Small Business Mystique
Over the past few years, I’ve been observing various ways in which ideas and concepts spread as it’s a highly critical aspect to launching a new product or service. After all, if a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around… (although, as Alex observed in a comment on the last post, simply getting the tree to fall is not as simple as it may seem)… This has generally led me to pay attention to various forms of marketing–grassroots, traditional, public relations and so forth. It’s interesting to look behind successful new product launches and break down the seemingly organic happenstance to the concrete blocks of work and planning by the company to create product awareness–carefully solicited interviews, well placed news releases, aggressive PR firms that manage to land 12 articles in 12 different trade magazines that just happen to have, word for word, the same content and so forth. Even (perhaps especially) the mythical “grassroots” form of marketing is, well, marketing and seemingly organic groundswell from the masses is often seeded by company employees, if not just outright faked and “astroturfed”.
Still, I am increasingly noticing various forms of business marketing that comes inherent to the business. Individual real estate agents, for example, do a pathetic job of marketing (except for the few that do aggressive business); however, the industry as a whole markets for themselves. “Pick an agent–any agent…but don’t be so foolish as to think you can navigate the complexities of real estate without a professional” (even if they only have 2 weeks of training courses and spent more years in lockup than in high school). Similarly, related industries market for each other…talk to a real estate agents and most will refer you to the one and only mortgage broker who can close your loan in thirty days; try getting pre-qualified through a lender to shop “For Sale By Owner” properties and you will get a (probably unknowngly) pre-canned spiel about the absolute necessity of using an agent.
Small business as a whole tends to use this concept. Shop at any small business, and you will, sooner or later, come across what I call as the “Gospel of Small Business”. This is the standard sales pitch for using small businesses–great service, more personable relations, more knowledgeable staff, identity and uniqueness, “not some faceless corporate blob”, yada, yada, yada. This is the small business mystique that small business owners live on and perpetuate, not necessarily consciously.
Now, don’t misunderstand me. I’m a big fan of small business; I prefer the small business environment, by and large, as both a consumer and a producer. There are a number of reasons for this, but it mostly comes down to three facts:
- Most of my working life has revolved around small business.
- I feel that a society of small businesses is a better society than a society of large businesses and can have more equitable wealth and power distribution, not through some artificial means (a la socialism), but through individuals empowering themselves.
Still, I’m often disappointed with small businesses. Too many shout the mantra but don’t really care about the customer experience–all too often, I deal with small businesses either as a consumer or on a business to business level and end up saying “they make it too difficult to do business with them”.
Yesterday I visited a local pharmacy to get a prescription filled and, after three visits over the course of 7 hours to pick it up (with no courtesy phone call), ended up leaving and getting it filled at the Kroger pharmacy in 20 minutes.
I think that small businesses have a few weaknesses that hinder them in a capitalistic marketplace:
- As a company, they often don’t have a driving goal to “grow”. Without the lash of investors, many small business owners get to a comfortable income level and give only occasional thoughts to growth and expansion. Rather than aggressively streamline workflows and productize their processes to ready themselves for expansion, they are often content once they reach a certain income level to just do “business as usual” day in, day out. Most development in these companies, unfortunately, only comes as a response to a loss of business….
- Although some professional firms (law, architectural, etc…) are better at this, too many small businesses provide no real growth opportunities for their employees. Ambitious employees at large business usually have a lot of room to go up; on the other hand; if your boss is the owner and a healthy 35 (as is often the case in small businesses), ambition is usually stunted in short order. This is especially true in business that aren’t growth driven; with no company growth, salaries grow slowly, if at all and employees are often left with less room for personal growth.
This is not universal–I am grateful to have cut my teeth in small business environments (even ones somewhat guilty of the #1 and #2 above) where I picked up skills and opportunities that I wouldn’t have learned in the corporate world until I had spent 20 years working my way up the ladder. Many small businesses do deliver the “small business mystique”–and many chant it all the louder to make up for their deficiencies. Most could definitely be more aggressive about streamlining their processes and improving the customer experience. I like more personable customer service (most of the time), but I also value my time–stretching a 5 minute in-and-out errand into a 30 minute hassle is never fun, no matter how personable the business is for the process.