Posts Tagged ‘SBA’

The Small Business Success Index provides small business owners and entrepreneurs with best practices to improve their businesses. This is part of a series of interviews with small business owners, entrepreneurs and small business experts providing their insights about the index results.

Tinu Abayomi-Paul is a semi-retired website promotion specialist, author and ghostwriter. She is a co-founder of Leveraged Promotion and part –owner of FreeTrafficTip.com. After making money from banners ads off of her poetry communities, Tinu opened a business as a part-time venture on a bet in 2003. She bet two of her friends $1000 each that she would have a commercial site up and running in Google with a product that sells in less than 90 days on a $100 budget. Tinu won her bet in 34 days and saw a huge business opportunity.

Her expertise includes article marketing and search. Tinu’s mission is to “help business owners realize the profit potential in their businesses by leveraging the cost-effective power of the internet to increase their leads and sales.” She has been featured in Site Reference, Web Pro News, About.com and Amazon. You can contact her at http://asktinu.com.

IF YOU LIKE THE INTERVIEW YOU ARE ABOUT TO READ, YOU WILL LOVE THIS:

At the end of this month, Grow Smart Business – a new Network Solutions blog, resource hub, and home to the Small Business Success Index – hosts its first webinar hosted by Network Solutions CEO, Roy Dunbar

Learn from the risks taken, lessons learned, and success attained from a great webinar panel. Join entrepreneurs and business leaders for this free, live webcast. And get a chance to learn from their experience in securing capital and deciding their approach to marketing.

When: Thursday, April 30 from 2-3pm ET,

To register: Visit http://growsmartbusiness.eventbrite.com.

Network Solutions: What did the study reveal to you about the success of small businesses in 2008?
Tinu: I learned that it isn’t just the fields I’m working in that are ripe with opportunity and that still have optimistic business owners. I’m in an area that overlaps marketing and website promotion, so naturally as companies look to cut advertising budgets in time of economic stress, they seek out people who can get them the same results, less expensively. So in talking to peers, I’ve been hearing that business was actually thriving for them.

However, I didn’t think that small business outside that realm would have such positive attitudes about where they were headed.

Network Solutions: The study captured six dimensions for measuring success: Capital Access, Marketing and Innovation, Workforce, Customer Service, Computer Technology and Compliance. What do you think are the top priorities for making small businesses more competitive?
Tinu: I personally put customer service above everything else. We small businesses can offer a personal touch, can do a little bit extra and make one on one connections. Not to say that bigger companies don’t or won’t, but I’ve noticed that when I used to work as an employee in big companies, either I felt like just another number, or I’d often come across some client who felt like they were.

Then I’d say, technology. It’s amazing how we can leverage technology to reach an international audience via the web if we’d like. We can broadcasts our thoughts to the world in the form of a blog, a digital book or a physical book without many of the obstacles to publishing that kept us out of those playing fields as little as 15 years ago. Access to technology has reduced the cost of generating and processing leads, communication with peers, clients and customers, and enabled us to reach out for help from colleagues and mentors in a way that just wouldn’t be efficient, or in some cases, possible previously.

Marketing and Innovation of course is also an area where we have an incredible amount of leverage, but the problem is that most small businesses don’t understand how to market themselves in a way that is both cost-effective and efficient. And yes, if you can become known for your innovation, and spread the word with effective marketing, access to capital becomes less of a problem – people are buying, you raise your own capital. I started my business with $100 and a used Dell.

Workforce isn’t a problem if you can outsources to smaller companies. Compliance is easily solved when you have the time to educate yourself, which you can gain from being properly compensated, which again arises from effective marketing. In short, by focusing on having great service, superior marketing and innovation, and the proper use of technology, you can minimize the impact of access to capital, compliance issues, and workforce.

Network Solutions: According to the results, Capital Access and Marketing and Innovation were the two biggest inhibitors for success. Do you agree? Why or why not?
Tinu: I disagree that access to capital is an inhibitor to success. it probably makes me “old-school” but I believe in boot-strapping. For example, let’s say my dream is to own a restaurant. I know there’s a 60% failure rate. (Not a 90% failure rate as Business Week recently covered). My credit’s not great, I don’t own a house, how do I raise the money to start this business?

Before the internet, your options might be, get a part-time job and save, see someone at the Small Business Administration, see if you can get a grant, live simply, save aggressively, that kind of thing. But now you could start simply and build an audience. You could find a small population of people with a particular, eclectic taste, maybe invent some new kind of fusion. Research would be relatively inexpensive. You could start a community for them, create a cookbook for them, and tell them you want to start a restaurant from the proceeds.

Those people know you, they are grateful to you for starting this community, you sell the number of copies needed, there’s your capital.

Now, not to say any of that is easy to do. But thanks to the Internet it’s an option we have, to use our skills to raise the money that funds our dreams and aspirations.

Network Solutions: How does the current economic state affect Capital Access and Marketing and Innovation?
Tinu: I’ll take Marketing and Innovation first. With marketing, I’m finding that with most of the people I work with, the solution is to market harder. If publishing an article a month used to bring you 100 sales, in today’s climate you may need to do one a week to get the same results. In some cases, consumers seem to be buying less, in other cases, prospects that never would have looked to your company before, might be seeing you as a viable option now. Sometimes a tricky economic climate results in an increase of opportunity.

As far as Capital Access, what I’m hearing is that fists are tight at the moment, so to speak. My company has never faced that issue, we started debt-free and while we’ve struggled, it’s our business to know how to do more with less. We were able to avoid those problems with closely controlled growth. Still, if an opportunity fell into our laps that we couldn’t afford to take without borrowing, we’d be screwed.

Network Solutions: The results show that 1/3 of small businesses feel they are successful in building the profitability of the owner. What is your advice for entrepreneurs and small business owners in terms of increasing the value of their company?
Tinu: The best way to increase the value of your company is to increase your company’s value to your clientele. This is tricky because you also don’t want to become the goose that’s laying the golden egg- if your departure decreases the value of the company then you haven’t created an opportunity, you’ve created a kind of slavery for yourself.

I’ve made that mistake before, big time. And there are 3 ways I began to overcome it.

First, I read The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It  by Michael E. Gerbe, upon the suggestion of a colleague, Antonio Thornton of Money Mouth Marketing. It helped me learn how I managed to get into a situation where I owned a job, rather than a business that could run without me. With this book I began the tradition of only working 6 months a year.

Then, upon the advice of the same peer, I started to outsource tasks that didn’t need to be done by me personally. I’d read Tim Ferris’ Four Hour Work Week, but I was still attached to the idea that people were buying my brand, not just my results. I learned that I could get even better results with a team, could help more people, have a wider reach, and still imprint my personal brand without feeling like I was cheating my customers and clients out of the best possible results.

For example, I learned they could probably live without me being the one to answer every phone call. It’s really okay for me to forward my phone to another human, LOL. Now, creating the plan that brings them a more successful business, still my job, and I love that part. But I also can’t physically answer 100 emails a day and do my best work for them too.

Third, I automate everything I can without adversely affecting customer service. Another colleague of mine, David Bullock is constantly helping me see where I need to reduce the amount of hands that touch certain processes, in ways that enhance my customer and client experience rather than interrupt it.

I’ll automate the delivery of digital goods and orders so my customers get served immediately. But I also make sure they get personal follow up to ensure they got everything within a day.

I wouldn’t say I’m an expert at getting myself out the way of maximizing profitability. I’m not completely there yet, there are still things I have to do myself, or feel compelled to do. And I often catch myself creating more work for myself than I need to have.

Network Solutions: According the study, “small businesses rely on a range of Internet business solutions and computer technologies to succeed.” What online services do you think best help entrepreneurs and small businesses? Why?
Tinu: It would be easier to answer what doesn’t. Everything that either puts you in the existing conversation stream that surrounds your product area, be it blogging, podcasting, participating in other aspects of the social web, can be executed in a way that is fruitful and doesn’t become this time suck where you’re on a property like Twitter six hours a day, yet not understanding how it benefits you, or what percentage of that participation increases your value to the market you serve.

Anything that makes advertising easier or cheaper is smart, too. At SpotRunner , you can produce a local cable TV commercial for less than $1000. If it’s successful, you can keep running the same one in neighboring markets – doing the whole thing from your computer.
Any technology that facilitates thought leadership or expertise marketing helps you bring prospects who already view you as an expert to your site. Sales are much easier to make if someone has already successfully sampled your knowledge.

Network Solutions: In your opinion, how can entrepreneurs and small businesses use the SBSI to their advantage?
Tinu: SBSI helps the Small Business Owner know where they are, relative to where other companies are, and to where they’re going. If you want to get to Florida, how to get there will vary if you’re coming from New York rather than California or Japan. It will help you see where you are on the map, and the related tools at the site will help you better navigate to the place you’d like to be.