Breakfast Table Entrepreneurs.

Dedicated to my friend SriVidhya
(Thank you for being my muse, you set me thinking on this).

I am a Breakfast Table Entrepreneur (BTE, for short) and I have no qualms admitting this. You must have heard of Kitchen Table Entrepreneurs – mind you, we Breakfast Table Entrepreneurs, though ubiquitous, are not some kind of poor, country cousins of the former. We struggle just as hard or even harder. Well, let me just explain this for you.

Even before the next operating cycle starts, we start all over again from a visioning exercise that leads us to examining the past, assessing the present and seeing where we want to be. This decides what our target for growth is and a detailed brainstorming leads us to our product offering and Market Mix. Even the BCG Matrix falls short at arriving at this magical mix! Mind you, again, this is not a one-off exercise. This happens fresh for every Operating cycle and don’t let your jaws drop – we operate on daily cycles. This is followed by checking up on stock and Inventory and Work-In-Progress, optimizing production to match the super-optimal, Just-in-time Inventory. This is Supply chain Management, stripped of its esoteric appeal, at its practical best. Our products have very low shelf-appeal (though shelf-life is much longer) and break-even is a daily goal. External forces like the demand-supply dynamics definitely affect our functioning. Feasibility Analysis for the chosen offering and operating cycle is done from different perspectives, from produce to platter and thereafter, to add depth to the exercise, every single day.

Production is a multi-level, multi-tasked, parallel-processing activity. This is where labour has to be handled very deftly. Managing people sounds so easy on paper – just try handling these paper tigers on a daily basis! That’s when you curse yourself for not having done a Management Program specializing in Human Behaviour and Labour Relations.

What’s a product without a consumer? You think having a captive customer means a high-resolution pen profile – where every like/ dislike/ preference of his is known to you, where positioning your offering to him is a cakewalk. Whoever says a cakewalk is easy? Try even imagining plodding on through the gooey mass… Anyway, you do all your planning and strategizing to fit your offering into a segment (which you think is very niche!), offer a highly differentiated product and peddle multi-pronged benefits on a platter. And you wait for reaping the benefits of being in a niche segment! Far from it - the battle is still on, for higher acceptance and customer satisfaction and loyalty, though not for a higher market share.

Marketing takes on a whole new meaning here, because the product is its own talking point, unless you follow Table Etiquette very strictly. Viral marketing has no place here, you would not want to be caught dead, parlaying with the germs. The Internet, at its best, can be a business enabler, nothing more. The mobile though emerging as a major marketing tool elsewhere, fails miserably here, except for its Alarm and Clock functions, which anyway are not mobile-specific features. Power lunches and Power breakfasts are loaded with Negotiations and your demonstration of your strongest Persuasion skills. The force of the Bargaining Power of the Customer can actually be seen here, to be believed and to be contended with. Which Business Development Teams of FORTUNE 500 companies wouldn’t want you on board, for precisely these skill sets that you display so casually and effortlessly, every single day?

Legal and taxation issues are best left undiscussed for fear of setting off a wave of paranoia amongst the Entrepreneurial community. Thankfully, suing producers for falling short of customer satisfaction has not touched this space as yet, but you never know. It would be prudent to keep open multiple Customer Grievance Redressal channels to mitigate this high risk. Almost like running a Call Center.

For the BTE, there are no VCs, no angel-investors in this space, not even Incubation Cells. The BTE has to jump straight from the planning table, literally into the fire (well, in front of it). That’s what the BTE has anyway, a fire-in-the-belly, like no other class of Entrepreneurs.

Networks exist, but only as fonts of information. Ultimately, the BTE has to learn the ropes of the trade, literally by burning her fingers.

But, the ROI that BTEs realise makes it worth it all for them. It is when the two extremities of the line that stubbornly stays flat at most times (even during high growth period ) steep upwards and when the thumb and the pointer fingers break into a “Big O”, that’s when you know that you have arrived as a ” Breakfast Table Entrepreneur”, at last!!!