Fitness

How fit is your small business? I would suggest that your business is only as fit as the people in charge. Like people, businesses can get sick. Some are even chronically sick. Just as people become lathargic, fat and unhealthy due to lack of exercise, so do businesses become unhealthy and unfit when the business does not sufficiently and regularly increase the energy levels of the business.

How can you "increase the energy levels" of your business? By investing time and (money if you have it?) into education, innovation, technology, marketing, greening, brand imaging and other similar workouts. Just like your gym workouts, your small business' heart pumping, sweat inducing, strength building workouts must be preceded by a warm up session, and concluded by a cool down period. That is just a fancy way of saying proceed cautiously as you embark on allocating capital. Know what needs the most work and create a triage. The goal is to get beyond the status quo. But in this economy, you have to get an okay from the "doctor" before you go full throttle into something, before you spend money in a certain area. Remember the ultimate goal: CUSTOMER SATISFACTION. What will get you there with the minimal pain and maxium gain?

Get the fire of Prometheus under your belly and give your inner mogul a workout. Start brainstorming about how to make your company as "fit" as it can be. A small business owner has to continually strive to move the business from one level to a higher level. That means you have to intensify the workout. Always think: Get to the next level. Do not remain static. But do things gradually to prevent "burn out" or injury.

By the way, what is your "Noodle score?" I was just reading about a new startup who, using Google like algorithms, can predict your "Noodle score." No, it has nothing to do with pasta. It is about using certain criterion to predict the "worth of your company." Have you heard of it? You should log on and input your info. Your company may be worth a cool million already. Hey, you never know.

Opportunity

A smart small business owner knows that success often comes down to the ability to exploit opportunities as they come knocking – and also knows that sometimes, if opportunity does not knock, he must sculpt it out of nothing.

The thing with opportunity is that it is often disguised as a crisis or problem and one’s natural inclination in a crisis or problem is to wait it out, hope to be rescued, or run for cover. It is the few who, after a major crisis or problem, will act as rescuers. And it is they who rightfully call the shots. They often create a triage in this case, and those of us who waited to be rescued are completely at the mercy of our rescuer’s judgment and sense of equity.

Take for example, the current mortgage crisis, the current mess that the economy is in. Most people are sitting around with their mouths open trying to make sense of a phenomenon that probably will never make much sense. Most people are feeling gloomy and negative. Many are feeling depressed and devastated – at least financially. Still others are full of anger and blame – If Clinton hadn’t repealed Glass Steagall we wouldn’t be in this mess; if Alan Greenspan hadn’t reduced interest rates to 1% we wouldn’t be in this mess; if Wall Street hadn’t securitized all those mortgages, we wouldn’t be in this mess; if it wasn’t for globalization we wouldn’t be in this mess; if it wasn’t for the War in Iraq we wouldn’t be in this mess…the excuses go on and on.

But there are a few people who, while the rest of us are busy analyzing that which cannot be analyzed, are busy trying to figure out how to make something good, how to reap a crop, out of a very bad soil.

They are looking for OPPORTUNITY. They are looking to see if there are economies of scale in distressed properties, they are looking to see what stocks they can pick up on the dirt cheap, they are looking to see what new technologies they can develop to exploit new and emergent markets that will literally self-pollinate as a result of these economic challenges, they are forming new consulting firms to assist the government and borrowers with finding solutions to the problem....they are creating new hedge funds. Sounds crazy, doesn't it?

They are not covering their heads. They are not twiddling their thumbs. They are revved up, turbo-charged, motivated and energized. Crisis? What crisis?

A smart small business owner is able to exploit even the worse situations and come out with a net gain from the opportunities seized.