How To Use Customer Research and Smart Algorithms To Name Your New Local Business

/in /by

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article | How To Use Customer Research and Smart Algorithms To Name Your New Local BusinessOpening a new local business isn’t for the faint of heart. You’ll have to hunt for commercial real estate, develop a financial plan, find the right suppliers, and more. However, before you can even tackle those challenges, you’ll need to come up with a name for your store. Many entrepreneurs find that it’s harder than they expect to name their business, but often feel like they have no options other than waiting for inspiration to strike.

Modern keyword-driven name generators like Namify take the guesswork out of the naming process. Namify combines a smart algorithm with user input to develop hundreds of unique naming options. With this approach, you can feel confident that you’ll choose a catchy name for your new store that conveys the right image to your customers.

Understanding Your Ideal Customer

Before you use Namify’s store name generator tool, it’s a good idea to think about what type of customers you want to attract to your store. The theoretical personality profile of your ideal customer is called a buyer persona. This exercise encourages you to delve deeply into the ways your store is different from nearby competitors. It also helps you develop a better understanding of the marketing strategies you’ll use to connect with the customers you’re best equipped to serve.

As you explore the behavior and preferences of the customers who will compose the core of your client base, you’ll also start to think about how you can signal them that your business is the best way to meet their needs.

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurial Insights Newsletter

Speaking Your Customers’ Language

Why spend all this time getting to know a fictional customer? With a fleshed-out buyer persona, you can start doing research on the keywords and phrases you’ll provide to Namify to generate your store’s name. Think about what your customers find useful, entertaining, or aspirational. For instance, if you’re starting a stationery company that caters to young professionals cultivating a minimalist aesthetic, you’d want to use phrases like “clean lines,” “organized mind,” “stillness,” and “classic.”

Using these terms to guide naming, imagery, and marketing copy communicates to your ideal buyer that your business was developed with their needs in mind. Since your store’s name is the first impression you can make, it’s essential to choose a name that’s informed by concepts that resonate with your prospective customers.

Using the Namify Algorithm

With several well-considered keywords, you’re ready to use Namify to generate new ideas for your store’s name. Choose the right category for your business to shape the results and all your keywords to the search field. Namify requires a minimum of two keywords but using more will provide you with more options. Once you’ve generated a list of potential names, you can start to review your choices. Consider how names sound when spoken aloud, or how they’ll look as a part of a custom domain name. If sound is important to you, try restricting your search output to names that rhyme.

You don’t have to write down or remember all the ideas that Namify presents. Click the heart icon next to your favorite ideas to mark them for your shortlist and email them to yourself so you can spend as much time as you want mulling over your top picks.

Naming your store won’t be the hardest part of launching your new business, but without any help, it can start to feel that way! Combining your market knowledge and customer research with Namify’s smart naming algorithm will make short work of the name generation process so you can move on to all the other tasks you have to tackle before opening day.

How to Make the Most Of Your Entrepreneurial Talents

/in /by

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Entrepreneurial Talent| How to Make the Most Of Your Entrepreneurial TalentsThere are some people that just seem to be drawn to entrepreneurial life. There’s just something inside of them that makes starting and running a business a highly attractive proposition. But of course, just because you may be drawn that way, that doesn’t necessarily mean that things will be easy. In fact, they’re certain to be anything but easy! Business, after all, is far from a walk in the park. There are things you can do that’ll allow you to make the most of your talents, however. In this blog, we’ll take a look at some useful tips that’ll lead to just that.

Follow the Passion

You’ll find that everything connected to running your business is much more straightforward if you’re doing something that you inherently enjoy. Though it can be tempting to start a business that you might think will make money flow your way, it’ll be better to select something that’s related to an interest of yours. For starters, this will probably cut down on the amount of time you have to research your industry, since you’ll already know a lot. It’ll also give you that extra motivation, and help when the going gets tough, as it surely will at some stage.

An Inch of Courage

We tend to look at successful entrepreneurs and just assume that they had the skills and talents to get to where they got to. They were always destined to reach the top, is what we think. But actually, this isn’t the case. Though it’s often overlooked, one of the key factors that unite all successful entrepreneurs — actually all successful people — is that they had the courage to make it happen. Unless you’re born to wealthy parents, nothing is given to you on a plate: you have to earn it. And in order to step up and make things happen, you’ll need to have some courage. You don’t need to have it in spades, but at least a little bit!

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurial Insights Newsletter

Find Your Rhythm

Even if you think you’re ready to start your own company after a period of being a regular employee, it’ll still take some time to adjust to the new way of doing things. You’ll have had your established rhythms at your workspace when you worked for a company. Now that you’re on your own, those rhythms will have disappeared — and it’ll be up to you to make your own, new ones. It’s important that you conduct a bit of self-analysis and figure out when and how you work best. It could be that you prefer to be in a busy working environment, or that you prefer to work in silence. Once you’ve figured out which is your preferred method, you’ll find that you’re able to make more progress than if you were trying to work in ways that feel uncomfortable.

Start the Day Well

It won’t be long before you realize that working as an entrepreneur is not the same as working as a regular employee. You’ll have to work harder and for longer when you’re running your own company. As such, it’s important that you take time to ensure that your energy levels and capabilities are at the highest level that they can be. While there are many different ways to do this, one of the best and most simple to enact is to start the day right. You’ll find that you’re able to make much more progress if you have a morning routine that pushes you towards delivering your best work. This all begins with, of course, getting a good night’s sleep. You should try to wake up well in advance of when you need to leave your house, and try to get some exercise in. A short run, cold shower, and nutritious and energetic breakfast will set you up for a great day at the office.

Trust Other People

One of the myths of entrepreneurial life is that people do things on their own. This is virtually never true. Every successful business owner has had to make the most of other people’s help. As such, one of the best things you can do for your business is to learn how to trust other people (that is if you’ve previously had issues with this). This is especially relevant when it comes to hiring your first employees. If all you want to do is micromanage them, then you’ll be doing your business a disservice. It’s much better to hire well and then trust that your members of staff will deliver top of the line work for your company.

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Entrepreneurial Talent| How to Make the Most Of Your Entrepreneurial TalentsOpen to Criticism

You’re going to know a lot. You’re going to have successes. But you’ll also make mistakes and take missteps. This in itself isn’t a major issue; every company in the world gets things wrong from time to time. What counts is whether you’re willing to accept that you’ve made a mistake, and take criticism from other people. There are many business owners out there that have pretty thin-skin. They take everything personally! But this will only cause trouble at some point or another (wouldn’t Tesla be better if Elon Musk could just let things go?). Instead, accept that you don’t know everything, and be humble enough to know that sometimes, other people will know better. It’s an approach that’ll take you far in life.

Lighten Your Load

Even if you hire employees to help you, you’ll still have a lot of responsibilities on your plate. But do they all need to be on your plate? Probably not. Not only would it be better to outsource the tasks to other people because it’ll free up your time to work on other tasks, by handing the job over to experts, but you’ll also ultimately strengthen your company. They’ll be able to do a better job than you could, after all. There are some jobs where it just makes sense to hand over to someone else. A company like CalTech Web can take care of your web design, so you don’t have to. Other tasks to outsource include your payroll, marketing, and legal matters. Once these time consuming and complicated tasks are off your plate, you’ll find that you have much more time to work on the jobs that help push your business forward.

Strengths and Weaknesses

As we mentioned earlier: you’re going to have a degree of confidence that you can run a business if you decide to become an entrepreneur. It would be weird if you didn’t! But it’s not as if you’re going to know everything, or even close to it. There are some jobs where it’ll be better to bow to superior knowledge. The difficult part is knowing which is which. In the early days of your entrepreneurial career, it’s recommended that you conduct an analysis of your strengths and weaknesses. This will highlight the areas that you should be in charge of, what others should do, and where you need to improve. And talking of which….

Continue to Improve

You’re not the finished article when you become an entrepreneur. Actually, you’re really just getting started along your journey. Though you’re the boss, don’t forget that there will still be areas in which you improve. And so make sure that you are. Whatever weaknesses you have, you’ll find that there are courses and other materials available that can help you to improve that aspect of your professional life. Think of it this way: it was your open-mind and willingness to learn that got you into a position where you could start a business in the first place. Don’t turn your back on that tactic just because you’ve technically started a business.

Find a Mentor

You’re at the beginning of your new career as an entrepreneur. While you’ll learn a lot on the job, there’s no denying that it would be pretty useful to have some of the lessons under your belt at the beginning. For that, it’s recommended that you find a mentor. This will be an older person who has been there, done that — and who will thus have plenty of wisdom to share with you. They won’t necessarily help you with the running of your company (though they might), but rather offer general advice about how you can achieve success, the habits you need to have, things like that. If you can’t think of anyone who would be your mentor, then you could consider reading the books and podcasts of successful people. There’s always a lot to learn in those!

Conclusion

As we said at the beginning of the article, running a company will never be easy. Even when things are going well, there’ll be challenges on the horizon that you’ll need to overcome. But it’s not as if you need to just go along for the ride. There are things you can do that’ll help you to make the most of your inherent talents. Take the tips that we’ve outlined above, and you’ll find that you’re in a pretty strong position to achieve great things with your company.

Running a Business Can Take a Toll on Your Mental Health

/in /by

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Running a business|Running a Business Can Take a Toll on Your Mental HealthDue to COVID and widespread job loss, many people have decided to become entrepreneurs and start their own business. It’s a great idea to go to work for yourself and build your own dream, but unfortunately, many of these people don’t know what they are getting into and quickly find themselves stressed out, depressed and overwhelmed.

What if it didn’t have to be this way? How can these new entrepreneurs build their new businesses while staying mentally healthy? It is very doable if done right.

Hedge the downsides

You’ve probably heard the hype: Entrepreneurship equals freedom. Starting a business is the fastest way to build wealth. Build the life of your dreams. Unfortunately, it’s the biggest lie out there. The truth is that all of these things can happen, but it’s not so easy. You need to have realistic expectations otherwise you’re going to be quickly disappointed, stressed and depressed when you realize how much work is really involved to run a successful business.

Care enough for people not to fail

If failure tends to get the best of you, you might want to avoid entrepreneurship because it is filled with failure in the traditional sense. In fact, you could say the most successful entrepreneurs are really just professional failures who keep trying. But ultimately, you can relieve any stress, anxiety and depression around failure by caring so much for people that in essence, you never fail. If you show people that you genuinely care and go to bat for them all the time, you’ll never be a failure.

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurial Insights Newsletter

Be adaptable

If you don’t adapt to change well, you might want to avoid entrepreneurship. In business, things are constantly changing. For people who like the same routine day in and day out, your emotions might start to get the best of you when you realize that running a business is filled with new and different challenges every day. Learn to accept change and don’t let it get the best of you.

Find a healthy outlet

Unfortunately, when it comes to depression, anxiety and other negative emotions, many entrepreneurs feel as if they need to appear strong and in control. As a result, they hold it all in and this makes it worse, leads to drug and alcohol abuse, and in severe cases even suicide. The sooner you can address your mental health, the better the outcome.

Focus on your health

All the success in business is meaningless if you’re not healthy enough to enjoy it. Entrepreneurship is hard work and will take a toll on your mind and body. Make your health a priority and eat a healthy diet, get plenty of exercise, get enough quality sleep, find time to relax, drink plenty of water and don’t overextend yourself.

Have a big solution

Deciding to become an entrepreneur is commendable, but you need to have real solutions for people otherwise everything is going to go astray. After all, business is all about soling people’s problems. The more problems you solve for them, the more money you make. After that, you can put your mental health at ease by answering some very important questions: How are you going to get clients? Do you need to hire employees? How will you handle cash flow and bookkeeping? Are you willing to wear multiple hats and work the long hours to build the business? Start with a solution to people’s problems, then follow up with a solid business plan.

The takeaway

Starting a business is definitely a great idea in these times when so many people are out of work and simply trying to make ends meet. It can yield great wealth, immense satisfaction and a totally different lifestyle for you and your family. Just make sure you know what you are getting into and that it’s not as easy as some people portray it to be. Entrepreneurs, in particular, need to take precautions to protect their mental health and take care of themselves.

About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor |Dr. Alok TrivediDr. Alok Trivedi is a health, human behavior and national stress reduction expert. He is founder of The Aligned Performance Institute and author of the book ‘Chasing Success.’ https://aloktrivedi.com/

Winter Woes Won’t Keep Your Business Down, If You Do This

/in /by

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Winter Business|Winter Woes Won't Keep Your Business Down, If You Do ThisYes, winter is going to threaten every business regardless of whether or not there is a pandemic. It’s always been like this and may always be like this. Winter presents unique challenges that businesses have to prepare for every year. Not only is there a lot of snow and ice to contend with, but you have to deal with colder operating temperatures, less daylight time, more morale-boosting ideas to think of, and trying to beat your competitors during the seasonal rush. Not to mention, the challenge of meeting export and import needs too. But, winter woes won’t get your business down if you do these things.

Get shoveling, or not

Commercial snow removal is very popular for businesses and if you are interested in this, then we recommend you read this. Not only do they use professional heavy-duty equipment, but that will also mean that snow is carefully removed and safely taken away. But it also means that if you have a complex area such as a car park, you won’t be in any danger of doing unwarranted damage to your foliage, lighting, wiring, machines or curbs. And of course, you lessen your liability to injuries. Employees that have an unsafe car park or exterior to the business could slip, fall and get seriously injured. Not only will they need to get sick pay but they could sue you. So commercial removal is quick, easy and very effective when you have suffered a heavy snowfall.

Protect logistics chains

The number one challenge of winter is the travel. The highways and train lines are covered in snow and ice, making them a hazard. It draws logistics to a crawl and can harm your bottom line because you’re not getting supplies and inventory when you need it. So prepare beforehand and ready your logistical chains. But how?

  • Increase your fleet number temporarily. If you have a fleet of delivery trucks, you should seek to increase the number by 10-20%. So if you have 20 trucks, increase the number to 22 or 24. If one or two trucks break down, another is involved in an accident, another gets trapped, you at least have a technically, full strength fleet.
  • Export markets need some love too. Just because it’s slow and challenging in your local or national marketplace, doesn’t mean it’s the same on the other side of the world. You should seek to increase your export customers during this time, as you try to compete with your rivals.
  • Hire more. If you cannot handle your logistical challenges, hire those that can. Hire more drivers, more warehouse managers and employees to make sure you can meet the higher demand and keep things ticking over.

Keep morale high

Make sure the ambient room temperature is nice and toasty in the office. Keeping morale high with surprise hot meals for lunches, extra time for completing projects and providing mental health care for the holiday season, is so crucial.

It’s easy for businesses to suffer from winter woes as they battle the weather and the seasonal rush. But these things will keep your employees happy, your business open at all times and ahead of the competition.

Tips You Need to Use to Help Your Business Become a Success

/in /by

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Tips for Business Success|Tips You Need to Use to Help Your Business Become a SuccessMake sure you do as much as possible to focus on this right now, and there are a lot of elements that play a part in this moving forward. Think about what it takes to move things to the next level as a business owner. You have to focus on the best ways of being able to do this right now, and it is important that you do what you can to take things forward in the right way.

Come up with ideas that you can use to help improve things as much as possible moving forward. You need to try to make the business a success as much as possible, and this is something that you need to make the most of moving forward.

Study the Market

Make sure you focus on studying the market and how it affects your business. There is so much information you can learn about the industry you are in that can help to inform your business decisions. Whether you run a business in the baby food industry, automotive industry, or recruitment industry, you need to make the right decisions at the right times in order to be a success as much as possible. Making sure you study and understand the market is one of the most important things that you need to do if you are going to be able to work on being successful right now.

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurial Insights Newsletter

Beat the Competition

Beating out the competition and getting ahead of your rivals is one of the best things you can do to ensure the success of the business. This is a massive factor when you are trying to achieve success because there is so much competition, and a whole host of other businesses and business owners vying for market share. You need to learn their strengths and weaknesses (as well as your own), and use this knowledge to get ahead of them.

Customer Service

Make sure you do as much as possible to improve your process and help you when it comes to improving your business. You need to present a company that people are happy to be a part of, and this means you need to treat your customers well and think about what they need and want from your business. Develop a mobile app that allows people to stay in touch with your business at all times, even when they are on the move. Make sure you prioritise customer service and do as much as possible to make the right decisions as a company right now.

As you can see, there are a lot of things you need to consider when it comes to improving your business and achieving the right levels of success. This is something that can play a massive part in the role of taking things forward, and you have to make sure you come up with the best ways of doing this. Try to work on doing as much as possible to factor this in and focus on taking things to the next level right now. It is important that you look at how you can keep up with this as much as possible moving forward.