BIG Ideas for SMALL businesses

Hi there, here are some of the ideas that have proven to be useful to small businesses:

1. Put a little extra effort to really understand your customers.

Find out constantly about your customers and do it regularly, say every two weeks. Have a structured way to quickly assess the Who, What, When and Where of your customer. And then check back against your marketing effort and delivery channel to see if they are still relevant.

2. Be resourceful

Resourcefulness matters more than resources. Remember that money is just one of the resources and there are plenty to replace money. Always try to find internal resources before seeking external funding. Internal resources includes pre-selling and smart-partnerships. The moment you think that you have to buy something, hold back and negotiate with yourself - What is the real resources that you need with that money and how can you get it for free or less.

3. Think big and small

No, this is not about the lottery. Always make sure you have the ability to look into the details of each activities and yet able to zoom out to look at the big picture. One way to do this is to have a  business model of your company. A business coach normally helps a lot in this area.

4. Learn to negotiate

Negotiation is vital as it allows you to get what you what, how you want it and when you want it.

5. Cashflow, cashflow, cashflow

It is okay not to understand accounting but you must know where your money is and how does it flow. Be careful of cashflow hole; it will sink you fast.

6. Share fortune and share risk, intelligently

Get good business partners to venture into the project. No, I do not mean equity partners, but more of supply chain partners. And get a good lawyer who can draw up a good agreement. If the project is big, the lawyer would want to do it for the gain later too.

7. Use social media, intelligently

Web 2.0, the internet, is a brilliant social platform to market your product - ONLY if your target customers are there. The key is to mingle with the customers using social media. Blind utilization of website, facebook and emails would be useless. It must be part of your overall strategies to get the customers, not the only strategy.

8. Pay peanuts get monkeys


Hire the ones with the best working culture. Skills can be taught but changing culture tales a long time and expensive. Hire 5 person to work like 10 people but pay them for 8.


Work Smart People


The Author is the principal of ElixirEducate- a training house for Smart Entrepreneur Training Series. He was an international investment banker, corporate financier and now serial entrepreneur and business coach. You can find more information on ElixirEducate at their facebook page, here.  And be a facebook friend  of Yazdi . Please share this information to your entrepreneur friend who may benefit from this post. Thank you.