Small Business as Success
(Tech billionaires have been all over the news lately so this seems appropriate).
Success = analysis + capital + execution
I call BS. At least for small businesses.
But before I go into that, let me share why this matters. Underrepresented and underestimated small businesses are at risk. To be clear, we always are. There is a class of people who have been amassing all the money, resources, and power leaving the rest with very little. My goal is to explore how we continue to build community through small business and group economics.
This is my current working success equation:
What I mean by this is, your gut plus your execution plus your community over whatever your obstacles are.
Some of your obstacles may include lack of capital, specific business expertise, or you haven’t built your team and community yet —could be anything. In some cases, execution can solve your obstacles and in others, it can’t. Sometimes your obstacles become your differentiator. Regardless, this is what a small business is made of.
Your mileage may vary on success depending how you define it. But the multiplier to get you closer to success is in the analysis component of the original equation.
Your business accumulates a TON of data.
Good business operators have a great sense of intuition. Great operators use their intuition to ask the data the right questions.
If Small Business as Survival was my WHY and Small Business as Transformation was the WHAT, here I am building up to the HOW.
My hypothesis is that data driven decision-making is how we do the best job for our customers and how we compete against the big guys. We actually know our customers. We can do things they can’t.
So how does small business use data to drive success? Well, the subject of the next several posts is just that.
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