Spatula II
The first Upsize B.Y.O.S. party was a success. That stands for bring your own spatula.
Readers may recall the editor’s note in our first issue, October 2002, in which I cited an escape from silly meetings as one benefit to starting a small business. My whipping boy was the spatula meeting at my old job, where department heads talked about who would bring utensils to the company picnic, and other heady topics.
One year later we had our Upsize company picnic, and it took 14 minutes and zero meetings to plan. We got a miniature plastic spatula, a brand new one with the tag still on, and an illustration of one from John Bush, who draws our Dear Informer cartoon every issue.
And I realized: We’ve been slinging advice for a year now at Upsize, working to help small-business owners build bigger and more profitable companies. I’ve learned a ton from our sources, and I hope you have too. This issue is packed with advice from more than 20 local business experts and more than a dozen local CEOs. Some of the year’s best wisdom:
Just do business. Everyone griped about the economy all year, and with good reason. But Karen Oman of Certes Financial Pros had a refreshing take. She says she geared her pricing structure and overhead to bad times. “We have decided that this is the economy for the rest of our lives. We’ll just go for it,” Oman says.
One size doesn’t fit all. Carla Bainbridge works for her piece of a huge market, employee selection, with Predictive Profiles. Burned in the past, she’s determined to not raise outside money, opting to hack out her corner customer by customer. By contrast Phil Soran launched his second company, Compellent Technologies, armed with more than $9 million in venture capital but without a developed product. Their approaches and networks are opposite, but their determination the same.
Keep it simple. We’ve featured all kinds of small-business owners. They include Janet Dryer who runs the 90-employee Help/Systems and generates $50 million in annual revenue, to Mike Cleary, who posts about $3 million a year at Coridian Technologies with fewer than 10 people. Their tactics seem simple. Dryer emphasizes employee excellence. Cleary focuses on customer relations. Anyone in business knows it’s more complicated than that, but targeting a few concepts and really working them can get results.
Reach out. Hundreds of business owners, experts, contributors and advertisers have helped Upsize since we started, both with the magazine itself and with advice for us as owners of a young business. Meanwhile our readers are helping each other out all the time. They call to congratulate someone listed in our contact box, or give a free seminar to educate other business owners, or get involved in helping owners with limited resources. “That’s what small-business owners do,” says one. “We help each other.”
It’s only your life’s savings. Growing a business can be overwhelming. But Linda Hall Whitman of MinuteClinic advises small-business owners to keep our companies in perspective. “At the end of the day, it’s really a gift to be alive and have friends and have health and business is a piece of that, but it is not the whole thing,” she says.
Thank you for the astute advice and generous help, in this special issue and in the past year’s worth. Now, can anyone tell me what to do with all these spatulas?
— Beth Ewen, editor and co-founder
bewen@upsizemag.com
