Small business – the engine of the US economy?

Politicians and the media like to spout what seems to be conventional wisdom that “small business is the engine of the US economy” and that these businesses create the most jobs.  But is that so?

One of the criteria describing Collaborative Xceleration’s target market niche is “small companies looking for exponential growth”.  So, recently I’ve been doing some research into how many of these companies exist in the U.S., and what their geographic distribution is (this is also input to deciding where we are going live!).  As part of that research, I’ve come across some interesting data that addresses the “engine of the economy” statement which I thought I would share with you.

Surround Yourself with Smart, Trustworthy People (Revisited)

In last week’s post, Surround Yourself with Smart, Trustworthy People, I talked about building teams of smart, trustworthy people around you.  In two LinkedIn groups that I post this blog to I got comments that I thought I should address here – especially as I thought I had covered the points they raised in last week’s post!  Also, I had a meeting this week with an individual where the subject of networking for leads came up, and which tells a similar story to that of the comments.

Surround Yourself with Smart, Trustworthy People

Recently, on behalf of a couple of new business owners I had met, I reached out to a past client because I thought they could provide some insight to and even connections for these new individuals.  This week, I got an email back from the past client in which they made a statement which I think is very apropos to the content of my last few blogs.

The past client said that the individuals should “surround themselves with smart, trustworthy people.  You can’t do these sorts of things alone.  Building a strong team around you takes time, a great deal of belief, money and tenacity.”  They clearly hit on my recent themes of “you can’t do this alone” and “get good people on your team”; but, in just those few words they touched on so much more.

Building a Better ‘First-Time Entrepreneur’

This week I talked with an entrepreneur (no names; no pack drill!) who isn’t happy with the speed with which their business is progressing (come to think of it I’m not sure I’ve ever met an entrepreneur who was happy with their speed of business progress [superemotions file=”icon_biggrin.gif” title=”Big Grin”]) – and, actually, my conversations were with more than one such entrepreneur.

This got me thinking about weaknesses exhibited in the businesses of first-time entrepreneurs, specifically during the period before they get to revenue.  My conversation with this individual covered most of the topics that I’ve detailed below; they are ones that commonly come up in conversations with first-time entrepreneurs (I’m sure you can come up with others!!).

Business planning, not business plans

I usually cringe when I hear an entrepreneur or small business owner talking about writing (or worse, being told to write) a business plan.  The reason I cringe is that, too often, what people mean by “business plan” is some 30+ page Word document that no-one will ever read and which will end up as a dusty binder on a bookshelf, or some forgotten bytes on a dusty hard drive.

Isolation vs. collaboration

In The New York Times’ Sunday Review section (January 15th) the front page opinion article was “The Rise Of the New Groupthink” by Susan Cain.  It was subtitled “Collaboration is in.  But it may not be conducive to creativity.”

As someone who believes in the power of collaboration – it’s part of the name of my company, Collaborative Xceleration – I had to read the article to see if my view of collaboration and creativity needed to be revised.

Is it a “good” business?

A while back I wrote a blog posting, So you want to start a business? Why??. In it I addressed the more personal issues of “is this a business for you?”.

Recently I have been reminded of the number of people starting businesses that not only don’t have answers to the issues I raised in that post, but who also cannot answer basic questions about “is this just an idea or is it really a feasible business?”.