I’m no technophile. I bought my digital clock radio at home 21 years ago, an eon in the life of what is basically a disposable product. What I like about technology can be summed up as “Does it save me money? Does it allow my small business to operate like a big business?”

Andrew at Southwest Windpower finds inspiration in Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat for “Going Global.” Technology and globalization have created the conditions for both the possibility and the necessity of selling products and services around the world.

I think of the basic technologies we use at Cedarcrest not only as leveling the field for international business, but creating a flatter world for small businesses to operate like big businesses.

VOIP Phone – Surprisingly cheap, especially for a business that makes many long-distance calls. I plug in my phone anywhere there’s a solid internet connection, and it’s ready to go as if I was at the office. For incoming callers to my office the phone rings and I pick up just as if I was sitting at my desk. For outgoing calls I call everywhere as a local call, no matter where I really am. I can intercom my colleague back in the office by hitting his extension.

Voicemails On Email – An audio file of voice messages arrives directly to my email box, allowing me to listen to phone message without picking up the phone. This is part of the VOIP package.

Laptop Portal Into My Desktop – I can remotely ‘take-over’ my desktop when away from the office through a laptop portal, thereby accessing Cedarcrest’s server and all of our business files. This has changed the concept of office location. My office is available wherever I’ve got an internet connection.

Crackberry – This needs no explanation due to its ubiquity, but still, it’s really cool to be able to respond to customers by email wherever, whenever.

Outsourced IT Support – My IT company charges a bare minimum to host my email account, and an hourly rate if I have a problem that needs fixing. They are always available and can usually fix problems remotely by a ‘Portal’ into my desktop.

None of these is ground-breaking or cutting edge technologies…BUT, the fact that they are affordable for small businesses is radical. It gives small businesses a level playing field when competing for big business. In addition, (for better or worse) affordable technology allows me to be in the office virtually, no matter where I go.

As one of California’s oldest and largest independent ad agencies located in Los Angeles, we're known here at The Phelps Group for our work in building brands and generating sales for our clients. Our success is partly due to our ongoing commitment to a mission statement that clearly defines what we expect from both the agency and its clients. In part, it reads:

“Our mission. . .is to do great work for deserving clients, in a healthy working environment, to realize our clients’ goals and our potentials.”

We define “deserving” as those clients whose products make the world a better place to live – and who treat us like human beings.

When we were about $14 million in billings, a friend came to me and offered to bring in a large account ($12 million) but said there were some strings attached. He said the account would be extremely profitable, but the client had a severe drinking problem, which invariably results in agency people working very hard, but never seeing the results of their labor. He also said that we’d sometimes have to lie about the client’s whereabouts.

This account represented a lot of money for us. It would virtually double the agency’s size. I thought about it for a couple of days. On one hand, I wanted the revenue; on the other, I didn’t want to destroy the harmony of our young, but fast-growing and very healthy agency. Here’s how I solved the dilemma. I basically went into the future and looked back to the present.

Our growth plans called for 25% growth per year. I could see on the chart that it wouldn’t be very many years until we would reach $50 million in billings. And I knew that if we maintained our present course, we would get there, and be a well-rounded company working for “deserving clients,” and would be proud of our accomplishments. However, if we took this big, but troublesome account, it could ruin our healthy environment, and we might never realize our real goals. So the decision was easy. We turned down the account and have always been glad we did. This year our billings will be $44 million, and we will probably reach $50 million before the end of next year.

If you’re ever having trouble making a big decision, mentally go into the future and look back to the present. Things can get crystal clear from that vantage point.

Last Saturday I woke early, put on my running shoes, and joined 5,400 other competitors for a 10K race in New York City’s Central Park. There’s nothing like jostling within a massive pack of Type-A health-nuts to push myself to the limit of my own speed-and-pain-threshold.

While I believe in joining large groups of competitors for a healthy body and sound mind, I don’t run crowded races expecting to finish in the top group.

I was reminded of the best business book I ever read, “The Millionaire Mind” by Dr. Thomas J. Stanley, since it recommends the exact opposite scenario from my Saturday race if you want to be rich and successful in business.

Stanley is better known as one half of the duo who wrote the best-seller “The Millionaire Next Door” (an excellent book in its own right).

Stanley surveyed about a thousand millionaires in 1998 to determine the common elements of their financial success, and came up with a profile of millionaires greatly at odds with how the popular press depicts America’s wealthy.

“The Millionaire Mind” speaks directly to every small business owner, since the lesson of the book can be summed up in four words: “Own Your Own Business.”

The key insight I took from his book for finding success as an entrepreneur can be summed up even more succinctly: “Avoid Competition.”

More specifically, Stanley writes, look for areas in which you do not have to compete with the best and the brightest minds of your generation, and the best and the biggest companies. Stanley found an inordinate number of millionaires who built businesses in non-competitive markets, or niches that others find difficult or unattractive to fill.

He highlights the guy who ran the junk/scrap yard in his small town who, by the way, retired with $5 million dollars. By his own admission, the junk yard owner didn’t have to be that good, he just owned the only junk yard in town.

Time and again Stanley interviewed millionaires who created businesses in areas where they had no competition, often because the industry lacked prestige.

The converse of the “Avoid Competition” rule is also important. If you enter highly-competitive, ultra-prestige fields such as medicine, law, banking, and consulting, filled with straight-A students from Ivy League colleges, it’s going to be extraordinarily difficult to stand out from the crowd.

Stanley found that a typical millionaire was an average B- student in school who went to a not-particularly-name-brand college. Finding careers in medicine, law, banking, and consulting too difficult to pursue, the average millionaire in his survey found employment in a less competitive field. The most successful of the survey participants worked in less competitive fields and they owned their own businesses.

My 10K Saturday was a “prize money” race which attracted world record holders and Olympic-class athletes, which may explain why the winning time at Saturday’s race was a blistering 4:34 per mile. Unsurprisingly, nobody was there to hold up the tape or a medal when I crossed the finish line.

In my road-racing career I accept mediocrity, and therefore welcome the competition from the world’s best. In my business career, however, I have higher expectations. Taking a page from Stanley’s “Millionaire Mind” at Cedarcrest I look to find the races where I’m the only one at the finish line, winning every time.