Business Isn't Rocket Science - Unless You are Making Rockets

Business can't be rocket science!

Who are some of the most successful entrepreneurs? Many of them dropped out of school or have been laid off from work in the past. Bill Gates never finished university, and children everywhere continue to quote example as evidence of why they shouldn't finish their homework. It is similar stories to this that have created the urban legion that "C" students own small business, "B" students work for the large corporations and government, and "A" students work for the "C" students.

If these successful entrepreneurs were so-called failures by society's standards at one point in time - wouldn't business have to be easy for them to be so good at it?

Business is easy. A business owner just has to do things that make sense in order to be successful.

So why doesn't everyone do this? The challenge is that business has achieved its own stereotype of being complicated. When an individual approaches a business problem, instead of pursuing the route that makes sense, they often think it should be more complicated. They follow what others have done for different businesses that have worked, as opposed to just sitting down and thinking about if it makes sense for them.

One example I've seen time and time again is a small business instantly using SEO (search engine optimization). Let's pretend that the company is a local barber who thinks that to promote their business they simply need to be ranked highly on Google's search engine. But if you are trying to target local clientele, your time and money is better spent putting up flyers at the local coffee shop or community centre. A barber shop trying to market their service through SEO has gotten wrapped up in what other companies where doing and talking about. SEO really didn't make sense for their business. This is just one example.

How do you ensure that you are doing things that make business sense?

First, do a quick numbers check for every business decision. If you aren't making money on something, you shouldn't do it. Let's use the SEO example from above. In order to be ranked highly in SEO, you need lots of partners and other websites to link to you. This takes a lot of time to develop the partnerships, and it also can take money in order to put advertising links on directory pages. In addition, most people don't find a barbershop online. Alternatively, the flyers are 10 cents a black and white copy, and are in the same location as the target market. When doing the numbers using both time and money, the flyers comes out as the better decision.

Second, re-consider your basic assumptions. Again with the SEO and the barbershop, the barber had assumed that all companies need a webpage, all webpages are designed to need SEO to be found on search engines, and that people search for a barber online. If we look at these three assumptions, we can see that they may not be logical. Most people find their barber since they are in the neighbourhood, the webpage could be used for people to book appointments or to have store hours, or maybe the barber doesn't even need a webpage.

By doing the numbers and testing basic assumptions, the barber would make better business decisions.

Remember, business is easy. And this really isn't rocket science - unless you are making rockets.