 Okay, the Drupal ecosystem is a rich and exotic biosphere of business diversity. From freelancers, sole traders and contractors to some of the largest companies in the world. I'm Donna Benjamin. I've been running a small successful business for almost 20 years. I say almost. We actually turn 19 next month. So I've been doing this for a long time and I wanted to talk about or no, I wanted to share my experiences of running a small business and effectively my secrets for success. Running a small business is more of a journey than a destination. So I felt like it was good to start with Lao Tzu's statement that a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. And starting a small business is very much about taking that first step. Hands up here who is already running a business. What are you doing here? Hands up who's thinking about starting a small business. Okay, very good. So this is going to be a little bit of a, you know, kind of the world according to Donna. And I'm not going to apologize for that, okay? So a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. And that decision to branch out on your own and start a small business is that first step, but then where to, right? So this is what I've learned. Try for secrets, okay? Do your chores. Running a small business, and those of you who are already doing that may sort of find this familiar, right? There is work that you have to do running a small business, which is not fun, which is not the part of doing the work that your business is for, which is not serving the needs of your clients, but it has to be done regardless. And I've learned sometimes the hard way, and sometimes through good advice, and sometimes through sheer good luck, but doing your chores is one of the most important things you can do. Hands up who's, yes, yeah, doing your chores. It's really important. Invest in yourself, and if you have one, your team. This is also really important and really easy to miss. You can get so caught up in the day to day chores business that we forget about what it is that drives our business, and in the small business world, it's you. So what is it that you need? Is it professional learning? Is it a spa treatment? Is it a mentor or a coach? It's really important that you invest in your number one asset, and in many ways that is yourself. You are the driving force of your small business. So secret number two, invest in yourself and your team. Secret number three, ask for help. This seems so patently obvious and so easy to forget to do when you're struggling. The hardest part, I think, about asking for help is knowing who to ask for help, yeah? It's also one of those things that is hyper-local. Depending on where you are in the world, very different sources of help will be available to you as someone who is starting or running a small business. But it also may not be in the places that you're expected to be. So having a look around and trying to find what those are is an important part of this. This is almost like your kind of homework, like what are your sources of support? Ask for help. And finally, my number one, small business secret, live within your means. This is fundamentally different to, say, the startup world, right? Which is all about trying to get vast amounts of venture capital to fund your big idea that you then build out and maybe become a multinational corporation or hope is going to get bought out. Small business is different. And from my perspective, it has to be sustainable. And so this is a really important lesson. Debt can be very seductive. Like you want a thing now, you can finance it, go for it. But it has implications for your long-term next steps. Again, that journey. If you choose to front load, then you're going to have to pay that later. And you may not necessarily have it later. Every decision you make is going to impact that. So live within your means is my fourth secret. So that's it. I'm done. My fourth secret, right? We can all go now. All right. Okay. So a little bit more. I sort of mentioned there about startups and small business. I thought this is a vintage image, right, of a very small business. And it's a service business. This is a shoe shiner, right? I mean, come on, is this picture gorgeous or what? Right? So, you know, I wanted to kind of explore, you know, get this idea of what is small business. I sort of wanted to delve a little bit into the history of business itself, you know. We're in the open source technology world, and so we're working in a really innovative space. And there's lots of talk about business models and innovation and new and fangled and wonderful, right? But actually, humanity has been doing business for a hell of a long time. And there are some, if you like, universal truths in how you go about that. And there are some businesses that have been around a very long time. And some of the oldest ones started as small, often family-run businesses. So I really wanted to kind of keep this idea of small business as opposed to that kind of crazy tech startup world, yeah? Something kind of intrinsically human about the scale of small business. There's been quite a lot of research done on small business. Hands up, if you've heard of whole small business is the engine of the economy. It's where growth and jobs and, yeah? There's a lot of research that gets done into small business because actually that's kind of true. And some of that research suggests there's really two key types of businesses. Two key drivers for the initiation, for the start of those businesses. Opportunity is one of them. And opportunity is that sort of class of business where you see something and opportunity in the marketplace that you can exploit or develop or basically get out there and market. There's an opportunity to be taken and run with, right? It's where that very entrepreneurial kind of sense comes from. Perhaps you've got a great product idea that you want to develop in that space. And the other one, which is also very common, is necessity. This is the kind of small business where you actually don't have any choice. You've got to earn a living by hawk or by crook. And you find something that you can deal or sell or service or do. That means you can earn a crust. And the research suggests that depending on which one of these are, it's going to drive the way you do business very differently. You're going to approach it very differently. Now, I don't have a good insight to share for you on this. I think nearly 20 years ago, my initiation was in necessity. I had jobs. I didn't ever really quite fit. I didn't really quite ever fit in a particular pigeonhole. My skills weren't project manager shaped. I could do a lot of different things. I brought different sorts of perspectives. And it just kind of wasn't working out for me. So I started my own business. And here I am, many years later, still doing it. So opportunity and necessity, this isn't a right or a wrong. It's almost like a yin and a yang, if you like. And they work in concerts. So there'll be moments where people who are running businesses out of necessity can take opportunities. And there are people who may have started with an opportunity of finding that they're having to do things out of necessity. So there's a kind of interesting relationship between these two things. Yeah? I'm seeing some nodding. Is this resonating for some of the people in the room? So you've made the decision or you're already running a business. What are some of the skills that you need? And this, of course, varies depending on the nature of the business. So let's put aside the skills to do the special magic foo that is your business, right? Whatever it is, like perhaps it's carpentry, perhaps it's crafting dripple sites, whatever that thing is, let's put that aside. What's the other stuff you need to run the small business? Now, some of you already are. So let's go a little bit interactive here. I'm not looking at you, Jason. You don't have to be interactive with me right now. What are some of the skills you think you need to run the small business? I'm breaking the fourth wall here. You can speak. No? Accounting. You need accounting. Yes. What else? HR management. If you've got staff, even if you're investing in yourself, yes, you need to look after your human resources. What else? Legal. You have to have an understanding. You may not need to be a lawyer, but you will need to understand the legal implications, contracts, complying with legal, local regulations. Yes, legal. What else? Sales. Very important skill. And one that's not natural to a lot of people, especially in the perhaps dev techie world. How do you get out there and win the business you need to survive? Absolutely. Others? Sorry? Self-knowledge. Do you mean in terms of self-awareness and knowing yourself or knowing what you're good at and what you're not? Absolutely. Yep. What else? Marketing. Absolutely. You can have the greatest product or service in the world. If no one knows about it, then you're not going to get very far. And also, if you don't know your market, which is the flip side of marketing, maybe you think it's the greatest product in the world, but if no one actually wants it and you don't realize that, then you're kind of stuck. Good one. What else? Operations. Operations. Like the actual day-to-day, step-by-step, along that journey of getting stuff done. Absolutely. Yep. Others up the back? Discipline. It's a good one when I'm bad at. You do. You need to be disciplined. You need to keep taking that step along that journey, day after day. You need to be focused about it. Discipline's a good one. Others? Sorry, driving? Vision, knowing your niche? Having that sense of where you're going? Yep, absolutely. A bit of direction? Yep. Time management. Absolutely. Time managing is absolutely important. How do you balance the working on the business and delivering the service that your business provides? How do you get all the things done that need to be done and make some hard choices? Time management's critical. What else? You need drive. You need drive. And absolutely. You need to want to do it. You need to want to push past, get your chores done, and get on with the bit that you actually want to achieve. So, yes, very much so. Did I skip one? No. What skills do you need? What should you outsource? Should you outsource? And this one's really tricky. Accounting. Should you outsource accounting? That's a good one. This is one of those ones where, when you're starting out, you probably have more time than money. And so your inclination will to do a lot yourself because you have the time but not necessarily the money to pay someone to do it. But outsourcing is one of those things that can be is a really strategic decision. It is worth spending money to outsource and delegate some of the chores. But also anything which isn't part of your core business offering, anything that is tedious, that takes time, that you need done but isn't generating income, or perhaps you just don't like doing, like if it's not fun and you can, you know, treat it like electricity and pay someone else to provide it. Then it's a really good candidate to outsource. So anyone got some examples? Like counting is a good one of things that you can outsource as a small business? Hosting. Sorry? Hosting. Hosting is a great one, right? Especially with, you know, containerization or that kind of stuff, it's gotten a lot easier. We don't have to also be sysadmins as well as web designers. That's a good one. Any others? Legal. Hire in that capacity or get a great legal advisor. Yep? Lead generation. Lead generation. I need to learn more of that one, yes. Where can you get leads from? Really good one. So this is one of those really important questions. What can I outsource and should I employ someone? Should you employ people to give you more, you know, have more people rowing on the business work that you're doing so you can do more of it? Or to do some of these specialized skills? I have a confession to make in my 19 years of business. I've never employed anyone. It's just been me and my husband. And that was a decision I made because I didn't want the responsibility of employing people. It was okay for me to just eat, you know, two minute noodles every now and again when things got tight. But I couldn't ask an employee to do that. So should you employ people? Absolutely you should. It's the path to growth to being able to do more. But you don't necessarily have to. It's not necessarily about building, you know, the next big massive business. But again, it's one of those questions you should ask and you should answer with intention. Those of you running small businesses, do you employ people? Yes, how many? Yes. I mean, employ those 200, but so... Yes. Right, employing the first person was the hardest kind of shift. And then it gets a bit easier. You've doubled your company. Yeah. So it is. I mean, it is the path to growth. It is a way to get more done. It is important. It's a way of, you know, offloading some of the chores. Or bringing in skills and capacity you don't have. That, you know, as a contractor or a sole trader, you're fairly limited in what you can achieve. But perhaps as a team, you can change the world, right? So this is, again, one of those really, really important questions. We touched on this in terms of the skills that you need. Maybe you don't necessarily need skills because you're going to outsource that. But you're going to need at least a little bit of knowledge, a little bit of legal and financial knowledge to get the work done that you need to, to comply with regulations. Kinds of legal and financial knowledge and everything you, we touched on accounting and contracts is one. What are some of the other things that your small business people have had to grapple with that wasn't natural? You know, this is not, this is not knowledge we learn at kindergarten, right? This is stuff you've got to acquire somehow. Any examples? Employment law, and that's a really good example of how it changes depending on your location. Employment law from country to country, even state to state, even city to city can vary. And what support can you access? This is the flip side to my question of asking for help, or my secret of asking for help. Now this is one where I'm actually going to get you all to do a little bit of homework, a little bit in a moment. What support can you access? So there are small business networks. There's the Drupal community, if you're running a Drupal business, then there's lots of people running Drupal business who will be very generous with their time and their experience and share that with you. What are the other supports that you might need? Do you know where to go? Have you got options? What support can you access? This, sorry? Chamber of Commerce is a great one. Others, you're a accountant. You're a lawyer. You're local, you know, you're local business association. There are all sorts of surprising sources of support out there, but having that instinct to ask for help is sometimes the hardest step on that journey. So this is where I want you to do your homework. So because it's hyperlocal, I had actually had this very misguided ambition that I was going to go and get like a sample of business organisations from around the world, like some from where I'm from Australia and the Irish Chamber of Commerce and a whole bunch of them get their websites and they went, wait, wait, wait. You've all probably got a device, right? So let's just take a moment, dig out your device and find one of those sources of support for small business in your local area. And they call different things, right? So just humor me, dig something up and I want to hear some examples. Is it a Chamber of Commerce? Is it a government run? You know, is the government providing that support? Or is there an industry association providing that support? Or is it your local user group who has a business meetup? You know, what is it? What are some of the local avenues for support? Then the flip side is if you're starting a business, that's also the kind of information that is very hyperlocal. What steps do you need to take to actually register a business name? Do you need to have some kind of business number? You know, do you need to get some kind of credential? Do you need to have some kind of certificate of having done a basic business course before you're even allowed to do it? What are these things? It's going to be hyperlocal. It's going to depend on your needs. And depending on where you are in that sort of business journey bite, it's okay. Depending on, and that's for any of you, if this is not right for you, you have the power of your feet, so please just go and do something else that's cool. That information is going to be very specific to who you are and where you're at in that journey. So has it got any examples have come up? That is awesome. I'm going to repeat that. So in Houston, Score in Houston, it's an organization with retired CEOs who will offer free mentoring for people running businesses. Beautiful example. Any others? BNI in the UK. Breakfast once a month, sharing leads all around the UK. That is fantastic. Awesome, thank you. One more. Just found out he's missing out on a grant that subsidizes, what was that? Employing young people. And he has roles that he could use that for right now. Awesome, that is brilliant. Yes. Wow, and so we're, sorry, what's your name? In Jordan, there's a program if you hire fresh graduates, then you can get funding for half the salary for their first year. That's awesome. So this is the example, right? Your local governments and institutions and networks are very keen because of that thing we said earlier about small business, driving economies. There is actually a lot of support out there and it's amazing what you can tap into. It doesn't necessarily have to be what you expect but just do a little bit of a, you know, pull out your favorite search engine and put in some keywords and off you go. Thank you all for those. That's much better than the crusty old slides I was going to put up. So this local piece is really important. So that's why, you know, your advice, when you ask for help, you need to tap into knowledge which is aware of those kind of local parameters. But that said, also running a small business is universal and we've all been doing it as humans for a very long time. So there's some stuff which regardless of the local stuff, there'll still be common things like how do you do good customer service? How do you, you know, make sure that your bottom line adds up? You know, there's some fundamental stuff which really doesn't matter. It's universal. So again, I wanted to go with this sort of sense of small business outside of tech. So from shoe shining to the spice market. We've been doing this for a long time and, you know, within marketplaces and if you think about Drupal and I started by saying we're a diverse ecosystem that our marketplace is also a rich opportunity to trade. As a small business, you might contract your services to a larger business and the marketplace, a place like DrupalCon is one place where that's a real opportunity. Probably the most fundamental piece about running a small business is this piece about your identity. Who are you? What is it that you're offering the market? What do you do? What is the service product? Whatevs that you're providing? You have to be really clear about this. You have to really be able to answer this question succinctly. You need to have a reason. That drive, if you don't have a reason, if you don't know why you do it, it's gonna be really hard to take that step day after day and do all those chores. Why do you do it? But most importantly, most importantly, who do you do it for? None of it matters if no one wants to buy it. Who is your customer? We spoke about marketing briefly. Who is your customer? Why do they need or want the thing, the service that you're offering? What do you know about them? What can you find out about them? How can you find out more about them? How can you be Google and know everything about them? No, okay, totally. That's too much. We're giving our talk this morning, right? Keynote. But who is your customer? Do you know who they are? Do you know what they want? Do you know what they need? Can you meet their needs? If you can't, they're probably not gonna be your customer. Well, not for very long. This is probably one of those things where you should think the most about it and that you should work on this. And if you don't enjoy it, put it in your chore list and get it done anyway. But it can become very rewarding. This is actually that fundamental relationship that drives business connections. So, if we're in a marketplace, whether it's the Drupal ecosystem or something else, what do we, where do we go from here? So, had my four secrets, I'll recap them again at the end. And those questions were actually in the abstract that I had on the website for this session. So, these to me were not directly, my four secrets were not necessarily direct answers to those questions. And the answers to those questions will change over time. And maybe intentionally so. Perhaps you need to pivot, perhaps your business needs to change. And this is also one of those keys to sustainability is if your market changes, does your business stop? Do you, if you're a necessity driven business, you still need to earn a living? Do you need to pivot? Do you need to change? Do you perhaps need to stop selling oranges and start selling watermelons? How much is what you do is your business built on a single offering? Is that something that you should think about? Should you do some horizon scanning and say, well actually, the mark of oranges is drying up. People are shifting to lemons. Goodness only knows why, but hey, that's where it's going. How do you get ahead of that? How do you pay attention? So then I wanted to sort of distill down into, I guess what I call universal truths. So, let's recap a little. A lot of the knowledge, the financial, the legal, the compliance stuff is gonna be hyper local and specific to the world where we, our local environments. Even if we're running a global online business, we still have to be registered somewhere, right? Then let's flip to those universal truths. So from local to universal. To me, freedom is the number one sort of benefit of running my own business. I have been master of my own destiny. I have made the decisions of where to go and what to do, make changes that I needed to make. That's been up to me. Okay, I've had to consult with my husband because he was also in the business. But it was us. It was our choice. We didn't have a master. It was up to us. I spoke already about chores. So there's a yin and a yang. When you're running a small business, you have to do the work that needs doing. There is no one else. It's not gonna get done by some street sweeper for you. You must get this stuff done. That's a universal truth. But then there's that autonomy. You can have your sense of self worth and identity in that autonomy. That you can do what you need to do and you can get better at it. They talk about mastery, autonomy and purpose. All of these are intrinsic to running your own business and being your own master. Boring. There are bits of it. And those of you who've run businesses, there's tediousness. There's stuff that is time and time again, needs doing. Not interesting. Not challenging. Not helping you feel that sense of autonomy and mastery. But just needs doing. It's not interesting. It's not even hard. It's just dull. But then you can make these choices. This independence, freedom, autonomy, independence, balancing out the boring, the chores and the hard work. There is no getting away from the fact that running a small business is not a nine to five job that you can just put on the shelf. Even if you're very disciplined about clocking off at the end of the day, because it's still gonna be a part of your brain ticking over, thinking about the next thing that needs doing. There's still gonna be work that needs to be done and you're gonna have to do it. Hard, hard work. But ultimately, all of that, I think, basically delivers this really deep, rich sense. Oh, I missed one. There are no paid vacations. If you're not doing the work, there's no one to pay, give you holiday pay. But you'll get great fulfillment. That's ultimately very satisfying about running a small business. And I can say that with absolute conviction. It has been very rewarding. And I think I have grown. I have learned. I have experienced things I would never, ever have done. If I had managed to be pigeonholed back at the start of my career as something or another with a nice project, with a nice title, it's very rewarding. It's all of those other things though. It's hard work. It's boring. There are chores. But ultimately, being master of your own destiny leads to this sense of I can control where I'm going. I know where my next step is on that journey. So back to our four key secrets. Do your chores. Invest in yourself and your team. Ask for help and live within your means. Questions? Yes? What are some of those chores? What are some of those chores? So for me, like stuff like bookkeeping, you've got to, even with the wonders of modern technology and automated bank feeds into automated accounting systems, you've still got to reconcile them. You still might have to write your own voices. You still might have to do some kind of marketing automation tasks. There's all sorts of bits and pieces that depending on the nature of the business you're doing, there's going to be stuff that just needs to get done. And that's sort of what I mean by chores. And that will again vary depending on the nature of the business. Good question. Yes? So I guess this comes to the apples and oranges and watermelons thing, as you know, the nature of the world will change. Are you still going to be in, and some, you know, assuming good health, is there something that you can still do? So perhaps you've shifted from directly creating innovative technology and you shift into a mentoring role. You know, I think that life cycle is probably just as important a part of how you transition and how you pivot for when you need to over the course of the time. So when I started my business, it's called Creative Contingencies, it was basically business support services. And in many ways it kind of stayed that, but then we were doing document production for events, like creating folders with stuff in it that stopped. We started doing that digitally. We started creating conference websites. You know, things changed. So we've shifted quite a bit over the time. And more recently, we've shifted quite a bit more, but that's a story for another day. So yes, you know, technology changes and that's why I say don't necessarily be wedded to one technology. The moment we're all like, you know, Drupal's awesome, right? It's always going to be here. But sacrilege, what if it's not? Jesse Nola from the Python community wrote a really interesting post just in recent days about not tying your identity to the tool, but perhaps to the context for the solution where your knowledge will transfer. Great question. Thank you. More questions? Yes. Yes. How does a small business compete with that? This is an incredibly good and existential question. So I think that fundamentally what that Taylor was doing was still about the relationships. So for someone who was wanting just cost and convenience, they're probably going to do that click button. But I would imagine that a really great Taylor is still going to be able to meet the needs of a local community or even an international community through quality work, incredibly good customer service. Hopefully those things are part of the universal truths where that great Taylor is still making great suits. But it's definitely in the mix. It's a challenge. All of us are in danger, as our keynote said this morning, of having our jobs automated to some extent. Lawyers in particular, I never would have thought that lawyers were going to be robotified out of work, but apparently they are, because we can get kind of boilerplate contracts online, change a few details, make sure it's fit for your local area and you don't need a lawyer anymore. So definitely, definitely that globalization, automation, risks for all of us. How do we adapt? Great question. Not a great answer, a great question. Any more great questions? Even average questions. So I guess I want to confess a little as we wrap up by Jason. He told me he needed to leave early, so I said he could go. It's fine. So a little bit of a confession is as I was preparing this talk, I thought I wanted to delve into all of this research on the history of small business and as I said, get all these different local examples from around the world to demonstrate the fact that, you know, whatever. And I got really caught up in it and then I kind of had to step back and say, hey, wait, you have been doing this for 19 years. I haven't necessarily got it right all the time. I've made some pretty terrible mistakes. I got into a terrible office, a terrible trouble with the Australian Tax Office and had to go into a payment plan and that was definitely one of those ones I learnt the hard way about paying my own superannuation and that was where the invest in yourself lesson comes from. Don't forget to do the things that you really need to do for yourself. So it's hard to kind of be in front of a room of people, a dribble con and be an expert. I think there was a session earlier today about impostor syndrome, so, you know, I was kind of feeling that. But then again, I stepped back and said, hey, no, wait, I have been doing this for 19 years. And so some of the things I did learn along the way, I hope might help you in your journeys of starting, running, building, growing your own small businesses, at least help out a little bit. So, oh, one more question. He's much better at it than I am. We have, so the question, sorry to repeat, any tips on how to handle work-life balance given I work with my husband? And he's better at it than I am and we have our office in one room in our house and he closes the door and he says, no, and I get very seriously dirty looks if it looks like I'm gonna be going and sneaking back in there. It's definitely a challenge and it's one that requires discipline to say very, you know, be disciplined about managing your work-life balance. We don't have kids, so that's also not, and that's a forcing factor too. If you have kids, then that drives work-life balance in a very specific way, but it is something you have to be mindful of. Oh, you know, there's a flip side, other people will tell you, no, it's all one anyway. It's work-life, who cares? It's, you know, it's what you are, it's who you are, it's what you do. But getting the balance right, I think, is important for the sustainability of that long journey. Great question. One more. All done, going, going, gone. Thank you all so, so much for coming today. Two bits of housekeeping. Friday, contributions, sprints, all the details are there. And finally and most importantly, I have a favour, a favour to ask you. Please, please take a moment and provide some feedback. Be as brutal as you like. Give me as many compliments as you like. I'll definitely like the compliments, but it's really important that we get feedback both for ourselves as presenters, but for the organisers as well. So, I've given you the shortcut to my node, 13535. Please do give some feedback. And thank you all. Give yourselves a round of applause. Thank you.