For small business owners who are already running a business (as well as for those desiring to start a small business), this book strives to serve as an executive guide that will concisely fill in some of the critical gaps in your managerial knowledge and skills. As we will discuss later in the background section, years of expert consultation with small business owners led to the determination of the topics covered within these pages.
Background
Under a grant from the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), the authors conducted an intensive weeklong pilot program for 30 small business owners. The program content consisted of all of the topics presented in this book, along with several others. However, program participants expressed in program evaluations and subsequent contacts that the topics included in this book were the most useful and had the most impact when applied to their businesses.
In the aftermath of the pilot program, the authors conducted a 12-city tour to cities in every corner of the continental United States, as well as Alaska. Focusing, during that tour, only on the topics that proved most useful in the pilot program, the authors received rave reviews from small business owners in every city (and were asked to return to two cities to repeat the program).
Like you, the participants in these programs were very busy small business owners. In the case of the pilot program, these owners set aside an entire week to devote uninterrupted time and efforts to learning (and catching up on) how to properly manage their ventures. Participants in the tour program only spent a day covering the content, but found the time to have been highly beneficial.
The pilot program and the tour led to a series of programs that focused on the same content (and sometimes other advanced coverage). In some instances, the format of these programs was the same as for the pilot program (intensive weeklong programs); while, in other cases, programs were spread over several weeks, with a full day having been devoted each week to a single topic. These sessions were conducted with small business owners and were continuously refined over a period of almost a decade. Now you have the opportunity to benefit from the content presented to your counterparts over the years, with the added benefit that you can maintain a copy of the coverage for your reference whenever you find the need.
Pat Roberson-Saunders, Editor
Author: Chapter 1 (Introduction) and Appendices (Break-even Analysis, Legal Business Structures, and Intellectual Property Protection)
Barron H. Harvey
Author: Chapters 5 and 6 (Managing Cash Flow and Managing Costs)
Philip Fanara, Jr.
Author: Chapter 3 (Financing)
Gwynette P. Lacy
Author: Chapter 2 (Strategic Planning)
Pravat Choudhury
Author: Chapter 4 (Marketing)