Small Business Talk

It’s long been bandied about by a lot of very educated people that the Chinese ideogram for crisis is composed of two symbols -  one for danger and one for opportunity. Consultants, trainers, authors and supposed experts have been “championing” the “Chinese perspective” on danger and change based on this conclusion.

Except there is a lot of evidence that it’s simply wrong. Of course there may be differences of opinion on such things, but here’s some information on the topic:

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Today Bacal & Associates unveiled its brand new low cost display designed specifically for small business in Canada. Designed to take the place of conventional presentation devices, this “whiteboard” or, as Bacal calls it the Canadian Snowboard, can be used in business presentations, has zero cost, and is completely flexible.

It can be used to model and sculpt, can be written upon, moved, carted, used in play and thrown, and is also useful for sliding, and burying. Use is limited only by your imagination.

In the picture to the right, Robert can be seen using the snowboard in a presentation for the local city council. Note carefully the snowboard tool to his left, and how well the board functions to hide the Ford Focus to his right.

Editor’s note: One of the competitive advantages small businesses have is agility — the ability to act quickly on creative ideas. This is an example of how quickly a product can come to market. Robert’s inspiration was the fact that 2007-2008 brought about an almost record abundance of the raw materials that go into this product. In March, 2008, Robert sat down to figure out a way to monetize the abundance, and the rest is history.

I just wanted to pass on this source for guides about ebusiness, and using the Internet as part of your e-business strategy. The site appears to be partly funded by the Province of Saskatchewan and presents 30+ guides on all aspects of ebusiness from building a website to dealing with fraud in ecommerce.

There’s too much stuff to summarize, but if you are interested, click here.

It’s understandable that a small business owner, faced with the need to make a living and put food on the table, may want to use a shotgun approach to selecting services and/or products on which to base the business. This is particularly prevalent in some service oriented professions, like business and human resource consulting, organizational development and training fields. Let me share an example.

Some time ago a organizational development and training consultant I worked (both employed by same employer) was downsized. This was a year or two after I had left the employer. We had some discussions about work, since both of us ended up as independents.

In looking at his promotional material, which was quite slick and glossy in look and feel, one thing came across to me as a bit of a mystery. He was offering a grab bag of services to potential clients — a shotgun approach. However, I knew from working and talking with him that for many of those services he was neither experienced or competent to deliver them.

My opinions, of course, can be wrong, but in this case I received several calls from the “client community” querying me on this exact issue and this consultant. They wanted to know what I thought of his expertise (I don’t really answer those questions directly), but the common thread was “How can he be good at all those things”? Or, “Has he ever done these things before?”

His demeanor and materials were such that prospective clients wouldn’t go to him to ask directly because they believed that he was so desperate for business (which he was) that he would lie. The didn’t trust him. And thus, they didn’ t hire him either.

The results were decidedly unfortunate and sad. He went from independent consultant to getting another job, losing it or leaving for some reason, trying to consult, and back and forth, always desperate. In the process his wife of only a few years filed for divorce and he lost his house. Of course there were other contributors to this meltdown — major ones, in fact, but the desperation and the lack of an understanding of his marketplace made it pretty much impossible for his business to succeed.

So, simply: Don’t Do This!