This is how I want to run my business. I try to do a lot of these already, but obviously scale applies to others. Scale is coming to us, I think. The fact that it’s ‘us’ now, and not just me, is a start. :)

Tucows Blog: Mid-morning brought an inspirational business session titled Choosing to be Great Instead of Big, led by Layne Sisk, president of The Plus Group. His talk was about focusing your efforts on satisfying key groups of people rather than appealing to mass audiences. Layne used five ways to be “great” to illustrate his point:

• Great in your customers eyes
  • Not just in customer service, be great from their perspective
  • Make the relationship personal
  • Make your customers a branch of your marketing department

• Great in quality
  • If you don’t believe in quality, you’ll never produce it
  • Get customer feedback to gauge quality levels

• Great in community
  • Participate in/set up community involvement programs
  • Get involved in what you truly care about

• Great place to work
  • Promote a culture of intimacy
  • Make pay a secondary reason for people to work for you

• Great for you
  • Make your business something you love; it becomes like your second family