I’ve been spending a lot of my time lately thinking about how to help connect small businesses in a positive way. It just seems to me that there are a ton of smart and talented entrepreneurs around that could benefit from an organized “collaborative consulting” group. I’ve outlined the basic idea over here to get started.

From my experience as a small business owner/manager I’ve learned that professional help in some areas is needed and useful but can be out of reach financially. I was in a position to hire the people that I needed to some extent but I know many are not. I’m talking about accountants, marketing firms, HR professionals, insurance consultants, management consultants, etc. These are important parts of small business no doubt, but they can be too expensive for some to hire out. I also learned a ton and got a lot of support from fellow business owners.

What if you could get the benefit of having these pros on your team without paying for exclusive service. How about a regular meeting with experts and other small business owners that is organized and focused on finding solutions to YOUR current issues. All the while saving on the expense by splitting the cost with others.

I see a meeting of the minds. Small business owners collaborating and helping the other members with their issues. Every small business faces the same types of challenges on a regular basis- hiring, firing, insurance, tax prep, budgeting, marketing concepts, ad buys, delegating, efficient systems, the list goes on and on. Can’t these questions be solved with a universal solution that is tweaked to fit into the business? The underlying systems work for any business when applied correctly don’t they?

I was talking this idea over with a friend of mine that always plays the devil’s advocate, thankfully. He seems to think that business owners are too secretive with the inner workings of what they do to share much with others, especially the competition. One of his solutions was to allow only one business from each industry at a time.

Please do me a favor and answer a couple of questions when you have the time-

1. Are small business owners too proud/scared/secretive to share their business with others? Keep in mind that these other folks would be business owners themselves, maybe even competitors. Also, I’m not talking about specific financials or proprietary info, just solutions to common problems that have worked for them.
2. Can you see a benefit to meeting once a month with experts, guest speakers and fellow business owners as an alternative to hiring these pros separately but having them to yourself? Realize that the cost would be about 10% of hiring them individually, plus the benefit of networking with other entrepreneurs AND having all of the information available online via video, text and presentations.
3. Would you be interested in taking part in a test group? No charge to you except for your feedback, which will be structured and required.

I’m hoping for responses from small business owners and managers but of course everyone’s input is welcome and helpful. I plan to run a test group if I see the interest and the folks that respond here will be the first to be invited. Please share this with your friends and colleagues that would be interested. If you want to chat about it you can reach me at 772-8447 or any of the places on my network page. Thanks in advance for your insight!