nutgone wrote: One of the people actually used to teach in night school for adults, "how to run your own small business".
Thats interesting, my knowledge is gained 100% from practical experience - 0% percent theoretical.
I dont want for one minute to suggest a theoretical approach has no merit however I think that fairly soon you really need to start applying practical examples to the theory so I could imagine a course aimed at small hotel owners being very useful but I find it harder to see how a course aimed equally at a small engineering shop, a sports wear outlet, a publican and a campsite owner could really be of much use to any of them - the real value information is in the specifics not the generics in my opinion.
I think if you list the generic information that is useful it takes only five minutes.
The real interesting stuff is in the specifics and then you have to decide whether you are talking about running a campsite or running a shop and stay on topic, I dont believe I would learn much of use if I attended a business course aimed at shop owners, the devil is in the detail and detail comes from practical experience so the valuable insights are gained from looking and talking to people already running that specific type of business.
My wife and I are both of the opinion that we have good ability at running a small tourist business but we both have severe doubts we would necessarily be good at running any other type of business -maybe we would but we lack that certainty to say "Yup I could do that really well" whereas now we feel really confident in the area of tourism.
I can remember at one stage we were a little flushed with an early success and talked of what other businesses we could or might like to run and to begin with the discussion was over confident and we thought "If we can do this well we could lots of other things well" but at the end of the discussion our deflated egos told us that NO! All we knew with confidence is that we can run a small tourist business well.
All I am saying here I guess is that if those folks just taught theoretical and the theory was not grounded in loads of real hands on experience in the specific sector of interest then I have doubts that the theory would be of great use.
If I wanted to learn how to run a successful cafe I would talk to as many successful and unsuccessful cafe owners ( learn from the negative as well as the positive ) as I could find - I wouldnt start at the local nightcourse centre.
I think you could learn a lot from talking to everyone who had failed at running a cafe....or actually...No that isnt really correct because usually they dont know why they failed and that is symptomatic of the problem - what I really mean is that I would like to see a fly on the wall documentary chronicalling their failure - that would be invaluable information albeit at the cost of someone else's misery.
Jon
PS: Away from business theory - Oone good quality is the ability to smile. Our customers warm to my wife who is aimiable and smiles easily - many have said that they are amazed that she still smiles in high season - they go on to tell us that in their experience the majority of campsite owners look like sour grapes when the pressure is on and they genuinely find it a pleasure to come to reception and get help with a smile from my wife.
I have to remember that because I do all the practical stuff and so if I am in the middle of a plumbing nightmare and run back to the workshop for some more tools I need to take a quick breath, let the anxiety drain out of my face and freshen myself up mentally so I can still give the kids a smile when I pass them - they can read your face and although you are focused on a plumbing issue what you may actually be displaying is fear or something else that they can pick up on negatively.
All I can say is the thing that often shocks me most in small family run tourist businesses is not the standard of the loos or the lack of business accumen, its just the apparent belief that the world owes you a living and that a careless, grumpy or slightly sour demeanour towards the customer is acceptable - I am sometimes deeply shocked.
The worst I ever saw was in France when I was helping a fellow hotel owner with his computer - I anticipated a pause so that the hotel owner could deal with a customer who had just arrived for his key but I was shocked as he briefly turned, silently slid the keys to the customer and then without a skip of a beat turned back to the computer screen where his (self) interest lay - when I saw that I knew we had choosen the right trade because with competition like that you know you are ahead of the game just because you care.
) & we all had 3 days notice! He said he would be good enough to pay me until the end of the week, if I helped them move out! (leaving me & all my stuff & an angry landlord to try & placate for long enough for me to get my stuff out!). My daily life was suddenly shattered & I had loads of stuff to get my head around.
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