Since it generally takes small businesses longer to get market penetration, it's important to have strategies that let you sustain your business for at least three to five years. At this stage, if it's a family business, it may be right for the wife or the husband to keep an outside job and not have to take as much income from the business for those early stages. Later on, when you get past the start-up and into the growth and survival stage, then you're more aggressive in reaching out in promotion and escalating the growth potential. You're not forced to be so tentative with capital because generally you're generating enough capital to finance the growth. One of the big realities in small businesses is just relating the business development to the capital available.
Balance is really a key.
One main overriding theme is the unity between personal ethic, personal taste, and how you spend your time earning money. The best way to do this, for many people, is to really have control over that income producing activity. It's not for everyone, but these days more people seem to feel that that's how they want to live. Generally, it begins less with market research, outside market research of what the public wants, than it does with an internal analysis of what you want. A lot of people we are writing for don't consider themselves businesspeople as a first priority or the first categorizing of themselves.