A few years ago, we wrote about the importance of pivoting for small businesses. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2 out of 10 businesses fail in their first year. To beat the odds, small businesses and startups must flex one of the few advantages they have over bigger businesses: flexibility. Why is this a small business superpower? Generally, it takes a small or boutique business a shorter period to decide and then execute. When the industry or market shifts in a particular direction, instead of scheduling a series of meetings or sending countless emails to work up the management hierarchy, small businesses can often get right to work and finish in a fraction of the time.

One of the highlights of the post included “DE’s Rules of Entrepreneurship” of which there were four.

Honestly, we could have written forty, but that would have been too many. Still, it’s clear to us that four is not nearly enough. So, we’re writing to add one more to the list and make it a nice even (odd) set of five rules. You’re welcome.

1. Do Dope Work. This should be self-explanatory, but if it isn’t, allow us to explain. If you bake cakes, create custom designer eyewear, or help people be better plant parents, do it. Do it really good! Whether you have one client, two customers, or three active subscribers, your first priority is to be awesome at what you do. Everything else is secondary.
2. Deliver Great Service. The customer is always right, and when they aren’t, it’s still incumbent on you to deliver excellent customer service. If you are a small business, regardless of what industry you’re in, you’re in the people business. And by and large, people want to patronize places where they are treated with respect and dignity. So, even when you find yourself in disharmony with a client or customer, do your best to rectify that situation without breaking things or using expletives.
3. Tell Your Story. The Achilles’ heel of many small businesses is our failure to tell our story. For some, the reason is a lack of knowledge of how to. For others, it’s the complex equation of managing finite resources. For most, it’s because you’re so busy running a business that you don’t have the bandwidth to tell others how good, great, or amazing you are at what you do. Cut that out. Find the time, find the money (or learn the ropes), and tell the world who you are, what you do, and why they should work with you.
4. Focus on the Big Picture (and the small details). If you’re too busy fulfilling orders or servicing customers, and you can’t be bothered to keep up with market shifts or sea changes, then you’re destined to go the way of the dodo (Blockbuster, Circuit City, Xerox). Make time to know what’s going on in your industry, understand the trends, and pay attention to how those trends may affect your brand. One facet of this is talking to your customers and learning what they want and need and how you can deliver it.
5. Pay Now, or Pay More Later. Starting a business is a huge endeavor regardless of how good or great you are at what you do. But chances are, you aren’t great at the business of what you do. For example, you may be a great chef, but when it comes time to managing personnel, operations, marketing, and budgeting, can you cook and balance the other tasks? Every opportunity to hire help doesn’t mean you have to get the platinum package. But skipping out on hiring an attorney to assist with intellectual property protection and contracts, or an accountant to manage payroll, or a manager to manage can cost you more in the long run. While there is no one-size-fits-all approach for when or how to hire help, the rule of thumb is that everybody needs somebody, sometimes.