on the end of the phone when someone calls an organization and asks who can do what you do, you might get a referral.

If you know the person who leads a particular organization, they may think of you when they need a speaker, or a service.

If you know someone who knows a lot of people who make decisions, they may mention you when the topic changes to something that might benefit you.

Now, the real catch to this is, you never quite KNOW who the “right” people are! You may think that knowing the mayor could help you. But if you are a little guy, the mayor really doesn’t give a rip about you, and it will be a long hard road to make any headway there. On the other hand, if you know the mayor’s secretary, you may actually get further, faster!

One of our students is a pretty ordinary person. Very nice – an easy person to love. Since she has been in our class, we hear her name regularly, and she refers people to us. She is not someone whom anyone would single out as being a person of power. But she knows people, and they respect her because they know she is sincere and good. We’ve met the mayor, and we’ve met many people in positions of power. Some of them remember us, most do not. Someone like our student though, is someone worth knowing for many reasons.

Get to know everyone that you have the chance to network with. You never know which one is going to be someone who helps you in ways you did not anticipate. Don’t USE people – develop good, helpful relationships with them. Our student recommends us in part because while we were teaching her, we went out of our way to help her when things were difficult for her. So it was about kindness and friendship first. The benefit came unexpectedly many months later.

So go… and GET to know…

Just because you CAN, doesn’t mean it is a good idea. Just because it is POSSIBLE, doesn’t mean that every alternative is going to wither away. But what AM I babbling about?

Gadgets. Smaller, more powerful, everything in miniature.

Some people seem to think that just because a cell phone can now theoretically do most of the functions of a laptop, that laptops will die a slow death and become obsolete as people run around squinting and trying to poke their smart phones to get work done.

NOT! I like my laptop. It is fast to use, has a lovely large clear screen, and enough power and capacity that I need no other computer. A phone just can’t replace that.

I heard a “futurist” state the other day that the computer keyboard would just poof into the vapor one day as speech commands took over, and as other forms of input took over. I think he is premature. The only thing that could replace a keyboard for data input, as far as sheer speed is concerned, is direct thought transference, and even that is problematic, because you’d have to sort out WHICH thoughts the thing was supposed to act on! Keyboards are fast. You can type information in faster than you can speak it in and correct the errors from speech input. You can give commands with a mouse or keyboard or other input device much faster, and more accurately, than you can speak them. That will be the case for a very long time, and some of the rules will not change unless something better comes along. So far, no one is even close.

See, your hands don’t have to talk. You can train yourself to go directly from thought, to action through your hands. Hands were designed to do that, and a keyboard allows us to directly translate thought, into words on the page, without having to mess with our speech centers, or try to get the computer to get the command right when it is spoken. You don’t have to think about how to tell the computer what you need it to do (which is an extra step), you just DO it. If you have experience with training someone to use a computer, when you cannot touch the mouse yourself, you’d know what I mean.

New technologies are good. They bring us new possibilities. But they do not automatically mean that they will eliminate other technologies. The “futurist” said, “All things being equal, wireless is always better than wires”.

But all things are NOT equal. Far from it. And they may never be. Wireless involves security risks that hardwired will never have. And it never will be equal for speed or clarity either. In some applications, those things matter.

The real issue here is that this man was making claims about the future – as many people do – without really THINKING out the issues he was talking about.

The future will undoubtedly lose many things we consider essential today, and many things will be replaced. Some current trends will continue, others have reached their practical end. Much of it we can’t know until we get there.

UPDATE: Five years after writing this post, I finally got my first smartphone. I was right. It can’t even come close to replacing the functionality of my laptop, in all the essential ways for online use. It is a convenience when I do not have my laptop, but still very much a hassle to have to type ANYTHING.

It was done because it has a few advantages. If I owned 51% of the stock in our corporation, we could be designated a “Woman Owned” business. Kevin agreed it was probably the best thing to do. And at the time, I knew so much more about the business than he did, that it also seemed wiser – if he died, I could carry on the business. If I were gone, the business would be gone. That is gradually changing. We still think our status as a Woman Owned business is a positive thing overall.

But it does present some interesting situations.

Women Business Owners is holding a convention in Texas next fall. I’d dearly love to go and staff a booth for our business. But I’d really not want to go without Kevin – partly because I like him, partly because it is his business too. They are happy to have men there, but I don’t suppose many really will be.

There have been other times when I felt like Kevin ought to get more credit also. But in the normal course of business, the reality is, that nobody really cares who owns it. They care more about whether you do the work, and whether they can work with you.

The government is happy – we give them a minute statistical boost. But then, they do not have a category for “couple owned” businesses.

So it has ended up being one of those things that has mattered in some ways we thought it would, has mattered in some ways that we did not expect, but which in most respects, has not been something most people even care about.