Is Your Business Heading For The Cliff Edge?

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What exactly is a disaster scenario in business? A disaster scenario occurs when you are no longer able to sell your products or make a profit with your company. At that money, the engines for your business have faltered, and you’re falling fast. In cases like this, the best option would be to start completing damage control procedures. But, if we’re looking at the optimum outcome, you should not be controlling the damage at all. Instead, you should do everything you can to make sure it never happens in the first place.

You need to avert a disaster scenario in your business, and there are a number of ways that you can do this.

Keep Spending Under Control


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One of the most common disaster scenarios is caused by a simple case of overspending. By spending more than you make from your business, you will reach the point where you’re no longer making a profit. Once you get to that stage, you only really have two options. You must be ready to cut back. Of course, if you keep your budget under control from day one, you’ll never reach that point. So, you’ll have to think about how to manage your budget.

Outsourcing is a great way to cut the costs while still delivering a quality service to your customers. You can outsource almost any part of a business these days from logistics to HR. When you do outsource, you have to remember that you are essentially giving the control of that part of your business to another company. They’ll still work for you, but they will be responsible for maintaining quality levels. As such, you should choose a company very carefully.

Backup Everything


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Another piece of advice would be to make sure that you are backing up important data and files in your business. To do this, you can use a colocation service for your company. Colocation services provide data protection, handling and backup for companies and colocation pricing can be very reasonable indeed. For just a few hundred out of your budget, you can make sure that if your systems do break down you have a backup ready to go. This can allow you to avoid your business entering a period of disaster recovery that can take weeks or even months.

Hire A Legal Advisor


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Of course, one of the main issues that might cause a disaster scenario for your business would be a legal issue. That’s why you might want to think about hiring a legal advisor for your company. You can check in with your legal advisor every so often and ensure that you’re not crossing any lines that you shouldn’t be.

Legal issues can arise in any area of your company, but you should pay particularly close attention to employee management. It’s quite possible for an injury or complaint from an employee to send your business towards a legal case that could cost hundreds of thousands. An SME won’t survive this type of expense and neither will your business.

If you take this advice, you can steer your business away from the cliff edge before you get anywhere near it.

It Takes No Time At All To Take Care Of These Niggling Office Tasks

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There are some jobs that no one wants to do in the office. You know the kind of things, like taking out the recycling or nipping out to the shop to buy a new jar of coffee. But once someone does take care of them, the office will certainly be a better place. After all, how are you all going to get any work done without any caffeine?! So, why not take the bull by the horns and get these niggling office jobs done today. They won’t take any time at all!

Clean The Kitchen

Most offices have a kitchen area these days. They are a place where employees can prepare some lunch or grab a quick drink. If yours is large enough for a table and chairs, some workers might gather for a chat during their break. Kitchens are important spaces in offices, but if yours is a tip no one is going to want to use it! So, it is really worth taking ten minutes out of your day to put dirty dishes in the dishwasher and to just have a general clean up. If you find that it’s always you taking care of the kitchen, you could set up a rota so that everyone takes it in turn. Apart from this, it might be useful to hire a professional cleaning company. One well-received company is Ideal Cleaning who can provide a routine office cleaning service, as well as kitchen, canteen and washroom cleans – this will save even more time when taking care of the kitchen, as the amount of upkeep employees have to do will massively decrease.

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Tidy Up

No one wants to work in a cluttered office! It will make it incredibly difficult to find tools and equipment, and it will look like a right mess to any visiting clients. Everyone in your office will benefit if you have a quick tidy up. You could cut down on clutter by using business document storage solutions so that you aren’t stuck with piles of documents all over. If everyone in your offices shares certain items, such as staplers and hole punchers, then you should have a cupboard where all these are stored. Make sure everyone returns them when they aren’t in use. Otherwise, they will clutter up your office and could easily go missing!

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Book Some Team Building Activities

Do you remember when the last time everyone in your office did some team building activities? If it has been a while – or if you have never actually done any – then you might want to take the time to get some booked. There are two ways to go about this. You could either look for a motivational speaker or team-builder organizer to come and visit your team in the office. They will then carry out activities in your office. Alternatively, you might like to book a session for you and the team at a local laser tag center for a fun way to strengthen your relationships. There are also some community centers that run company team building days.

So, rather than procrastinate for an hour, why not get one of these jobs done? At least once you have carried one out, it won’t need to be done for a while! And I’m sure that your whole team will benefit now that the job is done. Plus, it could encourage others to be more proactive around the office!

Be The Best Person To Run Your Business

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As much as it’s down to your business idea, you are part of the package when it comes to making your company successful. After all, if you don’t have the right skills, it’s going to affect your business. In fact, you might struggle to find clients if you aren’t winning them over with your passion. Therefore, here are some ways you can ensure you are the best person to run your business.

Get in the right mind frame to run your business

It’s time to work on you for the sake of your company. After all, you need to be in the right mind frame if you want to make a success of your business. Otherwise, it’s likely your company will fall at the first hurdle. For starters, you need to make sure you keep calm when starting your business. Of course, it’s easier said than done launching a company. After all, it’s likely to be one of the most stressful times of your life. But you need to find ways to get rid of stress. For example, it might be getting a helping hand when it comes to certain areas of your business. After all, if you are finding them particularly tricky, it can be necessary to get some outside help. Also, you need to ensure you have a good work-life balance. After all, if you are overworking yourself, you are bound to go under due to the stress. Therefore, ensure you are still spending time with family and friends.

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Work on enhancing your skills

You should also take steps to ensure you have the right skills for the sake of your company. After all, if you have lack of experience in particular areas, your business might take a turn for the worse. And you might make errors that jeopardize your company. Therefore, work on your skills for the sake of your business. For starters, you might want to look at doing a course such as an online mba aacsb. After all, you will learn valuable skills which will help you run your business. And if there are areas of running your company you are not so clued on, the masters can give you the knowledge you need to make it a success.

It’s time to be pitch perfect

You need to talk the talk if you want to run a successful business. After all, it’s the best way to win over a client’s trust. However, if you are not very good at public speaking, now is the time to improve these skills. After all, you want to be pitch perfect when it comes to talking about your business. You want to appear confident and passionate to impress them with your communication skills. You might want to work with a coach who can boost your confidence and ensure you are an amazing public speaker. That way, you can guarantee you are the perfect person to pitch for your company.

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And if you don’t have the right skills to run your business, it might be a good idea to get someone to front your company. Then you can concentrate on areas you are more skilled at such as creating the products!

Sussing The Biz Costs And Paying For Success

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Spending and costs are important factors to consider when you set up your company. You need to make sure that you are not wasting money by spending it in the wrong areas or even overspending in areas where it is needed. It’s vital that you get these decisions right from day one. Otherwise, you can end up in the situation where your business is in debt as soon as you enter the market. Starting at the very beginning, we need to look at the overall costs of a new company in year one. On average it costs around 30K to get a new company up and running. For an online company, it can be a fraction of that at around 9K. So, right away, you should be asking yourself whether you can run your business online.

If you can, you could immediately cheapen the deal and make things easier for you in the long run and the short term. But, you do still need to think about where to spend your money.

Legal Advice

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A legal advisor is a crucial hire for the owner of any business. You need to make sure that you have someone who can tell you how to stay on the right page and keep things clear. Legal issues can plague your company at every turn and an example of this would be when you’re setting up your business website. You need to make sure that the name of your website and any images or content that you use on it are completely copyright free. If you don’t, you can run into serious legal trouble, and your business could be put on the defensive stance before it’s even entered  the market.

Or, how about when you hire employees? You might not realize this, but there is some very strict protocol that you must abide by when you’re hiring new workers for your company. The idea here is that you provide fair and equal opportunity to everyone that applies for the job. This means you can’t hire someone for a reason other than their ability to complete the job. A lawyer can be an expensive addition for any business, but you can outsource. That way, you can use the service without paying the typical fortune.

Marketing And Promotion

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Next, you need to think about how much you should spend on marketing and promotion. You can get started by looking at a domain name for your business. It is possible to get a domain name for free or one that’s quite cheap, but you should probably avoid this possibility. Instead, you should spend a little more and get a valuable domain from a seller such as Nameperfection. If you do this, you can make sure that the domain name for your business is memorable, unique and even linguistically attractive. Essentially, you’re looking for a name that will roll off the tongues of your customers.

Aside from your domain for your site, you should also think about the content and of course SEO. SEO will guarantee that customers find your site online and the right content can keep them coming back even after they have committed to one purchase. There are various marketing companies that offer services like this to new business owners, and you should certainly invest in one of them. But which one to use is a tricky question to answer. You might think that the best choice would be the most expensive, but the fact is you probably can’t afford the most popular marketing agencies. They are already being used by the top brands. Instead, you should look for a company that fits your budget and has great reviews online.

Tech

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Lastly, you will need to invest a sizable amount of your business budget into technology. A lot of business owners avoid investing in tech to save money on their start-up, but this is a mistake. Second hand or outdated tech is just going to put your business at a disadvantage compared to other companies on the market that will be buying the latest computers and servers.

Don’t forget that new tech will also make your business more efficient and in the long run that’s going to make your company more profitable. As such, it is in your best interest to buy the latest, new tech for your business. Nothing makes your business more attractive to customers, clients and investors than a little innovation.

Take this advice, and you’ll be able to keep to a budget when setting up your company without crippling it.

6 Quick Tricks to Free Up More Time in Your Small Business

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship ArticleSuccess in business is always favoured, but there is one unfortunate by-product that comes with it, you tend to be much busier than before. Suddenly, there’s much more work, more meetings, more projects, more deadlines and more decisions to be made. All of this takes a toll on your personal life as you suddenly have a lot on your to-do list, preventing you from taking time out on other important things.

Thankfully, there are some ways you can free up more time in your business without impacting its success. Here are 6 quick trips to help you do just that.

1.     Automate As Many of Your Tasks as Possible

Most of the tasks that take up your time can probably be automated. Are you supposed to send out regular reports at the end of each month? Automate them. Do you have bills that need to be paid on a certain date? Automate them! These tasks may not seem very time consuming, but they all mount up and distract you from bigger projects. Automating things will free up valuable time that can be better spent elsewhere.

2.     Keep Track of Your Time

To better understand what activities are taking up most of your time, write down everything you do each day and the time you spend on each activity. Include everything such as breaks, social media, emails and calls. This way you will be able to figure out where are you wasting most of your time and can make decisions accordingly. Once you get a rough sketch of the time you spend on each activity, you can make a timetable and dedicate your time to all the important tasks by cutting out the time wasters.

3.     Prioritise by Urgency and Set Deadlines

It’s important to prioritise urgent projects and start working on them first, rather than worrying about the projects that are due next week. This will help you to keep your calm and avoid being haphazard. Also, you should set deadlines for each task and do your best to meet them each time. Deadlines motivate you to complete a project, preventing you from doing nothing when you should be doing work.

4.     Use Invoice Software

Invoicing is one of the most tedious tasks for any small business. It also takes a lot of your time that could have been better spent. Did you know that there’s invoice software out there that can actually take control of the entire process of invoicing from the beginning till the end? You can install online invoice software that not only manages things for you, but that also helps you to create better invoice designs that will increase customer satisfaction.

5.     Learn to Delegate Tasks

Although you may want to believe it, you’re not superhuman. You CANNOT do everything on your own. The idea is to find trustworthy people and delegate tasks to them. Not only will this help in freeing up time in your small business, but will also help you to complete projects within your set deadlines. Focus your energy on the more important tasks you have at hand and leave the rest to your team.

6.     Avoid Distractions

Checking on social media and looking at personal emails aren’t the only distractions we often fall victim to when trying to work. If you work in a busy office full of interruptions, try working from home a few days where you can get some peace and quiet. Avoid making any unnecessary phone calls and only take them if you know it’s urgent. Distractions take us away from the task at hand and can accumulate into hours of lost time.

With these quick and simple tricks, you’ll be able to free up a lot of time in your small business without affecting the profitability at all. It’s important to take time out for personal commitments so you can keep a balance between your work and personal life. If you follow the above advice, you should have some extra time to do just that!