Introduction

I‘m Wavell Cowan, co-founder and dean of the Vermont Small Business Training Center.

Our pathway will require you to think in a new way if the ideas and the routines needed to run a small business successfully are to be learned. First, its important to appreciate that there are certain fundamental beliefs and practices that apply quite broadly to all small businesses. Furthermore, these beliefs and practices are quite different from anything to be found in large businesses. It took me a considerable time to fully realize the significance of this. So you may not have given it much thought.

What I discovered is that most small business people, like myself, are driven by a desire for the freedom and satisfaction that comes from being their own boss. They have confidence in themselves and enjoy meeting the challenges of running their own business. They want to make enough money to survive comfortably, but achieving excellence in what they do is the top priority governing decision-making, not “maximizing” profit. That is, they understand that making money is a by-product of achieving excellence and not in itself the primary purpose of their business.

What I also discovered is that small businesses that survive, again like myself, have learned to do some things quite well, but mostly do not fully understand just why these things are actually working. The flip side is that other things they do quite poorly, largely because they haven’t really given them much thought. Again it took a long time for me to come to an understanding of these things and to start applying them in my own business.

The problem that I came to appreciate is that the business ideas to which we are exposed in normal business courses or conferences or in more casual reading have everything to do with how “large” businesses operate and almost nothing to do with how small businesses can best function. In other words, small businesses are a different species of business and are best operated in ways quite different from large businesses.

What I’d like now is for you to complete the indicated reading assignments. This will provide you an opportunity to give more thought to the idea of the small business as a unique species that needs to operate in a quite different manner from that defined by the dominant business model – a model applicable only to large businesses.

When you’ve done that, please come back and visit with me for the FINALE.