Summary: Go to the portable applications website and download their free portable apps suite plus any other programs that you may need to run your business. Stick them on a 4 or 8 gigabyte thumb-drive and run your entire business from any computer anywhere, any time. Save a ton of money and feel secure that no lost or stolen computer, computer crash or disaster will bring your simple small business to a halt.
I am a big fan of portable applications. If you are not aware of what that is, portable applications are small programs that reside entirely on your USB thumb-drive. These are the programs that you use every day on your computer like word documents, spreadsheets, graphic programs, etc. They take up no space on your hard drive, they don’t fill your computer with a bunch of garbage that slows your computer down and the icing on the cake is that most of these are open source and completely free.
To become familiar with what is available I highly recommend that you take a jump over to portable apps to see what they offer. There are other portable apps available from different sources, but this is a great place to get started. Imagine being able to run your whole simple small business using the thumb-drive on your key chain or in your pocket. If your computer crashes, quickly buy or borrow another computer and in minutes you are up and running. Someone breaks in and steals your equipment or a fire destroys your office, no problem, you have got it covered. You are on vacation and there is an unexpected business emergency, use the hotel computer and jump in and get your company back on track.
Regardless of what simple small business you are in, you MUST be a seed planter! Planting seeds is basically laying the groundwork for future business. EVERY business must do this. Most of the time the seeds that you are planting today will not bring any fruit until six months or a year from now. So you must be continuously planting seeds.
There are two common problems that simple small businesses have with seed planting. First, when you are planting seeds you are not bringing in any income to pay the bills. Cash flow is the blood that keeps a small business alive. Oftentimes, a simple business is a one or two person operation. The second problem is just the reverse of the first. If the entrepreneur is busy generating income, then they are not planting seeds.
This is the catch 22 that destroys most small businesses and the worst thing is, like a silent deadly disease, the entrepreneur never even knows that it is at work in the organization until it is too late.
In the previous article I mentioned that it is imperative that you find help with two of the Basic Pillars while you focus on only the third (it does not matter which one). As your small business grows you can and should take the liberty to break each of the Pillars down into their sub-columns assigning someone different to each area. You can slowly do this as your business grows, delegating or farming out one sub-column at a time over time. Pillar 1 – Create the Work: Columns
Develop the Product (R & D and Market Research)
Develop the Production System (Purchasing Materials, Stocking, Quality Control, Facility Layout and Manufacturing Processes)
Developing the Distribution System (Packaging, Shipping and Receiving)
For twenty years I have analyzed successful small businesses and I have asked a lot of questions from these companies that I have worked with. My goal has always been to find the common denominator that I can apply to my own simple small businesses and to help other entrepreneurs like myself.
I have uncovered something that, although may not be new to some, was revolutionary to me. I came to realize that all simple small businesses succeeded because they recognized that success comes from not one, but three different minds. This Trilogy of minds requires someone to CREATE the work, someone to GET the work and someone to DO the work!
Even when entrepreneurs discover this little secret they may not understand that these pillars must be built in this specific order. In other words, someone who has a love for something may build it or sculpt it (DO the work) and then look for a buyer only to discover that no one is buying. This is an example of doing things out of order.
Even a simple small business can learn a lot from the big guys. Sears department stores posted a tiny, 4% climb in sales recently (thanks to Kmart) while at the same time Pier 1 Imports claimed an increase of sales that reached a little over 12%. The high end store, Neiman Marcus, posted sales that showed an increase of 4.5% but Barnes & Noble, the low priced booked store, had sells fall much greater than anticipated. Zale Corporation, (the one that sales diamonds) said it had sales fall over 9% and Costco bragged of a 9% increase in store sales last month.
Even the experts are not in agreement as to the state of the economy. Some say the worst is still to come. Some state that we have not only hit the bottom, but have started the up hill climb out. With such confusing messages being expressed from the numbers, where are small business owners to turn?
As a small business owner, one of your keys to survival is learning how to interpret the mass amount of information that is coming at you all the time. This is a little bit art and a little science. It is experience, however, that will help you decipher the complex code of economics.
