Where does success really lie? Is it only in the numbers, or does it live within us as self-validation or validation from a customer or client?

Working in the economic development arena for a number of years now, I’ve come to see that the term “small business” varies in meaning. Most of the time, economic development people use the term to indicate businesses with 10–50 employees. Some even stretch it to mean up to 400 employees, which are the businesses they most hope to attract.

The people who mentored me years ago never told me what to do. They simply shed light on the journey they took, so I could learn from their experience. There was no “this is the right/wrong way” — there was only “this is what I did that worked (or didn’t).” Their mentoring was about their individual journey and what I could learn from it.

One of the important factors when creating economic development programs in any part of the world is knowledge of the resources you have in place.