Key Idea #1: Join A Peer Group

HATTIE: Hi. I'm Hattie Bryant. We are here for you every week if you want to start, run or grow a business. Usually we introduce you to one small-business owner, but today, it's completely different.

You'll meet several owners because we want to show you the power of synergy. It takes an independent streak to start a business, but that independence could kill you.

The feeling of freedom from dealing with other people's opinions is part of the attraction of becoming self-employed. The problem is when you start and try to grow your business, you will face many complex issues. The good news is you don't have to deal with these problems alone.

You probably won't go to a CPA or an attorney and pay big fees to discuss problems, you might not want to talk with them to your spouse, and you certainly don't want to discuss personnel issues with your employees. So what do you do? In the past, we've suggested you join organizations like the Chamber of Commerce or your trade association, or something like Young Entrepreneurs Organization. Well, today, we have an entirely new opportunity to tell you about. In fact, it's called Opportunity Knocks.

In Bend, Oregon, you can stop in The Bend Guitar Shop to buy a guitar, take a lesson, or just hear Bill Hayes, the owner, play. Or you can grab a copy of Pamela Hulse Andrews' Cascade Business News. You could even buy some one-of-a-kind hand-painted tiles from Christina Ocosta, the owner of Christina Ocosta Designs. Or, even learn how to paint yourself, by doing what hundreds do every year, attend a class run by Dee Hanson's company, Art in the Mountains.

All of these small-business owners in Bend, Oregon, are growing their businesses, enjoying success and they are involved in a business networking program. Jim Schell, the organizer, tells us all about it.

JIM SCHELL (Founder, Opportunity Knocks): You've got to understand two premises: first, all business problems are generic. You've seen one, you've seen 'em all. Products may be different, services may be different, but they're all generic. Second, if you put a group of small-business people together in the same room, someone will have had the problem before, or the opportunity. So the object here is to take this generic bunch of people, put 'em together in the same room, tee 'em up to solve their problems or realize their opportunities, and then let 'em loose.

I was in a group like this before back in the late '80s. I know that my peers have the answers to my problems and I have the answers to theirs. And so all it is, is just a matter of getting us together at the same time and the same place.

HATTIE: (Voiceover) Christina Ocosta is an artist who is building a business around her talent.

CHRISTINA OCOSTA (Owner, Christina Ocosta Designs): I decided when I was 23 that I was going to be an artist. I just felt like I had this calling. I had gotten a real estate license and started in school with a business degree, but it just wasn't working for me. So I felt I had a calling to be an artist and I was going be one, whatever that meant. So I went back to school and felt like as long as I could do some kind of job that would relate to artwork, then I would be getting better. And a friend of mine showed me how to do window splashes.

HATTIE: What's a window splash?

CHRISTINA: A window splash is when you take tempera paint, children's poster paint, and you paint on windows, usually for car dealerships and grocery stores and, you know, fairs, around fairs and different functions, Christmas oftentimes.

HATTIE: So what did you do? Did you walk in to the owner of a grocery store and say, `Can I paint your window?'

CHRISTINA: I did. I set a goal for myself and I would only stop after 50 people told me no. And so, I would cold-call, and it was just--oh, first I painted--first I came up with some ideas...

HATTIE: So your goal was to make 50 calls, regardless. Even if you got 50 people who said, "No," you were going to make those 50 calls.

CHRISTINA: Well, yeah. And how I started was, after the friend told me how to do it and what to do, I went home, and on my window, I would paint a window for a prospective customer. And I did five different windows, five different styles; and then I made a small portfolio and went around to different businesses (who said "Yes").

HATTIE: OK, so when you made your first call to get your first piece of business, you had already positioned yourself as if you had already had five customers.

CHRISTINA: I just showed them the portfolio.

HATTIE: I think it's brilliant. Many, many artists are not willing to make even the first cold call, much less 50.

CHRISTINA: Well, I really wanted to be one . . . it's just I had felt like I have a calling.

Key Idea #2: Ask Peers for Help

HATTIE: You live in Bend, Oregon. CHRISTINA: Yes.

HATTIE: And you're a part of something called OK Groups. Tell me why you went to the first meeting and what benefits you're getting from that as a small-business owner.

CHRISTINA: Well, I was recruited by a friend of mine who insisted that I would love this group -- she's also a member. I called up the people that are facilitating the group and they came and they consulted with me, and I was so impressed by their knowledge that I just signed up right away. It was just like, how fast could I give them my $99? I know this is going to work.

HATTIE: You have to pay? You have to pay to be in the group? Oh, I didn't know that.

CHRISTINA: Yes, you do, $99. I think it's worth it to pay, because it makes it more valuable that you need to have a little invested.

And so I did that, went to my first meeting, and brought one of my products. Jim and Mary Schell had helped; Jim asked me how I was doing with it and he said, `You need to take this to your first meeting and present it.'

(Voiceover) The general public hasn't seen tile as art, at least the way I see tile as art.

I look at this as an art pack --concept boards -- kind of like buying a nice print for your house. I'd take my developed designs and and come up with a program that would reference installation. This box had to reference installation so someone will pick this box up and say, `Oh!' They know right off it's not meant for coasters. I have nine different designs right now. Each one has a color story that's unique and a design theme.

HATTIE: OK, so the invention here is this display box.

CHRISTINA: Yes, and they (the OK Group) all told me that they thought it was a wonderful idea, but how was I going to produce it? And I told them my plan, and one of them said, `You mean you want to sit there and paint 2000 fish, 2000 suns, 2000 stars and 2000 flowers and birds, on each tile?''

HATTIE: And you said?

CHRISTINA: The reality of it just struck me that I didn't want to be painting the same 2000 fish over and over again. Designing the fish was great, and painting it in custom variations was great. That is what I've been doing. I am a custom artist who does it one by one. But now, with this new product, I do need to find a manufacturer. And so that's what I've been working on for the past six months.

HATTIE: So they suggested to you that you stick to the design and not get into manufacturing.

CHRISTINA: Right.

HATTIE: So they just caused you to stop dead cold and change.

CHRISTINA: Yeah . . . actually what happened is, no one ever said `You should.' It's just people raised questions that were so thought-provoking. The questions from one of the men in the group who had been involved in catalog sales and various programs, were, `Really, picture how you want your life to end up. What do you want to be doing a year from now? Do you want to be painting all these tiles? Do you want to tell your family that you can't go somewhere because you've got to paint 1000 fish or whatever? Do you not want to be able to do any personal work because you're so busy doing this or overseeing all these production people?' And when I really thought about how I want to picture my life, that didn't fit. It gave me indigestion.

HATTIE: They told you something was wrong with this idea, or something was right with the idea.

CHRISTINA: They thought the box was great. HATTIE: The box is great. CHRISTINA: They think the box is gonna be ripped off right away.

HATTIE: They're right.

CHRISTINA: You can't patent the box design. So they were telling me that, number one, `Do you want to be making all these tiles yourself, Christina?' And when I thought about painting these, I said, `No.' And then, I do need to hit the market in a particular way to make sure that I can at least establish myself before I'm copied.

HATTIE: OK, so because of their advice, you have decided to continue with this idea, however, you're going to have these pieces mass-produced based on your designs. CHRISTINA: Right. HATTIE: That came out of their suggestion.

CHRISTINA: That came directly out of their suggestion. And that is gonna change my life.

HATTIE: For the better.

delete CHRISTINA: Making a designer and an artist, not a manufacturer. So that's going to be for the better.

Move up from the end CHRISTINA: The business climate is not always very open. You know, people are not always willing to tell you exactly how they succeeded if they perceive that you're competing with them. And this type of group is very open and very supportive and gives me that. It gives me feedback and I'm able to give to them. So it's very wonderful.

Key Idea #3: Share Problems with Other Owners

HATTIE: (Voiceover) Business owners are grouped by business type. We visited the retail and service group.

Unidentified Woman #1: I wanted to read a little bit of our mission statement. Because sometimes we jump right into things, I want to remind everybody why we're doing this: `To develop a financially self-sustaining networking program as a vehicle for central Oregon business owners and/or managers communicating together to solve their problems.' In essence, you are each other's board of directors, and you are here to solve each other's problems. Each one of you is a CEO of your own company, and this is your board.

PAMELA HULSE ANDREWS (Cascade Business News - CBN): My critical issue last time was identifying CBN in the marketplace, and I talked about that and how we struggled with that. But actually you-all told me that wasn't my critical issue. After we got though all that, you-all told me that my critical issue was totally off base, that I needed stress management . . .

HATTIE: (Voiceover) Pamela Hulse Andrews is the founder of the Cascade Business News.

PAMELA: When I go there I feel like I'm in group therapy. I mean, it's a really good feeling, and I look forward to going there. You can share all kinds of things -- and who else do you share it with?

BILL HAYES (Owner, The Bend Guitar Shop): ...and like, here's a Les Paul...

HATTIE: (Voiceover) Bill Hayes owns The Bend Guitar Shop.

BILL: I'm getting the feeling that I'm not out there alone trying to make this happen; that there's other people, too, with entrepreneurs with some business issues that are similar to mine In a group we can discuss these issues and everybody's always right there with positive response to help each other with critical issues, and their own expertise. Everybody has something different to offer.

HATTIE: Have you ever had, in either one of your businesses, any kind of board of advisers before?

BILL: Absolutely not. It's always been usually just me doing it . . .

HATTIE: Scratching your head, `OK, what do I do now?'

BILL: Yeah, `Boy, what am I gonna do now?' So it's great to sit around a table with some really intelligent, articulate people that really have positive information to really help. I studied music in college, not business, so it's good to be around people that are left-brained, and I'm right-brained, so it works good.

Teacher: All right. Let's do another sky. Don't mess about with it. Use the whole arm.

HATTIE: (Voiceover) Dee Hanson started Art in the Mountains.

Teacher: The sky looks much more believable. You've got a good horizon.

HATTIE: Why did you join an OK group?

DEE HANSON (Founder, Art in the Mountains): I thought it was absolutely what I was looking for; being a sole proprietor in a business, it's very lonely. Fortunately I have my husband to discuss business matters with, but still you need a lot of input from other people, and it's been like having a board of directors.

Key Idea #4: Take Advice to Heart

SAM CARPENTER (OK Group Participant): I've been the owner of the company for 12 years. I recently, within the last six months, took on a minor partner, a 30 percent owner in the company. She's worked with me for many years and is a wonderful help. But I've got the same problem I've always had. We're riding this wave of growth. We don't have to do too much to grow. We should be growing faster, though, because we're tripping all over ourselves.

Customer service is not good. We don't train the way we should, I don't have a life. My kids have grown up, I've been a single parent most of my life. One's out of college and the other one's in the middle of college, and I can't remember bringing them up.

But anyway, I'd like to change all that. And I can start with a generality, and that is, I need to build a structure in my company of customer service, both for the people outside and the people that I employ so that I can have a life, I can take care of the customers I've got and we can ride this wave of growth.

I'd like to have a customer service skeleton, a structure that is so solid nothing's gonna blow it away. Because what I'll do is I'll get on a kick and I'll drop the hammer and say, `Customer service, we're gonna take care of all the people we've got.' And kind of what I'm saying is `This week.' And my employees are saying,`Yeah, sure. OK. We'll go along with this because we know you're gonna get over it.' And a week later I'm all caught up with customer service stuff again. Problems, killing fires, killing fires, killing fires all the time. And I don't want to be in that crisis place any more. It's like we're at war all the time there. I wish we could just create a structure in my company that supports the customers we have and would allow growth without a firestorm all around all the time and things going on, things going wrong all the time.

Unidentified Man #2: What kind of structure do you have right now as far as--how are you--what's your staff, because I don't have the...

SAM: I brought Sandra in to join me as an owner, and now she sweats blood like I do. I would like to have another person in customer service, but I don't even know if that's what we need.

BILL: Could you delegate responsibility in certain areas to have a symptom go to a certain point before it actually came to you, so someone else was like a manager of that area? You know, as an issue started to go, someone else actually could remedy it and take care of it, and it was their responsibility to do that, and then only very serious ones would actually come to you because you're gonna go away next week.

And all that other stuff is gonna go with you in your brain, and you're gonna think about it for a week and...

SAM: Well, here I am the owner of the company, running a pager up to somebody, I mean, that's great.

BILL: Yeah. Right. So that's stopping you from doing something...

PAMELA: Hey, didn't you ever see me hauling newspapers around?

SAM: Maybe we should talk.

BILL: ...you know, important things, you know, that you can be doing instead of doing...

SAM: Well, that's the other thing. I've had people internally handle things, and it's got way out of control, way, way out of control. And I'm almost afraid to hire people now because of some of the bad experiences I have. And I know I've contributed to that probably because maybe I didn't train them enough. So I don't even know if I need an extra person in the office or not.

DAVE KOLBUS (OK Group Participant): Sam, when you say it's way out of control, what do you mean by that? It sounds like you don't trust them to do the job, or they screwed up and it's--I know I have that problem.

SAM: No, it's not that, it's just that I have grown up with this company doing everything. Now I have a partner, she does everything, and I have never delegated this stuff to anybody else.

DAVE: Well, the question is, do you want it that way or do you want to change it? That's part of the--you know, it's hard, sometimes, because I have a real problem delegating myself. I know that. And part of it is because I want to keep all that in that little basket. You've got to let go.

Unidentified Woman #2: And you've got to know that when they do it they're not gonna do it the way you would do it. You have to expand the parameters of of acceptable.

SAM: I want this structure in my business. Is this the customer service person? What kind of a title do I give this person?

Woman #2: General manager.

SAM: General manager?

Woman #2: Sure.

PAT RODEN (OK Group Participant): Have you ever gone to your employees and said, `We want to create a structure. You folks do the work,' and find out from them what is necessary?

Invite them to create part of the structure. Gives them some ownership.

DAVE: Even if you found the perfect structure today in your mind, you should let them create it.

PAT: Exactly.

DAVE: It's like the quality circles, quality team...

SAM: I disagree with that. I should let my employees define how my company is going to run? I don't agree with that. I don't see the logic in that.

DAVE: Well, I don't think it's that. I think if you're going to delegate and give them responsibility, they have to have some buy-in in that. And if you just lay a structure on top of them that they have not bought into at all--you don't have to let them create it, but you can...

SAM: Let them have some input. OK. I don't have an argument with that.

Unidentified Woman #3: Yeah, exactly.

Unidentified Woman #4: He needs a foundation. He needs...

DAVE: No buy-in means, you know, you're lost.

SAM: Yeah, I see.

Woman #1: Maybe we need to actually form a structure for you today. Maybe we need to take the notes and start at the top. What is it that you just want to do, and then we'll throw out and they can give you the input. We had a couple ideas already, but...

SAM: OK.

Woman #1: You're at the top, you're the owner. Sandra's 30 percent owner, correct?

SAM: I would like to do big guns, big-time customer service and sales.

Woman #1: Maybe the day-to-day, mundane, answering the phones, running pagers, you know, maybe you just need a runner, somebody to fill in some of these spots.

Unidentified Woman #5: We're expanding to serve you better. You've added an administrative assistant.

HATTIE: I have a great idea for Sam. You have this new partner. Write a letter to every single customer that says, `I am so excited to welcome Sandra as a partner in my firm. And so that we can grow and service you better, Sandra will begin to take over a certain percentage of the accounts. So from henceforth, Sandra will be dealing with you.' What you're saying is, I have a new owner. You're not dealing with schlock, you're not dealing with the guy from off the street. You're dealing with my new partner, and that gives you the psychic release that it's OK for you to turn these people--you're not turning them over to a nobody. You're turning them over to your partner. And they're gonna be handled perfectly.

Delete for web play...And when those inbound calls start coming in, you don't take those calls any more. `Hey, Sandra, here's your stack.'

SAM: Would you explain this to Sandra?

HATTIE: (Voiceover) John Wargo says networking is also important when it comes to sales and marketing. There are often overlooked resources in your community to help you.

What are some resources, some help that might be out there in the local marketplace that small-business people can tap into?

JOHN WARGO (Consultant): There's a tremendous resources that are available in the community. One that is often overlooked is the letter shop. Most belong to an organization called MASA, the Mail Advertising Service Association. These people can do everything for you. They can do the copyrighting, they can do the list, they can do the mailing, they can do the printing. Literally just have to approve what it is that you want.

In addition to that, there's a number of magazines. There's Direct Marketing Magazine, Target Marketing, Advertising Age, and a whole variety of resources that are available. There are a lot of tips in here on how to become a more efficient mailer. Go o your local Postal Service; they publish a free subscription memo to mailers. There are several other magazines in the marketplace as well. So there's a lot of resources now that are available, much more than were available a few years ago. So a small business just has to reach

HATTIE: Wouldn't you say that the successful small-business owner is the one who's always a student?

JOHN: Yeah. I think the successful small-business owner is constantly learning because they don't have anything to rest on.

HATTIE: (Voiceover) For help with direct marketing, call MASA at (703) 836-9200 for a list of their members in your area.

BRUCE CAMBER (Executive Producer): Hi. I'm Bruce Camber, and it's time to go to the Internet. For those of you who are on the edge of starting your own business, and need a little help, consider becoming part of a business incubator.

What's a business incubator? Use your web browser, enter the words in quotes, `business incubator" and you will find a list of pages that covers the range of incubators around the country. If you cannot find a business incubator nearby, call SCORE or SBDC. Get an advisor, and start your own.

HATTIE: Or, come to the web and call Jim.

Move up to end point #2 CHRISTINA: The business climate is not always very open. You know, people are not always willing to tell you exactly how they succeeded if they perceive that you're competing with them. And this type of group is very open and very supportive and gives me that. It gives me feedback and I'm able to give to them. So it's very wonderful.