Business Advice, Zack Zimmerman

How do I know I am ready to hire employees? Kearney, NE

This is a very common question within the small business community and represents a fairly significant milestone within the development of your business. If you are asking yourself this question chances are you have seen indications that adding staff will help your business reach its goals. These goals need to be clear and well defined. Hopefully, you have established goals and specific metrics to analyze these goals. The reason why this is so important is because you may need help in form of additional staff to reach these goals. If these goals of the business are not defined then it will be very difficult in communicating the purpose and role of the business. These goals may come in the form of additional sales or a better customer experience or better turn time in fulfilling an order which will translates to more customers. Whatever it is, I would highly recommend defining specific goals for the business and then translating them into a specific job description. This will help you as the business owner to have a clear view of the role of each employee and what role they play in helping the business reach its goals. Not to mention, it will help the employee in understanding their part in the business and how it translates to the business’s success. This also can help with setting expectations, accountability, and leveraging your employees to obtain a competitive advantage. If the business does not have specific goals or a way to analyze and interpret these goals, I would not recommend you hire employees.

My small business is thinking about taking on a partner, what are the risks involved? Lincoln, NE

As you may already know taking on a partner in a small business can be very complicated. I would first ask, what is the purpose of your small business taking on a partner? Is the business is cash strapped? Is the business in need of a “fresh” idea or direction? Is the partner looking for a return on their money? All of these questions will help define the role of the partner within the business. The main risk involves decision making power. Sometimes taking on a partner creates a power struggle, in which, if not well defined from the onset, can demand significant resources, both in money and time. Clearly defining the relationship can help tremendously. Very rarely would I ever recommend a 50-50 partnership in a small business. One of the advantages of being a small business is that decisions can be made easily, quickly, and without endless deliberation from multiple decision makers. A partnership that is well defined will at the very least be a 51-49 relationship. The roles need to be well defined and ownership equity stake usually defines that role. If there is a 50-50 partnership, who will make the decision if there are conflicting views? And believe me there will be conflicting views! Many large organizations struggle with change because there are too many decision makers that have input in a given direction of the business. A small business can easily make decisions adapting to change because of the lead decision maker (usually the owner) is on site or readily available to be agile. Having a partner and another layer of decision making can sometimes limit that small business’s agility and ability to adapt to change in the future.

Zack Zimmerman is the Associate Director of the Nebraska Business Development Center located at Southeast Community College’s Entrepreneurship Center in Lincoln, Nebraska. The NBDC is a State and Federally funded agency dedicated to assisting small business in Nebraska. If you have a question for Zack please contact him at [email protected].