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What Still Works

NASE Members Stick To Fundamentals For Long-Term Business Success

By Jan Norman

NASE Member Ron Wilson, owner of R&S Cleaning Service in Peoria, Ariz., has been cleaning commercial buildings for as long as the NASE has been providing services and products to help the self-employed succeed.

Thirty years.

That seems like a long time, and it certainly predates many of the tools that are now considered everyday basics for many micro-businesses. Consider:

• More than 60 percent of small businesses use QuickBooks software to keep track of their financial recordkeeping. Yet the company that created it, Intuit, started just 28 years ago (1983).
• Businesses of all sizes are almost expected to have a website, yet the World Wide Web, which made websites available as marketing tools, was created 22 years ago (1989).
• The cell phone, which enables micro-business owners to stay in touch with customers and the home office from anywhere, wasn’t widely available to the public until 14 years ago (1997).
• Social media help micro-businesses communicate and build relationships with customers; yet Facebook didn’t launch until 2004, and Twitter didn’t tweet until 2006.

Interestingly, Wilson is just now setting up a website for his cleaning service. And he doesn’t have a Facebook fan page or a Twitter account. All of these are merely the latest tools that help micro-businesses accomplish the fundamental activities that lead to success.

But the fundamentals themselves—such as marketing, financing and building customer loyalty—haven’t changed, Wilson says. Other NASE Members and business experts tend to agree.

Even after 30 years, the basics of business success still remain much the same.

Fundamentals Rule!

What is more basic to business success than a cell phone and a website? Service, for one thing.

“If you don’t do a good job, you’re out,” Wilson says. “All my business comes pretty...