I’m aware life is not always as simplistic as the title of this post suggests, but how can people expect to succeed if they have a negative attitude towards everything? We all encounter people on a daily basis who live life with a “can’t do” ethic, and while a “can do” attitude doesn’t guarantee success, constantly thinking you can’t succeed will almost certainly guarantee failure.

Many people put off starting their own business because they think that they can’t because of numerous reasons; I would argue, however, that if you really want to start your own business then nothing should hold you back. No money? Bootstrap your business. Need to hold down your regular job? Work 5-9 building your business until you are in a position to rely on your business venture.

There are obstacles that are incredibly difficult to overcome; but being pessimistic and taking a negative view on challenges that you or your business face will almost certainly lead to hardship. View every challenge as an opportunity, and every problem as a way to gain experience and improve your business.

Looking for all possible ways to turn a problem in to an advantage is fundamental in being successful in business. Entrepreneurial spirits tend to have this attitude; you didn’t see Richard Branson giving up when he lost it all, did you? As a businessperson you will face challenges, and you should not only expect them but also embrace them.

Of course, we all have days where it gets on top of us and business life seems too hard – but if you run your business with a “can do” attitude then you will find these days much easier to bear. People with a positive attitude inspire positivity in others, so if you have employees it is more important than ever to conduct your business with this mindset.

Whenever your business encounters a problem, look for the opportunity that it creates. Think about how many problems we all face every day, if you view each one of these as a potential opportunity the world will suddenly seem full of things that you can, and will, do.

Success was never won by people thinking they couldn’t achieve their dreams. Always think that you can achieve, and there is the best possible chance that you will.

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When you’re in business you often hear the phrase “people buy from people”, but just how important are people, and personality, in running a successful business?

On Monday, Gordon Brown the British Prime Minister announced that he is to step down as leader of the Labour party. What was his main problem? Policies, recessions and unemployment aside, people lost faith in him and the moment that happens, whether you are a businessperson or a politician, you are in trouble.

A series of blunders led to Gordon Brown’s downfall; allegations of bullying, public gaffes and the icing on the cake was Labour losing the General Election. But it was the nuances of his character that left him being criticized and deemed as cold, unfriendly and awkward.

If Gordon Brown had a better public persona would the general public have forgiven him these blunders? It is difficult to say but in small business we can learn a lot abut the importance of public relations through this story.

I, for one, have encountered a rude, curt or abrupt salesperson and gone out of my way to not purchase something from them. I know people who have left one job in favour of another simply because their boss was difficult to get along with, unreasonable or simply unappreciative.

This doesn’t mean you always have to be nice to be successful in business, we all know there are times when tough decisions have to be made, but having a personality that blends in to the ethos of your company is vital. Once you have developed this micro-culture within your small business employees and customers will know exactly where they stand and what to expect.

A great deal of small business success can be attributed to developing a company personality. This is considerably easier if, as a small business owner, you have passions, belief and a purpose behind your business. It is your ethos, values and priorities that will become the lifeblood of your small business. Make sure they are positive.

Creating a personality for your business isn’t about cracking jokes and being the life and soul of the party. It can be anything from creating an environmental awareness within your company, through to flexibility for your employees. It’s not about being nice; it’s about being approachable, respected, open and considerate.

Under Gordon Brown Labour lost their personality and strayed from those that so fervently supported them in previous years. This election proved that. Don’t let the same happen to your small business. Your company’s personality should be representative of the thoughts, values, experiences and character of the small business owner.

So, what’s the personality of your small business?

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Starting a small business can be a worrying and daunting time for would-be entrepreneurs. With four out of five small business start-ups ending up in failure the statistics are stacked against small business owners. But knowing why small businesses fail could just be the key to making sure yours doesn’t!

Knowing the pitfalls that other small business start ups have made can stop you making the same mistakes. I believe there are six fundamental issues that cause small businesses to fail:

- Lack of planning – I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, starting a business without planning where you want to go is like starting a car journey with no idea of your final destination; you’re bound to get lost. To avoid this mistake set a clear goal of where you want to be, and how you are going to get there.

- Inability to delegate – Within every business someone needs to keep an eye on the bigger picture; and have an overview of everything happening internally and externally around the company. That person should be you and if you have your head buried in the accounts you won’t. So delegate and outsource all the tasks that can be done by others and free yourself to focus on the bigger picture.

- Unwillingness to change – As a small business you cannot afford to remain motionless as your market and the world around you drives forward. Adapt and develop your small business so it is forward thinking and innovative, not behind with the times.

- Forgetting that cash is king! – A small business needs to keep its eye firmly focused on cashflow, as soon as a business loses sight of this then they are prone to failure. Plot and analyse your incomings and outgoings to make sure your small business stays on the right track. Don’t expect massive profits from the outset, but don’t accept a loss.

- Lack of objective targets – Not measuring the success of campaigns, products or services can be disastrous for a small business. Is that PR campaign your running really worth the money? Does Twitter really bring traffic to your website? Know what to measure and you’ll know how successful you are.

- Not asking the right questions – When you are a small business start-up knowing which questions to ask, and to who, is difficult. I aim to answer as many as I can here on my blog, but a new website, Advicely, offers tailor made answers to your small business questions.

Whilst avoiding these pitfalls won’t necessarily guarantee your small business success, knowing what not-to-do can help you to focus on the things that you should do. I know that small businesses are going to be the making of this country – lets pull together reduce that horrific statistic.

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I can hear you asking, ‘what is he talking about’?

The point is that ‘time’ is the most precious commodity of any entrepreneur or small business owner. Given this fact, does it make sense for you to spend your time setting up computers, networks or even your website? The answer is a resounding NO.

Firstly, not only will you do a bad job, because you are unlikely to have all the necessary skills to do a good job. Not even computer people have all the skills needed for a good IT installation these days, it usually takes a team of specialists to do that.

Secondly, not only have you spent money you shouldn’t have, now you have also spent your time on a non-profit generating activity. You are taking your eyes off the ‘business’-ball, which is something you can’t afford to do, especially in a small business or home business.

This all should make you consider your IT needs and how to get what you need without losing business focus. OnlineOffice and other cloud computing applications are the best way forward for micro-businesses, which is nothing else than a very cost effective way to outsource your IT skills.

When are you taking your business into the clouds, in more than one way? — ST.

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In times when money is short a very open relationship based on partnership will allow a chain of suppliers and customers to fulfill orders in a “joint venture per order” kind of way. This will allow small and medium size business to compete successfully with bigger business and take the order. Everyone in the chain has to agree to get paid when the order is finally fulfilled.

This is however not going to solve the problem of financial difficulty in businesses for historic reasons or based on too high fixed cost. In these times cash-flow is more essential than ever. So outsourcing and reducing fixed cost is paramount at every juncture.

I have been talking about the fact that we live in a time of business partnerships, the traditional supplier – customer relationships do not work anymore. This has never been more true than at the moment.

How are you partner skills, I hope for you, they are good. –ST.

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I have now been working for almost ten years from home, and most of my staff works from home too. Apart from being an eco-friendly way to work, it saves people time and frustration to travel in and around London to come to an office, where we all sit in cubicles or offices. In the days of broadband internet, Skype and OnlineOffice, there is no need for an office, even to have meetings.

Offices, like cars are are often nothing else but status symbols – what other reason can there be for a small business to have an office? If that is true then how is the office helping with your business, it’s a big expense. Seriously, if you do not have clients coming thru your office doors several times every day, why have the office. Even if you have, do really all your people need to be in the office every day? I guess not!

We are in an economic downturn, what is more important – your ego or your business – ask yourself that every time you walk into your office. I’m sure there a good reasons for some micro businesses to have offices, even so I currently can’t think of any, but I’m convinced in most cases a healthy bootstrapping and outsourcing mentality would be more beneficial for your business.

Unless the first business goal is to feed your egomania, you need to have a good hard look at your cost structure to survive in these times. — ST.

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She began to explain, that she wanted to work from home since she wanted to be home for her child and still have an income and not lose touch with the work she loved. It was always clear to her that she could only spend about 10 – 20 hours of work per week, but that would give her the income and the professional life she needed, while getting her work/life balance right.

As she was telling me about her business, she began to lighten up – as she realized she had done exactly what she set out to do – far from a failure she was a success. She had made the same mistake we all make from time to time, she had compared herself to a business that clearly had different goals. Sometimes our ego gets the better of us or in cases like this the worst of us, which is why I believe it important to write your goals down on a piece of paper and look at it each week, to help you to focus and realign your actions with your goals.

Any business is only a failure when it is literately failing, like running out of money failing, if that is not the case you are a successful business. Looking at the competition is all about seeing what is happening in the market and learning from the comparison how to achieve your vision and goals, not to limit yourself to what your competition is doing.

The vision for your business should go beyond comparing yourself to your competition, comparing yourself will often limit your vision. — ST.

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During the course of the day I listened to 16 business plans, I was supposed to be a bank manager (!) approving bank loans for the presented ventures. I might as well mention now that I approved each and everyone of these loan applications, and I do not believe that my actions would have resulted in anything like the Northern Rock or Bear Stearns debacle. But then my business education does not limit me to just ticking boxes on a form (-forgive me for this little side dig, but it had to be done!).

What have I learned yesterday? Here are some highlights:

• Bootstrapping is alive and well, a fair amount of business plans needed no external funding, due to good focus on the business essentials;
• not all businesses wanted necessarily to grow, but focused on an income based business idea with a high job satisfaction element;
• Home-businesses, was also mentioned more than once;
• strong family and friends connections and elements in the business ideas.

These guys must be reading my blog, each one of these ideas was achievable. The format of the business plans was very good too. Not too long and drawn out with irrelevant information and to the point:

• business idea
• entrepreneur details
• very basic market study
• cash-flow and break-even calculations
• SWOT analysis

Some had added some political, economical and other risk factor analysis, which let’s be honest, is difficult to asses given the greed and stupidity circulating in the upper echelons of our business and political world currently.

So here are my favorite small business start-up ideas:

• Natalie Douglas is going to continue in a good family tradition and open a child care nursery, keeping it small and personal for parents and children.
• Cohen Gordon-Swhyer is going to offer us a sleeping experience with good customer care in his high street bed store – Ikea take note – customer care is the way forward and a great small business differentiator.
• Valerie Iwenya is opening a African cinema with a cultural experience – what a great idea.
• Carlton Nicholson is offering to make your hatchback car into something special, at a price of cause.
• Farrah Smith is opening a music store with cafe and internet so you can download your music too.
• Emmanual Opanuga is opening a shoe store chain, focusing on customer care while understanding the price pressures in this business.
• Raphael Dobbin is not going to help me loose any weight soon with his idea of a West African restaurant, but he was going to offer me free fruit as a dessert option for healthier living.
• Ibilola Johnson presented her idea for an internet cafe for local youth, as a focusing point to get our kids off the road, great social engagement thru a well established business idea.
• Monica Osborne is opening a hair saloon, judging by her own hair style she will be doing very well.
• Jeffrey Owusu will be offering a chauffeur/taxi service with multimedia entertainment for longer journeys.
• Jose Ruales is going to entertain us with a Karaoke sing-along bar. Very professional presentation, I certainly committed all the banks funds for this idea.
• Fleurette Irakoze will offer all different genres of young generation attire in one convenient location.
• Koyinsola Quadry is helping ladies to buy better shoes, especially for bigger shoe sizes. Quality, customer service and a niche market, what could possibly go wrong.
• Lawrence Madukaife will focus on the college and university student with his telecoms offering.
• Meron Nour and his Underground Imports will import trendy cloths and shoes from Japan. He explained his company was called “Underground Imports” because it was situated in the basement of a building – no other reason.
• Juan-Carlos Valverde will continue breeding his puppies and make that into a business, from home and maybe part-time.

Sadly some business ideas will not be acted upon in real life since most of the presenters will go to university in Autumn, but then maybe some on them will end up running their own business in the future. Others, I believe, were outlining their plans for the future to me and I believe they will be successful in their ventures.

It is good to know that their will be enough good and solid small businesses in the future to bail the the big, greedy and egotistical business failures out, while at the same time punishing incompetence in public life at the polls.

For me yesterday was a great and above all reassuring day that I will remember for many years to come – or to say it in their language: Guys – you rock! Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. — ST.

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We will charge 2% extra for PayPal payments.

Te motivation is quiet understandable, Paypal will charge you 2% to process your inward payment. But should you really charge your client extra for this? I would think not, since this is a great business turn-off. More business is lost through little charges here and there, it generates the feeling in the buyers mind of hidden charges. While at the same time the buyer will wonder why he/she should pay for the suppliers bank charges.

I was given options to send a cheque or pay by bank-transfer. This makes the whole situation even worse, since you would be inclined to send a cheque, which would take weeks to clear through the banking system – this was a international transaction. You would certainly not use the bank transfer option since it would cost even more. The whole problem was no made easier by demanding stage-payments.

It seems to me the solution here is to increase your prices by 2% and don’t talk about it, or enquire before hand which payment method should be used. One needs to remember that getting payed is of the utmost importance for any small business, so PayPal seems a good way to go in this instance.

Look at your payment terms and do not create unnecessary business barriers. — ST.

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It occurs to me that being successful in business, whatever your precise small business goal may be, means one thing – Leadership! The simple fact however is that leaders will fail more often than others, so failure has to be part of your way to success. The sooner you accept this, the sooner you will get there.

        Success Is A Staircase of Failures.

Failure is a prize you need to pay for being successful, a leader will know that. If you look at what leaders do, you will understand that failure is an essential part of the course and not such a big problem as society at large will have you believe. The reason for this is quite simply the fact that any problem, in this case being successful, has not a single simple answer. Different strategies will have to be tested and some will not work. This is where you see the difference between a gambler and a leader, or risk-taker.

If you are running a small business, home business or any other micro business, you are probably already successful. Because, here is the thing, it is not the big pay day that is your success, but what gets you to your big pay day is success.

Being a successful small business owner requires commitment, passion and risk-taking, or as some would call it a pioneering spirit. So, don’t complain if the stepping stones to success bruise your feet. Have a great weekend. ST.

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