Feb 24 2009
Sweat Equity Builds Small Businesses
Invest time, talent, and muscle in your dreams
The small business owner needs to do 1001 jobs.
At any given time on any given day, you may be a cashier, a janitor, a plumber, a bookkeeper, a salesperson, a customer service rep, a buyer, a shelf stocker. You may be writing a grant proposal or a business plan, applying for a bank loan or looking for venture capital.
To get your business off the ground, you wear so many hats at once, you look like a pagoda.
This is sometimes called “sweat equity.” You are investing your time, your muscle, and your knowledge to build capital.
Sweat equity is smart business.
WHAT DO YOU KNOW?
It is just as important to know when to hire someone else to do the work.
Even if you run a one person shop, you’ll never be able to do it all yourself. The trick is to hire out the right tasks – not just the boring ones.
You may have an MBA. You can write a successful loan application in your sleep, get an SBA grant without breaking a sweat, and read a prospectus as easily as a comic book.
And lucky you – you grew up with a father who was an electrician and a mother who was a plumber.
When you open your store – you can do all the managerial tasks and you can put in the fixtures.
But you can’t draw a straight line with a ruler, you’re color blind, and you wouldn’t know a serif font from a baptismal font. You’d better not do your own ads.
In this situation, a smart business person will recognize not only the need for advertising but also the importance of hiring a talented artist or copywriter. Offer your clientele only your best – which may very well mean contracting with someone who can do it better than you.
Evaluate each job with an eye on the bottom line. Can you invest your time instead of your money? Will the return be worth the effort? Or would you make more money in the end by hiring someone else to do the work?
INVEST IN YOUR BUSINESS
When I owned a garden store, I used to sweep the sidewalk every morning. You might see that as a menial task, better left to minimum wage or pick up labor.
But it got me out front, where I could see and talk to my customers. It gave me a street-side perspective on what passers-by saw when they walked or drove by. It told my neighbors (both business and residential) that I cared about our common good. And I enjoyed the feeling of proprietary pride I got standing in my doorway at the start of each business day.
You invest far more than money in your business. Find the magic balance between what you can do and what you can afford not to do. You’ll not only be more prosperous, you’ll be happier.
Photo by by world_waif Released under Creative Commons License
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