Common mistakes can kill your small business, but most of them can be easily corrected or avoided.
Today’s Bad Example: Bad Location
All business depend on location to some extent. Even if your small business is just you, the location affects your work! More often, we think of retail and food businesses that depend on walk-in traffic. Small towns especially have limits on the number and quality of usable business locations.
Many small businesses labor to overcome a bad location, with many small town small businesses operating from off-the-beaten-path or a run-down structure. Why? Because of the costs of a better location. Not only the rental or purchase cost of the new place, but also the cost in effort and expense for moving. It’s also possible that no suitable locations are available in your small town.
Solutions
Put careful planning into the first or next location of your small business. You may find some useful ideas from our friend Isabel M. Isidro, who has a wonderful article on Finding the Right Location for your Small Business.
In a small town, you might wait years for a better location to open up. You might need to build a new location, or invest in remodeling an older structure in a great location. Don’t underestimate the power of personal relationships. You may need to invest patient work to acquire a prime spot by convincing reluctant owners to sell.
Do you have examples?
Together, we are going to try to help each other out of these most common, deadly mistakes. You can use real world examples, real small businesses. Write it up, take a picture, or shoot a short video. Take care not to embarrass the offenders! Key point: include suggestions on how to do it right!
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Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband have a small cattle ranch and are lifelong entrepreneurs. Becky is an international speaker on small business and rural topics.
I’m not in small biz – but I did want to say happy new year, Becky!
To add – even though I’m not in small biz, your blog has some great tips to help me with what I do!
Paul, thank you not only for the well wishes, but also for the compliment! I’m glad you dropped by, and thank you for continuing to stretch my thinking with your writing.