The Small Business Dread of an Election Cycle - Using the Strip Mall Study Method

Decisions are what stress leaders. Over thinking without resources will give us grey hairs.

The Small Business Dread of an Election Cycle and finding if a community is right for your business. The Strip Mall Method can help make the right choice for YOUR business.

A little starting entrepreneurial factoid - Most small businesses do not make it past the five-year mark. This is a statistic known to most entrepreneurs. You can look it up on the small business association website AND you can see it around your community. With an election coming up stress is even higher. What to do?

Location, Location, Location is the key. Always has been and always will be.

A quick look around can tell you the state of some businesses. As you drive through the streets of your community, look at what businesses used to be there, which businesses are new, and which ones have been there more than five years?

Surprised at what you see?

 Too often we are on automatic pilot. Just coming and going to our favorite establishments, and we do not notice minor changes in the business store fronts. If you have a business, or are thinking of starting one, this little exercise alone can help guide you to what local services are a fit in your community.

The Exercise - if you want to start a pizza joint. Check the surroundings for other pizza places. You may be surprised that the market for that area is saturated already. That could be a good thing or dreadful thing, depending on what your pizza joint offers. New York style, Chicago style, cheap pizza, Mod pizza, special dietary pizza, or something unheard of.

CAUTION to the new entrepreneur!

Educating Your Market - may slow profits.

What happens when you have a product that does not match the current market? Customer Discovery should help with this scenario but if you are still determined to move forward with a product and location that doesn’t fit the need - you will have to educate the public.

The Next Economy MBA mentions “I can be difficult, challenging, and humbling to attempt to shift the awareness of something from a need to a known need.”

Check out the Next Economy Mba here

However, if after you drive around, looking at how many of the joints offer your ideal pizza, you notice more of those pizza restaurants are run down or empty during peak times, this is a strong sign to either double down on your goal to offer YOUR best quality pizza or even better, there might be a different need you can help fill.

Questions you should ask.

Is the market shifting?

Is there a need for better pizza?

Or should you pivot?

Is there a need for cheaper pizza?

What’s the demographic look like?

Frontal Cortex Work That Must Be Done

There are a ton of questions that should start flooding into your frontal cortex. We have mentioned using a Business Canvas method in a few other blogs and this is the prime situation to use the tool again (Follow this link to get a PDF version of the Business Canvas Template).

Whether the market (pizza market in this example) is good or bad. Whether it’s an election year, or a Trump/Biden rivalry going on, or whether you’re planning on competing with Spacca Napoli Pizzeria in Chicago, working your research is vital to your next move.

 What research should you do to spot a trend in the brick-and-mortar business world?

 Here are the top three activities for deciding if you’re on the right track with your business – The Strip Mall Study (Survey, Evaluate, Identify)

1.    Pick three or four strip malls and find out how many businesses are open, or if there are blanks in that strip mall. This will tell you how good business has been lately, if a strip mall can’t keep businesses in their storefronts, it can tell you a couple things.  One, it can tell you that it might be expensive to have a storefront where you’re at and that rents are maybe too high for a starting business for the ideal demographic.  And/or two, it could tell you the market is saturated already.

2.    Looking at the brick-and-mortar stores within strip malls or within your community, can tell you if your community is supporting commercial business or supporting the service industry. If you did an audit in your community, if the majority are restaurants, drycleaners, service centers, then you’re looking at a community that supports service industries.

That community board, or business association, is bringing in people. People for services.

If you see nothing but industrial parks, services that support industrial business, like shipping centers and such, a B2B might be the better possibility.

3.    Next, Identify whether or not the businesses in your community are set up to support the community (as in Home Depots, Menards, Hobby Lobby’s), or are they set up to support businesses (as in office supplies, small banks, credit unions, and educational facilities).  This sounds like the 2nd activity; however, this is a more granular activity. This activity is to name the exact name brands of stores. If you are thinking of buying into a Little Caesars franchise you would want to put one up next to an existing one.

This step is where you work through Michael Porter’s 5 Forces model and get critical with entrant barriers, local government oversight, permits. Etc.

Understanding the concept of these three activities, or “the strip mall study”, will help you decide whether you want to support the community, or whether you want to support industry, or both. Answers to these activities will/might guide you into your own entrepreneurship journey and lead you to what might be a good fit, for you.

If neither of these are a fit for you (supporting the community needs through business, or supporting an industry through location), then an online business might be better suited. Online businesses can do much of the same as brick and mortar. You can also include sales marketing, affiliate marketing, any media marketing can be supported within any one of these types of communities at a fraction of the cost. 

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The world of entrepreneurship is vast with opportunities. You could be the next Bezos!

Supporting your drive to ditch the 9-5 day-jobber rat race is just around the corner for you. Check out the resources on HandPrint Content and for those who like to read up on an idea first, there are several impressive books that have helped in my journey below.

Business Model Generation

Business Model Generation is a handbook for visionaries, game changers, and challengers striving to defy outmoded business models and design tomorrow's enterprises. If your organization needs to adapt to harsh new realities, but you don't yet have a strategy that will get you out in front of your competitors, you need Business Model Generation.

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big

The World's Most Influential Book on Personal Success

The bestselling classic that made Systems Over Goals, Talent Stacking, and Passion Is Overrated universal success advice has been reborn.

Once in a generation, a book revolutionizes its category and becomes the preeminent reference that all subsequent books on the topic must pay homage to, in name or in spirit.

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, is such a book for the field of personal success.

Competitive Strategy

Now nearing its sixtieth printing in English and translated into nineteen languages, Michael E. Porter's Competitive Strategy has transformed the theory, practice, and teaching of business strategy throughout the world.

Electrifying in its simplicity--like all great breakthroughs--Porter's analysis of industries captures the complexity of industry competition in five underlying forces.

The Spirit To Serve

In the bestselling tradition of The HP Way, The Spirit to Serve describes how one of the most successful hoteliers of the twentieth century built Marriott International from a respectable $50-million-a-year enterprise into the mammoth $9-billion multinational giant of today. Told in the words of J. W. Marriott, Jr., The Spirit to Serve distills years of hard-earned wisdom and experience into twelve timeless lessons that managers at any level can implement in their own business lives.

The Next Economy MBA

This radical and rigorous rethinking of the traditional MBA program combines solid business principles with a commitment to environmental and social justice.

Many current and aspiring entrepreneurs are looking for a solid business education that also deeply aligns with their progressive values. Based on a course field-tested with over 500 students, this book fills that gap. It covers traditional topics such as business strategy and structure, finance, marketing, recruiting, and branding from a socially just and environmentally regenerative perspective. And it also touches on topics such as strategies to reverse climate change, nonviolent communication, self-managing organizations, locally self-reliant economies, racial justice, and more.

Financial Feminist

An instant New York Times bestseller

From the globally-recognized personal finance educator and social media star behind Her First $100K, an inclusive guide to all things money--from managing debt to investing and voting with your dollars

Tori Dunlap was always good with money. As a kid, she watched her prudent parents balance their checkbook every month and learned to save for musical tickets by gathering pennies in an Altoids tin. But she quickly discovered that her experience with money was pretty unusual, especially among her female friends.

Upstream

Wall Street Journal Bestseller

New York Times bestselling author Dan Heath explores how to prevent problems before they happen, drawing on insights from hundreds of interviews with unconventional problem solvers.

So often in life, we get stuck in a cycle of response. We put out fires. We deal with emergencies. We stay downstream, handling one problem after another, but we never make our way upstream to fix the systems that caused the problems. Cops chase robbers, doctors treat patients with chronic illnesses, and call-center reps address customer complaints. But many crimes, chronic illnesses, and customer complaints are preventable. So why do our efforts skew so heavily toward reaction rather than prevention?

Upstream probes the psychological forces that push us downstream--including "problem blindness," which can leave us oblivious to serious problems in our midst.

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From bestselling authors of Rainmaking Conversations and Insight Selling.

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Recent world events have flipped sales on its head and driven unprecedented levels of virtual interaction. As a result, sellers are faced with more challenges than ever before.