Tag: marketing

Starting Your Small Business on the Right Track

Introduction

Once I became self-employed I noticed an alarming trend among my friends and close associates with small businesses.  A lot of them failed!  Even some with plenty of customers and revenue were getting into deep trouble.  As I learned more about running a business the reason became obvious.  While they were serious about the product, they ignored the business!  According to a U.S. Bank study, 82% of small business failures are due to poor cash flow management.

The classic mistake is starting the business because you love selling the product or skill and thinking all you need is to do it well. If you want to build a successful business, you need to be a good business person, as well.

The solution is simple. Most problems are avoided by doing some things right during the startup phase.  I’ll give a snapshot of the most important factors since there are hundreds of books and courses that get into the details.  Basically, you need to do the same stuff the big companies do.  Using more formal practices will get you more respect and trust from customers and vendors.  Having established procedures for everything makes the workflow more efficient, easier to train new employees, and way easier to scale up your business.

Running the business “by the seat of your pants” never works for long.  I have seen this play out too many times.  Here’s one example of what happens:

You are just getting the business off the ground and hire a receptionist to schedule appointments and onboard customers.  You don’t have a process for any of this, so you rely on the new person to figure it out.  They create a system that works for them and everything goes smoothly. Until that person leaves or you hire a second receptionist.  Now, your new person recreates the system for what works for them because it’s too hard to figure out how the old person did things.  Meanwhile, customers are waiting to be served, customer and vendor records are lost, and vendors are being paid late!

Don’t do this to yourself!  Making stuff up as you go along is a major path to failure.  Yes, by all means let your employees help you develop processes, but make each process as generic as possible and, above all, document the procedures.  And, don’t reinvent the wheel.  Learn the standard ways other businesses do things and model your processes to common best practices.  Way smoother over time and scalable!

Business Plan

Write your business plan before you start your business.  Do it right!  There are plenty of resources to help you do this.  Some good resources are listed at the end of this post.

Your Team

Even the smallest of businesses need, as a minimum, a banker, a tax accountant, a business accountant, insurance agent, and a business lawyer.  Some specialized professionals may be needed, such as, real estate broker/agent, mortgage broker, etc.  Often the tax and business account can be the same person, just know that these are two very different professions.

Business Processes

Set up a grown-up accounting system.  Before you even start, you need a basic understanding of the double entry accounting system.  I learned it by reading a couple books and watching several YouTube videos.  Then you’re ready to setup your system.  Spreadsheets will do the job, if you plan to stay VERY small, but accounting software is highly recommended.  QuickBooks Online is the gold standard, but there are others.  But the main thing is, all company principles need to learn the double entry accounting system and the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).  You need to know how to use and read the Profit and Loss (P&L) statement and the Balance Sheet report.  These are the heartbeat monitors of your business.

Inventory System.  Inventory systems are required if you sell a physical product and especially if you fabricate or assemble products.  This solves the problems of running out of product or parts, over or under buying inventory, and stock forecasting.  The Microsoft Access database works great if you know how to program and there are plenty of user-friendly products out there.  If you sell through Shopify or other online or Point of Sale (PoS) platforms an inventory function is usually included.

Marketing

You may not feel the need for much marketing effort if planning to keep your company very small. That is another classical mistake. Sure, it’s a fantastic product! But, will anyone buy it? Maybe your product or service is something that lots of folks do buy. But, will your startup overcome the competition? Plenty of businesses fail everyday for these two reasons along. Read a basic marking book or look on YouTube to find easy solutions. There are good sources on my Reading List and Podcast List.

Smoke Testing – Smoke testing is a method of validating demand before investing in product development. Set up a landing page, run a few ads, and track sign-ups or pre-orders to gauge interest. A/B Testing, Prototyping, and Minimum Viable Product (MVP) testing may be used to test the market.

Scope the competition before investing too much time and money. You may have the best product but if other companies have an established customer base, it’s hard and maybe impossible to get your product out in front. Conduct an extensive review of your market. Since your competition is advertising, this is not too hard to do. Here’s a post of one of my personal failures.

There are plenty of marketing firms out there, but be careful as they are usually expensive.

Human Resources

A system for managing employees and 1099 contractors is required even if you have only one person.  Keep all HR paperwork in one place.  You will need to track job applications, W9 forms, simple contracts, performance reviews, etc.

Visibility

Always represent yourself and your team as a real company.  You want your customers, vendors, and associates to see you are a serious business to gain trust.  Here is the minimum:

  1. Choose a good but simple company name and domain name.  They should match exactly.  Check availability of entity names and domain names before you make a final decision on the name.  Your email address should use your domain name.  Having a yahoo or Gmail address is cheesy.
  2. Your logo should be as simple as possible.  Get it done by a professional.  While you may be creative, you don’t make logos everyday like a professional. 
  3. Include payment information on all invoices.  I don’t know how many times I’ve had to call a company to get the address to send a check.  Don’t be one of those.  Always include billing/payment address, payment methods (check, money order, ACH, etc.), and payment terms (NET 30 for example).
  4. Always carry business cards (everyone).  You’ll get a higher level of respect from those you interact with, plus more returned calls.  Giving business cards to your employees empowers them.
  5. Have a website no matter how small the business.  Can be simple:
    • Contact information.  It’s a very good idea to include your physical address.  Websites set up to scam people never have one.  If you work from home and don’t want to publish that address, just include the city.
      • Hours of operation.
      • About – Company information.
  6. Have business name, logo, and phone number on your vehicle.  Keep it all very simple and easy to read from a distance.
  7. Spell and grammar check everything!  Especially emails, web site, and all public facing documents. Typos make you look stupid. Use tools like AI or MS Word grammar check/editor.

Company Communications

How you communicate with customers and vendors is the voice of your company.  Go here to learn more about proper professional communications:  https://timschmitz.blog/2025/01/03/streamline-your-day-communication-tips-for-busy-professionals/.  Here’s some quick points:

  • Always state your company name and your name when you answer the phone.
  • Put contact information at the bottom of every email.  There are plenty of good examples out there of email signatures that include a head shot, logo, full contact info, etc.  How many times have you read an email, decide a phone call response is required, but you must look up the guys number (if you even have it).  Make sure your number is in the signature of all your emails.

IT and Data Organization

If you are not good with computers, find someone who is.  Your PC or Mac is your most important business tool.  Not your phone!  The phone is great for calls and convenient reference to your calendar and some documents but is far inferior to the PC for getting actual work done.

Organize your data.  There are many good ways to do this, but the best I’ve seen is the same way executives through the many years have organized their old file cabinets.  After all, there’s a reason your disk system is organized by “folders” and “files”.  High level folders should be named after standard corporate divisions with sub folders for appropriate subject matter.  Here’s an example:

  • Admin
  • Advertising
  • Executive planning
  • Financial
  • HR
  • Legal
  • Operations
  • Inventory
  • Training

Use the cloud.  In-house backup equipment and procedures are prone to failure, time consuming, and easy to neglect.

Final Thoughts

Total professionalism is the key to long-lasting success!  Be professional in all the work you do and spread that culture throughout your company.  And remember that simply doing great work or providing great products is not enough.  Your company is a living entity with a presence and a voice.  Make that presence and voice standout above the crowd! Develop an entrepreneurial mindset of resilience, curiosity, and willingness to delegate—as an essential business asset.

Resources

SCORE Foundation – Every business should start here. These guys will help you get setup with everything you need from business plan to processes. They are part of the Small Business Association. Its all free!

US Chamber of Commerce – There are local offices in each state. All sorts of resources to help you scale in international markets.

SCMEP – Helps South Carolina businesses with manufacturing resources. Look for a similar agency in your state.

Tim Ferris – Successful author, business leader, and investor. His first book, “The Four Hour Work Week”, is a bit outdated, but still well worth the read. Tim’s blog is full of tried and true advice for living well and doing business. In his podcast, Tim interviews the most successful people in the world to discuss their personal habits and methods leading to success. Learn from the best!

Streamline Your Day: Communication Tips for Busy Professionals

Put an end to communication frustration. Take a few simple steps to improve productivity and reduce churn.

Like to find some extra hours in your day?  Effective communication is essential to success in all our business and personal projects.  Most folks know this, but lots of us take it for granted since it is an integral part of each day.  Like drinking plenty of water, we do it all day, so we don’t think much about it, but that’s essential to our health.  A little time spent analyzing our communication habits to improve efficiency has the beneficial side effect of creating more time in our day and the day of others.

Are you overwhelmed by messages and calls?  Our time is valuable and the communication methods you and your colleagues choose can conserve or waste time.  We are in the age of multiple communication tools, each with many pros and cons.  Using the tool that best fits the message can improve efficiency, save time, and reduce our level of stress.

I had a major awakening on this subject a few years ago.  I was helping the Navy design wireless networks for ships.  I was the lead engineer in our lab, so I had a lot of coordinating to do everyday with other engineers, equipment vendors, logistics folks, and our managers.  On a typical day I would spend the first two, three, maybe four hours on the phone each morning.  Then the Navy came down with a major operational change.  We were all issued Navy.mil email addresses and ordered to use email for all communications possible.  I had a tough time accepting this.  Phone calls are so much more personal.  Not only would the message be conveyed, but you also knew how their family was doing, the latest gossip, and when the next group happy hours is.  Why switch to email when you can work the phones?  But, once I finally caught on, my entire day changed.   I was done with emails in the first hour of the day and had eliminated 90% of the calls I needed to make.  This meant way more time in the lab where I was actually getting stuff done!

Then, text messaging came along.  Way more efficient than email for short messages, but other than that it’s a shit show!  I will break that down in a minute.

In a business context, selecting the right communication medium—email, phone, or text—depends on the urgency, formality, and complexity of the message.  Here are guidelines to help decide:

Email

Email solves a lot of the problems caused by the other comm modes.  The best use of email is for formal, important, and detailed communication that needs a response within 24-48 hours.  Specifically:

  • When formality is required, like sending reports, proposals, contracts, meeting minutes, or client follow-ups.
  • When details need to be documented, like project updates, task assignments, or confirming decisions.
  • And when the response is not urgent.  You only need to check email once a day. Use email to ask non-urgent questions or discussions that can wait 24 to 48 hours.

When emailing always use a professional tone and structure your message for clarity.  Email is the equivalent to the old business letter and should be written in that style.  Here’s some other good practices:

  • Use rich text formatting to take advantage of bold text, highlighting, bullets, etc. for better readability.
  • “Answer the mail!”  Check email at least once a day to maintain consistency and responsiveness.
  • Manage your email account: use folders, separate accounts for business and personal, block spam, and have a “trash” email account for signing up to newsletters, etc.
  • Have good signature blocks.  Most should include your phone number.  If the recipient reads something in your email that strikes them as urgent, they don’t need to look up your phone number.  It’s at the bottom of every email.
  • Get your life back by training your colleagues and customers to email.  Once they see you are VERY responsive with email, they will get sucked in.
  • Make your emails as smart as you are – reread and edit all emails before sending!  The person that can compose and type anything perfectly the first time is very rare.  I know that’s not me and probably not you.  If you’re not doing this already, once you start you will see what I mean, there will be mistakes.  DON’T LET YOUR EMAILS MAKE YOU LOOK LIKE A DUMMY!

Phone

Phone calls are total time suckers, but nothing beats a call for certain things.  A phone call is best for urgent or complex topics requiring discussion.  Use phone calls when a quick decision or immediate response is needed for resolving time-sensitive issues, clarifying miscommunications, or confirming details for tight deadlines.  Voice calls are essential when complexity or sensitivity is involved.  Emails and texts do not express emotion like the tone of a voice.  Calls are more personal for delivering critical feedback, negotiating contracts, or addressing client concerns.

When calling, always respect working hours and schedule non-urgent calls when possible.  Remember phone calls are not self-documenting like email or texts.  Having a clear agenda and keeping notes makes your calls more productive and considerate of everyone’s time.

Most importantly, before you make that call ask yourself, “Can this be better done by email?”  You can read and write a lot of emails in the time it takes to make a single call.  Be considerate of the recipient’s time, and yours!

Texting

Text messaging is best for brief, time sensitive updates when quick and informal communication is appropriate.  Use texting to inform someone or a group of a last-minute schedule change or confirming logistics (e.g., “Meeting moved to 3 PM”).  Texting is much more time efficient than a call for short semi-urgent conversations.

Beware, texting is easy for the sender, but much harder to manage for the receiver.  I’ve noticed a lot of folks using text just because it’s so easy to click, speak or type, and send.  But on the other end, text messages are a kludge of random bits of information not categorized in any way and hard to search.  Non-urgent messages coming in from several people in random order is a big time-sucker.  If you want to have a discussion, make a call.  If you want to document information in an organized manner, use email, please!

I am certain there are issues I have not covered here and some of you will disagree with my protocols.  So, I would love to get your comments.  And don’t forget, reread and edit all messages before sending!