Employees! Can’t work without them:  Pick me, Pick Me!  There are only so many hours in a day and running a small business takes up the majority of those hours.  There is so much to do and there never seems to be enough time to do it.  As a business owner I am committed to experience sleepless nights and infrequent thoughts of failure coupled with the occasional bit of envy for those 9-5ers.  I also rejoice from the accomplishments of my hard work with satisfaction and accept the spurts of recognition success can bring.   However I do get to worry about finances, customer accounts and taxes but I also reap the benefits of paid accounts and good sales.  I have the opportunity to enjoy a cornucopia of emotional lows and highs; from the heart dropping big customer lost to the rush of adrenaline that comes with a big sale.  I am committed to this business.

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If you didn’t happen to inherit a successful business or start your own business somewhere along the way but would like to, I have the following suggestions and experiences to consider.

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Show me the money.  My husband and I started this business in 1996 with the expectation of making money and the ease of working for ourselves.  We made money but getting there wasn’t as easy as some may believe.  Like many other self sufficient small business owners, we are not millionaires and like many small businesses owners we probably never will be.

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 The phone company and the yellow pages:  - let your money do the walking.   As a local business owner I always thought advertising in the local phone book was a good idea. In the beginning it was costly for a small business like mine, but at the same time yellow book advertising could be extremely profitable for us and them.  When we started yellow page ads, over 9 years ago, most people would naturally reach for a phone book to look up local business services rather then reaching for the keyboard. The ads always prompted phone calls when the books first hit the streets, so we started advertising in several phone books: but our main audience remained in our local market which was owned, at that time, by GTE.  GTE now Verizon was one of the last phone companies to relinquish yellow page book control and eventually it was the last phone book we advertised in. 

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