Where do you go for help when starting a business?

[Jim Briggs]

Hi, I'm new to this forum and I'm developing a service to help small businesses develop and test their business ideas.

I've mostly worked with "scalable startups"--startups that want to create big businesses. The "scalable startup" crowd "appears" sophisticated, knows the buzz words (not necessarily a good thing), and goes to meetups and startup weekends. My interest, however, lies in helping people who are starting microbusinesses or just smaller scale, not necessarily tech businesses.

In the "scalable startup" world, there are TONs of sites, blogs, and forums where you can go for help and, importantly, participate. I think of Quora in particular. But when it comes to microbusinesses, I don't see the same set of online places people can go.

In this forum, people appear to be asking and answering honest questions without a lot of spam. And that's good.

I've just started to investigate, but so far I haven't seen one other place like this. There are some other forums, but all of them are mismanaged and drowning in spam.

So what's the deal? I don't see many good sources of help for microbusinesses especially when it comes to the give and take of online conversations. What am I missing? Where do people who want to start small businesses go for help? Where are the online discussions?

And here's a related question. There a plenty of gurus who are popular in the tech startup world. And active conversations often get initiated after blog posts. I think of Ash Maurya. But, again, I don't see any gurus in the microbusiness space--other than those who write books saying how easy it easy to start a business--with no money!

What am I missing? Otherwise the conclusion would be that microbusinesses are underserved by the web.

[KristineS]

I think it depends on the industry. The company for which I work deals with garment decoration specifically machine embroidery and sublimation supplies. People starting businesses in this world tend to gravitate toward organizations like the National Network of Embroidery Professionals or Facebook groups centered around machine embroidery, or to company pages like the page EnMart has. We offer advice and answer questions there. A lot of businesses in the garment decoration world are relatively small, individually or family owned. Most of the mentoring is one and one with more experienced owners helping those just starting out.

As to where people go in general, I'm not sure. A lot of the advice I see tends to be specific to a certain industry.

[Harold Mansfield]

In this forum, people appear to be asking and answering honest questions without a lot of spam. And that's good.


I've just started to investigate, but so far I haven't seen one other place like this. There are some other forums, but all of them are mismanaged and drowning in spam.


So what's the deal? I don't see many good sources of help for microbusinesses especially when it comes to the give and take of online conversations. What am I missing? Where do people who want to start small businesses go for help? Where are the online discussions?

Um...you are having one right here.

Seems strange that you are asking "Where does one go?" on a place that people go.
There are resources for women in business, veterans, minority organizations, regional and community organizations and so on.

The Government is also a great resource:
SCORE (http://www.score.org/)
SBA (http://www.sba.gov/)
IRS (http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self-Employed/Starting-a-Business)
GSA (http://www.gsa.gov/portal/content/105221?utm_source=SBU&utm_medium=print-radio&utm_term=HP_03_Businesses_smallbusiness&utm_campaign=shortcuts)
Business.gov (http://business.usa.gov/)

Am I missing something? Is there specific information that you think people are looking for and not finding?

[Wozcreative]

I think what OP is looking for is an actual step by step guide on setting up a business.. and there isn't one. You would have to look to each individual industry to get a step by step instructions on starting a business. You will then have to pick out the product/service that the business is specializing in. (Ie, if you are in auto industry, maybe you specialize in just oil changes.. well then you need a guide that gets you a business for specifically that).

If you are looking for an easy way, it is probably best to take on a business and franchise it off. All the step by step guides are there, because they have been tried and proven to work.

Reminds me of those people that say "i want to start a business, anything will be good as long as it makes money"... if you know your industry, you know where to look for answers on how to start a business. As a freelancer, I went to freelance boards, freelance business sites, events, networks etc. Freelancing design is not cut out of the same "business plans" as a solo mechanic would be—so why would you expect it to be in the same place? Besides, if it was that easy, everyone would be running businesses! Instead the lazy fail when they don't figure out how to find the answers to the questions they haven't asked yet.

FYI - one site that I like specifically (not for it's design, but for relevance to my own work), is youinc.com created by Arlene Dickinson of Dragons Den and Venture Communications inc. There is no guidelines there, but there is just back and forth conversation that happens.

[Jim Briggs]

Thanks for the responses.

I agree with KristineS that different industries have different resources available and one should take advantage of them. But I also think the quality of online conversations would be improved by a large scale microbusiness Q&A site--at the same caliber and scale as Quora.

I think the step-by-step guides alluded to by the previous poster are useful and necessary, but you can't follow a recipe to have a successful business. Not anymore. There's an implicit message in the step-by-step guide: "follow it and you will succeed."

Case in point: There's a step-by-step guide on how to start a pet store, but as has been demonstrated in another conversation on this site (a plus for this forum), starting a pet store is very difficult given the current environment of online stores and other sources of competition.

In a world of abundance and the internet and global competition and commodization of everything, people who want to start tiny businesses need more help with being strategic and creative and experimental.

To say this another way, microbusinesses now need to think more like larger startups and employ techniques that are sometimes tagged as "lean", "customer discovery", "design thinking" and "innovation" in general. These techniques need to be translated to microbusiness. Tactical steps are being offered when stategic thinking is needed.

I'm not looking for startup help myself as was assumed by one of the repliers. I've had a successful business for well over a decade. (And I've rarely done anything step-by-step. Maybe three steps: build, measure, and learn.)

I don't know a lot about microbusiness, because I've been involved in big business. My perspective is skewed. I'm trying to figure out how I can help microbusinesses by more deeply understanding their unsatisfied needs and applying what I've learned along the way.

Am I wrong? Does this resonate with anyone?

[Harold Mansfield]

I don't know a lot about microbusiness, because I've been involved in big business. My perspective is skewed. I'm trying to figure out how I can help microbusinesses by more deeply understanding their unsatisfied needs and applying what I've learned along the way.

Am I wrong? Does this resonate with anyone?

From what I've observed a lot of Small Businesses are completely overwhelmed by the amount of things that they need to learn and do, and yet don't have the budget to hire someone for everything. Especially when it comes to the web, and marketing.

I don't know what the answer is. You can't make people do the work and get involved no matter how easy you make it for them.
But the ones that are involved and want to know, are hungry for knowledge and can be a very good market.

I've never been able to come up with a way to make them want to learn. Some people just aren't going to do it and get stuck in the fantasy that the only thing they need is to be online and the money will start rolling in.

So many people who claim they want to go into business for themselves, still think of it like an episode of Seinfeld: "All we need to do is build a slick website to get it online and yadda, yadda, yadda, we make bunch of money".

The internet has been a great equalizer for a lot of businesses, however, it has also spawned a generation of unrealistic people whose idea of going into business for themselves is racking their brains to come up with some Pinky and the Brain idea that will be a miracle money machine, rather than learning how to run and grow an actual business in order to get it there.

[Wozcreative]

Harold's post reminded me of someone who about a year ago contacted me and mentioned they used to "tinker" with graphic design in highschool. He now wanted to become a graphic designer and asked me to "update him". These people have NO HOPE! How can I possibly tell this person in a few sentences about how graphic design works now, and how to turn it into a professional business? If you expect to go to one resource and have the answers given to you on a plate, you are not from this planet. These people have no hope in life what so ever. I even consider it a COMPLETE disrespect to the industry I am in, you can't just wake up and become a graphic designer. It is impossible! These people need to go off on their own, learn for 5 years everything they can, and THEN come to someone and say, hey give me some tips on ABC or how should i do BCD. Don't start from ground zero and expect things to happen.

This type of mentality drives me so CRAZY!