STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES, AND GIVING IN SMALL BUSINESSES
As a small business owner there are many things I have learned along the way about how to grow and scale. First and foremost, you have to recognize that you cannot do it all. If you try to scale a business by yourself, and you are stuck in the day-to-day operations side you will have little time to execute the creative thinking needed to grow, market, and scale your small business.
I have had the opportunity to surround myself with other entrepreneurs in Houston who have given me guidance and lessons learned needed to grow a small business. One of things I have learned is as your business begins to grow so do you. Your mindset will change with regard to how you interact with customers, how you interact with supply chain wholesalers, how you create, sell, and ship your products, and implement new technology for business automation. You begin to realize your small business is not just a local store or website that customers purchase your products from. They are literally buying you - your creativity and hard work, your experience, your trust, and your historical business legacy to get them the product in their hand they enjoy so much. Making this visible to your customers is how you create a memorable experience for them and gain customer loyalty and appreciation. Never forget you are the brand of your product, and when your customers buy your products they are buying you.
I met one technical entrepreneur over three years ago who built our first website for free. I was impressed but also wondered why he would do that? He said that the idea of the ‘Cookie Confidant’ was a great idea, and he could see how it could scale into something much larger when it was still a hobby interest of mine. The entrepreneur said that idea of the ‘Cookie Confidant’ garners mystery and memorability. I did not understand fully what he meant at the time. He said it means that customer loyalty is best preserved when your business stands for a concrete idea that customers can grasp onto. In a sense this means after we experience the products of the Cookie Confidant we become a Confidant ourselves, and we can revel with other Confidants in our own cookie experiences. This is memorable!
As a technical entrepreneur he went out of his way to further help me scale the online presence of the Cookie Confidant and implement Search Engine Optimization (SEO) so more domestic customers could find the Cookie Confidant website. He overhauled the website to make the customer experience and checkout more intuitive for local delivery and shipping customers. He helped with product and logo re-branding to reach a larger customer base. He gave all of his services for free for two reasons. First, he appreciated the grit and grind I have been through the last three years to perfect our cookie recipes, and grow our local delivery customer base one person at a time through face-to-face deliveries and communication. This showed him I am a person who never gave up even when the times got hard. Second he had another entrepreneur who did it for him seven years ago when he started his online Water and Natural Products Business, and this was his way to give back the same experience.
This technical entrepreneur who helped the Cookie Confidant scale is an emotional intelligence and business process management expert. As an entrepreneur he said he has to understand and research how technology, visual layouts, colors, text, and content affect people’s behaviors, emotions, and buying patterns. I am not an expert in this field, and I had to go find the skillset or strength I did not have. I have learned businesses that grow and scale quickly typically have a technical expert who understand the cross pollination of technology and psychology. It has been very interesting to be mentored on the topic, and also see how the implementation of it has increased Cookie Confidant sales 50% year over year (YOY) in the first month of January 2021.
Takeaway and lessons learned from this blog:
1. Don’t spend time trying to turn your weaknesses into strengths. There will always be someone who has your weakness as their strength. Finding experts to supplement your weaknesses will make you that much more effective at scaling your business faster. When you find someone who complements you form a long lasting business relationship with them so you can leverage them for other future opportunities.
2. Realize you cannot accomplish everything yourself to scale your business if you are also handling the all day-to-day sales and operations. Take time to write up a business plan and project what your future resourcing requirements are if your business happened to scale faster than you anticipated. You will find when you write up what if scenarios some of them will come true.
3. When you work hard and give yourself or your services to others eventually someone will do the same for you unexpectedly. If this happens to you just show you appreciation for what is happening and learn as much as you can.
4. Ideas, hobbies, and interests that you want to scale into a small business are best sold to customers when they are delivered in a memorable and shareable experience with your customers. The outcome of this is customer loyalty, appreciation, and satisfaction.