This is a site for people who are trying to start and run small businesses and want to keep them small. Yes, believe it or not, there are some people who don’t hope to create a future member of the Fortune 100.
In fact, most small businesses have fewer than 10 employees and there are mobs of individual practitioners out there. Call them whatever you want: freelancers, independent contractors, consultants, work at home moms, micro-businesses, or whatever other name you can think of. These are the people this site is for.
Now that doesn’t mean those of us with small businesses don’t want to make money. Far from it. We just don’t want the headache of big staffs and lower margins.
Did you know that the standard government and academic definition for small business is a company that brings in less than $100 million in revenues. I’ve also heard it’s less than $25 million. Depends on who you ask.
I don’t know about you, but if I were raking in between $25 million and $100 million, I wouldn’t consider my business small.
That’s the difference between the pundits and the rest of us. The fact is, there are millions of us out here trying to make a living with our small businesses. We’re satisfied if we can pay all our bills and have a few bucks left over at the end of the month. We’re ecstatic if we can actually save or invest any money that comes through the door or the mail slot. And yes, we do have hopes, dreams, and sometimes we even have plans for how to increase our profits. Right?
But we have different issues than that piddling $25 million business. We have very localized, specific problems to solve, such as how to get just three more customers this month. Or, how to find another reliable subcontractor while my regular sub is on vacation. How to deal with the insane cost of health insurance. Or how to figure out why I lost money when I sold twice as much product last month.
Those are the kinds of problems I deal with here. I want to hear about those issues and problems that are nagging at you. You know, something that’s been bugging you for days or weeks may not really be hard to solve, if you ask enough people. Or if you ask the person who knows the guy who worked for the gal who solves that problem once.
Oh, and if you’re wondering who I am, my name is Mark Smallwood. I’ve been involved in business, in one way or another, since I was in my early 20s. As you can probably tell from my picture, that was a while ago.
I’ve started six small businesses, including a landscaping and gardening company, a graphic design firm, a multimedia design and online help company, a greeting card company, a computer hardware reseller business, and a book promotion company. Only one, the multimedia company, really went anywhere. It was reasonably successful but was merged into a database tools company called Embarcadero Technologies in 1995, where I became Marketing Communications Director and later Vice President of Business Development.
I’ve spent most of the last 24 years in the software business, working for companies like Oracle, Unisys, Siebel Systems, Borland Software, and Juniper Networks, and of course, my own little company HyperGlyph, Inc., back in the mid-90s. I’ve learned a lot from my experiences in both large and small companies. Over the years, I’ve amassed a large number of stories about those experiences, and an insight here and there about how not to do things, as well as how to do them.
I hope you find them interesting.
