Contends that micro-business owner-managers invariably have objectives, although they do not always make them explicit. These objectives tend to relate to personal rather than business criteria. In addition, the vast majority of micro-business owner-managers indicate little inclination to maximise profit or pursue growth. The supposed non-existence and ambiguity of objectives amongst owner-managers probably arise because they often subconsciously set objectives, rather than make them explicit as part of a written business plan. In practice, micro-businesses generally pursue a number of economic and non-economic objectives relating to factors such as income levels, job satisfaction, working hours, control and flexibility. These objectives were derived from the influence of the micro-business owner-manager’s individual, social and economic contexts. Moreover, the behaviour of owner-managers is most appropriately characterised in terms of satisficing behaviour. The impact of this is very important, because it means that there is often no drive to improve the business in terms of growth, sales and profitability. Furthermore, the willingness of owner-managers to alter their aspiration levels, if objectives were not being easily achieved, often means that they do not initiate changes in the way they run their business when perhaps they should.

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/viewContentItem.do;jsessionid=3F6A59B9CF045BC0204114D360A7ACE7?contentType=Article&hdAction=lnkhtml&contentId=872083

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:

The Chinese word weiji (危機 translated as “crisis”) is often said to be composed of the characters for “danger” and “opportunity”; the implication being that in Chinese culture, a crisis is regarded not merely as a danger, but also as an opportunity. This is a misconception or etymological fallacy. In fact, wei (危) does mean “danger, dangerous; endanger, jeopardize; perilous; precipitous, precarious; high; fear, afraid”, but the polysemous ji (機) means “machine, mechanical; airplane; suitable occasion; crucial point; pivot; incipient moment; opportune, opportunity; chance; key link; secret; cunning”. While the word jihui (機會) means “opportune, opportunity” in modern Chinese, its ji component has many meanings, of which “opportunity” is only one. In weiji (危機), ji means “crucial point”, not “opportunity”.^[1]

Origins

Mark Liberman traces the history of weiji in English back to an anonymous editorial in a journal^[2] for missionaries in China.^[3] The use of the term gained momentum when John F. Kennedy delivered a speech in Indianapolis on April 12, 1959:

When written in Chinese the word crisis is composed of two characters.

One represents danger, and the other represents opportunity.^[4]

Kennedy employed this trope routinely in his speeches, and it was then appropriated by Richard M. Nixon and others. The usage has been adopted by business consultants and motivational speakers and has gained great popularity in universities and in the popular press.^{[not specific enough to verify]} For example, in 2007, Condoleezza Rice repeated the misunderstanding during Middle East peace talks, ^[5] and Al Gore did so in testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee,^[6] and in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.^[7]

There is an undeniable appeal to the misappropriation of weiji.^{[original research?]} It is dramatic in its compression; in two syllables it offers inherent proof of the opportunity hidden within every crisis. This presumed oriental wisdom is used to communicate the inspirational notion that a crisis should be a time of optimism by erroneously deconstructing weiji (crisis) as wei (danger) and ji (opportunity).

Footnotes and references

1. ^ Crisis” Does NOT Equal “Danger” Plus “Opportunity”: How a misunderstanding about Chinese characters has led many astray, Victor H. Mair, Professor of Chinese Language and Literature,University of Pennsylvania
2. ^ Chinese Recorder (January 1938, “The Challenge of Unusual Times”)
3. ^ Language Log, March 27, 2007
4. ^ Remarks by President Kennedy at the Convocation of the United Negro College Fund
5. ^ Kessler, Glenn. “Rice Highlights Opportunities After Setbacks On Mideast Trip“, The Washington Post, January 19, 2007, p. A14. Retrieved on 2007-12-12. 
6. ^ Testimony of Honorable Al Gore
7. ^ Gore, Al (2007-12-10). Al Gore: The Nobel Peace Prize 2007: Nobel Lecture. Nobel Foundation. Retrieved on 2007-12-12.
8. ^ April 26th, 2006 edition of The A.V. Club

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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.

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

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!

In fact, you can pretty much find any old numbers to support any dire predictions. But mostly it’s all wrong. It’s pretty much unreliable.

Which is really good news if you are looking at opening a small business. The failure (as in horrible, disastrous failures) isn’t as high as you have been told. And, we don’t exactly know what the failure rate is, and it’s likely to fluctuate considerably depending on economic conditions.

Here’s the simple reason. It’s definitional. While there are studies all over the place about business failure, how business failure is defined varies from place to place, and often it includes businesses that have been sold (even for large profits), or closed due to death, or family issues, or a number of other reasons.

So, it may be true that x percent of small businesses close within x years of starting, but we do not know WHY they closed, or whether they “failed” or not.

Running a successful small business is difficult, but if you feel you have the vocation and have the skills and desire, don’t let the numbers discourage you. Since the numbers, at leat in this case, simply don’t mean much without knowing HOW the numbers have been calculated and exatly what the numbers mean.

If you would like to learn more about the use of promotional items you can apply to receive a free subscription to Successful Promotions. Here’s the brief summary:

Successful Promotions shows you how effective imprinted promotional items can be for any kind of campaign. Planning an event or meeting…learn about travel destinations and incentives items that motivate. Whether you want to attract or reward talented employees, thank loyal clients, find new prospects or tout your new products and services, Successful Promotions can help with true-life case histories, usable marketing strategies and showcases of proven promotional products nine times per year.

One of these decisions has to do with whether one decides to expand an existing business, or to maintain an equilibrium.

As a small business owner you will find that there are several “levels” of size that vary a lot from each other, even though the leap from one to the next seems small.

For example, moving from a sole proprietorship without having any employees to the next level, which is having at least one or more employees is a huge jump, because the skills needed to run a business with employees is quite different than those required to make a sole proprietership work if it has no employees.

Then, moving from a business with one or two employees to one employing more employees than you can reasonably manage or supervisor is the next leap. Once again, the skills you need to do this are quite different than the previous two levels.

The decision to grow your business (growing in the sense of adding personnel) is one that needs to take into account:

• your current skills
• your desire to develop your skill
• your tolerance of financial risk (expansion increases risk)
• your lifestyle preferences (owning a growing or larger business results in a rather different lifestyle than running a one person shop).

One neglected aspect is the Unique Value Proposition that your website will or does offer visitors. This should be established early on, before any website coding is done, and it unique value proposition should reflect a need on the part of your market or potential visitor pool.

For example, this site is based on several different UVP’s, one of which is based on the potential visitor’s problem of finding good reputable, no bull, semi non commercial information about small business that isn’t, in effect spam, and is also available at no charge. Hence we are building two human reviewed directories so visitors don’t have to wade through machine generated junk from search engines.

So, first things first, which is that when planning for your small business website, always start with how you will fulfil some visitor need in your target market. Of course, there’s much more, and we’ll cover more topics soon.

This site (smallbusiness411.org) is, of course, in the process of being built, so I decided to share with readers the thinking, and actions that go into what presumably will be another successful site. We’ll chronicle our thinking, goals, purposes and so on, and explain our decisions as we go.