Starting with fifty dollars or starting with five hundred thousand, a small business owner must, must, must have a handle on his finances if his business is going to survive You don't need a degree in accounting to apply common sense or to take good advice

No, this is not your mother talking This is a hard-nosed, long-time businessman who has watched many small businesses fail and a few succeed

Whether a small business owner is a one-man show or has a staff of twenty, his business success depends as much on how he manages the business as on any other factor Management is defined as coordinating the actions of the people in a business to achieve the desired results: high sales, loyal customers, and profits sufficient for personal comfort and business expansion

Pricing in a small business is far more art than science For one thing, small businesses tend to change much more rapidly than larger businesses

You can learn all the techniques, tricks, and procedures of any and every aspect of business, but unless you understand quality, you will always be fighting an uphill battle The problem is not that quality is hard to understand, but that most small business owners pay it little attention

Some small business owners plan to the smallest detail, sometimes planning themselves into a nervous breakdown from long hours and stress Others are completely impulsive, shouting orders madly and cursing the dolts who didn't order enough whatchamacallits

Of the many basic lies of business, one of the most destructive is that production has to trade off between quality and quantity in order to maximize profit Acting on this false principle almost guarantees that a small business will only grow slowly, and not very far

A well-trained staff is more efficient and more productive and produces higher quality than a haphazardly or inconsistently trained staff An untrained staff that is supposed to figure it all out on their own is a nightmare on the way to a disaster

Time is a funny animal Time can fly, and it can crawl

Promotion is not the same as marketing Promotion of a small business encompasses all methods of getting the word about your small business out into the community