Essential Ingredients for a Successful Small Business by dena728 featuring TOMS shoes

There are a lot of really great articles out there about what you need to be successful running your own small business. There’s advice on everything from what accounting software to use to how to pick a name for your business, and everything in between.

Sometimes things that work incredibly well for one business might not work well for yours, but I believe that there are universal ingredients that go into the creation of most successful businesses.

Do you have everything in place that you need to be successful?

1) A GREAT IDEA

There’s just no getting around it. What do Apple, Facebook, TOMS shoes and Spanx have in common? All of these businesses started out small but with a really great idea! A great idea doesn’t have to mean inventing something new. Sometimes it’s about how to deliver something that out there in a better way like Foursquare did, or improving the way business is run, like Zappos is trying to do.

2) Time Management

When you’re running a small business, you are the one running the business. This means how you spend your time is directly related to how successful you will be. There’s so many moving pieces that need your time, the bookkeeping, the marketing, producing the thing you are selling. Figuring out how to spend your time, and making the most of it to optimize your business goals is essential to success. I wish that I could give you a magic formula for how to divide and optimize your time, but sadly the formula is going to be unique to every business and it’s needs. I can share with you these great tips from the NY Times Small Business Blog!

3) Hard Work (and Caffeine)
Running a successful business, no matter how great your idea or your time management skills, is all about hard work. There’s no getting around it and there’s no substitute. But we’ve found that caffeine helps.

4) Resources

Having resources and knowing how to use them are essential. If you have a great idea but no way to produce it, or to eat while you’re trying to produce it, then you are not going to be successful. You dont need a multibillion dollar infusion of cash to start your business and be successful but unfortunately you will most likely need some! There are some great references = out there to help you start a “bootstrap” business (i.e. with no money) as well as how to manage your resources by spending as little money as possible. collecting money, and tracking your finances are also essential.

Mobile technology is a special category of resource, especially for small businesses because it’s changing the way that we do business. With laptops, cellphones and technology like WorkingPoint running a small business has never been more location flexible, cost effective and portable.