January - February - April - July - August - September
The Small Biz Pro Start up Story
A Journey of Frustration and Fulfillment
(see our ongoing story on our Blog)
January 2009 – Like so many others in the US, some of us found ourselves suddenly out
of work with limited prospects and a bleak near-term future. Add that to the problem of getting older (all
of us over 40) and the problem compounds.
What to do? Friends and
associates were contacted via phone or email, resumes posted on every damn job
board we could think of, we went to networking events, etc. Nada, zip, zilch, zero. No calls taken or returned, hence no
interviews and certainly no job offers.
Some minor temporary work came up, but nothing permanent or promising.
[Note: Since January,
unemployment has continually increased and as of this writing is now reported
at 10% and climbing. While this number
is the official government statistic, reality suggests the out-of-work and
underemployed population is closer to 20%.]
What
to do?
Fortunately,
in February, Molly, Gunther and I decided to do some volunteer work for Illinois
WorkNet where we met and formed an alliance and brainstormed about how we might
combine our talents into a business.
Our initial choice was to form a software training and computer repair
provider. Molly and Gunther would deal
with the former, while I would be responsible for the latter. AGM, LLC was born.
Fast
forward a couple of weeks, and Gunther opted to drop out of our fledgling
business for family reasons. Molly and I
met a couple times in late February and early March to discuss the future of AGM. We decided that training was not
viable with just the two of us (neither certified trainers) and changed our
business plan instead to focus on developing content to assist the small
business market. The rationale was
simple; self-employment was (and is) becoming an increasingly viable
alternative the traditional workplaces.
We did quite a bit of research on the Internet and in the library and
looked at our potential competition. We
found a number of sites that specialized in either accounting software for the
small guy or information related to starting up and running a small
business. What was missing, in our opinion,
was a fully comprehensive site devoted to all aspects of the business. Our so-called “Business in a Box” would
provide our clients/visitors with enough content and applications to quickly
get a business off the ground and running.
At one of the later meetings, we also searched and discussed domain
names for our little project. Many
searches (and a pile of discarded paper later) we arrived at “the-small-biz-pro”
as the chosen name. We quickly
registered and purchased both the .com and .net domain names from GoDaddy.com.
[Note: Domain names should be researched and determined early in the business development process. Many names are either used or held by others for various reasons. Domain names and websites are a key for many businesses – large or small – in today’s market. In addition, marketing and/or selling via the Internet yields potential additional revenue for business.]
At
this point, we realized that though we both had small business experience
(Molly – family hardware store, me – independent computer consulting), neither
of us knew enough to proceed successfully.
I contacted a friend, former co-worker and small business guru. Caspar has started, operated (and closed)
many small businesses during his life and was a logical choice as a sounding
board. We met over lunch the first time
and presented our initial idea for a site.
Caspar was intrigued, supportive, and encouraged us to continue our
research and proceed with content plans, risk assessment and potential
competition. Further, Caspar stressed
the importance of “building a community” for the site and research, research,
research! Determine what our competition
was and define our target market and offerings to the same.
[Note: When first
considering a business launch, talk to an expert in the field - both in the
product/service area intended and a small business consultant.]
As
indicated earlier, one of our initial partners – Gunther – dropped out. In his place, Molly suggested involving another
recently unemployed business analyst – BMac.
I met with BMac for lunch and discussed our thoughts and business
proposal. BMac was quite enthusiastic
and felt he could contribute valuable input to the project. Molly and I were equally impressed with
BMac’s credentials and agreed to a joint effort and split up responsibilities
for research, layout, etc. While I
busied myself with flowcharts and processes, BMac visited libraries and read
books and articles on small business models, etc. (Molly was re-employed at this point and assumed
the role of “mock client”.)
April
started off with a bang. A committed
team was now in place (Molly, BMac, A.J.) with an expert consultant (Caspar)
and cranking out ideas, flowcharts, models, suggestions and general stream of
consciousness thoughts. While a useful
practice, this resulted in a classic “cart before the horse” scenario. We were so anxious to have a working site
with content that we dismissed some of the important pre-planning steps. This issue was further reinforced when BMac
and I met with Bonnie – a small business consultant at a local community
college. We went in with said
flowcharts, content plans, and an initial business plan. While Bonnie certainly didn’t shoot us down,
she did stress the following (taken directly from my notes at the time):
- We need to identify and define our
target market group (e.g. age group, newbie or seasoned business people,
business size)
- Similar to the above, we need to develop a market
penetration strategy and prioritize the rollout strategy (if more than one
target market is involved)
- We need to focus on active and passive marketing –
Internet, social networking, newsletters, presentations, etc.
- We should begin building a list of prospects
(clients) and attempt to gauge value of services and appropriate initial
pricing.
- Our key challenge according to Bonnie will be the
emotional and mental aspect of accounting.
She indicated that the small business owners she meets with detest
accounting. Our goal must be to keep it
as simple and intuitive as possible.
- Process steps: Create the business plan, determine
financial projections, get everyone on board, and incorporate.
- Bonnie does feel our plan has value and is
viable, providing the above issues are addressed.
Ouch.
[Note: We’ve compared
much research and made some mistakes when starting this business. We offer you this blog and these notes to
provide a simple and transparent roadmap to starting a small business for our
visitors.]
Our
first official team meeting (with all members) took place on April 18th. It was quite a spirited session with original
plans discarded and redrawn. I went into
the meeting with an agenda typed up for the group and every intention of
proceeding on our original website development plan and assigning
responsibilities, dates, and the like.
The easy stuff first: We agreed to equal interest in the business, 25%
for each partner; the domain name was accepted as satisfactory; the name would
stay the same – BIB dba the-small-biz-pro.com.
Next up was the meat of the conversation – the base business idea and
how it should play out. Caspar pointed
out a number of problems with our original idea. Legal and liability issues, development time
& cost, reinventing the wheel, support and upgrade concerns, and so
forth. The three of us sat dumbfounded
as we listened to his sales pitch and justification for changing the direction
of the site to more of a referential and community collaboration concept.
OUCH! So much for my grandiose plans of developing
a site for the small business using cloud computing, my beloved flowcharts,
interrelated databases, process flow, and so forth.
Caspar
of course, was completely correct in his assertions. The time and money required for developing a
product that already existed was way out of line and not responsive to our
client needs and requirements. To paraphrase
his comments, we need the community to tell us what they need and either direct
them accordingly or in certain cases create a spreadsheet, database, or report. We felt responding to our visitor’s needs was
best addressed via a community forum – one in which visitors can comment on
articles posted, ask for approaches to common problems, and ask for feedback on
professionals in a given area. And this
forms the basis of “the-small-biz-pro” – a website dedicated to providing the
knowledge, resources, and ideas required for all aspects of small business
startup and operation.
After
the meeting mentioned above and clarification of strategic direction for BIB,
articles started to flow quite nicely.
For the visitor, this site will provide articles on how-to’s, reviews of
existing literature, technology and observations on best practices. We invite you to agree or disagree with any
forum topic – only requesting that the posting is relevant to the topic and
obscenity-free. Posts will be reviewed
by a moderator and the operators of this site reserve the right to remove any
article considered inappropriate.
Our story will continue as this site adds content and until the site launches. We will follow with a blog page for ongoing site evolution, news, and changes. We want you to learn from
our experiences – the good, the bad, and the ugly! We also ask for your participation and
feedback – this site is for all, us included – for education and
collaboration. Thank you! BMac, A.J., Caspar & Molly
July
2009 – We’re nearing the point of ‘Go-Live Day’. In our most recent team meeting, July 11, we
reviewed our current strategies, the content we had produced so far, and opted
to research and buy a website complete with user forum. Our domain is registered through GoDaddy.com
(one of the Internet’s largest registrars) and we opted to look in that
direction for hosting options. Our
decision came down to a hosted solution vs. a Website tonight option. Initially deciding upon the latter, we
proceeded to purchase a deluxe package for $9 a month. The deluxe package gives us 10 pages of
website content, plus 500 email accounts, a guest book, a forum, and 1,500
professionally designed templates. This
package is quite intuitive, easy to use, and will allow you to have a site up
and running within hours. A perfect way
to create a business almost immediately – just add content (pictures, images,
etc), stir and mix, and voila – you are now in business. One of the best parts about using GoDaddy is
the low cost; investing $9 is hardly going to break the bank. You may need a couple add-ons to give your
site exactly what you want or need, but the base package is neat. Further, past experience with GoDaddy’s
24-hour support line has been very positive and is highly recommended, at least
from this user.
[Note: A website is almost a must in today’s
competitive global business world. Many
providers offer websites with various plans and features – do your research on
the Internet, check out our forum for opinions, and get your business started. Make money even while sleeping, eating or on
vacation!]
Toward the end of July, a little
frustration was starting to set in. It seemed that the bulk of the time
and content contributions were provided by me and our concept was slogging
through the mud. Our next team meeting was July 26 where we started
working as a group, looking at the web site template chosen and actually
working through the process of adding content. Our launch date was pushed
off to the 15th of August, but we had positive discussions regarding
member contributions to the overall effort.
In addition, we discussed linking to
Bizfilings.com as an affiliate - the site is simply top-notch in the legal
aspects of setting up a business in each state. We agreed there was
nothing to gain by duplicating their efforts and opted to link to them for our
clients. This affiliation would also prove to be a source of revenue, as
we would receive a referral bonus.
[Note: Revenue from a web site can be generated in many ways - one of these is via a referral, reseller or partnership relationship. For each "sale" a partner site makes as a result of a link, the referring site receives a percentage or fixed amount. Don't discount the small revenue streams from partner sites; money is money. Futher, site linking is a method of increasing visibility and web traffic statistics.]
August 2009 - Though our launch date has been pushed forward yet again (too many other issues for us to devote full time effort to this project), significant progress is being made. Our team meeting on August 9th had all four partners participating and contributing. The team decided that the format of the web site was quite acceptable and the content was generally agreed to. We’ve decided that the “our story” section will end at launch time and we will use a formal blog format and Twitter account for ongoing updates. We also decided to add a page for branding – “Brand that Cow” – an “FAQ” page, a “Second Steps” or “Next Steps” page to follow the “First Steps” page idea. (Our next meetings will take place later this month and early in September. Launch date is now set for September 15 – a date I think we’ll meet. In that month’s report, I’ll discuss the concepts and steps for a media blitz.)
After reviewing each page in depth,
Caspar noted the importance of including a disclaimer on each page. Simply, we are not experts in the legal,
accounting, or marketing aspects of business and do not wish to portray
ourselves as such and thereby misleading our visitors. This is not a cop out in any way; though we’ve
done extensive research and have had personal experience in running small
businesses, we are not legally qualified to say we are legally qualified in the
field. Confused? Not to worry – the information provided on
these pages is designed as a guide – each potential entrepreneur should do
their own due diligence to ensure their business is set up and run correctly.
Another interesting (and notable)
idea that has been implemented is the use of site analytics. Simply, analytics are a way of tracking the
number of visitors to a web site’s pages, how long the user stays, and other
valuable statistics. Analytics can be
especially important if a web site intends to generate revenue via
advertising. More visitors equates to
more visibility to advertisers and so on.
[Note:
Google has a free web site analytics program with many tracking options. It is easy to use and available at https://www.google.com/analytics/provision/
. An additional article discussing analytics is available in Technical Tidbits]