We have now passed the six-month mark in our journey of being a small business at Pinnacle Custom Signs.  It has been a wild ride, but one that has been fun most days.  For those of you who have ever started your own business you know what we mean when we say “most days”.  Looking back, we wouldn’t trade a a minute of it for anything.  One thing that we have found, is that starting out a successful new business requires focus, in addition to what we would call the “Three P’s”:  Planning, Persistence, and Patience.  Those of us with Type A personalities have no problems with the first two, but the third is a killer.  Let’s explore the three P’s in more detail.

• Planning:  When starting out a business, you need a plan.  Not just one plan, but really, multiple plans.  You need to have your overall strategic plan for your business.  You will also need to put together a sales and marketing plan to show how you will bring in your customers.  Most importantly, you need a financial plan.  The main reason that most small businesses fail is that they run out of cash;  most of the time, this is due to a lack of Financial Planning.  Having your plans together, you can always gauge where your business is, and allows you to judge the health of your operation.

 

•  Persistence:  This is key to any success.  It is never giving up, especially when things may be hard.  Olympic athletes train for hours each day.  Professional Athletes work from when they were very young.  Successful businesses succeed due to the persistence of the owners of the business, who never give up, never give in, and are always looking at new ways to skin the cat.  No one told us the sign business would be easy, but they did say with hard work, it could pay off.

 

•  Patience:  This is the one that we have the hardest time with, as does most of our society today.  We want everything now.  We have instant communications, instant news, instant everything.  Our children are growing up in a culture that never waits for anything.  Instant gratification seems to be the plan of the day.  We are no different.  We wanted to make money in our first month.  Being a new business, how reasonable is that?  Most studies say that it takes 2-3 years for a small business to grow and sustain itself to make money.  When one of us is not pleased with how things are going because we didn’t close any big deals on a given day, the other one has to continually remind him/her that the plan wasn’t for us to close a big deal every day.  It would be nice, but it is not going to happen.  We need to continually remind ourselves of this fact.  The comic shown here seems to say it all when it comes to patience.  See if you agree....

By following the "Three P’s", we are confident we will build and sustain a very successful business.