There Are Few New Problems
One of the paradoxes of owning and operating a small business is that it can feel really lonely. Even if you have lots of employees and customers, no one else knows what it’s like to sit in the owner’s seat, often get paid last, keep everything from going off the rails, and have no thought partner when it comes to thinking about risk and opportunity.
This is a challenge we hear about from business owners time and time again. In fact, we were in Cincinnati recently for a potential deal and asked the owner what he was looking for in a partner. His answer? “Someone to help me think through growth and scaling and who has done it before in this and other industries. Because I don’t have that context or experience.”
It was a good, self-aware answer because our experience is that when it comes to business, and small business in particular, there are few, if any, truly new problems. Rather, it’s the same challenges arising over and over again in new contexts, sure, but where the same solution can still apply. This is where having a trusted network helps. Trust, of course, matters because in order to accept help you need to be able to let it be known that you don’t know how to do something – and that’s hard. But if you have someone to ask about a problem and that person knows the answer and you take that answer and run with it, you’ll get better faster.
NPR did a story recently on “boomerang CEOs.” These are people such as Bob Iger (Disney), Howard Schultz (Starbucks), and Michael Dell (Dell) who were CEOs of a big business, then stopped being the CEO of that business only to return as CEO of that business. Leadership guru Cindy Solomon said during that story that the reason this is so is because big companies (like many small ones) are underinvesting in leadership development at the highest levels because “The perception is that by the time you reach that C-suite level, you really should have all of the skills you need, and by golly if you don’t, don’t let on.”
The problem, of course, is not not having the skills, but rather not letting on!
One of the most successful things we did this year was host all of our portfolio CEOs in Columbia, MO, to talk and share best practices. Our only guidance to them was to be honest about the states of their businesses. Not only did the conversations go well then, but they’ve continued into the present and the benefits of being an SMB operator that’s able to bounce ideas off of another SMB operator are real.
When something goes well, we immediately think about how we might scale it. Where that landed with this is something we’re calling Main Street Summit that we’re hosting here in Columbia in November. The goal is to bring together as many SMB owners, operators, and investors as we can to learn, get better, and create connections so that everyone can go back to work and no longer feel lonely, but instead have a trusted network in tow.
If that’s you or someone you know, we’d love to have you join us. I promise that someone there will know how to solve your problem if you’re willing and able to ask.
– By Tim Hanson