Launching my business

Negativity, that’s all I hear these days. The Michigan Economy is one of the toughest ones in the entire United States. So making a small business thrive here is almost as hard as selling eight track tapes to people who don’t even like music! This economy can either get the best of you or really make you shine. Fortunately for us, the ladder of the two was the course we’ve taken.

We focused our energy on the global marketplace and the core competencies that we knew best. Instead of investing in printed materials, we put all of our energy into our website. Instead of spending gobs of money on advertising, we turned to search engine optimization. Instead of chasing after several new, great ideas, we focused on our existing great ideas that we could quickly bring to market and sell today.

The plan has worked out beautifully. Sure, could we use 20 more people to do it better, heck yeah. But we face the same problem that every self-funded small business faces, the more you invest, the less you personally make and the more you have to sell just to stay in business. I can say without a doubt that without these proactive steps, we’d have a “For Lease” sign on the door just like everyone around us:

1.       Invest a lot of time and money in your website and Internet marketing. We sell one of our products exclusively on the Internet and it brought in more than $250,000 in profit last year alone and continues to grow year over year.

2.       Focus on what you have now and what makes money. For entrepreneurs, a great idea passes through your head daily. It’s hard to forgo this and focus on the same old thing for so long.

3.       Leverage help, you can’t do it alone. We realized that we couldn’t keep writing our own software, marketing it, selling it, and supporting it. So we turned to a company to handle all of our programming along with a technology sales firm to help us sell. The companies have now turned out to be just an extension of our company but for a price we could afford.

4.       Diversify with overlapping expertise. We are good at software, IT, and automation controls. So we do it all but specifically where they overlap. The key is that together they keep our company very stable.

5.       Leverage Relationships. It’s all who you know. That’s so true – and who you know is built up from your own reputation and your dedication to making people happy. But it takes work to keep up that network. Facebook and Linked In are not just for play anymore.

Advice for others

So get out there. That’s my best advice. Don’t sit around and wait for things to happen. You have to make them happen. Don’t wait for the economy. Don’t wait for that big break or that loan. Now is the time. Stick to your idea. Stick to your passion. Don’t put things off. Work your butt off and seriously, just do it.