When you do business as a solo small business owner, you alone are responsible for every aspect of the business.
If there are breakdowns in your product sales, customer relations, or financial management, there's no one to shake a finger at except the guy in the mirror.
Now in a typical "regular" business, each of the employee managers that handle a department like those mentioned above will be scrutinized and evaluated in their performance.
They gain a reputation for, not necessarily their departmental knowledge, but their actual performance – the ability to turn their knowledge into output that can be tracked and measured.
But in a solo small business, there are not separate individual managers responsible for the many different operations that must happen.
If something breaks down, the solo owner has no departmental manager to go to when a solution is sought.
In fact, sometimes the business owner has difficulty in recognizing that there may be a problem brewing on the horizon.
He may be so involved in the business, so close to the problem, that he fails to see that he will soon have a major issue that could have been corrected had it been identified and addressed sooner.
So what is the criteria against which a good solo business manager can be evaluated or judged to see if he can make the grade?
I believe he is judged by the market.
He has no way to be an objective judge of himself and his own performance.
What good does it do to have the business owner talk to himself about his mistakes and his need to solve some departmental problem?
No, instead, the market will be his judge. If he can keep sales on track, if he can meet his business goals, he can feel satisfied that his performance is adequate.
In a solo business, performance is always the bottom line.
A good solo business manager is one that sets optimistic but achievable goals for his business in terms of sales and net income, and then manages the business in whatever way he can to meet his goals.
Solo business owners, particularly those who have no previous private sector business experience, are bound to make some faulty assumptions, poor decisions, and counterproductive strategy moves.
Management is not an exact science and the solo operator can only hope to do no better than to overcome his mistakes and still reach his business goals.
The great thing about solo business, though, is that the risk of failure can be minimized.
Owners can set up their business with minimal financial investment. They can control the upfront costs and long term commitments.
Smart owners will outsource much of what they do, so there will be no employees to fire if things don't go well.
Inventory costs can be kept minimal (or even be non-existent) depending upon the type of business products sold. (A real advantage of information businesses!)
Do you have what it takes to run a solo business?
Or maybe a better question is this: "Can you execute a small business into a profit machine?"
