photo by: gribley
The inspiration for this post came when I saw a lady distributing Yellow Pages books from her van. Made me think about the last time I used Yellow Pages; the actual printed book. It occurred to me that the last time I used it was before I had high-speed internet. I got my high-speed internet in early 2000. For the past ten years I’ve been getting my information from online sources. If I want to find a phone number, I go online. If I want a restaurant recommendation, I go online. If I want to know the closest car wash to me, I go online. And most of my blog readers, friends, and colleagues do the same. But surprisingly, majority of small businesses are not online. They only exist in the offline world.
I completely understand that not all small businesses need a full website, need to be on every social network, or provide status updates regularly. I understand that economics may not work, expertise may not be there, and time commitment to figure out how internet works may be non-existent. But please have some kind of presence so that I could find you, call you, and recommend you. There are enough tools and sites such as Yelp and Google’s Local Business Center and that allow you to claim your small business listing, update your information, and interact with your customers with ease. But most importantly, it leads to greater understanding the type of impact having even a greater online presence may have on your small business and your bottom line.
While reading a Business textbook, I was extremely surprised to see that the author listed luck as one of the reasons why small businesses succeed. It is almost unbelievable that a business textbook would imply that you can succeed in business with some kind of magical force. A quick search for the definition of luck from various dictionaries brings me to conclude that luck is “some kind of force beyond our own control that shapes events and circumstances that create amazing or unfavorable outcomes.” However, I agree with the author on other three things he lists as reasons why businesses succeed, these are (1) hard work, (2) market demand and (3) managerial competence; but luck should not be mentioned in the textbook. I can think of at least a dozen of other and better reasons why businesses succeed.
A former boss of mine once said, luck is the point where preparation meets the opportunity; and I firmly believe in that. The reason why businesses succeed is because they have done enough work and preparation to take advantage of opportunities that present themselves. Referring back to the textbook, the author uses a horrible example to describe what luck really is. “Entrepreneur started an environmental clean-up firm, he struggled to keep his business afloat. Then the government committed a large sum of money for toxic waste clean-up. He was able to get several large contracts, and his business is thriving.” Luck by traditional definition had nothing to do with this entrepreneur’s large contracts from the government. He was simply prepared to take advantage of the opportunity. He had a firm, he worked hard, he was determined, he had enough cash to last as long as possible. The entrepreneur wasn’t lucky, he was ready.
The bottom line is, there are opportunities everywhere. It is just a matter of whether we are prepared and ready to take advantage of them.
