Pains of Business Owners

[CCarter]

I want to have an open discussion of some of the pains we've all seen at small businesses - online and but especially offline; reason being I'm brainstorming some ideas on how to solve them. People can walk away with whatever idea they come up with, I won't even ask for my 15% royalty fees.

1. Revenue - One of the biggest things I thought most small business owners had was generating revenue, but after dealing with a ton of them, I realized that is not the case. Unless they were completely oblivious to their market most small businesses don't have a problem getting revenue, it's keeping it that's the problem.

The one thing I've seen which was the biggest problem was overall lack of customer service/support. Customers wanted to give them money, but the small business itself was hindering the process by poor customer service, support, or overall lack of "caring" from employees. So when new customers were acquired they were essentially left hanging not knowing the next steps of the process.

I figured out a couple of ways to help businesses which walked customers through an 'on-boarding' process, so they knew the next steps. Even giving them a "Next Steps Guide" was better then leaving them hanging around to discover what's next.

2. Marketing - I see business owners pinching pennies instead of putting dollars into marketing. Maybe it's because they have an overall lack of "how to market" knowledge, or aren't confident in their skills and abilities.

This is an overall knowledge problem, cause most of it requires hunting down new "keys" of success to this. I don't have a non-complicating solution for this, but maybe, if someone could come up with one, a bootcamp, newbie guide, or different tactics used to generate new business it could make for a killer idea. I wonder if a free marketing app might work. I know one of the hottest apps is the bible, so a marketing bible where people could go to read resources of different marketing material and have easy quick access and a search function when they are on the go.

Example, if one wants to figure out the best ways to do a direct mail campaign with postcards, how would one get started, where are some places near by they can outsource to, and what are some DIY guides with resources. Having a website is great, but an app that allows me to not have to google every single thing - maybe even a stack-overflow like Q&A session, they key is, it has to be mobile. Besides forums are there even marketing resource centers that allow something like this? Like in the mobile app stuff, I'm not looking to sit down and login to Udemy when I'm in the middle of traffic thinking about a marketing concept and need to validate some ideas.

3. Messaging - Conveying each business's USP (Unique Selling Proposition - what differentiates them from their competitors) is a bit tricky. On one hand - business owners want everyone to know about them, but on the other, they don't want their competitors to copy them. You see the dilemma, it's impossible to do both, so I advise doing the one that makes more money, rather then worrying about a competitor copying them, cause competition will copy no matter what. You just have to be louder and say ahead of the curve or re-create the landscape in your own image.

4. Too Many Ideas - Sometimes - Small business owners especially, operate under a lets do everything and see what sticks mentality. Going in twelve directions, whether it's with marketing tactics, or new product ideas is never going to work out. Lack of resources is the biggest culprit. But it doesn't stop there, when you divide your time and effort, you aren't putting 100% of your energy into one idea, so it's not the absolute BEST it could be, it's simply some MVP (minimum viable product) style, which is a philosophy I completely disagree with - in fact I hate it.

If you are going to present something you have to present it at it's absolute best, since it's difficult to get people to come back and give it another try if something didn't work. Even taking extra time and delaying is better then coming out with a half-ass idea to see if people would buy it. Go all in or just don't bother, no point in putting your name, brand on something half-assed, cause your reputation is on the line.

5. Not In-Touch With Their Customers. I have no idea why, but there is a group of small business owners who simply are not in-touch with their customer's pains. They got into business to solve them, but simply cannot make that transition to taking critical advice from their own customers. The worse are the ones that are terrified of the phone - aka hate customer service. I don't know how you plan on growing a business if you aren't willing to talk to your customers - only solution I can think of is hiring a communication director or someone specifically designated to handling customer care. It has to be someone that enjoys the process of solving people's problems and is kind.

One thing I know is the way people send emails now-a-days is pretty shitty. Recently with a project I started I had to force myself to becoming the best customer service rep possible. Since communication is primary email, just getting a great email explaining things from an owner has an extra warm feeling, so I made it mandatory that I reply to every feedback or request myself so I'm in-touch with my customers as much as possible. I've learned a lot about their pains and needs, but also dozens of new features, ideas, and ways to make things simpler have come from customer ideas and interactions. The only way to improve a service is to constantly communicate with the people who utilize it in their daily routines. I recommend everyone that utilizes email read this post about how to create better emails: https://www.helpscout.net/guide-to-better-email/

Anyways, that's all I got for now. If you have ideas, pains you see, or solutions feel free to add it, I'm going to be coming back and forth to this thread cause it'll give me a spot for brain dumps.

 

[stackcash]

I see a lot of small business owners getting tied up doing the grunt work of the business, rather than creating systems and overseeing the operations of the company. They seem to derive some sort of satisfaction from breaking a sweat - even though it's not contributing to the long term success of the business.

 

[sweepthelegnate]

This is perhaps a lame pain point, but one I struggled with as I started generating money... bookkeeping, tax forms, reporting dates, general organization of all the paperwork you continually need to keep to backup all of the processes mentioned.

There are people out there you can easily outsource part or all of it to, but I have found they all expect you to know more about it than at least I do...

 

[stackcash]

Yeah, I agree with this too from my own experience. I think it comes down to the lawyers, accountants, and bookkeepers you choose to deal with.

My lawyer set up my LLC for me and I haven't heard from him since. I have no idea what I should be doing on a yearly basis in terms of upkeep, etc.

This is perhaps a lame pain point, but one I struggled with as I started generating money... bookkeeping, tax forms, reporting dates, general organization of all the paperwork you continually need to keep to backup all of the processes mentioned.

There are people out there you can easily outsource part or all of it to, but I have found they all expect you to know more about it than at least I do...

 

[SmokeTree]

I won't even ask for my 15% royalty fees.

You told me just the other day it was 20%. Thought we were bros...

The one thing I've seen which was the biggest problem was overall lack of customer service/support.

^ This! I think that sometimes, we as business owners (particularly SaaS) expect the customers to "get it" the same way we do. Of course all this is easy for us, we designed the thing to do the thing. The last thing anyone wants, is to receive vague answers, vague documentation, vague anything.

Take SerpWoo for example. Here's a good example of a service, where you get the feel that "it wants to help you", from the time you hit the lander to the time you're in the trenches using it. The app is saying to you the whole time "Take my hand Wendy. 2nd star to the right and straight on till morning".

So what can we do here to be more upfront, and most importantly "real" with our customers, and also provide the best service possible? I have some ideas:

• Set up a trouble ticket system and stay on top of it: Something like http://osticket.com/ just might fit the bill.
• Build a knowledge base into your service. This can be as simple as a series of "how to" instructionals that are put there at the right place and the right time. Tooltips and the little pop-over boxes are excellent too. Don't make people have to travel to find out how to do stuff
  
• If you're dealing with more of a "one client/project at a time" deal, consider setting up project management. Set it up for your own projects too. Emails get lost in the sauce and if you've ever tried to manage a project with just emails, you'll know what I'm talking about. Want to eliminate a lot of the "meetings" and "are we there yet" emails? Project management. Want to get a bird's eye view of a project's status? Project management
  
• Add a personal touch to your interaction with customers. Canned replies sound canned. People don't (normally) like talking to machines. They don't like feeling like they are emailing one either
• Make your customer's problems, yours. When you contact a support dept, do you get cold chills? Maybe that's because there have been many times you have felt that your problems aren't really high on their priority list to fix. You can say what you want, but at the end of the day, people want to feel like they are the only customer and that their problems are top priority. I have built a pretty solid client base because I take all my client's problems "personally" and I make sure to let them know that I'm going to take care of things for them when something isn't right

Not In-Touch With Their Customers

If we're offering a service, doesn't it make sense that we should be using our own service right along with our customers? To "eat our own dog food", so to speak.

I'll put it this way. I will say no to any project, either for myself or for a client, if neither I or my client will be using the service in some capacity. Sorry but that's just the way I roll. I'm not going to design a watch and not be able to tell you the time when you ask...

That's what I got. Looking forward to seeing what else is shared here.

 

[Court Jester]

[Vomited quick outline below that I intend to get back to.]


(My experience with offline businesses. Running, investing, and on boards plus friends in the ring. Sample of ~60 businesses.)

0-3.5 mill (U.S. dollars)
Cash Flow Management and systems
How to move and manipulate money becomes a skill when you hit above $100k. Unless, you have less than 5 employees. Entrepreneurs do not turn this over fast enough. When they do, it is often out of desperation and usually to the wrong person. It should be on the top 5 list.

Systems are talked to death. The talking needs to die. More doing and WITHOUT the exceptions. Small biz is in love with "the exception to the rule" while large corps are lovers with "This is the rule! NO exceptions." Both carry the Aidz virus.

Best to start before the 3rd customer. Small feedback loops. Short daily morn and night talks about fails/wins and corrections.

4-7 Mill
Acquiring/managing talent, core focus, Five Monkeys experiment, Leadership clashes, Actionable meetings with "employees" missing

7.5-10 mill
Scale or not, Supply chain, Equipment tiers, infighting between departments, reorgs for best personnel, property/office R.E., Meeting waste

No direct exp with over 10 mill yearly rev offline biz.

Internet biz has overlap, of course. That is a problem. Things appear the same and they fucking aren't.

 

[netwerks]

My background ranges from my first sales job @ 19 working in a boiler room telemarking agency in 1989 slamming people in San Fran Chinatown barely speaking english from one long distance carrier to Sprint, selling Japanese new and used cars in the early 90's in a small midwest town between a Ford and Chevy dealership during college, to selling and implementing multibillion dollar technology solutions at Fortune 500 Companies along with global sales, marketing, and operational turarounds, multi-year transformation, outsourcing, insourcing deals, M&A etc. in about every type of public, private and government business you can think of big and small.

I work with a lot of "smaller" business owners, national and local. I say smaller because some of my clients may have 10 people in the office yet do $25M - $50M a year in revenue so they are hard to classify as "small." These are not stupid people by any stretch though a lot of the things that go on in their business are pure stupidity. I mean this is the type of stuff you look at and say "this is not even common sense, let alone business sense."

My grass roots 15 min view @ most small-mid size business - outside of the unprofessional family, personal agendas, and political nonsense that goes on, I could walk into 99% of small-mid size businesses in today's world and these would be the immediate things I could find by asking @ 6 questions without even scratching the surface.

Most common things I see...

Branding - Cheap, half-ass, outdated, unoriginal, inconsistent and confusing. Lacks authority, differentiation, and trust factor. This ranges from those that don't know what branding is to sloppy DIY and all the way through copycats and wanabees. Your brand is what people think and say about you when you are not in the room. Doing nothing would be better than using this and I often recommend clients take down a shit website or stop using crappy elements that are doing more harm than good. What is really sad is when you point it out but do it anyway, knowing it's shit. Those are the clients I fire.

Marketing - Using in-house amateurs who do not have the experience with developing a measurable, effective marketing system to drive new, repeat and referral business. Marketing campaigns are basically shot in the dark ad campaigns with little to no strategy and/or strong, time-sensitive call to action. They do not have the capability to develop strategic marketing programs and/or campaigns. Simply put, they don't get it and never will. Their marketing is driven based on their reactive business needs, not strategically developed to their customer's buying needs. They are not progressive in their thinking and continue to rely on expensive, outdated advertising that does not work anymore. They bitch about no new customers yet have no system to go mine all of the existing business they already have for cross-sell, repeat, referral etc.

Product and service offerings - They simply don't have any standard offerings and/or they have weak offerings. For those "offerings" they do have they are typically exception based and no one is running a true cost model against them so these are losing revenue right out of the gate. They have no clue what cross-sell and upsell means. They do not measure what their customers buy so they do not know what they should be offering. They also resort to giving away tons of product or service to "sweeten the pot." They bill by the hour, not by the job, no ROI, value statement nothing.

Messaging - Same issues as branding above and further suffer from feature driven messaging vs. benefit. They probably can't even tell you the difference. The messaging they do rely on is shit, unprofessional, even misspelled, grammatical errors etc.

Sales - No sales process, no sales collateral. Everything they do is reactive and relies on hard selling techniques to convert the customer because they have no marketing, sales tools or training to enable the sales person to succeed. They are constantly cutting price to win. They spend too much time and money on selling and have no way to measure the true cost of sales and roll it into their overall price. The sales people they have are slobs, look like shit, smell like shit, act like shit . They talk too much, act shady and are not paid on performance so they do as little as they can to make sure they get their commission regardless if the deal is profitable. Their approaches to selling are reactive, farmer led vs proactive hunter led.

Operations - Too many business and unnecessary legal rules that disable selling. The people who work in the office have no incentive to perform via their job or via their pay. EVERYBODY IN THE COMPANY SHOULD BE SELLING OR ENABLING A SALE. Sales come first without sales there are no operations. Beyond that there are no documented processes, procedures, order processing etc.
Employees are wasting time, stealing time, revenue is leaking out in ways you can't imagine. Departments are run with 10 people that could be run with 1.

Delivery - Shit customer service. Shit communication. Shit solution. Shit reputation. Do not track time, costs, process, clueless people etc etc etc. SHIT. SHIT SHIT. ABSOLUTE SHIT = FAILED BUSINESS - Problem with this is it can be so easily fixed but they can't let go of shit. It's like they love wading in it. They love the smell of their shit. Fecal freaks.

Billing - This one has to be the worst. I can not tell you how many business I go to where the owner admits they are not billing accurately. I took an attorney on two years ago and drove an incremental $2.5M in revenue in the first year just by putting in a basic process and system in to track hours and bill. We are talking about a law firm that was dong @ $8M annual revenue on POST A NOTES - I shit you not.

Technology - Overcomplicated, restrictive, outdated, disabling. Just start with most mid size businesses. You can go in their and look at their laptops - do you know how much time and money is wasted by having a workforce with 5 year old computers? TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS in labor. I have seen everything you can imagine here and shit you can not imagine. I once had a client that had "football fields" of outdated equipment they were scavenging to maintain their network. Technology is working against them not for them. It's like swimming in concrete every day. Every piece of technology they have is a band-aid and it's disabling their business or their solutions are completely over-engineered and wasting money. Then there's data management, disaster recovery, shit networks and connectivity, overpayment on mobile plans etc etc etc. I don;t care what anyone tells you. Your business technology should be making you money at every opportunity you have to automate, consolidate etc.

Of course you also have business owners who have a problem they have tried to solve 5 ways and it's failed and want you to solve it the same way or they think they are the next Steve Jobs and can't let anyone else do the thinking when they are clueless themselves to start with.

Again this is just obvious, low hanging fruit. There is so much more when you start to get into unqualified and unprofessional staff, corruption, theft, embezzlement etc. that business owners and leadership are blindly trusting to their employees.

Just when I think I have seen it all I see something new but it's usually just a new spin on what I've seen elsewhere.

 

[netwerks]

[Vomited quick outline below that I intend to get back to.]


Systems are talked to death. The talking needs to die. More doing and WITHOUT the exceptions. Small biz is in love with "the exception to the rule" while large corps are lovers with "This is the rule! NO exceptions." Both carry the Aidz virus.

I have worked with leadership at companies that try to make business rules for business rules that are not even in place yet and/or still be worked on 6-12 mos out!

Even worse is doing something by the book that has been done that way for years, the person who made the rules did so to eliminate work or stop a business problem. Of course the business need has now changed and the rule is no longer needed, yet people continue to follow it regardless if is it no longer needed or not.

They will do things 1000x harder just to avoid challenging someone to change a rule or policy and waste shitloads of time and money doing so. More leakage.

 

[netwerks]

So what can we do here to be more upfront, and most importantly "real" with our customers, and also provide the best service possible? I have some ideas:

• Set up a trouble ticket system and stay on top of it: Something like http://osticket.com/ just might fit the bill.
• Build a knowledge base into your service. This can be as simple as a series of "how to" instructionals that are put there at the right place and the right time. Tooltips and the little pop-over boxes are excellent too. Don't make people have to travel to find out how to do stuff
  
• If you're dealing with more of a "one client/project at a time" deal, consider setting up project management. Set it up for your own projects too. Emails get lost in the sauce and if you've ever tried to manage a project with just emails, you'll know what I'm talking about. Want to eliminate a lot of the "meetings" and "are we there yet" emails? Project management. Want to get a bird's eye view of a project's status? Project management
  
• Add a personal touch to your interaction with customers. Canned replies sound canned. People don't (normally) like talking to machines. They don't like feeling like they are emailing one either
• Make your customer's problems, yours. When you contact a support dept, do you get cold chills? Maybe that's because there have been many times you have felt that your problems aren't really high on their priority list to fix. You can say what you want, but at the end of the day, people want to feel like they are the only customer and that their problems are top priority. I have built a pretty solid client base because I take all my client's problems "personally" and I make sure to let them know that I'm going to take care of things for them when something isn't right

And here's another one to add to your list. PICK UP THE PHONE!!

This includes not hiding behind email, voicemail and all of that ridiculousness. I've had clients who do not answer the phone in the office, do not answer their vm or cell phones, do not call people back etc etc.

On top of this is the other side which is only communicating by group emails or via email skype text etc only. I am not suggesting meetings with a cast of thousands, but don't waste time with this shit. Be direct, be brief, COMMUNICATE.

There is nothing I love more than great clean, clear, simple STRATEGIC communications which many times even requires such a thing as a formally documented communications plan within your business governance, stakeholders, process, projects, initiatives, service delivery etc.

 

[AntonUber]

...so it's not the absolute BEST it could be, it's simply some MVP (minimum viable product) style, which is a philosophy I completely disagree with - in fact I hate it.

Awesome post and really good insights but this part I don't agree with. Minimum Viable Product has three parts: minimum, viable and product. Minimum means that it has very small feature set, viable means it has to produce value to the customer and product means it is an actual product. What you are talking about is simply throwing shit against the wall type of approach which can produce huge hits but it's more like a lottery and usually people who do this just had an idea on sunday afternoon and decided to put up a landing page.

The whole point of MVP is to do a super small representation of an idea that you can sell to your first customers and then build the product further based on the customer feedback. There's no part in the whole MVP thinking that prevents you to do your absolute best on that small feature set. The idea behind MVP is not to waste years of time to an idea which has no demand. I don't care how well you execute an idea but if nobody wants it, it's not really a business.

So here's a friendly challenge for you hate against MVP: if your next project would be an authority content website, would you build it straight away with the content that it will have in one year's time or would you start with few pieces of content you think people might like and then see what people want to read more of? Building content websites with the latter approach is exactly like MVP is suppose to work.

 

[CCarter]

So here's a friendly challenge for you hate against MVP: if your next project would be an authority content website, would you build it straight away with the content that it will have in one year's time or would you start with few pieces of content you think people might like and then see what people want to read more of? Building content websites with the latter approach is exactly like MVP is suppose to work.

I don't enter niches that don't have demand or there isn't a market for. If I did, then I wouldn't have done proper market research.

I've also worked on projects for months on end with no idea whether it was going to hit or not - I did that with www.SERPWoo.com, 9+ months of code for a concept that turns an industry on it's head, me and @eliquid took the risks, brought something to market at the absolute best (or near), then held our breaths. It's been 7+ months since we launched and every month we're growing in customers, size, and brand recognition. So yeah, the risk was there, we took it, and are rewarded for it.

I'm not a MVP type of person, I also don't work on more then 1 project at a time, I learned a long time ago, if you are going to go into something give it 100%, burn your bridges, and go all in. If I were to seriously do a content project, I would have enough sense to do market research and know if there is a target audience and how to attack that niche before starting anything. But when it comes to a product that's not a simple me-too-copycat, you have to risk everything, if not you're half-assing life, and that's what an MVP is to me.

First impressions count for a lot, you have to hit the niche hard and keep hitting until you are the defacto leader. We've already got rank trackers and keyword tools copying us left and right, I can show you logs of the competition's IPs and what they're looking at within SERPWoo then they turn around and attempt to mimic what we are doing, and this isn't just one, two, or three competitors, it's a ton of competitors, so we hit a nerve - and when you have people copying you 2 months after launching, you've all of a sudden have become the defacto leader in your competitors minds - and that's hardly going to happen with an MVP.

I completely understand what you are saying - but I'll never do it. It's got to be all in or don't bother or you'll end up like this guy:

 

[AntonUber]

I don't enter niches that don't have demand or there isn't a market for. If I did, then I wouldn't have done proper market research.

I've also worked on projects for months on end with no idea whether it was going to hit or not - I did that with www.SERPWoo.com, 9+ months of code for a concept that turns an industry on it's head, me and @eliquid took the risks, brought something to market at the absolute best (or near), then held our breaths. It's been 7+ months since we launched and every month we're growing in customers, size, and brand recognition. So yeah, the risk was there, we took it, and are rewarded for it.

I'm not a MVP type of person, I also don't work on more then 1 project at a time, I learned a long time ago, if you are going to go into something give it 100%, burn your bridges, and go all in. If I were to seriously do a content project, I would have enough sense to do market research and know if there is a target audience and how to attack that niche before starting anything. But when it comes to a product that's not a simple me-too-copycat, you have to risk everything, if not you're half-assing life, and that's what an MVP is to me.

First impressions count for a lot, you have to hit the niche hard and keep hitting until you are the defacto leader. We've already got rank trackers and keyword tools copying us left and right, I can show you logs of the competition's IPs and what they're looking at within SERPWoo then they turn around and attempt to mimic what we are doing, and this isn't just one, two, or three competitors, it's a ton of competitors, so we hit a nerve - and when you have people copying you 2 months after launching, you've all of a sudden have become the defacto leader in your competitors minds - and that's hardly going to happen with an MVP.

I completely understand what you are saying - but I'll never do it. It's got to be all in or don't bother or you'll end up like this guy:

And there's nothing wrong with your approach. The key piece here is the risk. Personally I like your approach more and I tend to do exactly like you but I also think that MVP has several great concepts that many starting entrepreneurs intuitively miss. In your case also you also have much more higher capacity to take risks than your average entrepreneur. For example very few entrepreneurs can sustain themselves for 9 months of developing the product full-time all in.

SERPWoo entered into a proven market (serp monitoring) while many people doing MVPs are trying completely new markets where's there no existing products. MVP approach with SERPWoo wouldn't have worked because your minimum viable product is totally different than for, let's say for example an idea about mobile app that connects individuals to other individuals who are willing to drive them from place A to B. When you're entering to a whole new market, market research is very difficult. You first need to understand if the problem even exists, that's the easy part you can do by just asking potential customers but then comes the hard part - you need to find out whether anybody is really ready to pay you to solve the problem. I have two failed startups that solved a problem but it wasn't that big of a pain that people were willing to pay for it - though of course everybody said they would when asked...

So to say MVP is for all cases is bullshit. It works for certain types of cases where the market entry can be pulled off with MVP. With proven markets I still think you should apply assumption validation thinking as soon as possible but go for a product that can compete with the rest of the market right away. Many highly popular apps like Tinder are essentially still what people mean when they say MVPs - they do very few things but do it very well and it solves a problem for the user.

 

[miketpowell]

So far I don't think the most important thing has been mentioned.

Talent Acquisition - Finding and keeping the people that bring value to your business.

When I talk to others if they don't bring up this problem I suspect they are more trying to scale their own free lance operation than build a business. You can only make so much money with the work you do on your own, it's quite a bit more than most people will ever make but it does hit a wall. To get to the next level you need to have people that make you a ton more money than you pay them; and you need them to love you for it.

Anyone that's worked at a job has looked around and thought about how much there co-workers are worth. At most businesses the 80/20 rule is in full force. 80% of the value and revenue is being driven by 20% of the salary cap. The other 80% pretty much is just taking up space and picking up the scraps.

Many small businesses pretty much post an ad on Craigslist or maybe some other online sites. Not much though goes into it after that. Well guess what? You know those amazing workers? The one's that get shit done 5 times faster than there counter parts without bitching? Yeah those ones. Well they aren't looking for jobs on CL usually. Most of the time they already have a job they like. If a company they work for does go under they just need to call up anyone they used to work with and they've got another job lined up pretty easy. The talent you find on job postings are looking for jobs for a reason quite a bit of the time.

The difference between a small business and a business that's going to grow IMHO is accepting that talent is the #1 most important thing and are willing to spend BIG upfront to get it, because it's worth every penny. So what are some good ways to do this?

First your business has to look interesting to work for. A corporate website explaining your culture, goals and such that is solely for recruiting. Do you need developers? Don't host it on WP than. They are gonna check out your source code - impress them with a new technology or something custom. Your flowery language about your company being on the cutting edge is not going to mean much when they see that WP code.

Create an office environment people want to be at. Feed them if it's worth it - "free" food goes a long way. Much more could be written on this but it's all over the web already.

Don't just create job posting - actively advertise your positions in places people aren't looking for jobs. It should be repeated it's so important ADVERTISE YOUR POSITION IN LOCATIONS PEOPLE AREN'T JOB SEARCHING. The best talent you will ever find already works for another company. You need to convince them to come work for you. Facebook targeting is amazing for this. You can drill down to exactly who you want to reach. Then link directly to that nice corporate website you should have.

This is still a process I'm very much learning about. I get the concept but am still building up my personal experience in the area. Any tips any of you have got would be great. But as I said before IMHO this is the most important aspect in getting to the next level. Great talent will solve all the other problems you guys mentioned for you. Bad talent will kill your soul.

 

[netwerks]

So far I don't think the most important thing has been mentioned.

Talent Acquisition - Finding and keeping the people that bring value to your business.

When I talk to others if they don't bring up this problem I suspect they are more trying to scale their own free lance operation than build a business. You can only make so much money with the work you do on your own, it's quite a bit more than most people will ever make but it does hit a wall. To get to the next level you need to have people that make you a ton more money than you pay them; and you need them to love you for it.

Anyone that's worked at a job has looked around and thought about how much there co-workers are worth. At most businesses the 80/20 rule is in full force. 80% of the value and revenue is being driven by 20% of the salary cap. The other 80% pretty much is just taking up space and picking up the scraps.

Many small businesses pretty much post an ad on Craigslist or maybe some other online sites. Not much though goes into it after that. Well guess what? You know those amazing workers? The one's that get shit done 5 times faster than there counter parts without bitching? Yeah those ones. Well they aren't looking for jobs on CL usually. Most of the time they already have a job they like. If a company they work for does go under they just need to call up anyone they used to work with and they've got another job lined up pretty easy. The talent you find on job postings are looking for jobs for a reason quite a bit of the time.

The difference between a small business and a business that's going to grow IMHO is accepting that talent is the #1 most important thing and are willing to spend BIG upfront to get it, because it's worth every penny. So what are some good ways to do this?

First your business has to look interesting to work for. A corporate website explaining your culture, goals and such that is solely for recruiting. Do you need developers? Don't host it on WP than. They are gonna check out your source code - impress them with a new technology or something custom. Your flowery language about your company being on the cutting edge is not going to mean much when they see that WP code.

Create an office environment people want to be at. Feed them if it's worth it - "free" food goes a long way. Much more could be written on this but it's all over the web already.

Don't just create job posting - actively advertise your positions in places people aren't looking for jobs. It should be repeated it's so important ADVERTISE YOUR POSITION IN LOCATIONS PEOPLE AREN'T JOB SEARCHING. The best talent you will ever find already works for another company. You need to convince them to come work for you. Facebook targeting is amazing for this. You can drill down to exactly who you want to reach. Then link directly to that nice corporate website you should have.

This is still a process I'm very much learning about. I get the concept but am still building up my personal experience in the area. Any tips any of you have got would be great. But as I said before IMHO this is the most important aspect in getting to the next level. Great talent will solve all the other problems you guys mentioned for you. Bad talent will kill your soul.

You are so right on this one
Other aspects of this are:

• Not knowing what talent to look for - you think you need x but you really need y - e.g. I need a guy who can do estimates vs really needing a guy who has experience estimating and as a business development manager (note I did not say sales, that would come after you got the business development manager up and running)
• Not looking for people who have a lot of experience and are a little older who may still be hustlers but are working their way down the ladder due to age and/or financial stability maybe their kids are out of college now, empty nesters etc.
  
• Not tapping into college interns, college hires, MBA grad students that are HUNGRY TO HUSTLE. (You get to try them for little to almost free and then you can hire them after the fact if you like them) these people are not stupid by any stretch. Got to the dean of students and ask for the best three.
  
• Not incenting employees to perform - as the business grows, your employees responsibilities and wallets grow - NO CLOCK PUNCHERS ALLOWED

"Bad talent will kill your soul" They say if you are the smartest in the room then you are in the wrong room. Maybe, maybe not. There have been a lot of times when I was in the room with people who I thought were much smarter than me because I was younger and intimidated but shortly realized that I knew far more than them because they were very siloed/one-dimensional in their thinking. The more multidimensional you can become and hire talent that is multidimensional with the same ability to overcome ambiguity, the better you will be.

And of course let's not forget about PROCRASTINATION... aka TOMORROW.

 

[CCarter]

Sloppy Executions

Have you guys seen operations which are just sloppy? There is a theory that small business owners cannot hold down regular employment cause they don't work well with others, hence why they start their own business. But I've seen things, that completely don't make sense, like small leaks here and there in ships which if fixed would turn the whole ship around, but they purposefully are left leaking.

I know of an operation where the developer is completely incompetent and wasting everyone's time and resources, but the owners refused to get rid of him, and I think deep down it's because they don't want to admit they made a mistake in hiring this individual. But the problem is so wide spread, cause a person is one thing, but not changing your process to profitability when it's clear as day and night, it's completely baffling.

Some people get into businesses to have jobs, and not necessarily to run a successful business or even grow it to beyond "small business" status. Some of these small business just can't be helped - cray cray.

 

[Romac]

Epic thread here, I missed it the first time around. Stuff like this helps me a lot more than looking at huge screenshots. Props to everyone here I owe you guys.

 

[emp]

Since I am in this game called life longer than a lot of you, I also have quite a few of anecdotes connected.

I worked in every kind of company/employment freelance, small startup, small and medium sized businesses, up to huge corporations and now University.

I also love collecting stories of corporate dumbassery from anyone I can find.

I would LOVE if this kind of thing was only small businesses, but the size of the company just changes the size of $$$ lost.

But you asked for small biz, so here are some stories.

Family and friends
One of the restaurants I do website work for... geezes, their manager.
The owner is the wife of the former owner who died a few years ago. She's doing pretty well, has five restaurants in Zurich. NOT chains, but individual upper-class restaurants.
The profit (not revenue) is just about 1.5 million each year.

That manager...

• Does not know the basic numbers for his business.
  I went in there a year ago to discuss some changes to their website. Turns out, he signed up with some kind of outsourced reservations service. The promise to handle the booking of tables in your restaurant. While this could potentially eliminate the need for someone to pick up the phone, it doesn't. They only take a part of the tables and returning guests or people with special requests STILL call in the restaurant. (This being upscale, this is the majority of calls).
  IN short: This gains nothing.
  So I ask him how much he pays for it.... he doesn't know.
  You should have seen the look on the owner's face.
  (This is just a small example, to illustrate.)
  
• Doesn't do shit
  While he handles day to day stuff well - any thing longer term is just procrastinated away. I need his "go!" on a few changes the OWNER wants - well.. it has been a year now.
  I wrote a detailed SEO/marketing report (which I got paid handsomely for) outlining marketing avenuesm etc... nothing.. I doubt he ever read it.

Why isn't he fired? Well, he is a former manager's step son, the guy being a good friend of the deceased owner.

The reason here is family / social ties... I've seen this break small businesses over and over. Keeping inane people because family or friends.

Talent acquisition
So.. as some may know, I am looking for a new job (yes, a jobby job - I like em) right now.
Holy shit, please, really?
The amount of just downright shitty HR people and service has been astonishing.

• Not getting back to a CV for a month or two seems to be norm.
• Ads for technical talent written by HR people with no clue what they are talking about.
• From the other side:
  I used to get resumés sent in by headhunters (we state in our ads we don't work with agencies) for web developer positions - they send us profiles of guys programming embedded systems in the aerospace industry.

Latest one I experienced on my job hunt was from a medium sized web agency coming from the marketing space. Basically moved into web and do quite good small, one-off campaign sites.
Why are they interviewing me?
Because they want to get into bigger, more complex projects and need aproject manager who knows how to work those.
1st interview goes well, I get the typical "We'll call you in the next two weeks to see if we want you in for a second interview" (Here, 2-3 interviews are usual).
Nothing for over 4 weeks.
Then I get a frantic call by the CEO (who I interviewed with) on Friday afternoon.
The basics:
"Sorry sorry sorry. Shouldn't have taken so long. We got a new international client, big technical project estiated at 7-8 months (my quiet estimate is 1+ years from what he tells me), would I sign an NDA?, meeting next week am I available?, I'll get an email in the next 2 hours."
..............................................................................................................................crickets
It has been over a week now, I contacted them several times but can't catch the CEO.
Yeah.. I think I'll pass on that type of "company".

Technology
Well, the place I still work at got that right, at least. Nice, fast work machine, big dual monitors, etc.. Well, there is a reason they are on top.

Other places? not so much.

My wife used to work for one of the biggest gastronomy providers here. Machine was so old and decrepit it took 10+ minutes to start up Windows and InDesign (which she needed to do her job).
We calculated they lost her salary (part time) in one month just in the time she spent waiting for programs.
She even presented that to her boss (small team, friendly) but he knew already and was frustrated himself - corporate just would not invest.

Another big one for those are doctor's offices. Holy crap.
Tell them the lifetime expectations for HDDs and watch their eyes go wide...


... to be continued....

::emp::

 

[Janiform]

My two cents:

Talent retention
I have yet to work for or with a company which manages to retain talent the right way. You see, the difference between "doing the right thing" and "doing things the right way" can be HUGE.

Doing the right thing: treating all employees "fairly" (I hate that word). Treating all employees as equals of each other is the corporate equivalent of handing out participation trophies. It's communism. It does NOT work because this approach scares away top performers, the real talents, your superstars.

Common scenario: treating 17 year old kids doing customer service who come in late the exact same way as top talent that comes in late because they spent last night fixing an important issue for you.

Dear team manager, do you know how dumb you look when you want to have a "serious" conversation about that one time I came too late this week after I earned one of your clients $100k in SEO revenue by fixing one technical issue last week?

Doing things the right way:

- Reward results, not the XYZ number of hours worked.
- PUNISH "yes" men that will work 'til late consistently. They are B's. A's will tell you that process XYZ or system ABC sucks and, hence, it made him/her work late. Entirely different mindset.
- Is something wrong with working late according to top talent? No, not when it involves improving processes, systems or strategies. But making presentations more butt kiss friendly? Come on, man.
- Never ever be a helicopter mom when dealing with top talent, please? Micromanagement will make them leave yo ass, son. Trust is a big deal for them.
- Being rewarded with money is nice, real nice, but true A's care more about the challenges you can give them. They are self-actualizers, builders, eternal students... not gold diggers.
- True A's are not team players, they are team creators and leaders. They work independently within the framework you give them, but force them to treat all team members equally and you'll drag them down. You just will. True A's have a hard time finding other true A's, so forcing them into a team with B's will hurt your business & limit them... not enable them.

I'm sure you guys can come up with many other tips. The key takeaways here are: A) think about how to keep people around, not just how to get them in the building and B) top talent requires a different approach than average employees.

 

[emp]

Oh hell...

Worked for a guy who was an on/off micromanager.. holy crap.

He'd leave us alone for weeks, only to turn up and sit behind people watching them work and criticizing every step. (Of which he had no clue, as we developed sites and software - he was a photographer who ended owning a web design shop)

::emp::

 

[Andrewkar]

Oh hell...

Worked for a guy who was an on/off micromanager.. holy crap.

He'd leave us alone for weeks, only to turn up and sit behind people watching them work and criticizing every step. (Of which he had no clue, as we developed sites and software - he was a photographer who ended owning a web design shop)

::emp::

I hear you, photographers and all other kind of artistic souls are not the easiest to work with. I've had few of them and they are really hard to work with. They are never on time with stuff, or just with reply to your message, or payment. I don't know, maybe it's just my experiance. In general I would avoid them (unless they have solid manager).

 

[Capital]

If you are going to present something you have to present it at it's absolute best, since it's difficult to get people to come back and give it another try if something didn't work. Even taking extra time and delaying is better then coming out with a half-ass idea to see if people would buy it. Go all in or just don't bother, no point in putting your name, brand on something half-assed, cause your reputation is on the line.

I totally get where you're coming from, but the problem isn't with MVPs or the Lean philosophy -- the problem is people abusing the fuck out of the philosophy because they're lazy and scared.

Ideally, an MVP should be fully functioning and polished. BUT, it should be minimal enough to avoid unnecessary feature creep and ONLY address the most pressing pain points.

I think the issue is that people misinterpret the concept of minimum viability as, "LET'S SELL PEOPLE ON A SKETCHY IDEA, AND THEN CON POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS INTO HOLDING OUR HAND WHILE WE BUMBLE AROUND THROWING SOMETHING SHITTY TOGETHER." (Which is why there are so many half-completed products floating around the internet with pissed off and neglected user bases)

In my mind, the customer development process is simply a way of verifying your product idea truly aligns with the wants and needs of the market. After that, the MVP should simply be a product that ONLY addresses those pressing needs, and nothing else.

Anyway, great post. I'm taking notes on this shit.

(Sorry if I sound pedantic).

 

[CCarter]

I think the issue is that people misinterpret the concept of minimum viability as, "LET'S SELL PEOPLE ON A SKETCHY IDEA, AND THEN CON POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS INTO HOLDING OUR HAND WHILE WE BUMBLE AROUND THROWING SOMETHING SHITTY TOGETHER." (Which is why there are so many half-completed products floating around the internet with pissed off and neglected user bases)

And that's why I hate that route. It really doesn't matter what "IT SHOULD BE", it's what it's "perceived as" which is the reality. I can make the argument SW came out as an MVP, with the core as the base, and when things took off we added more features, but if I start stating that people will think of the lazy route - that it took a month to get off the ground or something ridiculous and we made money from a half-ass product. But the reality is it took 9 months of planning and coding to get the service off the ground in the "MVP-like" state it was in. It took a couple of months for new features which user requested to be implemented as well, so it didn't start off at "Done", nor is it still done.

But I would use a tablespoon to stir my tea before I would ever state to the world SW started out as an MVP.

 

[Capital]

And that's why I hate that route. It really doesn't matter what "IT SHOULD BE", it's what it's "perceived as" which is the reality. I can make the argument SW came out as an MVP, with the core as the base, and when things took off we added more features, but if I start stating that people will think of the lazy route - that it took a month to get off the ground or something ridiculous and we made money from a half-ass product. But the reality is it took 9 months of planning and coding to get the service off the ground in the "MVP-like" state it was in. It took a couple of months for new features which user requested to be implemented as well, so it didn't start off at "Done", nor is it still done.

But I would use a tablespoon to stir my tea before I would ever state to the world SW started out as an MVP.

I feel you 100%. If I were in your position, I don't think I'd want to associate SW with MVP culture either.

 

[turbin3]

You all have covered the what in good depth. Certainly enough to keep any business owner busy with process improvements for quite awhile. So I'll come at this from a different angle; the why.

I think the single largest factor in the failings and inefficiencies of business owners is failing to properly manage productive development of habits. This could be personal habits. This could be fostering the atmosphere and encouragement for employees to do the same.

You see, processes and strategies can always be improved. That's a simple matter of mechanics; IE - pick something from the list and just work on it. It is infinitely more difficult for a person to want to improve their own habits, let alone to actively pursue doing so. These are habits they've likely built over their entire lifetime. There are habits that lead to success, and those that lead to failure. There are also those that lead to generally being lackluster. You know, those fools we've all seen that make money despite themselves, and despite having some truly insane business practices that just boggle the mind. Those are the subconsciously incompetent. ;-)

With successful business owners, I would say there are two primary types.

• Consciously Productive Habit-builder
  
• Subconsciously Productive Habit-builder

Ultimately, the point we would all love to reach is subconscious competence. This is the point where you have so thoroughly developed a habit that leads to success.....well, that it leads to your success!

Subconsciously Productive Habit-builders

For some people, based on their genetics, upbringing, social & professional influences, education, and general life experiences, they have managed to develop subconscious competence at developing subconscious competence. This is the subconscious habit-builder. Look at industry leaders in any field. Some can tell you with great self awareness, precisely how they achieved their success (hours of practice per day, EVERY day, etc.), but they may not always have the extreme self-awareness and depth of insight to explain how and why they developed the habit that lead them to successfully do those hours of whatever, every single day. You will sometimes hear people refer to this type as "born with it", which is almost a complete fallacy. While it is true that they may have some genetic predispositions that give them potential to excel at certain things, it still requires putting in the work and developing the habits.

Consciously Productive Habit-builders

For others, some can tell you with great self awareness, precisely Why they achieved their success. Not only the tools, processes, or techniques, but rather the mental processes and habits that successfully utilized the what to lead to success. These are people that often have great perseverance, self-control, and "drive", likely developed as a combination of the social and societal influences they've experienced in their lives. These types often seek to actively change, reinforce, and build habits that lead to success. They may not have benefited from all of the positive influences and experiences of the subconsciously productive habit-builder, but they still retain some excellent traits, as well as the benefit of the great self-awareness and personal insight necessary to actively change and build their own habits.

Considering all of this, I think it would be extremely productive if we had a conversation about the specifics behind intentionally trying to change and develop our own habits.

 

[emp]

Hmmm...

While habit building is good, I'd like to adress this on another level.
I found that bad businesses HAVE no processes set up. A lot of the time, stuff is done by the seat of the pants, spur of the moment thinking.

This is OK for a lot of stuff, especially if you know your business or craft, but they overlook the importance of processes in vital areas which might fall out of their expertise.

Marketing, for example.

Again, let's do examples:
My wife and I were preparing our wedding.
So we were hunting around for a place that could dine and entertain a party of roughly 100.
Not many of those around, two stick in mind, as they were in the same small town close to our hometown.

One restaurant basically threw their menu in an envelope, added the (badly done) town tourism flyer and called it a day.

The other restaurant -
They wrote a personalized letter. Included two example menus or the evening, paying attention to the details in our mail regarding the food choices. Invited us warmly to see the facilities and discuss the event.
They also included the town flyer, but also information about their own and other hotels close by, offering help with getting people a bed.

Guess who got that event?

Problem with place one was, they weren't intentionally bad, they had no set way of dealing with this. They didn't know what to do.

Now, I am a fan of loose processes. A lot of times, processes are company scar tissue (something bad happened, let's patch it and get rigid about this here so it never happens again).
Avoid adding unnecesary processes. Like the scar tissue they often are, they hinder flexibility.

But you should have an outline of a process for important things... such as getting customers.

::emp::