Compete with Big Corporation for employees
We are talking about more than just competing for the same market and customer base, about competing for the same resources.
Now, I can lose one customer, I can lose 10 customer and I can also lose even 100 customers. But the ugly, terrible fact is that I can’t afford to lose resources (example programmers) to them. And still, can’t really fight on it.
Being a small business, it’s very hard to attract good working employees – they are not going to relocate for you, they are not going to leave a better paid job for you, and most likely they are going to leave when they an offer from a big corporation. You simply can’t stop them. Sure, each business has it’s work force turnover, but when this happens to a really small company – you will be hurt personally and the business is going to take a big hit as well.
Being small, you can’t really assign tasks to another person. If you have to deliver something – well, you just have to find your way to do it without the missing person. At a larger level it could make a big negative impact on your business plan – (if you have for example to hire 2 people to replace the leaving person, you might be forced to relocate, buy more office hardware – which is especially difficult in the first years).
It’s really hard to give raises. Big Corporations usually have an evaluation/rewarding model in place. You have targets, you get more money. In small companies, even if the employee is doing his target, it’s very hard to find supplemental resources to give him a bonus or a raise.
No trainings available. One of the reasons people choose to work in Big Corporations is that they can improve their skills with free trainings from the company. Can’t do that if you are small.
I’m not going to play smart on this one, because I really don’t know how a small business could really compete with a big corporation. At a certain level we are doomed to lose employees to Big Corporations, because we (entrepreneurs) don’t know to sell our ideas well enough to have so loyal employees.