I couldn’t resist mining Monday’s San Francisco Chronicle article about Jacob Lee, the mayor of Sheepskin City, for a riveting discussion of small business ownership and management. Lee, a Korean immigrant who couldn’t get work at home as a lawyer, has been selling fluffy sheepskin car seat covers to sore-bottomed San Franciscans for almost 20 years.

Lee is the opposite, in many ways, of today’s multitasking society: he sells sheepskin seat covers.

And nothing else.

Business stayed pretty steady up until after 9/11, he tells sympathetic Chronicle reporter Chris Colin, who urges readers to immediately run out and purchase sheepskins for their own Hummers and hybrids. Though he’s now considering adding cell phones to his inventory, Lee ran a successful business for nearly two decades by carving out a niche and dominating it completely. Despite Americans’ desire to shop at Wal-Mart, it’s not a bad strategy for anyone who wants to start his or her own business.

Building Your Niche Business
You might remember some version of the iconic Lincoln quote about not being able to fool all of the people all of the time. The same is true of pleasing them; for every big-box retailer and multitasking service provider that conquers the world, there are dozens or hundreds of smaller versions that tank. The U.S. Small Business Administration notes:

A market in its entirety is too broad in scope for any but the largest companies to tackle successfully. The best strategy for a smaller business is to divide demand into manageable market niches. Small operations can then offer specialized goods and services attractive to a specific group of prospective buyers.

So if you’ve been stuck in that cubicle or behind that bar for one day too many, what steps do you need to take to turn your bright idea into a business? Follow these steps, to start:

• Get business training. Depending on your situation, this might mean a handful of specific online classes or an MBA, but you definitely need a lot of knowledge under your belt to succeed.
• Use that time in school not only to learn business principles, but to plan your own business (you may even be able to do so for credit). Think about how you want to create and market your idea. If you don’t have an idea yet, now would be a good time to develop one.
• Build a business plan. There are lots of resources out there, in addition to business school, to help you work through the way you want to run your business and plan for the obstacles you might face.

Get these right, and this might be just the beginning of your beautiful business career. Sheepskin seats, anyone?