Small Business Wish List
It is a short but powerful reminder of what’s important to small businesses.
By Maria Meyers

Gift giving and receiving is on most people’s minds during this holiday season. A small business owner’s wish list is short but deep, and extends way past the holidays.

Whether an early start-up or an established company, any wish list most likely includes items from these five categories:

Money
Some call it the “root of all evil,” but for small business owners, knowing how to establish and manage a good financial base is the “root of all success.” Financing is usually at the top of any wish list.

Money-related needs vary, but they always include how to find and obtain basic business financing to launch or grow a business. Although options depend on many factors, “free grants” are rarely an answer. Most grants are for nonprofit organizations, not small businesses. Be careful of advertisements promoting “free money for your business.” The government does offer a few, very targeted grants to companies developing certain technologies, but these are difficult and time-consuming to obtain.

Other wished-for gifts include knowing how to manage accounting functions and cash flow, understand financial reporting requirements and create and manage profitability. Here’s a helpful holiday hint: Purchases of some equipment in December can be depreciated for the full year, resulting in tax savings.

Ringing Phones
Small business owners often wish for an easy answer to selling their product or service—an ever-present challenge. Sales is really just one component of marketing, a comprehensive area that includes the product or service, its target markets and distribution channels, pricing issues, promotion and sales. Broadly called “business development,” these components are interrelated, and the answers are specific to each business or industry.

Hint: Sometimes customers have “use it or lose it” budgets tied to the end of a calendar year. Help them spend all they need to before January 1. It’s a win-win situation. Remember to thank all of your customers at year-end. Tell them how much you appreciate their business.

Business Basics
People launch small businesses for many reasons, often because the owners love doing a certain thing and want to be independent. New entrepreneurs may not know a lot about the business of running a business, so their wish list often includes a plea for help with business basics.

These basics can run the gamut from the big “where do I get started” question through nitty-gritty issues such as licenses, registrations, insurance and other legal requirements. Staffing and legal issues also are important.

Hint: Look into Minority Business Enterprise (MBE), Women Business Enterprise
(WBE) and other certifications that can help you compete in new and bigger playing fields on city, state and federal levels. Cultivate happy employees by honoring, respecting and remembering them with special recognition and gifts this holiday season.

Time
Small business owners often cite time as one of their biggest needs and challenges. They’re always wishing for more time each day. They juggle the competitive demands of ownership—including finances, employees and legal issues—with sales, promotion, staying in touch with industry trends, pricing issues, governmental regulations and more. And, that’s just in the workplace. Unfortunately, time for home, family and community often takes last place.

Hint: Change your time patterns. Don’t just prioritize your schedule, but schedule your priorities, including those that involve family, friends and community.

Road Map
Entrepreneurs wish fervently for a “road map” that can be a constant guide and reference. Actually, the key to realizing all the other wishes, this gift should move to the top of the list. The “road map” is the company’s business plan, and creating it is the first step to success for every small business owner.

Although many owners do not want to spend the time developing one, the business plan charts the path to money, marketing and business education. Time spent in developing a good business plan saves owners precious time every day.
Hint: Do an end-of-year inventory of your business, including products, equipment and supplies, but also include the business plan and the business itself. Revise as needed for the New Year.

The Gift
Small business owners often feel that owning a business is a “lonely place,” but this does not have to be the case. In the Kansas City region, all of these gifts can become a reality for small business owners, because help is readily available in each wished-for category.

The small business community in our broad 18-county region already has a wealth of nonprofit organizations that can provide every imaginable type of business-building service. Many for-profit organizations also deliver professional services specifically targeted to small businesses.

Hint: Whatever support and assistance a small business owner needs at any time is right here. It is available, easily accessed and affordable.

And, for all small businesses in retail—remember, January is coming!

Maria Meyers, Network Builder, leads the KCSourceLink team. KCSourceLink is an initiative of the Henry W. Bloch School of Business and Public Administration at UMKC, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the U.S. Small Business Administration. There is no cost involved in using KCSourceLink’s network services.

For more information, contact KCSourceLink at www.kcsourcelink.com, at the hotline phone numbers at (816) 235-6500 or (866) 870-6500 or by e-mail at .