Many of the folks who follow this business page are friends as well as clients.  It is from that relational platform that makes that seemingly innocuous question difficult to answer.  The nine month anniversary of the official transition from partnership to sole proprietorship comes up tomorrow.  This post will seek to answer this question honestly without being heavy on specific proprietary models.

 

As an essentially pure free marketeer ideologically, I don’t concern myself much with competition.  The culture of this business is narrow niches served, and I seek to build a business through a reliable sustained base rather than to raise sales and trade through unsustainable marketing gimmicks.  It’s all about relationships, and what I learned 25 years ago in my first business (I was a Domino’s Pizza franchisee back when they had a good product and a good business model) are as true now as they were then.  What’s more, what works in a small business will work in any small business.  My goal every day when I go into the shop is to do at least one single thing that makes the business better at the end of the day than it was at its beginning.

 

The short answer is that business is good.  June and July have been the best 2 months since I assumed total control of the shop.  We’ve (while I no longer have business partners there are key collaborators) looked to first define and categorize the business into 3 separate niches, and then market and develop those niches separately.  It’s a 180 degree shift from a reactionary approach, which is really no plan at all, and towards a defined response to shifts and changes in the niche markets that we serve.  The exciting thing is that it very much remains a work in progress.  It is a desire to continue to ‘drill down’ on marketing, and institute planning to every aspect of the business.  In many ways it is an approach that runs counter to the western corporate culture of bottom line results oriented management.

 

We will be all about PROCESS.  It is slow, disciplined, and sometimes painful.  It is also consistent with the faith I profess and desire to live out.  There are no ‘aspects’ of my life or separate purposes, and this will be a business of relationships and service.

Gene