The guru coaches and experts make starting and running an independent small business sound so easy that just about any fool can do it. Yes, we all believe them.
Let them speak to real business owners who are forced to live with landlords that push-up rentals every year. One small business owner I know lives in fear that his landlord will learn that he is doing well and push-up his rent. He’s devised sharp ways to keep the big bulldog at bay. Taking cash, running his business on word-of-mouth and keeping quiet as a church mouse about his sales.
A supplier knows you need raw materials of high quality and on-time deliveries. But he knows there are very few suppliers around so he sets out to chisel you by raising prices with feeble excuses or even no excuses at all. It’s simply his right.
A child care facility for special needs children comes in with a low-or monthly fee to get your business. Then when the owner knows she’s got you because there are few such facilities around and your child is happy there, the demands for money start. Increases are made constantly for no rhyme or reason. Add-on costs are sneaked in to take you for every last penny.
Go moan somewhere else, you might say until faced with the same limited options.
But are your options limited?
Often these intimidators who play their own win-lose game spur you into inventing options. These shoddy business practices provide the motivation to come up with alternative solutions, and think about a range of possibilities.
We’ve all seen entrepreneurs succeed under the most difficult circumstances – limited resources, few skills, hard-nosed suppliers and impossible customers. In fact, the mere starting of their own business is in itself a highly creative or innovative.
An entrepreneur or small independent business person has to be an immovable object when meeting an unstoppable force of adversity. Yet those who wear the Joker’s costume and play their vicious little games eventually self-destruct. Meanwhile, you innovate and create your own path for yourself where there wasn’t one before. That’s your ace in the hole.