Renée Warren's Blog

Kindergarten: The Basics for Small Business Success

April 7, 2009 at 3:38 pm Leave a comment

Remember the saying “All I really need to know I learned in Kindergarten“?  That saying should hold true in your small business.  The list is basic, ironically whimsical, and valid.  

These are the things I learned:

• Share everything. (Good for power brainstorm sessions and idea creation)
• Play fair. (Merit, merit merit!!!)
• Don’t hit people. (If someone ‘screws up’.  Let them dust off and try again)
• Put things back where you found them. (Like my stapler!)
• Clean up your own mess. (Tidy workstations, businesses, and offices, are easier, healthier, and more productive places to work)
• Don’t take things that aren’t yours. (Ideas, thoughts, inventions…and merit!)
• Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody. (If you ‘screw up’, apologize and fix your mistake)
• Wash your hands before you eat. (Makes for a healthy flu season)
• Flush. (duh!)
• Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. (I always loved the ladies that brought in home-cooked food. It surely increased morale)
• Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day – some (Don’t make your business your life. Make sure to live and love too.)
• Take a nap every afternoon. (To the dedicated entrepreneur, a ‘nap’ is a 15-20 minute afternoon siesta.  Try it sometime)
• When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together. (What is your competition doing? Probably taking a nap)
• Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that. (Plant your businesses roots deep and watch it grow.  If you water it and give it light it will turn into a beautiful flower)
• Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup – they all die. So do we. (Your business will change, it will evolve, and hopefully prosper into something amazing. It’s your duty to avoid business death, but to understand that it can happen)
• And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned – the biggest word of all – LOOK (Self explanatory)

Now take one or all of those items and apply it to your life  and your business.

Watch it grow.

Entry filed under: small business tips.