It can be a daunting task starting or running a smaller business.

You look around you at the major league of businesses like Wal-Mart or Target, and you wonder how you can possibly compete against them. They have such a huge budget for advertising what could you possibly do or say to make a person turn to you over them?

What you need to realize is that being small can quite often be the very asset you need to sway a customer into taking their business to you instead.

Quite often the large established businesses are able to pull in the people simply because everyone already knows them, but that doesn’t mean people aren’t willing to give another company a chance. The fact is the bigger a business gets the less personal the interaction they can give to a customer is.

I know when walking into a Wal-Mart that the CEO is so far removed from the environment of the sales floor I’m walking through I’m not really talking to anyone high up in the company at any given time. But when it comes to a small business it can be nice knowing that who I’m talking to has a serious stake in the company. Because of this they are more than willing to go out of their way to make me happy.

Being small isn’t always such a bad thing. Effectively use the impact of a more personal environment as best as possible. Newsletter printing is a prime example of how the perceived disadvantage of a small business can be turned into a great asset.

I’ve seen newsletters from large corporations before where they show me the picture of a person who might’ve gotten a promotion. Quite often even if I shop at that huge company my whole life I’ll never actually see the person face to face.

When a company is spread out over an entire country, what are the odds you’ll run into the people you see in newsletters? Even though I’m getting a look into the company I don’t really feel more connected to them.

But take a small company instead. When they print a newsletter and show me an employee of the month I might go into the store and see that very person. A kind of bond can be formed through this kind of interaction that larger stores can never really manage.

I know I’m dealing with the people who pour their life into the company, and seeing into their lives through well-done newsletters only helps make my desire for them to succeed even greater. I know Wal-Mart is going to keep on growing, so why should I really care when they do?

The impact I have on Wal-Mart’s business isn’t nearly as important as the impact I can have on a small business where I might talk to the very person who owns it.

Whatever you think your weaknesses might be, do everything you can to turn them into a strength. There’s no greater way to make a name for yourself than to show people you can turn those weaknesses around.