 Good morning everybody. Did you enjoy your lunch? Some of you are still having some. Excellent. I think that's a good sign. No, I think that's great. Come in, be comfortable, finish your lunch. All good. Do you have something to tell me? No? Press the button. The button has been pressed. The Drupal ecosystem is a rich and exotic biosphere of business diversity. From hobbyists, volunteers, freelancing contractors to award-winning digital agencies, multinational technology integrators, there are organisations of all shapes and sizes in our Drupal industry. They're all finding some unique creative way of selling their Drupal expertise to earn a crust to make a living to build a business. I'm Donna Benjamin. I've been running a successful business for almost 20 years. I say almost because we literally turned 19 last week. Thank you. I wanted to share a few of my ideas on what's been involved in that process over the last 20 years of running a small business. So that's sort of where this talk came from. And I want to be very clear. I'm talking about small business. I'm not talking about venture-backed startups. I'm talking about small business. And there is a difference. And for me, one of those is about the pace of it and the sustainability of it. It's a different kind of world. Now, to some extent, startups get lots of attention and a lot of energy. And small business is perhaps not so sexy and exciting, but it is sustainable. So that's where this talk comes from. A thousand mile journey. Running a small business is a journey, not a destination. And as Lao Tzu said, a journey begins with one step. Sorry, a thousand mile journey begins with one step. And it continues one step at a time. Along the way, I have learned some lessons, some the hard way, some with sheer good luck, some by taking great advice and not necessarily making the mistakes that we usually need to learn those lessons. So I hope that what I have to share with you today is useful in one way or another. What I've learned, I've distilled into four simple secrets. I'm going to take you through them right now. The first secret is do your chores. Running a small business is not always fun. And there is a lot of work to be done, which has nothing to do with the product or service you're selling. It has nothing to do with the nature of your business itself. It's just stuff that needs to be done. It might be accounting and bookkeeping. It might be complying with local regulations. It might be putting out the garbage if you're... It is literally the things that just need to be done to keep the business running. If you don't do your chores, no one else is going to do them for you, and they're going to add up, they're going to mount up, and they're going to be a weight upon you. So that's my first secret, do your chores. My second secret, invest in yourself and your team. As a small business, you are your business. If you don't invest in you, then you're not investing in your business. It's really easy to forget yourself and to treat yourself badly to get the job done to keep going when there's so much to do, when you're busy doing your chores. I've been very guilty of this. And in your team, if you have one, looking after you and your business, and your team is really keen in making sure that your business can be sustainable. If you neglect this, you're neglecting your business. And this one seems obvious. Ask for help. It is obvious, but what's not obvious all the time is where to ask for help. Where do you go? Who do you ask? Who can you trust? Who is going to know? How do you find out what your sources of support will be? Whatever that is, it's really important that you find it and that you use it, and that when you get stuck, you reach out. It's a real danger pit to fall into that you get stuck and you don't reach out and you don't ask for help. No one can do this alone. And there's lots and lots of sources of information and people who are willing to help, who will if you just ask them. So that's my secret number three. Don't forget to ask for help and know where to find it. And finally, live within your means. This one's really important and one of the key differentiators between small business and perhaps start-ups, venture-backed start-ups are actually all about building and investing up front and building a product with someone else's money. And it's much easier to spend someone else's money than your own. Cash flow is a really important part of the small business journey. Managing your cash flow, staying on top of it and living within your means is a real key to that ongoing long-term sustainability. It's also good to remember that debt is really seductive. You can take on debt to buy the things you think you need right now, but you are going to pay for it later and not just in interest. It adds an overhead to your work and your ongoing business if you front-load with debt to buy stuff that you need. If you can live within your means, you're going to be taking that next step on your 1,000-mile journey a lot more easily. It might mean you can't necessarily have all the greatest shiny things that you want right now if you can't afford them, but then you work to find a way to afford them. This is also balancing that invest in yourself. So striking a balance, maintaining good cash flow and living within your means has been one of my key secrets to sustainability and not stumbling and not taking on risk that I wasn't comfortable with. Small business. This is a very small business. I love this photograph. Coming back to that point about small business as opposed to startups, they're often family businesses. They're often very small indeed, finding a particular niche or a particular locality and serving a need. So there's this kind of relationship between the business, the clients that it services and the people in it. In family businesses it becomes very personal very quickly, but it's the sense of scale, I think, that I really wanted to get across here. Small business is human-scaled. It's not multinational corporations with lots of layers of bureaucracy and policy. It's very human, and you need to deal with things on a very human level. And if you were in Hannah's session earlier, your relationships with your customers, your clients, also are very personal and human-scaled. You don't have some kind of customer service team to farm that off to. That relationship is your relationship with that person. I just love looking at this picture, sorry. I'll move on now. So I've got two slides here. Opportunity and necessity. There's sort of two sides of the same coin, kind of a yin and yang rather than an either-or. Who's heard the phrase, small business is the engine of the economy? Yeah, if I'm seeing some hands and some nods, it's pretty common. It's kind of true, and a lot of research has been done on where and how small business fits in economies. And some of that research talks about what drives, what impetus forces people or prods people towards starting businesses. And there's really two key paths, opportunity and necessity. Now, opportunity are those businesses that start because someone has a great idea or builds a product that kind of beautifully has a niche. They've found something, there's an opportunity to be taken and they rush out and they take it. And necessity are those businesses that start because that's all they can do to earn a crust. They must do something. They must find some service or product to sell or offer the market to be able to earn income. They're quite different focuses to begin with. They may change over time too. Businesses that start out in necessity might find an opportunity to exploit or run after. And businesses that start from an opportunity may grow to a point where necessity is, that they've gotten to a point where they're kind of having to run through the mill to keep themselves going. So there's a relationship between those two things. And thinking about that relationship carefully and intentionally is also really important in this journey to becoming or running a small business. So I'm just going to break the fourth wall now and ask all of you, who here is already running a small business? Probably about five of you? Who here? Six? Who here is thinking about running their own small business? Hardly anyone. Why are you all here? Sorry? Get interested into doing it. So I have to like, you know, sell this. Sell it. Okay. Great. Awesome. So this, why would you do it thing? Why do you take this step, this thousand mile journey that you're about to embark on? What's going to make you take that step? It's going to be different for everyone, but I think it's worth thinking about. Is it opportunity? Is it necessity? Is it you're just sick of it being someone else's decision all the time? There's something really interesting around that moment about what makes you say, okay, it's time for me to leave behind the nine to five grind and get on my own path. Is it opportunity? Is it necessity? Is it a combination of both? I can't answer that question for you. I want to plant that seed in your mind and have you think about it. For me, it was a bit more necessity. When I was starting my career, some of you who know me will not be surprised by this, I didn't really fit in any of the boxes that kind of early career paths sort of offered. There wasn't really a Donna shaped kind of hole in any of the places that I went. I did a few kind of interny, trainee kinds of things, and it just cemented my opinion that I didn't really fit. And so I thought, well, I can still do stuff and I had been doing stuff, like helping out with various things. And so I started my own business 19 years ago. It started out being kind of business support services. I kind of actually made folders full of documents for events. Fortunately, we moved on from there and stopped making paper in folders and stuff and did stuff online. And that's how I ended up, I guess, in the digital space. But that's sort of where it began. But it never really stopped being business support service. The nature of the work changed in the actual kinds of widgets we were producing. But the fundamental focus, I guess, and a really deep sense, didn't change that much. And then I found there were opportunities that because of the way I'd been doing things and what I'd learned along the way, I could solve particular problems in ways that others couldn't. So it became opportunity as well. So what skills do you need to actually run a small business? Now, some of you here who are already doing so. So let's share the knowledge in the room. We're all smarter by the fact that we're all here than our single brains. So what are some of the skills you need to run a small business? Time management, says Angus. Yes, time management, good one. Others, Murray. Keeping the flow going, juggling things to make sure things keep moving. Yeah, really good one. Accounting. Client management, yes. Sorry. Forecasting. Ooh, that's a good one. Yes, forecasting. Where are you going? What's happening next? Yes. Sales. Management. Determination. Tenacity and determination, yep. What are some of the other things? What are some of the day-to-day skills you need to have to run a small business? Flexibility, yes. Do you have all of these skills as a single individual? Someone up there is very confident and awesome at this. So some of them you have and you're naturally good at. You don't have to practice. Some of them you're going to have to develop. Some of them you might hire for, but there's a lot involved. And at a very small business level, it is generally just you doing it. So you may not be great at it. There are skills that you're going to be kind of average at, but you're still going to need to do it. And that comes back to that doing your chores bit. It's harder than it needs to be because it's not your strength. So what skills do you need? Think about those. Should you outsource? If you don't have the skills, maybe you should outsource. Maybe you could outsource. There are things that are not necessarily skills, but stuff that just takes time and is tedious and is taking your way from the real work that your business does of helping your clients. This is not my core business doing my accounting. So I'm going to hire an accountant and a bookkeeper to do that for me. I'm not taking on the risk of having an in-house bookkeeper, but I'm going to outsource that. And I have. And it's probably one of my single biggest expenses particularly over a ridiculously expensive accountant. But my accountants have saved my bacon on many occasions. So I think it's, you know, that investing in myself and perhaps a few less grey hairs as a result of it. So when do you outsource? What should you outsource? Be intentional about it. Ask that question. It's an incredibly strategic decision to make. What you decide to outsource. What you decide to hire for. What you continue to do yourself. And this is a big question. Should you employ people? And confession time, I never have. I was always too cautious to take on the additional risk, burden and responsibility of having other mouths to feed than my own and my husband. We could probably, you know, get away with eating two minute noodles when time's got tough. So I don't want to consciously make that something I did to my, to employees. So I never took them on. That said, I have contracted. I have had other people come into the team as contractors. But I wasn't taking on the burden and the responsibility of employing people. That's just me. Murray at the back, a wonderful track chair, has taken on employees. And it is a different risk and a different level of responsibility. I've interviewed us too, Murray. And to all of you who take that step, I haven't done it. So I'm very impressed and in awe of those of you who've done so. Because it gives you a pathway to growth. You can bring in skills you don't have. You can do more because you've got more people to do the work. It is, again, a very important and strategic decision. Should you employ people? I can't answer that for you. You're the nature of your business and your willingness to be responsible for your employees. What legal and financial knowledge is required? Now, this one is very different depending on where you are in the world. Even where you are in a country because your state, your local council may all have regulations and requirements that you need to comply with. There's contract law. There's beyond accounting, there's sort of getting more into the forecasting area that was mentioned earlier. What legal and financial knowledge are you going to need? You're not going to need to become a lawyer, but you might need to hire one. Or you may not need a lawyer, but you might need some basic contractual advice. What knowledge will you need and how will you find that knowledge and how will you access it? Speaking of access, what support can you access? This goes back to my original secret, is ask for help. Do you know where to go? When I was originally envisioning this talk I had this grand scheme of doing all of this research around the world, having local examples and global examples and because I was going to first give this in Ireland, I looked at the Irish Chamber of Commerce and it's going to look at the Gold Coast. Hang on. I was talking to someone about this. I've got an idea for you. I bet everyone in the room has a device. Get them to pull it out. I'm going to ask all of you to do this right now. Pull out your device and look for small business resources in your area, in your local area, because this is where small business is hyperlocal. There are resources in your neck of the woods that you can access that will help you. That are designed to help you. It's in their interests for you to be successful and for you to bring financial harmony and positive energy and all of that rah-rah stuff. There are supports that you can access very locally. So quickly have a look and then I'm going to give you a moment and I want to hear some examples. Something local for small business in your neck of the woods. Have I got any contenders yet? Internet too slow. You have a whole government agency for it. So this is in the US. Small business administration has all sorts of resources just designed for small business. Training, seminars, information, resources, coaches, mentors, all that kind of stuff. Awesome. So the small business administration is an example. Now we also have in Australia similar sorts of things. They're generally on a state by state basis but also the federal government does have resources for small business. But also your local council will have resources for small business. So that's at the government level. But there are also business networks which will also be very generous and willing to share their expertise and help you in a pickle. So is there a small business network where the Drupal community is filled with businesses who know a lot about Drupal and a lot about the challenges of running Drupal-based businesses. And a lot of them, just like Hannah and Pam gave sessions earlier today, very generous with their time and expertise. So reach out for help. Have some, do some homework on where to get that help and what sorts of help you can access. Any other examples as you've now been Googling? River City Labs. River City Labs in Brizzy. Okay, Brisbane. Cool, so they're a start-up incubator and they run events. Awesome, thank you, great example. Any others? Co-working spaces and events that are open to anyone? Great. And Meetup. Meetup.com, Meet Local Meetups, Local Business Networks, yep, cool. One more. New South Wales has a program to connect small businesses with advisors. And your local Chamber of Commerce, absolutely. Beyond the kind of industry specifics that you're in, people have, you know, this is the thing is business is common across regardless of what you're doing is a whole bunch of stuff. And you can learn lots perhaps from your local butcher and florist about customer engagement. You know, great Chamber of Commerce, good one, and they're everywhere. Okay, so what support can you access? The key here is to find out before you need it. Just do a bit of work. Get lots around, make some relationships. Because the relationships are going to help you when you need that help. So local business landscape, I've kind of got a bit of a head of myself. So the point here, sort of bringing that all together, is that depending on where you are in the world, in Australia, elsewhere, locally, there is going to be stuff that's different because of where you are. There'll be regulations, networks, et cetera. So the local business landscape is part of the picture. It's kind of like the environment. It's the air you breathe. What is unique to your situation can be hyper-local when you're running a small business. And businesses do not operate alone. This is a picture of a spice market. And it's inside a souk. And there are many, many other businesses in that area, in that world. And your business might be about overseeing other businesses. Understanding your ecosystem, understanding the world, the environment that your business lives in is really, really critical to your, not just your success, but your well-being. Where do you fit? What else is around you? Do you understand the market in which you operate? What does it look like? What does it smell like? And ultimately, the key questions is who are you? As a small business, you are your business. Do you know who you are? Do you know what you do? Do you have clarity about it? Can you communicate it quickly and effectively? Do you have an elevator pitch? Who are you? What do you do? What is your service? What is your product? These kinds of questions you need to know, not just know them and talk about them, but in you. This needs to guide you. You need to understand this. You need to be able to communicate this. What do you do? Why do you do it? What drives you? Small business, you probably drive that business. As a small business owner, that's it, it's you. It's not like coming from some mysterious board of directors having strategy retreats and bringing things down from on high. Who do you do it? If you don't know, perhaps you should think about that a little bit. I should take my own advice. I still don't know why I don't know. Why do you do it? But most importantly, who do you do it for? Ultimately, your customer is the most important element in the equation. Who are you? What do you do? Why do you do it? But who do you do it for? What do you know about your customer? Who is your customer? This opens up the big hairy kind of can of worms. Can you have a hairy can of worms? I don't know if you can. Anyway, marketing, dirty word. You have to understand your market. You have to know who your customer is. You need to know where they are, how to find them, how to talk to them, how to use a language that they'll respond to. You really need to get under the skin of your customer in order to really meet their needs. And be customer focused. Small business does not exist without customers. No business exists without customers. But you'll write down close and personal and nitty-gritty customers often in small business land. So you need to know who these people are. And they are people. I can't remember why I have this slide here. It's nice and colourful, though, isn't it? We've just had lunch, so hopefully it's not, you know, making you think, hmm, I'm hungry. Universal truths. So I sort of said this before, but, you know, we work, you know, as Drupal people and as in digital agencies in a very innovative space. There's a lot of new stuff going on, and we're constantly sort of at the edge of things and finding out new and interesting ways of doing things and solving new and interesting problems. However, business is something humans have been doing for a very long time. And there is some stuff that is just on the verge of a universal truth when it comes to running a small business. We don't necessarily have to have the most innovative business model to run a small business, okay? So we can learn from, you know, as this chap suggested, our Chamber of Commerce and other kinds of businesses, we can learn those fundamentals and those universal truths from other sources. This isn't a lesson. This is why. This is one of the things that really matters to me and as a small business owner. I have absolute freedom. I have control over my destiny. This is, to me, the greatest benefit of running your own small business. It is yours. You are free to do what you want. When you want, how you want. You might have some constraints on that freedom, going back to doing your chores and the world that you live in, but ultimately you can also choose to not do it anymore and to pack up shop and go and be a hermit in the mountains. Your choice. Unless you've made Murray's mistake and actually hired people, you might have to have a conversation with them first. But you have to do your chores, as I've said. But you have autonomy. So this is the kind of, you know, flip side yin and yang of running a small business. Freedom, great. You've got to do your chores. Autonomy. I can be master of my own destiny and make decisions and have a sense of purpose and control and mastery. And ultimately be my own boss. But sometimes it's really boring. It's the reality of it. When you're doing those chores and you're having to input dozens of transactions because there was a failure in the bank feed or something and you're just doing it one by one and you're thinking, oh my goodness, there has to be a better way or someone can pay to do this. Sometimes no, it's just boring and independence. Sensing a theme here. Freedom. Autonomy. Independence. But chores. And boring. And hard work. It is hard. It may not be physically hard, like unless of course you're a landscape gardener in which case it probably is very physically hard sometimes. But it is hard work and it does require tenacity and discipline and focus. Hard work. No paid holidays. If I'm not working, I'm not earning. So I'm not getting that great kind of holiday pay in my payback when I get back. I do have awesome holidays. Ultimately though, all of that aside is very, very deeply fulfilling. I think if I distill it all down, that's why I do it, why I've done it for so long and why I continue to advocate for it. Often we get stuck, especially young people, it's all about this career focus and finding a job and working in someone else's world. But you can create your own work. You can be in charge of your own world. Create your own destiny. So those four key secrets again, do your chores. Really, seriously, do your chores. I've gotten into so much trouble with the tax office for not doing my chores. That's how I learnt that lesson. Invest in yourself and your team. There's no one else who's going to. There isn't some other kind of human resources department that's going to come along and say, it's time for you to go off and do some professional learning. You've got to do that professional learning yourself. Ask for help. Really? Don't be afraid. Don't feel ashamed. It's really okay to ask for help. Do that work to know where you can go and where you can ask for help. And ultimately live within your means. It doesn't seem like rocket science because it's not. It's really fundamental. They're my secrets. Hopefully they're helpful. Do you have any questions? As many of us know, as well as running a business, you also have several other commitments, including being part of the Drupal Association, which involves you doing a lot of travel. I'm wondering if you have any secrets about managing your ongoing clients when you're out of the country a lot. Neglect? No. Definitely a challenge. My business is two people. It's me and my husband, Peter, who some of you know. So poor Peter has to pick up the phone sometimes when he'd really rather not. But it is definitely a challenge. And expectation management, I guess, is part of it. And if we again reference back to Hannah's talk, your relationships with your clients mean making this really clear to them. The thing that I haven't been able to figure out is how they always seem to know what to do before I go away. It's uncanny. But actually building in with them that understanding that I will be away, that we need to do things before or after that, communication really, I guess, is the key to that challenge. Thank you for that talk. So one question that I had was this. Small businesses still have to make plans, right? So as she pointed out, you need to do your forecasting, right? What I have found very challenging has been to make reliable, workable plans. Because one way of doing it is to use your past data and just apply a percentage, like 20% or something of that sort. But then small businesses are also businesses that are expected to grow exponentially, right? Now that requires planning of a different sort and that kind of capability may not be something that's there internally, which is why forecasting becomes a big challenge. What are your thoughts on that? So one thing I disagree with the statement that small businesses are expected to grow exponentially. My business hasn't grown in 19 years. Actually, no, in the first six months 50% because Peter came into the business and started out just me. But that's it. And that I think is one of my earlier points, is that small business is often not about growth. It's not about that kind of projection into the future but it's more about this kind of day-to-day daily journey. But the other point about forecasting and planning and where you're going next, yes, it's still very important and work that needs to be done. So how do you do it? Do you rely on past data? Do you do a bit of naval gazing and project into the future what you imagine or hope? Do you do some research to kind of validate those that vision and hopes? All of the above. But I think in some ways at a small business level you create your future. Just the act of planning creates a pathway forward that didn't exist before you thought about it. Actually, I'm giving a talk next month at BuzzConf about creating our futures. Which is less about forecasting and more about designing your destiny. So for very large organizations with lots more moving parts forecasting becomes critical in a different way. The scale I'm talking about I think forecasting is really about sort of making a bet with yourself to say this is what we're going to be doing over the next 6 months, 12 months, 5 years. It may change. In fact, it nearly always does. It's the act of doing that thinking and being intentional about it that I think matters more than necessarily being right. I don't know if that really answers your question. Good question. Thanks. Any others? Yes. Making a run a run. Sorry. Sort of similar question. How do you stay motivated when you're starting a small business out of not necessity but opportunity? How do you make deadlines on yourself so you can stay motivated? Do whatever you can do to trick yourself fool yourself into having deadlines. Make bets with yourself. Look, I think it's actually important. I'm very deadline driven. If I've got 3 months to do something I'll probably still do it in the last 2 weeks. So if I say, well I need to have this part done by the end of this week because I know I'm not going to have time that sort of stuff. So it's kind of this strange bargaining process. I think the motivation part of the question is really interesting. In some ways if you're not motivated to work on your own business that is going to be a real challenge. So finding what your motivation is understanding it and rekindling it if you feel it's lagging is going to be really important. And if you don't have any motivation whatsoever in an opportunity focus then perhaps you shouldn't be doing it. It's hard. I think that's the thing is you'll probably have a fire that you've seen the opportunity for and it is only through hard work persistence, sweat that it's actually going to come true. And you'll be very motivated or I've found that people who really do succeed in small business are extremely motivated to have their vision come to life. There are a lot of people who have brilliant ideas all the time but then don't do any of the investment in making those ideas real. So motivation is critical. Probably a terrible answer but great question. Another question? Going? One right up the back? You said the customer. I give him the like because the recording... I'm so sorry about that. So that was just one of the thoughts I had but it's about nurturing the business as an entity as well and sacrificing some of your own income and getting that back into the business to make it secure. So you kind of look at your business as this other third party almost that you've got a nurture along as well. Absolutely. The bit that didn't get quite there was Murray also mentioned you know who do you do it for? I talk about doing it for your customer but you also do it for your shareholders. Now in my kind of small business I am the shareholder but yes investing back into the business or buying a new TV I'm sorry I was there not long ago. These are big questions and you know in larger businesses where there are shareholders outside of the business then you know they are stakeholders. They do become masters in your destiny and you do need to meet their needs as well but you're not going to meet their needs if you're not focused on your customer. Any more questions? Burning even comments? Crucisms? Compliments? Jokes? I look nice. Thank you Milly. So on that note then let me perhaps sum up. I'm not sure if we do have feedback forms on the website or not. If we do please fill it in. If we don't please tweet me at Catacrab. I would love to hear more questions, more comments. I would love to hear your stories where you're at in the small business world but I think if I need to distill down this kind of crazy talk survive, thrive and stay alive small business secrets it's really about you why you're doing it and your commitment and motivation for doing so and whether or not you're willing to commit to your customers and serve their needs whether you have a business if you don't have customers and if you don't understand their needs they're unlikely to be your customers for long. So do your chores really do your chores and live within your means the first one and the last one if you can distill it down to that then you're all good. Thank you all so much for coming today. One more image credits they're rolling.