Report: Small Business Success

Back in Nov ’14, the Center for an Urban Future, an NYC-based think tank focused on growing and diversifying its local economy, released a terrific report entitled,  SMALL BUSINESS SUCCESS: A blueprint for turning more of New York City’s small businesses into medium-sized and large businesses.  

 

Why does this matter?  Because if our small businesses grows, jobs grow, our middle class grows and our economy grows.  A corporation like Amazon that makes $89 BILLION in sales annually employs 110,000 employees.  Now, 110,000 employees sounds like a lot, but imagine if we were to combine employment numbers for a group of small businesses that generated $89 BILLION in sales.  The combined employment would be closer to 600,000.  (Paraphrased from Robert Reich, Inequality For All.)

Back to the report… It profiles 21 NYC-based businesses that have successfully expanded and how they achieved their success. It’s a long report (44 pages)but easy-to-read and chock full of great information and resources.  What I found most interesting are the different opportunities the business owners pursued.  For some, that meant exploring corporate or government contracts, while others invested in new technology.  But one of the common themes throughout it that the business owner had help.  

If you want to explore how you can apply some of these insights to your business, contact us!  In the meantime, here’s some highlights of the report.

 

  • Page 10 outlines a Small Business Success Blueprint of 8 specific tactics owners can explore to growth. 
  • Technical assistance and peer-to-peer advice provide a significant boost.  Specific information, obtained at exactly the moment it was relevant, was particularly meaningful.
  • These successful entrepreneurs understand how much their product or service costs to produce at different scales and how to price their product competitively against their peers.
  • The most successful firms envisioned growth almost from the moment they started their businesses.  Because of this vision,  they can articulate what it looks like, develop a plan for it, and then proceed with discipline to execute the plan.
  • All of the successful businesses interviewed had developed a keen financial awareness—both about their businesses’ finances and about how to access and deploy capital in their businesses. 

Join SBIDC and Skopos in congratulating the achievements of this cohort!

Shinobu Kato, founder of Kato Sake Works, on scaling his business, organic customer growth, and finding a piece of Tokyo in Brooklyn

The founder of global public relations agency Hello Human on reimagining PR for creatives, seeking out a financial partner, and launching a business during the pandemic.

When I started Skopos in 2016, I wrote this Manifesto to expresses our philosophy, commitments and ideas that drive us.

Want to talk business? (We sure do!) Get in touch here