Key Idea #1: Earn the Right to Join the Club
Yes, Eric is enormously successful but he paid his dues in earning that success. Like so many entrepreneurs, he started young and over-promised and under-delivered. He knew he could not continue doing what he was doing. He had enough humility to take a job with a major building contractor and learned the nuts-and-bolts of business and of building. "I learned it is a lot more than pounding nails," he said.

Today, among custom home builders, he has established a reputation as one of the best of the best.

Topic for discussion: How does a small business get to the top, to truly excel at what they do?

Answer: It's the same as the way to Carnegie Hall. Practice, practice, practice. "if at first you don't succeed...

And, Eric learned his lessons well. Today, he only takes on three or four projects at a time because he thinks of himself as a project manager, not a corporate CEO. Every project commands his undivided attention and every project is important to him. He concerns himself with the quality of his work, mastering his craft. He gets involved in each project, working with the architect to come to the right solution for each client. His reputation and financial success have been the fruit of the tree of excellence.

You think about it: Success rarely comes easy and to be the very best in your craft is tremendously challenging. It takes commitment and literally years of effort. Do you want to be the very best? It's OK if you don't. Eric has made a lot of sacrifices in growing EM Rose Builders. This kind of dedication is not for everyone but we can all admire Eric for what he has accomplished.

Key Idea #2: Win the Recognition of Your Peers
Earning any award as the "best" is quite an accolade but to be judged the "best" by your own peer group is really impressive! EM Rose Builders has done this over and over again for its work.

Topic for discussion: Should a small business actively seek such recognition from its peer group?

Answer: You bet! Virtually all trade associations give awards of many types. They do this because they recognize the benefit to their members. Most awards are given through a self-nomination process but you can always write the application and ask a customer or colleague to submit it on your behalf. Don't be shy about tooting your own horn.

No one notices the light under the basket. If you've done something extraordinarily well, get the word out. Win the award and then let the world know that you have won it. Display your plaque or trophy prominently in your reception area. Contact your local newspaper and ask if they will do a story on you, your company, and your award. Do a direct mail piece with your customers and your prospects. Have a big party with your employees and their families and publicly thank them for the award. Share the glory; you know they helped you earn it.

You think about it: What awards can you apply for?

Key Idea #3: Embrace the World as Your Source
It Is Truly a Global Economy. Eric buys products from all over the world. Whether it's stone or glass or workmanship, he identifies sources and executes transactions via the Internet.

Topic for discussion: How does a small business take advantage of the global economy?

Answer: The World Wide Web has had a profound impact on the way we do business. The effect can simply not be overstated. Remember when we found sources in the yellow pages? Seems like 100 years ago! Internet shopping is smart shopping. Whether you are in a B2B (business to business) or B2C (business to consumer) business, you can be sure that your vendors are selling and your customers are buying online.

We've moved way beyond books and airplane tickets, to a point that the search engines are the first point of entry for virtually every buyer. Even people who would not buy on the web, who have yet to "cross the chasm" as the technologists like to say, are shopping, i.e., doing their pre-buying research through the search engines available on the Internet. Are you doing your shopping on the Internet? If you aren't, you should investigate the alternatives available to you.

There are a lot of advantages to you; here's just a few:

Vendor Selection Search for the product and you'll find the sources. That's your starting point to make the buy decision based on service and price. Gathering this information is a lot easier than it used to be, just click on the "contact us" button on virtually every web page and ask for a quote.

Product Selection Catalogs cost money but digital images are cheap. Many customers present a wider variety of their products on their web pages than they are able to include in their catalogs. You can search for inventory items quickly and expect to get all the detailed specifications you need.

Market Research Search for your own products and find out what the competition is doing. What are the latest innovations? What pricing strategies are your competitors using? Is the delivery model for your business changing? How are your competitors branding themselves?

Technology has brought the world to each of us. If you are still operating in the same closed space you operated in before the Internet, you are putting yourself at a serious disadvantage with your competitors. Using technology in your business goes way beyond networking your computers or using an accounting software package.

The World Wide Web broadens our horizons and opens up distribution channels for small business that would otherwise be unattainable. With technology, you can compete in the global economy.

You think about it:What steps can you take now to more fully engage the Internet's resources?

Key Idea #4: Add Wire Whenever and Wherever You Can
In building custom homes, Eric takes advantage of existing technologies as well as positioning the home to take advantage of future technologies.

Topic for discussion: What does all this wire have to do with us?

Answer: More than we can possibly comprehend. Unless you are in the technology business, and most of us aren't, all this talk about networks, routers and hubs is pretty confusing. Eric is building homes today with the thought of preparing the home to be lived in the way we will live a few years from now. He referred to the mechanical center of the house as the "brain" and he is providing connectivity to his office, the Internet, the phone company, and the security company. Within the home, servers are move data along thousands of feet of wire so that the owner, from any computer in the world, can lower blinds, heat the swimming pool and warm the water that runs through tubing to melt snow off the driveway. Panels through the homes are programmed to manage light, multimedia, air flow and temperature.

We will all live this way, and soon, because this is how information and services will be delivered. Other models will become archaic and cost prohibitive. EM Rose Builders has provided a valuable lesson to all of us: the cost of connectivity is part of the cost of any facility.

You think about it: Don't buy a building, for business or residential purposes, or sign a lease, without doing your homework on whether the facility is wired for the evolving business model. Find out now what your current physical capacity is to connect to your markets. Will it see you through the building's planned life cycle? If not, what effect will this have on your business and how will you manage the resulting risk?

Key Idea #5: Do More For Your Customers Than They Ever Dreamed You Could Do
Eric's office stays connected to the house after the construction is completed. This is part of the service he provides and just one of the things that makes EM Rose Builders such a great company.

Topic for discussion: How does a business determine its after-market and go after it?

Answer: Whether you sell goods or services, they are consumed. They have a shelf-life, they expire, and they need to be replenished. You know this, that's why you have repeat business from existing customers. Let's focus on what happens to your customer between your sales. Suppose you sell office supplies. You deliver an order and most likely you (1) wait for another order (bad) or (2) contact the customer after a reasonable amount of time and ask for another order (better).

Whoever you contact has to inventory the office supplies to find out what is needed and place the order. They probably haven't done this or they would be calling you. And they may not be too pleased to be reminded that they have to do it! This is not their only responsibility, after all. Wait a minute! What if you took on this responsibility?

What if you analyzed your customers buying habits and generated standing purchase orders for them to review? What if you determined safety stock levels for your customers, inventoried their supplies with each delivery, and went back to the office and wrote up a new sale? You just increased your sales and improved your service at the same time. Aren't you the smart one!

You think about it: What's your after-market and how do you go after it?

Key Idea #6: Love the Work, Not the Business
We've all heard the statistics on how many small businesses fail each year. Some fail because the owner loved the business, but not the work.

Topic for discussion: What's the difference between loving the business and loving the work?

Answer: The work is what you do every day, all day, and usually bring home with you each evening, mentally, if not physically. Small business owners are a sturdy lot, they pretty much have to be. The more successful they are, the more people's lives are dependent on their future success. Most business owners take this responsibility very seriously. They are able to deal with the pressure and the stress when they have a real passion for their work, their customers, and their employees. They jump out of bed in the morning and can't wait to get to work because they love what they do. The business owner whose only passion is for owing his or her own business, not having a boss, able to make all the key decisions of the business, is likely to "burn out" quickly. The work is the juice!

You think about it: Do you love what you do?

Key Idea #7: Know That The Devil and The Lord Are In The Details
Eric is most proud of what his customers can't see, the details of his workmanship. He doesn't take on more projects than he can handle, and his definition of "handling" means paying attention to every detail of the homes he builds.

Topic for discussion: How important is it for a business owner to pay attention to details?

Answer: It's critical. Attention to details is what separates the moderate from the excellent. This attention is spawned from a passion for your work, a burning desire to make your product or service as close to perfect as possible. We build quality control, inspections, and various levels of review into our business models because excellence is important to us; we want our customers to be more than satisfied, to be blown away by the value of what he have delivered. All of us want to grow our businesses, but that growth must be tempered by the resources we have. If we spread ourselves too thin, and take on more than we can handle, we won't be able to pay attention to the details and the quality of what we produce will undoubtedly suffer.

You think about it: Have you created a culture in your business where everyone knows the importance of paying attention to the smallest detail? Do you turn work away if you know you can't properly manage it?

Key Idea #8: Turn Every Job Into the Source for the Next Job
EM Rose Builders is the general contractor of choice of some of the nation's leading architects. As they are successful in obtaining new design opportunities, they are able to recommend Eric for the construction phase.

Topic for discussion: How does a small business capitalize on existing work to obtain new work?

Answer: John Donne said it best, "No man is an island". No business is an island, either. Business consultants would call Eric's relationships with the architects "strategic alliances". The point is that rarely does one company have the breadth of product or service to meet a customer's needs entirely. Each of us is part of a supply chain consumed by our customers. If you know who else is in your chain, you can team up in your marketing and delivery efforts. Start by thinking about the supply chain you are part of. If you sell paint, recognize that customers who buy paint also buy lumber, frequently at the same time. Have you met the owner of the local lumber yard? Could you pool your resources and make something happen for both of you?

Maybe you could take out an advertisement in the local Sunday paper together. The advertisements are sold by size, so you could split the cost and get twice the size ad you would otherwise get. You could have a sale at the same time. Would more "honey do" projects get started if the paint and the lumber were on sale at the same time? Could be! If you don't know who is in your supply chain, ask your customers. You might even ask your customer for an introduction. It's certainly in your customer's best interest to foster collaboration among vendors.

Strategic alliances are not just for the Fortune 500 companies, all of us can accomplish more if we work together.

You think about it: Do you have strategic alliances with other businesses?

Key Idea #9: Create Digital Workflow
What comes to mind when you hear the word "technology"? For most of us, it's computers first, followed closely by the Internet. But technology's role in the small business is just as important as marketing and finance. Technology is the ultimate enabler. You can do more in your business and you can do it faster with less error if you incorporate technology in your everyday business operations.

Topic for discussion: How does a small business use technology in the business?

Answer: There's lots of ways and many of them were only available to big businesses up until a short time ago. But new products and plummeting costs have positioned all of us to be more competitive in our respective market places with a minimum investment. We can analyze our inventory and learn what sells and what doesn't, in what quantities, to whom, with what seasonality, at what margin, and just about anything else we might want to know.

We can codify the intellectual capital of our organization, protect it, keep it organized and up-to-date, and easily search and retrieve what we need. It's all about the learning continuum, turning data into information and information into knowledge, then using that knowledge as the basis of the decisions we make in operating our businesses. Hence the term: knowledge management.

Our challenge as business owners is to figure out what data to store, in what vehicle (data warehousing) and how to access it in such a way that it provides meaningful information that is of real value to us in our business (data mining). We've used a lot of buzz words here; let's look at knowledge management, how it actually works, within a small business. There are a number of things that even the smallest business can do to capture, organize, and make available the intellectual capital of the organization. We'll focus on three here.

Establishing a Common Operating Environment (COE). Before you had computers at your office you kept documents in folders in file cabinets. Different people had access to those documents because they needed them to do their work. Sometimes people forgot to return the documents when they were through, and you would scout around the office until you found them. Sometimes two people needed the document at the same time and they would work something out, or make another copy of the document. The point is that every business generates important information, has processes that includes forms and templates, and shares these among a number of employees.

Now that you have computers, you still generate documents, you still keep them in folders, folders are kept within folders, and various people have access to them. Electronic filing systems can be vastly superior to paper filing systems if we remember to follow the business practices we used in a paper environment. Do you have documents on your computer or network server that are not in folders? How many? How does that compare to the number of documents you would have tossed into a file cabinet without filing?

The good news is that at least (a) the documents are listed alphabetically wherever they are stored and (b) we can always "search" for them if we remember the name, or the software application, or when they were last modified. Hmmm. There must be a better way. You're right! And it's called a common operating environment or COE. In a business with a network environment, where a number of employees have access to a central data depository, you:

1) Establish document naming conventions. As new documents are created, they are named in accordance with organizational policy. People looking for a document would have a good idea of the document name, even if someone else created it.

2) Determine the file structure. Folders within folders within folders. Organizing your information so that documents are easily located.

3) Grant access as appropriate. Security levels and edit rights, determining who can have access to what or not, when to permit "read-only" access, and who is authorized to make changes.

4) Safeguard information. Back-up systems, on and offsite, disaster recovery plans.

If you do all of the above, provide training on the implementation, you will have established a COE. The benefits are enormous and immediate.

Using Databases to Work and Mine Data Most of us couldn't imagine functioning without word processing software and spreadsheet software in our businesses. We all use e-mail and a lot of us can use presentation software, some more rudimentary than others. Yet, for some reason, the database software frequently goes unused in the small business.

If you use Microsoft, you could pick up here.

Digitize, Digitize, Digitize Maintaining our information in electronic form is critical to both the establishment of a COE and mining our data on an ongoing basis. Virtually all software applications allow for exporting data and importing data. So as long as you maintain your data electronically, you can take advantage of new software development in your industry without having to re-enter the information.

Electronic files are easier to navigate and cheaper to maintain. Additional computers and memory are just less expensive than rent, file cabinets, and storage facilities.

You think about it: How far has your business moved along the learning continuum? Are you taking advantage of the latest technologies to codify the intellectual capital of your business? If you arrived at your office, and all your information OR all your money was gone, what would be more devastating to you? Now, compare how you safeguard your money with the way you safeguard your information. As you digitize your workflow, be sure you have adequate back-up systems with offsite storage for all important information.

Key Idea #10: Hire Talent Before You Need It
Eric increased his capacity by hiring more staff than he needed for his current volume of work. He wanted to have 3-4 projects at a time so he positioned himself to be able to do that.

Topic for discussion: Why not wait until you have the work before hiring the people to do the work?

Answer: Because you'll probably never get the work. Buyers are a savvy lot. We all have competitors; all our potential customers have other sources. When they look at their alternatives, they are concerned with your ability to perform. Perform might mean delivering a product or a service, but either way your prospects have a need, and if that need isn't filled, then their business suffers. Most of us concentrate our efforts on our customers and our employees but we do realize that without our vendors, we would be seriously hampered in our businesses. If you want to be the vendor that contributes to your customers' success, you need to be ready to meet their needs before they are customers.

You think about it: Are you ready for the next big customer?