Sue Canyon arms small businesses for prosperity through the Anatomy of Business workshops
SILVER CLIFF, Colo., July 15, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- For 30 years Sue Canyon of Business is Booming! has waged war on the bane of small business — bankruptcy. Working with entrepreneurs on the front lines of enterprise, Sue has armed a great many small business owners with the ammunition needed to defeat the insidious enemies of profitability.
As a seasoned veteran of business rescue operations, Sue is adept at performing forensic analysis to reveal the kinds of vulnerabilities that force small business owners to surrender to bankruptcy. Even business owners on the brink of financial disaster have employed Sue's field-tested tools and tactics to emerge victorious — profitable, confident, and rejuvenated.
After decades of developing and refining her system, Sue is now offering that system, the Anatomy of Business Series of workshops, to business owners at a fraction of the cost that her clients typically pay for her services (AnatomyofBusiness.com).
After the advent of factories and the close of World War II, consumers were so eager to get at new products that a new business owner could hardly fail. But with the social and economic disruptions caused by WWII, "small business mentors were no longer available to guide new entrepreneurs," Sue notes. "Without mentors to teach the nuances of their business craft, many businesses became what I call 'the walking dead.' The recession of 2007-09 proved an excellent time for these walking dead to close their doors and save face by blaming their failure on the banking crisis."
Even trusted allies can unwittingly lead business owners into dire straits, Sue reveals. "I've learned that accountants generally don't know how to run businesses that aren't selling hours." Likewise, "Nonprofits don't know how to run a business to make a profit, and the government doesn't know how to teach us how to run businesses. Any savvy entrepreneur who's seen the training coming out of the Small Business Development Centers will understand what I'm saying."
Even business professors at top-rated business colleges don't know how to run a small business, Sue adds. "Business schools actually teach that it's good for the economy to let businesses fail because, to start again, the entrepreneur must scrape together another chunk of money to invest — retirement savings, their kid's college fund, a second mortgage, or maybe even a third. They teach that all that sidelined money needs to get dumped back into the economy. To get the money moving again, let's let them file for bankruptcy and start over." Sue cringes at this approach.
Hamstrung with a bad credit rating, the business owner can lose everything, including their home and family. "I've seen it happen too many times."
"Here's a common example," Sue says. "A young entrepreneur graduates from college with a hard-earned business degree. They have no practical experience, and (more often than not) plenty of student loan debt. Without experience, finding a job to pay back those student loans is tough. Business degree in hand, our graduate decides to start a business, and their proud parents are eager to help the new graduate become a 'captain of industry.'"
Our aspiring entrepreneur puts together a business plan just like they learned in college. But the new business burns through Mom and Dad's retirement savings much faster than the business plan accounted for. As Sue has observed far too often, "It doesn't take long before this bright young entrepreneur is overwhelmed by all the disjointed things that they didn't know they had to pay attention to."
Sue makes it clear that she recognizes the value of business degrees, "but they're not much help when starting a small business." Business degree programs are generally focused on preparing the student to work in the corporate world. "The textbooks are written by professors who have only studied the corporate world because there's enough depth there to warrant study."
So, if a business degree doesn't provide much help for startups, where does a new entrepreneur go to get the knowledge they need for success?
"Many rely on their tax accountants," Sue answers. "After all, accountants have business degrees. But … well, our example just illustrated how ineffective a business degree is when it comes to helping our typical graduate start a new business. Don't get me wrong, accountants are great. They accomplish some very tedious work, and they keep the IRS off your case."
Rarely do any of these accountants ever visit a client. "So they don't get exposed to how business is actually done from the standpoint of those they work for," Sue says. "They're part of an accounting business, but all they sell is the hours they spend working at their desk, isolated from all other business operations."
And the accounting business is pretty simple. The only costs are labor and a little overhead — no materials, no production costs, very little capital equipment, and no inventory. Accountants also must follow established rules and guidelines, so there is no design, no prototype, no preproduction, no tweaking the system to minimize costs — "none of the things other business owners have to deal with every day," Sue notes.
"This narrow range of business experience lends credence to the kind of advice you typically get from accountants: 'Sell more.' The more hours accountants sell, the more profit they make. But for most business owners who are looking for advice to improve a bad situation, selling more, from a loss standpoint, will sell them into bankruptcy."
"Given the accounting business model, the only place accountants have experience in cost reduction is overhead," Sue observes. "Rent, utilities, pens, coffee … I can't tell you how many times I've had to listen to a new client complain about how much more it cost them when they moved to a new location to save on rent — at the advice of their accountant. And the joke about five people sharing one pen is actually not far off."
These overhead expenses are also known as fixed expenses. As the term indicates, fixed expenses remain fairly consistent, and Sue has repeatedly observed accountants advising business owners to reduce fixed expenses, which can only be accomplished at the rate of 1 or 2% of revenue. Instead, among a myriad of other concepts, Sue shows business owners how to reduce the cost of goods sold, "which can be accomplished more easily and can yield savings of 20-40% of revenue."
Then, there are consulting firms or private individuals who sell their hours to advise small businesses. Many of these people are laid-off managers from big business. "They may know a small part of how a business should work," Sue says, "but they don't have the experience to know how the business should work as a whole. Their biggest overhead cost is in attorneys fighting off lawsuits because the consultant doesn't know what they're doing for the average small business in trouble."
So now the Small Business Administration (SBA) is stepping in, trying to help small businesses. "The SBA is a nonprofit and a government entity. Their revenue comes mainly from grants and taxes." As Sue points out, "Neither pf these revenue models is helpful in teaching entrepreneurs how to do business in the free market economy."
Recognizing the lack of practical, reliable information available to entrepreneurs, Sue created the Anatomy of Business Series, which teaches business owners how to bypass the pitfalls that commonly contribute to small business bankruptcy.
"I was very fortunate to learn from an amazing mentor while I was earning my college degree," Sue says. "He was a true business genius, and what I learned from him became the foundation of my career. Since then, I've made some adjustments and used these techniques to dramatically improve the success and profitability of a wide range of businesses. I'm happy to now offer this knowledge to all small business owners through the Anatomy of Business Series."
Having consistently proven her system with multiple businesses over the course of 30 years, Sue knows her system works, and she backs it up with a money-back guarantee. Visit AnatomyOfBusiness.com for more information or to start learning how to dramatically improve your business.
SOURCE Business is Booming!
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