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Growing a Small Business into a Large Business @ BillDoll.com
Billion Dollar Questions @ BillDoll - The Billion Dollar Site |
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Growing a small business into a large business
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Many of today’s very successful business magnates started small, and not too long ago. Companies such as Microsoft, WalMart, Intel, and many others achieved global leadership within their founders’ lifetimes. And we are not even talking about Google, which has achieved global leadership in web search and its founders are just in their early thirties (2007 data).
So what were the reasons that catapulted these small companies, many of them begun in garages, to achieve global domination, and what are the lessons other small businesses learn from them.
This section of Billion Dollar Questions provides comprehensive inputs and web resources that attempt to answer the above questions.
This page – like all the other pages at BillDoll.com, The Billion Dollar Questions Site - is a work-in-progress and stuff will get added regularly.
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Key Success Factors to Make Your Small Business Big
There are certain characteristics and actions that have been common to entrepreneurs who started small and built successful business empires.
1. Set Goals - Setting goals and having these goals constantly at the back of your mind is critical for big success. Bill Gates started with an audacious goal of a computer on every desktop, and today, almost 30 years later, he still speaks about it – and has been fairly successful in achieving it as well. Many successful businessmen have mentioned how writing down on paper their goals and methods to reach those goals helped them significantly. Doing so could help you as well. Some links on Goal Setting – How to Set a Goal from Mind Tools (more for operational goal setting), an article on personal goal setting from Top Achievement, myGoals – a useful site that assists in goal setting and goals achievement, Goal Setting Guide from Time Thoughts
2. Monitor Progress and Implement Improvements Fast – What you cannot measure, you cannot control. Continuously monitor the key aspects of your business that are needed for success. Analyse the data you receive from such monitoring, and continuously implement any small improvements that are required to improve results. Make sure you check out whether the new ideas / corrections you implemented a month earlier resulted in expected improvements. In the context of a small business owner, business monitoring would involve determining the key success factors for making the business a success and monitoring each of these factors on a continuous basis.
3. Be Organized & Disciplined - A lot of productive time is lost to lack of organization. If you are not currently organized, not to worry, because being organized is a habit that can be learnt. Spend some time setting up a proper system for your transactions. Such systems alone can provide you with a sustainable framework for growth. When asked in an interview what he felt was more important for business success (and his success), brains or hard work, Bill Gates replied that it was hard work and discipline. He continued saying that, while sheer brains could be the most important thing in an academic setting or a game of intellect like chess, in a business world setting, what really is important is hard work and discipline that sustains the hard work. The difference between a talented entrepreneur and a successful talented entrepreneur is often the amount of discipline and organization that the successful entrepreneur brings to this business.
4. Constantly Develop Yourself – A number of successful businessmen became successful by constant learning – be it through reading books, attending seminars, browsing the Net or by simply talking to friends and colleagues. Make sure you constantly are aware that every area of your being has scope for improvement – especially on the knowledge and personality frontier. Today, you have a number of interesting and useful blogs as well that can provide you not only with information and knowledge, but also different perspectives on any issue. See a list of useful blogs that discuss business trends and opportunities at the How can I make a million dollars quickly? section of BillDoll
5. Pay Attention to Detail – You will be surprised how many successful businesses started off because their founders saw something no one else saw, even though every one else had the same information. Put another way, seeing is not understanding. Understanding happens when you pay attention to details. Google’s founders came up with a superior search methodology when they realized that they could use the citations methodology used in research domains to assess the popularity of a research paper – that is, the more a research paper is cited by other papers, the more popular it is. Google’s founders used it as the founding principle of their popular PageRank system – the more a site gets links from other sites, the more popular it is. Every computer science researcher worth his salt knew about the citations methodology, but only Larry Page & Sergey Brin, realized its true power when applied to the world of search engines.
6. Use Your Time Productively & Use the Right Tools – It needs no repetition that time is one of the key non-renewable assets humans have – if you have lost a second, there is no way you can get that second back. What you can do is arrange your activities to get the most out the available fixed time. Automate what can be automated. Use human brains for the work that requires such brains. You will be amazed at the speed at which things get done. See some personal and business productivity tools listed later in this section.
7. Be Patient – If you are sure about your goal and your methodology to achieve it, be patient until you reach there. Make sure you monitor progress, but let not temporary dips in performance make you lose focus. Let these temporary setbacks or failures propel you to fine tune your methods. Few, if any, business empires were built overnight. It took Wal Mart, just a mom and pop shop when it started, decades to reach where it has reached today. Sam Walton believed in his fundamental understanding of the retail, and persisted with his efforts.
Web Resources
Book Review
Billion Dollar Site Highlights
Other Web Resources for Small Businesses & Home Business
Resources from U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA)
Read some of the histories of small business that made it big
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Other questions you might be interested in: (see BillDoll Home Page for the complete list of questions)
Content Derived from Wikipedia Reference on Small Business
A small business may be defined as a business with a small number of employees. The legal definition of "small" often varies by country and industry, but is generally under 100 employees in the United States while under 50 employees in the European Union (In contrast, the American definition of mid-sized business by the number of employees is generally under 500 while 250 is for that of European Union). These businesses are normally privately owned corporations, partnerships, or sole proprietorships.
Small businesses are common in many countries, depending on the economic system in operation. Typical examples include: small shops, hairdressers, tradesmen, solicitors, lawyers, accountants, restaurants, guest houses, photographers, small-scale manufacturing etc. Small businesses are usually [independent businesses|independent].
The smallest businesses, often located in private homes, are called microbusinesses (term used by international organizations such as the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation) or SoHos. The term "mom and pop business" is a common colloquial expression for a single-family operated business with few (or no) employees other than the owners. When judged by the number of employees, the American and the European definitions are the same: under 10 employees.
Problems faced by small businesses
Small businesses often face a variety of problems related to their size. A frequent cause of bankruptcy is undercapitalization. This is often a result of poor planning rather than economic conditions - it is common rule of thumb that the entrepreneur should have access to a sum of money at least equal to the projected revenue for the first year of business in addition to his anticipated expenses. For example, if the prospective owner thinks that he will generate $100,000 in revenues in the first year with $150,000 in start-up expenses, then he should have no less than $250,000 available. Failure to provide this level of funding for the company could leave the owner liable for all of the company's debt should he end up in bankruptcy court, under the theory of undercapitalization.
In addition to ensuring that the business has enough capital, the small business owner must also be mindful of gross margin (sales minus variable costs). To break even, the business must be able to reach a level of sales where the gross margin exceeds fixed costs. When they first start out, many small business owners underprice their products to a point where even at their maximum capacity, it would be impossible to break even. The good news is that cost controls or a price increase can often resolve this problem.
In the United States, some of the largest concerns of small business owners are insurance costs (such as liability and health), rising energy costs and taxes. In the United Kingdom and Australia, small business owners tend to be more concerned with excessive governmental red tape.
Certification and Trust
Building trust with new customers can be a difficult task for a new and establishing business. Some organizations like the Better Business Bureau and the International Charter now offer Small Business Certification, which certifies the quality of the services and goods produced and can encourage new and larger customers. These services may require a few hours of work, but a certification may reassure potential customers. However, the most effective way to earn trust is through customer referrals.
Contribution to the Economy
Small Business is the major job provider in most economies. The top job provider is those with less than 10 employees, and those with 10 or more but less than 20 employees comes in as the second, and those with 20 or more but less than 50 employees comes in as the third.
Sources of Funding
Small businesses use several sources available for start-up capital:
International Differences
The challenges facing small business owners vary from country to country, based on the overall business climate as well as the regulatory framework of each geographic location. It is extremely important for business owners to understand the legal requirements and obligations in their particular country of operation.
Sources of Advice and Guidance
There are many sources of guidance for Small Businesses. Governments provide books, pamphlets, websites, even coaching and funding. Look also to local government and city councils. Business schools In some countries, banks are often keen to help new customers succeed and provide books, websites, newsletters and/or coaching to attract new business customers. Likewise accountants and lawyers. Babson College hosts a student business, UTANDEM, that specializes in advising small business owners for free. There are a number of large franchise chains of professional business coaches.
References
American Independent Business Alliance American Small Business Alliance CanadaOne.com(R) National Federation of Independent Business Small Business Administration USPTO Stopfakes.gov Small Business Resources Reviving Russian small-scale business
Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_business
End of Wikipedia content
Some Good Blogs for Small Businesses
General Reference
Web Portals
The following portals provide resources on research, directory, search engine / search engines, yellow pages, classifieds
AOL, Yahoo, Google, eBay, YouTube, Yahoo Groups, Wikipedia, CNN, Time, Forbes, Fortune, BBC |
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