The Future Face of Business

This year my good friend in the printing industry joined the ranks of nearly everyone I know:  he took a pay cut to save his job while his company flounders.  My friend in the auto repair industry reorganized, laid off his high-paid technicians, sold his shops and is now repairing cars in the garage behind his house.  My friend who designs automobile parts lost his job in the declining Midwest auto industry.  Fortunately, he returned to his roots as a design engineer in appliance manufacturing.  My friend in the computer industry hasn’t been so lucky; he is still looking for a job after more than 18 months of being unemployed or underemployed. 

Economists all agree that unemployment is a lag indicator:  it is more a result of where the economy has been than of where it’s going.  But those looking ahead wonder what chance they have to succeed in a declining market.  If that’s what the economy looks like, is there any hope for the entrepreneur wanting to start a new business, when even established companies are dropping like flies?

There is a method to this madness that we call economic recovery.  It may be complicated.  It may be more of an intelligent guess than an actual prediction.  But it is based on history and statistics.  We will recover; but the business world will look different than in did in the last century. 

The U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics made such a prediction in its report on the “Top 10 Growing and Shrinking Industries” for the next 10 years.  A Marketing Charts article summarizes the report.  The article predicts the decline of U.S. manufacturing, likely a result of more companies outsourcing or moving overseas to cut costs.  It verifies, too, the aging population that demands more health care.  It also demonstrates the rise of high-tech industries, resulting in less demand for printed material and wired telecommunications.  A case-in-point:   the highly industrial cut-and-sew apparel manufacturing industry is expected to experience the highest overall percentage decline (57%).  It, too, has moved overseas, where labor costs are a fraction of what they are in the U.S.  Newspaper publishing will decline 25%, being replaced by the highly flexible, economical, Internet-based media.

The top 10 industries expected to experience the steepest employment declines:

1. Department stores
2. Semiconductor and other electronic component manufacturing
3. Motor vehicle parts manufacturing
4. Postal service
5. Printing and related support activities
6. Cut and sew apparel manufacturing
7. Newspaper publishers
8. Support activities for mining
9. Gasoline stations
10. Wired telecommunications carriers

The report also lists the top 10 growth industries:

1. Management, scientific and technical consulting services
2. Offices of physicians
3. Computer systems design and related services
4. Other general merchandise stores
5. Employment services
6. Local government, excluding education and hospitals
7. Home health care services
8. Services for the elderly and persons with disabilities
9. Nursing care facilities
10. Full-service restaurants

What does this mean for those entering the business market?  Success might just come to those who are looking more to fill a consumer need than to fulfill a personal dream.   The business winners in the next ten years will be the truly innovative, forward-looking, but pragmatic entrepreneur.  Don’t lose heart; for the budding business-owner that is willing to do the research and the hard work, there is still room at the top.

Sue. A. Evans

Recession-Proofing Your Business

850, Northwest Florida’s hot new business periodical, gives some valuable ideas for sustaining your business during tough economic times.  Highlighting several entrepreneurs that are finding success during an economy that is taking its toll on even the most stable players, the article focuses on methods that work in EVERY market.  The article, “Recession-Proof Ingenuity,” follows five area business owners as they work to build their business using a few tried-and-true techniques, as well as new approaches.  The capstone of the article is this list of no-nonsense hints to help you, too, thrive in difficult times:

Don’t Just Survive, Thrive!:  Tips for Small Business Owners During the Recession

• Ramp up your business development. Visibility, credibility, profitability. Get out there and keep hunting for business.
• Get clear on your niche markets. Don’t just assume because you have a business people will buy from you. You must define the markets you service and get in front of them consistently.
• Form strategic alliances. Who sells complementary products or services to your market? Look for ways to align yourselves to add value to your market.
• Build champions. Champions are people who know what you do, the type of client you service and refer business to you on a regular basis.
• Get creative. Use social media such as blogging and podcasts or social networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to build strong networks in exchange only for your time.
• Check your mindset. Are you buying in to the fear or rising above it? There is a lot of low hanging fruit out there if you’re prepared to weather the storm.
• Use measurement tools to manage your business development. Sales funnels and profit models are great to keep you on track to reach your goals.
• Shed dead weight. If you have to let staff go because they don’t fit the business model, or you need to move away from colleagues who are getting dragged in to the ‘doom and gloom,’ do whatever you have to do to surround yourself with positive, opportunistic, hard-working people.
• Systemize all areas of the business that you can. Take all the guess work out of your business development. Use seamless, consistent processes that are measureable.
• Use your financial statements to assess the health of your business. Review them at least once a month.

Tips courtesy Heather White, ghost adviser for Ghost CEO

Sue A. Evans

Creating a Website For Your Company, Part 3: Can I Build My Own Website?

This month we’re interviewing Hannah Evans, freelance web designer and contributor to last month’s article. 

Hannah, I know you do web design, so give us a little advice:  When is it appropriate for a business owner to design their own website?

Most websites are designed by using advanced programs such as Adobe Photoshop and Dreamweaver, or Microsoft FrontPage. If you have a good handle on how design, html, and css works, than you can handle designing your own website–but most people leave that to the experts.

(Note:  if you are still interested in designing your site from scratch, check out the article, “Introduction to Web Design.”)

You can also purchase website templates (both html and flash) online, but again – you will either need to know how to make personalized edits yourself, or hire someone to help you out.  Some web services can help you set up your site completely online without outside help.

Ok, well, assuming I don’t want to learn advanced web design, and just want to use a web service, first, how do I find one?

There are both free and paid web building services online. The difference will be in how many extra features are made available for your use. For example, Google Web Page Creator is free and functions well for posting a clean site that is information heavy, but isn’t very visually interesting.  Network Solutions is a monthly paid service that offers a variety of stylish layouts and more advanced features. Do a basic web search for “website builder” and decide which builder works best for your current needs.

So if I decide to go ahead with using a web building service, will I get a decent value?  Or will I be just wasting my money?

If you’re worried about your budget at this point, try a free website builder to at least get your business name out in the web world. Start small and build up gradually as you discover how useful your web presence is.  Consider your audience – if most of your potential customers are web savvy, you may want to spend some money to create a relevant and stylish site.  If you just want basic contact information accessible, a free site may be a better option.

Thanks again, Hannah, for getting us starting in designing our own website.  For more information about getting your business on the web, the BIC website has a number of articles on Building and Running a Website.  

Sue A. Evans

Creating a Website for Your Company, Part 2: Website Planning for a Site that Sizzles

Well, if last month’s article convinced you to build a website for your company, this month’s article is going to get you started!  Building a quality website that represents your business well takes thought and planning.  Hannah Evans, a freelance web designer, has a few suggestions:

 Before you meet with a web designer, think about the following:

•  Who are you trying to reach: young or old, businesses or consumers, etc.
• How much do you want to spend?
• What do you need your website to do?  Does it need to simply convey information, or are you looking to build an on-line store?
• What is the “culture” of your business, and how can the graphics on the web page represent that?

When you’ve answered these questions, get online and look at a number of websites in your industry.  Make a note (copying the URL of the site) of things you like and don’t like about those sites.  If you are particularly attracted to a site, what is it that attracts you?  The colors?  The simplicity? The flashy extras?  Be prepared to pass this information on to your web designer.

Finally, decide on a timeline for completion of the site.  Is there an event that will require the site to be finished by a certain time?  If not, then realize a single page can be online in as little as a week, but a multi-layer website with purchasing capabilities can take months.  Likewise, a simple one-page site can cost a few hundred dollars or less; a complicated site can cost thousands.   Know your timeline and check some prices before you make unreasonable demands of your web designer! 

 I hope Hannah’s advice will get you on the right track.  Next month:  “Can I build my own website?”

Sue A. Evans

Florida PTAC: A Business Cure for Hard Times

A couple weeks ago I sat at a meeting of IT professionals next to a man named Richard.  Richard is an IT specialist who presently works as a civilian for the military.  Richard’s dream is to eventually start his own business, contracting government work.  I will tell you what I told him:  Richard!  You are in a perfect position to go into business for yourself…what is stopping you?  Richard explained that he just doesn’t know how to get started and finds the whole procurement process a bit intimidating.

Down the hall from my office is the office of Laura Subel, Program Manager for Florida PTAC.  PTAC, loosely translated, stands for Office of Doing Business with the Government.  Laura is the one who will lead you down the path.   The Florida PTAC Office educates businesses on what the government requires to be a government supplier of goods or services.  It takes jumping through a few hoops, but considering that the government is one of the few customers buying in this economy, it is well worth it.

Laura has this sage advice to small businesses:  “We don’t care what you call us, just call us!  The acronym we want you to remember is HELP.  The PTAC is here to HELP you do business with the government. “

Laura said that the PTAC (which really stands for Procurement Technical Assistance Center) provides the following services at no charge:

• One-on-one counseling sessions such as Bid/Proposal Preparation, Marketing, and more
• Assistance with 8A and HUBZONE certification applications
• Free access to resources
• Referrals to the HAAS Center for Business Research
• Training Events on related topics

Laura promises that selling to the government can be  easy IF you follow the rules and work with the PTAC office to learn the rules.  They will provide guidance through the maze of rules and procedures.  Just one phone call is separating you from a client who spends over $40 billion a year doing business with small businesses, and who is in the market for every service or product that you can imagine.  Make the call.

Sue A. Evans

Making your voice heard: The Florida Office of the Small Business Advocate

The rewards of entrepreneurship are great; in this current economy many people who have never considered running their own businesses are doing so. As much as the State of Florida is encouraging entrepreneurship and thus promoting economic development, sometimes the regulations that help protect the citizens, the environment, or special interest groups create undue hardships on small businesses.

Well, now you have someone to go to when you feel the state has enacted a regulation that makes it hard for you to do business. Last year the state approved funding for a new office which will look at bills and regulations that affect small businesses in the state and make recommendations to the state legislature. The Florida Office of the Small Business Advocate (FOSBA) is a program of the Florida Small Business Development Center (SBDC) Network, and is co-located with the state SBDC office in Pensacola.

The bill that established the office also established the Florida Small Business Regulatory Advisory Council (SBRAC) to hear complaints submitted by the FOSBA and make recommendations to the Governor. The nine-member council, appointed by the Governor, Speaker of the House and President of the senate, are current or former small business owners and meet regularly to review any laws under question.

What should you do, then, to make a complaint? Write a letter to the FOSBA, incorporating the following information:

• The bill (or current regulation), including the bill number
• How the bill impacts your business
• How many other businesses, in your estimation, the bill impacts
• What the impact will be on the state of Florida, in dollars and cents, if the bill remains in effect

If it sounds like you have to do your homework to have your voice heard, you’re right. The new FOSBA office has a skeleton staff and currently can only review information that is well presented and complete. You may have to contact your state industry association (Click here for a link to a live Yahoo list of trade associations) to get the information or make the contacts you need; but you can rest assured that, at the least, every legitimate complaint will be presented for review.

Sue A. Evans

Catch the Vision, Part 1

Our little corner of Northwest Florida is making great strides in examining, in a truly objective way, the public perception that a tangled bureaucracy constitutes our local government system.  The Pensacola News Journal (www.pnj.com)  featured a number of articles and a survey on September 7, 2008, that addressed that very issue as it pertains to Pensacola.  The data presented in the survey (funded by the Better Pensacola Forum) supported the argument that residents are generally discouraged.  One statistic, in fact, stated that 31% of those surveyed said they were likely to move from the Pensacola area within the next 5 years.  Their reasons?  Eighty-one percent said “poor leadership, vision, and action.”  Having concluded, through a general expression of citizen frustration, that whatever we were doing wasn’t working, government entities are working hard to restructure and dismantle legislative and administrative systems that could possibly be stifling economic growth.

In my position as Business Resource Specialist at NWFlorida BIC, I see a number of organizations making serious progress and looking at difficult issues that affect this community.  But what I don’t see is the enthusiasm or excitement being passed on to the average citizen or average business owner.  Our citizens have a perception that no one cares and that nothing is being done.   Unfortunately, “Perception is reality until proven otherwise.”

The changes that are being made IS the best news in town; let’s pull out the megaphone and let people know that we are on our way to becoming a community where people WANT to live!   My next few blog postings will unveil some great new ideas that organizations and individuals have created to spur change in this community. My hope is that YOU will catch the vision, spread the good news, and help our region become the jewel of the Emerald Coast.

Sue A. Evans