Small Might Not Be Beautiful, But It Might Be Effective
Saturday, February 2, 2008 at 10:32AM Well, it’s been a great start here at Bonzai. My staff (me and a yorkie named Puck) celebrated last night with meatloaf, carrots and English peas. This morning I started thinking about all the wonderful opportunities the internet presents. Not only is it a great place for a small player to get a message out, it’s a great meeting place, a place to develop friendships and business relationships.
I love diversity and the internet is chockfull of diversity. Although the internet is not the total answer for business and friendship, it’s a great tool to widen the spheres of each. I mean, I still meet my pal George at Starbucks to hear the latest and swap business ideas, and I keep in touch with local friends and associates – the old eye-to-eye, belly-to-belly, garlic breath-to-garlic breath thing. Nothing will take the place of flesh and tangible.
Perhaps you can tell by the name of this blog I’ve been thinking about small in a big world lately. I first started reading about and thinking about this through the writings of E.F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful. Well, I don’t know how beautiful it is, but it’s a concept of interest. The only problem I’ve had with a lot of the talk about small is the concurrent demonization of BIG. I would like to state I’m not against BIG.
Big is fine. Big has resources available. Big has marketing clout. Big has IT departments. Big has many departments. Yet, today’s gizmos and virtual assistance present a creative opportunity for those who like small to play along and compete. One of the aspects of the internet that truly fascinates me is the networks that can be created to simulate the advantages of big. It remains to be seen if it can actually match the advantages of big.
My sensibilities are sparked by the loosely aligned rag-tag, barefooted, irreverent, small players competing with big, organized resource-rich big players. Internet guerilla warfare! Well, that might be a bit dramatic, but networks, I believe, will be powerful alliances to give the individual players some of the advantages of big.
Reader Comments (2)
Mike, I've been affiliated with a large regional company, a very large national/international company and am back to the local family-owned independent company.
Mind you the core group is pretty much the same, but we found we prefer the freedom of being independent. It gives us more flexibility to serve our Clients and with the internet, we can reach people the "big guys" can and still keep our local flavor.
Another advantage to being the "supposed" small fish in the big pond: Many more Clients and potential Clients prefer to work with a more local company.
But we have to understand the internet, how it works, and how best to get our "little" message out there. In the two years I was with the "big guys" I never received one viable Buyer or Seller from their big name website.
Turns out, most people would rather work with a smaller company. Makes sense, actually. While some of the larger names can serve an area very well, we "little guys" can serve a different area much better and give a Client a sense of security and personal service of a local-yokel who knows her stuff just like the big guys.
Also, never underestimate the power of blogging (and I know you, obviously, don't). I had an out-of-state Agent contact me the other day about a Buyer looking in my area. Seems he recalled a blog I wrote but could only remember my first name and my area. Through the miracle of the internet, he located me rather quickly.
It's really incredible. What pumps me up is the challenge. I thrive on it.