Green Business Guide How to Make Your Business More Eco-Friendly

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Green Business|Green Business Guide: How to Make Your Business More Eco-FriendlyTransforming into a green business is a low-cost, high-reward investment. The change over to eco-friendliness is a great contribution to our environment’s betterment. In the process, you’ll improve the brand image — win/win!
We all know about the three R’s: reduce, reuse, and recycle.

How can we bring these into our businesses? What ways can we make an environmental impact beyond them? Keep reading, we’re sharing a lot of ideas to boost sustainability in business.

Start with the Three R’s

Start with what we know to be effective in lessening our impact on the environment. Let the three R’s become a philosophy within your business.

How could you incorporate and encourage the three R’s? Try:

  • Reducing hard copy materials in favor of digital items
  • Reusing shipping materials for your logistics
  • Recycling old electronics and hardware when appropriate

Look for inefficiencies and waste in your business. Else, seek environmental consulting if you feel lost. These experts provide helpful insights on how to adopt eco-friendly business policies.

Go After the Low Hanging Fruit

The low hanging fruit is the “easy wins” anyone can do without trouble. They have a big impact with little put into the effort.

Do things like:

  • Smart plugs to track and reduce energy use
  • Using energy-efficient lighting
  • Ditching single-use products (especially plastic)

Perform an audit by tracking what gets used in the business every day. Then, see what you can do to reduce or end its usage. Find those items you and employees wouldn’t have qualms doing without.

Virtual Meetings and Remote Workers

Why waste resources holding meetings when you could do them online? Virtual meetings, webinars, and video chat mean you’re not wasting time and fuel. You also won’t waste money with printed items since you’ll deliver digital versions.

You could also open up to remote employees!

Remote workers are happy workers but they also help lessen the environmental impact. That’s one less person in the daily commute. It’s also one less person using items, facilities, and energy at the business.

Factor What’s Going on Around You

Think of your environment impact outside of the business and/or warehouse.

Consider items like:

  • Energy consumption
  • Water run-off
  • Sustainable sourcing
  • Landscaping
  • Trash

You could explore smart ideas like switching to renewable energy sources like solar. Or, heat energy waste via window films and reflective exterior coating.

Be mindful of where your business waste is going, too. And, the businesses you work with and their environmental impact. Harmonize your green efforts with those following similar policies for a bigger impact.

Also, choose landscaping fit for your zone’s hardness and environment. This reduces upkeep. Smart planting can reduce energy costs inside, too.

Transform into a Green Business

Make the transition into a green business part of your over-arching strategy. Leverage the positive brand image to build stronger connections. And, tap those connections to expand operations, sales, and reach.
Plus, know you’re doing good in the World by becoming sustainable.

What ways could you introduce policies and philosophies to your business to help it grow? Check out our strategy section for more ideas and inspiration!

Recovering from an Illness or Injury? How to Keep a Business Running in Your Absence

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Running a Business|Recovering from an Illness or Injury? How to Keep a Business Running in Your AbsenceBeing a business owner entails a lot of responsibility: looking after employees, pushing the company forward, and being the head individual for people to answer to. This can all change if you are suddenly ill or have an accident. Maintaining the same equilibrium and productivity can be hard if you’re not yet feeling up to it, and you don’t think you are fully on the mend. Here are a few ways of approaching your day-to-day management while you recuperate.

Take it slow

Don’t rush back into the hot seat as soon as is possible. Being in a hurry to assume control of day-to-day proceedings could cause you to miss vital signals your body is sending out. Hopefully, if a client or employee was keen to come into work regardless of how ill or unfit they were, you would send them back home.

Delegate responsibly

If you are bad at delegating, now is the time to learn how to do it effectively. You can’t always micromanage every aspect of your business – particularly when you’re incredibly unwell. Ensuring that you hand out jobs to the appropriate people will give you some peace of mind that the work is being done in your absence. Staying in touch to see how everything is going will help you feel calmer about being out-of-action.

Get the legal side sorted

If your injury or sickness is due to a major accident, such as a car crash, then you will need to take time off to fix the legal side of proceedings. As well as taking time off to recuperate, you will need to ensure that you get the compensation and justice that is deserved, so you don’t keep mentally re-visiting it after you go back to work. If your business is based in Florida, for instance, finding a car accident lawyer in Fort Lauderdale would help you get local legal help.

Drop in for visits

If you’re worried about being completely absent from your business, dropping in for the occasional visit could be valuable to you. Skype and conference calls could be a temporary solution when it comes to maintaining order and understanding the day-to-day processes. When it comes to showing face, you may just need to pop in every now and then to say hi and tell them how you’re doing – only if you feel up to it, of course.

Be realistic

As a result of having to delegate and give other employees responsibility, you will have to be realistic about what you personally can achieve. You have to acknowledge that it won’t really be possible for you to get everything done yourself. Being realistic also means acknowledging what your employees can realistically take on, and that it may be a bumpy ride for them initially in your absence.

Running a business while you’re recovering from an injury or illness can come loaded with guilt. Worrying about how your employees are getting on and whether you’re a good boss are inevitable. However, in order to maintain a good relationship, it’s a matter of keeping contact when you can and being pragmatic.

Time to Level Up

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Running your own business has been something you’d always dreamed of and when you’ve built your business from scratch, from the bottom up letting go of any part of it can feel like a real wrench. But if you want your business to succeed and grow up to the next level then it’s time to make some hard decisions on how you’re going to achieve just that.

In this blog, we take a look at three tips to start levelling up your business, whether you manufacture car parts or work for Yeremian Law employment attorneys, you’ve got some hard decisions to take.

Hand Over

If you’re a one-man-show then chances are you’ve become used to handling everything yourself. While you many not enjoy spending hours going through the books, you know where everything is and you’re on top of the finances.

The same for your marketing strategies, you’ve got the basics and while it might not be the most impactful strategy, you’re making some headway.

But is that really good enough? Are there other parts of your business that would benefit from having your full attention? The answer is quite probably yes and that’s why you’re going to start handing some of your daily tasks over to staff.

If you’ve never recruited before, it might feel daunting but expanding your workforce and entrusting them to do well those jobs you’re only just scraping by on, is going to be a game changer.

Get a great team behind you and see how quickly your business begins to flourish with everyone working together to achieve your goals.

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | Entrepreneurship | Business Growth | Time to Level Up

Re-Focus

If you’re going to look at growing your business anywhere take a fresh look at your marketing strategies. If you have gone ahead and recruited someone to take this on for you then sit down with them and brainstorm a fresh, innovative ways of reaching out to your customer base.

You’re looking to grow and build upon that existing loyal base to create a new influx of customers who you’ve reached through new channels.

Take a look at how you leverage your social media and have your new hire explore some fresh ideas such as YouTube, podcasts and so on to provide a little bit more interest in your business.

Prepare

Finally, you need to prepare for growth. You can’t just sit back and let the cashflow come rolling in, you need to make sure your tech is adequately supported to handle more customers to your website. You need to make sure that any checkout facilities you use online can handle lots more use. You need to be ready.

If you’re going to invest in your business, then you need to believe that those investments are going to pay off so get ready for success.

With a great team behind you, a fresh vision of how you’re going to talk to your customers and a new strategy of how you’re going to deal with a sudden upturn you’re all ready to take your business to the next level, so hang on and enjoy the ride.

5 Steps to Successful Business Translation

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Business Translation| 5 Steps to Successful Business TranslationIf your business is starting to reach the international market, chances are, translating your website to different languages is at the top of your list. The globalization of your business heavily relies on your digital marketing campaigns, and for the rest of the world to understand your products or services, you need the help of professional translation services.

Below are the essential steps to successful business translation:

Strategize and Plan with the Best Translation Agency

The success of a business that is trying to reach the international market relies on its website and digital marketing campaigns. With regards to this, you need the find the best translation agency that can help you make your website sensible to other countries that speak different languages.

You can find tons of professional translation services online, but only few can thoroughly help you and willing to work beyond translation to ensure the success of your marketing campaigns. Hire a professional translation agency that can help you with creating a strategy and planning for a smooth translation process.

Choose a translation agency that offers business translation services that deal with financial documents, marketing materials, emails, legal agreements, employment contracts, and any documents that has something to do with your business.

Hire a Localization Expert

Why do Chinese people prefer Baidu than Google? Why is CNN broadcasting for Latinos while they are in the U.S.?
While Google is a widely used search engine, Baidu feels and looks entirely native to a Chinese audience. On the other hand, CNN understands that over 55 million Latinos are living in the U.S., and they want shows that speak their language. Baidu and CNN use localization to gain more users and viewers.

So, what are translation and localization services? Localization gives the products and services the natural feel for the customers in specific countries. It is the process reconstructing your business’ product, service, or content for a particular market. The translation is one of the steps of the localization process.

Get a Marketing Translator Who can Do Desktop Publishing

Online marketing campaigns are useful to attract more foreign customers. However, it would be better if you can spread the word through printed advertisements such as brochures, magazines, etc.

Get a professional translator who is well experienced and has enough skills in creating desktop publishings. It will ensure the smooth flow of the service, too, you can save your budget as you won’t have to deal with different agencies. You should choose a translation agency who can do more than translation alone.

Brief Your Translation Agency Thoroughly

Once you have hired the translation agency that can do all the works that are needed to be done, make sure to tell them the exact details and all your expectations. It is better to bombard them with tons of requests than become unsatisfied with the job because you were not able to brief them thoroughly. Besides, you are a customer, and you are going to pay for the service.

If your target country has different dialects, inform your agency about the specific dialects you want your business to be translated. A well-experienced translation agency can also help you decide what particular dialects are primarily used in certain regions.

Have a Constant Communication with the Translators

If you are working on a deadline, so as your translation agency. The speed of the service relies on the service provider and the customer. Always check for the translation agency’s queries so you can answer them right away. Otherwise, the process will take longer than expected, and you might not be able to meet your deadline.

From time to time, the translation agency will ask you some questions about the details or to let you check som
e of the finished jobs. Multiple short waiting times could accumulate to a long delay, so a prompt response is a must if you want to get the job done at your desired schedule.

Business translation plays a huge part in the success of your business’ international venture. Gaining foreign customers is impossible for a business that cannot be understood.

Choosing the right agency could help you in every translation process. Also, having your digital campaigns and desktop publishings localized could help you gain more customers as it makes the locals feel more comfortable as they can clearly understand what you are offering.

Meanwhile, as a customer, your participation is highly needed in the translation process. Remember to give your translation agency a thorough briefing for them to understand what specific results you are expecting to see. Moreover, try to respond to their queries as quickly as possible, so you and the translators could meet your deadlines.

These simple steps should help you achieve a successful business translation that would open the door of the international market for your business.

Reduce The Stress Of Running A Business

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Running a Business| Reduce The Stress Of Running A BusinessAnyone who has ever even attempted to run a business in the past will tell you just how stressful it can really be. The act of looking after such an enterprise can really often be enough to cause a great amount of worry and anxiety, and even if you are not anxious, the day to day grind of it can still have some kind of negative effect on you. If you are keen to try and reduce the amount of stress that you experience as a result of running your business, then there are many things that you might like to try. In this article, we are going to try and make this a little easier by focusing on a few things in particular which are likely to help. Follow these, and you should find that you are able to reduce the stress of running a business greatly.

Lighten Your Load

It might well be that you find yourself simply doing too much. Many entrepreneurs fall into this trap, and it can be a subtle one that you don’t even notice to begin with. But if you want to make sure that you can keep your own mind in check while still looking after the business, you will need to find a decent way to lighten your own load while having it taken care of by someone else. That could mean that you simply need to delegate more, in which case it’s time to start identifying the people you really trust beneath you. Or you might want to think about getting into outsourcing some of the things that you would rather not have to worry about yourself. Knowing that someone who knows what they are doing is taking care of your business IT support can be a huge relief, and it is certainly something you will want to think about if you are feeling a little overwhelmed.

Keep The Goal Simple

Perhaps you have found yourself widening the goals to the point where you are trying to do a number of things at once. This is again very natural, but not entirely helpful ultimately if you hope to make things easier on yourself. The truth is that you will find it much less stressful if you simply focus on one goal at a time and keep it simple. That will mean that you don’t feel that you are trying to do too many things at once, and actually it will make running your business much more of a joy too, and also ensure that the business is actually more likely to be a real success. By keeping the goal simple, you can really make sure of these things

Enjoy It

Finally, remember that there is nothing wrong with enjoying running your business. In fact, it would be highly recommended, and you will find that simply making the assertion that you are going to start enjoying it more can be enough to really make a difference. The more you actively enjoy your business, the less stressful it will be on the whole.