Taking your business public, what you need to know

Taking your business public is a big step. Depending on what you're doing (setting up a mechanic's shop on main street versus selling homemade office equipment on the Internet), you'll have the inevitable red tape to get through. The purpose of this short essay is to look at some practical, common sense aspects of taking a business public.

 When a business goes public, its owners must decide if they want to do so quietly or with a little bang, as it were. Some business owners prefer quietly, as it'll help them find time to get their bearings, start slowly and safely, and not get in over their heads. Other business owners prefer to jump right in, take advantage of all the benefits of publicity, and say "Here we are!" as loudly and attractively as possible.

 If a business goes public "quietly," it basically means that they don't make a big deal of it with the press; they don't come up with a bunch of opening day discounts and prizes and so forth; they just open, and depend on steady advertising and word of mouth to bring in the clients. If a business goes public "noisily," it basically means that it gets the press involved (or tries to), so that there's an announcement in local newspapers and maybe an article or two about the owners; it gets a lot of balloons and streamers involved, and invites the whole neighborhood in for a look-see, so to speak; it might offer special deals and discounts and prizes for the first customers to become customers etc. Both approaches have their positive and negative sides; going public either way is a big step and depends largely on the personality of the business owners themselves.
 Once you've gone public, there's really no going back. This means, be prepared! Be sure to have your cards in a row before you step out into the spotlight. Many small businesses have rapidly gone under due to lack of preparation before they went public. Sadly, the preparation we're speaking of wouldn't have required an arm and leg of these broken businesses; they might have stayed in the game with just a little more thought and planning. For this reason, many small businesses have tried the technique of improvisation before finally going public.
 Improvisation means that the business owner and his or her staff do a little role-playing wherein X plays a customer and Y plays a representative of the business. X comes up with any sort of complaint, problem, predicament, etc., that he or she can think of, and Y tries to answer and solve said complaints and predicaments. You'd be amazed at how many important things come up in these sessions. The key thing is to brainstorm, to be as wild and silly as you want. Chances are, you're going to have some pretty wild and silly experiences once you take your business public. You want to be prepared for anything.
 Finally, once you've done all the preparing you can, and you're set to go public, take a deep breath and realize that you're going to be fine in spite of the inevitable bumps in the road. There are still things you'll be a little unprepared for; crises you didn't think of in your role-playing sessions; whatever. The name of the game in business is to keep your head, stay organized, and keep track of your money. Do these things, and your experience in taking your business public will be rich, exciting, rewarding, and a fantastic learning and teaching experience for you and your employees.