From the course: Small Business Secrets

Filtering the big-business perspective

From the course: Small Business Secrets

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Filtering the big-business perspective

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- One of the challenges of entrepreneurship is that there are many great lessons out there that you can learn, you can read business books, you can attend conferences where there are great speakers, you can even watch videos on a site like lynda.com. Part of the problem with it though is that most of these lessons are geared toward big business. Now, while there's value from listening to these lessons, you must put it through the filter of being a small business owner. There are some important differences between how you use information, and a big business uses information. First of all, understand that the lessons on branding are different. Big businesses are focused on awareness, they want everyone to know about what they do. They can afford to create campaigns that make people feel a certain way. You often see this with large soda companies, putting their logo everywhere. A small business, on the other hand, needs to focus on a call to action. That means that every time you market, you want people to be able to take direct action on what you're selling, what you're offering, so that they pick up the phone, that they fill out a form, that they visit your website. That leads to the second filter, which is the filter of investment. Big businesses are focused on the long game. They can take their time, they can take years, even decades with a marketing strategy. They have the money to invest, and they have the time, but small businesses you're in an immediate situation right? You need to get quick returns on investment. Occasionally you'll be able to invest out a year or so, but often the things that you need to do result in sales in the next month or the next quarter. Third, the prices are very different between big businesses and small businesses. Big businesses can afford to get into price wars. They have economies of scale, that means they can buy lots of stuff, or they can make lots of stuff at a time, so that can reduce the cost. Big businesses can fight that way, you cannot. You want to get into value, so rather than lowering your prices, increase the value of what you're offering. Give people more personal attention, add on, do things that make your customers feel like they're getting more for what they're spending rather than trying to price hunt. Number four is the structure between big businesses and small businesses is very different. Big businesses have lots of layers in their organization chart, and they have people who are filling very specialized roles. They're large companies serving a big geographic area, and so they can afford to do that. Small businesses have flat organization charts with maybe one or two levels, and they have individuals who are perhaps filling multiple roles. There's nothing wrong with that, it just means that some of the management tips that you might hear related to big business need to be filtered slightly. Also, politics may be a little different between big business and small business. Big business the politics is dealing with your coworkers, and advancement, and hiring, and firing. In small business the politics usually revolve around family members or friends who might be working within the business, and finally investors. Big businesses are focused on their shareholders. If they have a public company, they are trying to raise their share price, and everything revolves around that one result. A small business, on the other hand, it's really about you, and if you have partners, your partners. It's about you getting what you want out of your business, and so you have more flexibility in the choices that you make. Now there are lessons that you can learn from big businesses, and from all the seminars and books that you read, just keep in mind that as you listen to these things adapt the lessons of big business to your small business.

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