Escape from Cubicle Nation’s Pamela Slim Sheds Light on the Small Business Success Index

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.

Pamela Slim is a business coach, writer and the founder of Ganas Consuling LLC. She started her company in 1996 with the intention of management consulting, leadership development and most importantly – being her own employer. Throughout her experience consulting hundreds of organizations in the U.S. and Europe, she decided to help frustrated employees in corporate jobs leave to start their own business.

Pamela also shares her expertise in personal and business change through her blog Escape from Cubicle Nation, which is one of the top career and marketing blogs on the web.  Her past experiences include consulting inside corporations such as Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard and Charles Schwab, where she coached thousands of executives, managers and employees. Her book Escape from Cubicle Nation: From Corporate Prisoner to Thriving Entrepreneur comes out May 1, 2009 (Penguin/Portfolio).

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?
Pamela: Not surprisingly, given the current shift in the economy, those companies that are just beginning or who don’t yet have a strong financial foundation are going to be faced with some big challenges.  Unless you can operate with a very small amount of cash, or have a lot of savings, getting access to credit may be an issue.  But there is always a great side to problems and barriers:  people will get much more creative with how to start businesses with low capital.

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?
Pamela: As the study revealed, most small companies are excellent at serving their customers and delivering what people pay them for.  But this creates the classic entrepreneur dilemma, described in many books by Michael Gerber as working “in” your business, not “on” your business.  In order to innovate, reach new markets and build a strong infrastructure, you need to step away from the day-to-day activities of your business.  And many newer entrepreneurs are very uncomfortable doing this because they are much better technicians than managers.

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?
Pamela: Without cash flow, growth is very difficult.  And since many local and regional markets are shrinking, it is imperative to find new markets to serve, and better ways to serve them.  Without growth and healthy finances, many of the other areas covered in the study become less relevant.  If you have no customers, you are not going to be as worried about detailed compliance reports, you are going to do what it takes to keep the lights on and your doors open.

Network Solutions: How does the current economic state affect Capital Access and Marketing and Innovation?
Pamela: While it was never easy to get funding for a new small business started by an entrepreneur with no experience, our current economic situation is pretty extreme.  Without the luxury of money to pay people to create products and services for the future, many businesses will have an extremely short-term focus, which can lead to non-strategic decision making.  But once again, with the majority of people focusing on short-term results, tremendous opportunity exists for those business owners willing to plan now for a brighter future.

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?
Pamela: A natural tendency for many small business owners is to only focus on serving the needs of their customers, and not invest any time or energy in strengthening their own skills and building a strong infrastructure that can withstand new growth.

To grow the value of your company, you have to step back and look at it objectively.  And in order to do that, you have to be comfortable ceding operational responsibility.

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?
Pamela: If capital access, marketing and innovation are critical levers for small business owners, I think social media is absolutely essential.  If companies have to bootstrap their growth, they can do it very effectively with a strong, clear and active presence on sites such as Twitter, Facebook and blogs.  When done well, you can virtually eliminate advertising budgets, building direct and strong two way conversations with customers.

I also think that companies today should automate every part of their business that they can, and make web-based transactions very easy for their customers.  Face-to-face time with customers should not be spent filling out reams of paper or winding people through an endless maze of phone calls.  It should be spent in conversation to find out about their unique needs, and how you can best serve them.

Network Solutions: In your opinion, how can entrepreneurs and small businesses use the SBSI to their advantage?
Pamela: The SBSI could be seen as both a strategic framework and recipe for professional development for entrepreneurs.  If you notice that your small company is very strong in some areas and very weak in others, you need to plan to shore the deficient areas up or business will suffer.

For business owners and managers, if they are not familiar with the skills and competencies required to deliver on each facet of success, they better learn how to get mentors or they will never be prepared to take their organization to the next level.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 at 8:00 am and is filed under Entrepreneurs, Interviews, Small Business Success Index, small business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.


You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.